NUTRITION BITE: Week of July 28

Vitamins/ minerals: part 2

 So you’ve decided you want to take a multivitamin. Just pick one off the shelf right? The one on sale? Before you do that, you should know about one law: The Dietary Supplement 
Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). Under this law, it allowed supplement companies to not require FDA approval before marketing their supplements. As you can imagine, the market for supplements exploded, which wouldn't be a problem per se, but the number of fake, dangerous, useless supplements multiplied. What do I mean? There have been multiple studies showing many brands on any supermarket shelf have little to NONE of the purported ingredients in them, and occasionally some have too much. Some have batches that are inconsistent from pill to pill. Many have contaminants and fillers in them. What's the potential result? At the best, you potentially buying placebos, and at the worst, you buying pills that are actually harmful to you (all the while you believing you are doing your body good taking them.)

So, how do you find a good vitamin/mineral/supplement? One way is looking for the USP and NSF certification on the bottle. You can be more confident that they've been tested to contain what they claim to contain and don't contain what's not supposed to be there. Also look for other reputable 3^rd party certifications. If you are super serious about quality, you could even research the manufacturing methods and quality control procedures of the companies producing the supplements.

Just a few companies that I trust include Apex, Thorne, Standard Process, Pure Encapsulations, Metagenics and Xymogen. (some of these you can only get through a doc’s office).
Now you know, think: Could it be that previous supplement didn't work or made you sick because it didn't even contain the supposed ingredient, or maybe it contained contaminants? Hmmm, food for thought.