Malaysia’s Health Supplements Boom: What Are The Side Effects? | Undercover Asia | CNA Documentary

in malaysia there's a new breed of millionaires building their fortunes making health supplements and selling them on social media influencers and entrepreneur influencers like ali shukri right they are very effective [Music] the moment you think of datto she's just pink and crowned and people remember her the recall is very powerful [Music] i love them actually to be honest actually like a big fan how is the strange mix of flamboyance and wellness products made possible is and is there a hidden price to this new phenomenon in malaysia [Music] [Music] irregular eating and sleeping habits due to work had caused fauzi to gain weight this led to a search online for a solution to solve his weight problem [Music] one particular product caught fauzi's eye a chocolate slimming drink wow [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] there ozzie a full-time home baker also found success using another slimming product she found online one that promised weight loss within three days [Music] of a growing legion of malaysians buying health and dietary supplements online pushing sales up by 50 in just five years to around 730 million us dollars in 2019 but ozzie isn't just a buyer she's also a reseller part of the network pushing up sales [Music] [Music] [Music] goes even further tapping on his fame as an internet influencer to turbo charge sales for his own wellness brand the herbs today he's launching a new product isn't a beauty queen nor was she in miss universe malaysia in the 90s alif isn't serious yet netizens are lapping it up yes is [Applause] it's this heady mixture of charisma and hyperbole that's made aleph a celebrity in his own right is [Applause] on social media millions follow alif as he touts a variety of health drinks and vitamins said to improve the immune system prevent cancer and enhance sexual health hi hi everyone when i'm young i hope i will be a friend can i speak malay well because it's very bad you know because i'm education very low you know thanks to his fans alec is now a multi-millionaire his sales by his own account have topped 17 million us dollars in 2019. for this collection only have maybe three units in the world it funds a lavish lifestyle which he shows off to his fans readily you view all the channel here you can marble you can see the carpet all is custom made this marble is very expensive and you can see this one is pure swarovski all is custom-made his flamboyant style and willingness to flaunt his success is winning him even more followers [Music] they become a ready audience of millions for his product pitches raking in even more money for the multi-millionaire the majority of influences are hide hands my skin used to have a big paws and a bit of pigmentation because i'm always out in the sun and now it has been so much better oh my god no more oily skin you gotta try it guys adria is an actress and influenza with a following of 32 000 on instagram she occasionally partners companies to promote their wellness supplements so what i do i put it in my tongue i'm more into health and beauty people got fascinated about what i eat sometimes so i share with them how about veggies and fruits and how i try to stay healthy although i do want to indulge sometimes since what i was 31 which is like eight nine years ago the last drama i did i was still a 16 year old girl although i was 31. so people used to say how the hell do you do that um and i said it's about living healthy and that's when i started sharing about being positive i got some stuff for my mom as well my dad so that's gonna help alhamdulillah cannot wait have a great adria's contracts with brands typically involves endorsing or reviewing their products on her social media platforms okay it depends on how long okay like sometimes you can get 500 1000 2000 for a post but you can get more if they want you to do it as a package in the long run and it depends also whether you're going to be interviewed on the show or on radio that kind of thing so it can go up to 10 15 20k with more than 80 of malaysia's population tapped into the internet marketing health supplements has taken off in a big way on social media this has contributed to the growth of a multi-million dollar health supplement market one which everyone from sellers to online marketeers are profiteering from malaysia is seeing a boom in local health and wellness products the multi-million dollar industry is largely fueled by promises made on those products on social media [Music] thirty-one-year-old aussie was taking a slimming drink that promised to help her lose weight make the letter or just reduce it stop undeterred ozzie experimented with other online slimming products until she found one that worked for her saying um drop shipping is a low risk retail model that allows retailers like azi to sell products they do not own instead they refer their successful conversions to the supplier to process payment and deliver the products e-commerce has made dropshipping an effective method to seek out potential customers this is because firms that adopt dropshipping need only to work on production and fulfillment of the orders while relying on dropshippers like azzy to manage sales and customer service after a month as a dropshipper ozzy signed on to become an agent it's very good for you it is just amazing unlike drop shippers sales agents typically operate like independent distributors who buy goods and bulk at a competitive rate they then sell it at market rate agents take on more risk but they stand to earn more because they get a better cut than dropshippers exploring it product just for you guys with more than 190 000 items competing for attention on e-commerce portals some companies are going beyond drop shippers and agents to push their products they're turning to cyber to provide social media engagement in the form of liking sharing and commenting on social media content airline posting to support america [Music] as a form of alternative advertising to create the illusion of organic hype around a product to service and depending on the hype needed his prices can range from 30 us dollars to 12 000 us dollars whatsapp some more group telegrams some more group facebook kids foreign at his headquarters aleph shukri besides over more than 30 direct employees they help him manage his network of over 20 000 sales agents but the most powerful weapon in his marketing arsenal is a team dedicated to working on the social media channels they produce lifestyle and marketing content to keep his followers engaged in the last three years he's doubled the number of followers on instagram to over 4.2 million with another 1.4 million subscribers on youtube [Music] family influencers and entrepreneur influencers like ali shukri right they are very effective the videos and the content that they make can look tacky and you know the way they talk sometimes they intentionally provoke the audience i hope you don't say i'm react show off but people still like them because you know it's entertaining they remember i think at the end of the day it's a very good recall for the brain [Music] [Music] the moment you think of datto vida she's just pink and crown and you know people remember her it's the recall is very powerful [Music] whose real name is also her own boss [Music] like alex she has a line of health problems as well as a penchant for self-promotion and displays of material wealth i love them actually to be honest actually like big fan i would say that um it all comes back to the entertainment value 97.1 of social media users use their social media platforms for leisure activities to for escape for diversion and so on and data vida and alifukri are larger than life right so when we come back to the idea of social comparison they flaunt their riches they from their outfits whatsoever you look at that influencer and you're like oh i wish i could be like him where am i lacking what do i do to get there i think a lot of people have this upwards comparison towards that influencer so they would want to believe what their influences said is true [Music] foreign [Music] started off by selling products from thailand and indonesia before starting his own product soon with the help of a chemist he released his first product a health drink called juice parawa or virgin juice the product was a major success thanks to his social media following and extensive online channels alif's business flourished since its founding more than 10 years ago olive's brand has grown to sell more than 100 products his brand is not alone there are over 200 makers and sellers of health and food supplements in malaysia many of their products make all kinds of promises but how safe are these products [Music] so august 2020 malaysia's health ministry seized 2.4 million u.s dollars worth of unregistered health and beauty products they were all sold online through e-commerce platforms and dropship agents some of these products contain steroids and other controlled substances [Music] dr hassena and her team are the people that stand between the malaysian public and harmful supplements her team at the national pharmaceutical regulatory agency or npra oversees the registration of health supplements in malaysia supplements are classed as either health or food supplements food supplements are deemed as food products and do not need to be registered with authorities whereas health supplements are products containing active ingredients these are chemical compounds such as vitamins minerals and enzymes among others such products if tainted can be harmful the npra therefore tests health supplements to determine the safety and efficacy of the products before they are approved to be sold in the malaysian market it is very dangerous for the public to consume any unregistered products when we say unregulated or unregistered products meaning they have not gone through the evaluation process so the the terms of quality and safety of the products is not ensured the unregistered product might contain harmful substances so it is very dangerous for them to take that and somehow we know that this have supplement always been consumed for a very long period of time so when you take it for very long period of time it can cause any side effect which we never know to help the public npra created quest 3 plus a searchable database of registered products using that portal the malaysian dietary supplement association found in a 2019 investigation that many unregistered supplements are readily available for sale online they also found products with banned ingredients such as conjugated linoleic acid the ingredient known to cause liver problems is clearly prohibited in malaysia right now there's so many supplements out there that's claiming that it will uh cure disease like so many different diseases but the fact is they use so many like mercury or steroids and all kind of stuff to make it you know see instant results and yet you don't realize that in the long run you're gonna get cancer and it's gonna exit your kidney and so on you know that's the thing that that i find it very scary hey guys so i've got this amazing product that can make you both fair and slim this one product that claims that you can be fair and slim at the same time so which is dodgy and we had a famous actress who promoted before and quite a few of them because they are all paid quite a bit to review every day's thing they are taking it and yet you don't see them taking it in the long run because they actually know there's something wrong with it you know but they cannot say anything because they already signed a contract so that's the hard bit they cannot expose and say oh it's actually bad because they're going to get sued actually in the past most probably public will get their advice from authorized persons like pharmacists on the printed material like vampires banners poster also newspapers but now i think most of the people they get the information through internet whether the information is true or false it's quite difficult to control muktar's team does routine inspections for the illegal sales of health product in physical premises with online marketing makta says his work has become harder we can ask the alibaba to take down the advertisement if we find out any advertisement against our general rules and regulation we can ask to take down the advertisement but when we ask one advertisement being removed from the platform there will be another 10 or 20 new advertisement will come out that's actually a big challenge making this cat and mouse game even more challenging are the hundreds of original equipment manufacturers are oems in malaysia they are legitimate factories many are part of the supply chain for reputable brands of nutritional products but their existence makes it easy for anyone to put out a brand new line of nutritional products on any ecommerce platform with little oversight to get the products to be ready nowadays is is very very easy there are a lot of factories so-called oems you just come to them tell them what you want to do and then they produce it for you undercover asia visits these factories to see what's involved in starting a new wellness product hello [Applause] uh malaysia is plagued by the illegal sale of unregistered health products and original equipment manufacturers are oems while legitimate businesses in their own right may well be fueling this trade by allowing anyone to mass produce their own brand of supplements posing as entrepreneurs undercover asia visits the oems in the clan valley to see how it's done [Music] hello undercover asia visited two companies both were found via facebook each of them were able to custom make a supplement product and mass-produce it and we were able to get into those discussions almost immediately [Music] um [Music] try our best [Music] in creating a product these oems are able to emulate existing products in the market they can also adjust the ingredients tweaking the formula to the client's needs foreign [Music] [Applause] um the flourishing of oems in the clang valley allows anyone with very little knowledge to start their own wellness brands be it by replicating illegally existing wellness products or by tweaking existing formulas with little scientific basis over 15 years dr amat tamizi has seen his fair share of patients who have fallen for the wild claims made by supplement sellers for supplements especially food supplement they simply can go to any factory that can produce oem and claim whatever they want to claim and sometimes they use scientific findings the research is not about the product the risk is about compound but they're claiming that compound is available in their products and overclaiming i believe that all these supplements are bogus where they are claiming medical benefits where actually they don't then it's difficult to prove because there's thousands of products and you can buy it easily you don't even have to go for pharmacy there are people who are selling it online social media claiming everything the most common is that one supplement solve multiple medical problems undercover asia was offered precisely such products in a series of phone calls and whatsapp messages with an oem one product offered promised to burn fat prevent acne and wrinkles as well as remove scars [Music] another product flattens the stomach stimulates fertility regulates hormones and irregular periods and lifts the breasts efficacy aside the safety of these products has also been called into question usually those that brings the most effect definitely contains some active medical compound in it and let's say you're using sibo treatment weight loss it can lead to kidney problems in some cases where especially when they claim the supplement is for energy the commonest compound is steroid when you're using a large amount it can cause a lot of problem hormonal imbalance leading you to have increase in fat deposition and the worst case scenario is you can cause ulcer to your stomach leads to bleeding that can cause death to test for the prevalence of banned or restricted ingredients undercover asia brought five supplement products to a lab for testing they include two samples from oems and three others widely available online out of the five one of them a whitening pill contained a banned substance we have detected 10 milligram per kg which is also equal to around 0.01 of hydroquinone npra agency has already listed down drgt it's a drug registration guidance document they have restricted this active ingredient they have already listed that hydroquinone should not be taken orally the same skin whitening pill sparked controversy back in 2018 when an influencer marketed it for babies [Applause] triona law was working for malaysia news portal solosis when she investigated the story the product was basically claiming that um it's anti-wrinkle and whitening and it could even benefit babies below the age of six months so she was saying how you could feed this to your kids from you know zero to six months and just crush up a tablet and put it in their food and i was thinking why does a baby need to have white thinning supplements why does infants or young children under the age of 12 need beauty supplements and of course a lot of people were very angry because hydroquinone can actually cause a lot of nasty health problems they can actually cause things like kidney failure brain damage and cancer far-fetched claims can also mess with the minds of those with serious medical conditions you drink this and you are cured from diabetes hypertension gout cholesterol or even heart disease and the most ridiculous is off of cancer i've been treating cancer patients they are gullible and most of the time when they are diagnosed they are looking for cure or whatever stage they are some of them do say that they want to take some time and after that lawsuit treatment and come back when they're ready at later stage i have a lot of patients like that and contributing to this partly are over claims of supplements hajiwana suffers from kidney failure in a bid to find a cure haji's family turned to a wellness supplement the decision however proved detrimental causing further complications to his poor health benefits [Music] the family sought all kinds of health products and supplements to help the father one product a milk supplement seemed to show promise haji's son rossly said the packaging made claims that it could help those with kidney disease two months into the milk supplement a specialist found [ __ ] has liver damage they traced the cause to the milk supplement product after confirming that other kidney patients who had taken the supplement suffered the same problems i [Music] eventually succumbed to liver failure he died four weeks after this interview [Music] meanwhile fauzi's health took a wrong turn after he consumed slimming product chocofat he would suffer side effects linked to sibutamin such as chronic headaches and gastric problems he decided to check with the influencer who sold him the product solutions foreign was subsequently banned in mid-2019 but the ban came too late for fauzi his long-time use of the slimming product has already planted the seeds for health [Music] complications um eventually diagnosed him as suffering from a severe case of acid reflux a condition sometimes associated with guarana an ingredient found in chocofit guarana has caffeine in it and at high levels and with constant consumption caffeine can cause heartburn or acid reflux when it's too good to be true it doesn't mean it's true foreign foreign hit product but it also landed his company in trouble with the law a prominent local health and beauty product manufacturer d herbs holdings malaysia has been fined eleven thousand ringgit by the kuala lumpur magistrates court the company has been confused his company was found guilty of false advertising for two products including claiming that drinking juice per hour on gold can boost immunity the fine amounted to seven hundred us dollars a drop in the ocean when the juice alone made in millions benefits product products happening foreign foreign [Music] isn't an isolated case in 2017 his counterpart has misa othman was also convicted of unlawful advertising for her pomoga health drink and fined around 1200 us dollars a small price to pay for a multi-million dollar fortune built on selling and at times overselling health supplements both alif's and vedas products contravened the food act of 1983 which states that food products including supplements are not allowed to make claims on their products without evidence these two products continue to be sold the very visible success of alef and datovida is poised to continue a trend of entrepreneurs pushing out new health products with ease supported by oems and vulnerable consumers seeking alternative remedies to fix their health problems [Music] then [Music] i think the best way is actually to educate rather than enforcement yes should be done and should be done regularly but i know the limits you know the education is much more important if there's no demand there's no need for it if there's a lot of product people pay hundreds of thousands to produce the pro the supplements if no one buying it i think they would stop by itself a raging pandemic and movement control orders imposed in several states in malaysia is now creating a perfect storm sales of unregistered medicines claiming to be a cure for covet 19 are flooding the market spurring the government to take action it has since identified and blocked 182 website selling such unregistered pharmaceutical products the battle for the well-being of malaysians is on you

Channel: CNA Insider

Views: 383,280

Keywords: CNA, CNA Insider, Channel NewsAsia, Asian perspective, People stories, Asia news, Undercover Asia 8, Undercover Asia, Malaysia, documentary, health products, health supplement, Aliff Syukri, D'herbs, Adrea Abdullah, Internet, health, beauty, diet, social media, influencer, Dato Vida, wellness, slimming, internet marketing, Jus Perawan, false advertising, investigative, full documentary, narrated, Southeast Asia, inhouse

Id: 6lnY7dV3g9k

Length: 46min 47sec (2807 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/mocmocmoc81]

lol wtf, false advertising fine is less than covid sop fine....

[u/Financial_Truck6854]

If can limit your taking of supplements

[u/Dramatic-Butterfly30]

I am more concerned that I'm starting to see more people rely on selling these health products as their main source of income... It basically means Malaysia has such bad economy and health is the last resort where people would spend money on.