Multi vitamins can provide a convenient way to take a
variety of supplemental nutrients from a single product to
prevent vitamin or mineral deficiencies, as well as to
achieve higher intakes of beneficial nutrients.
In the current state of the vitamin and nutritional
supplement industry it can be difficult to decide which
supplements will provide real health protection and
improvement benefits and which are simply “me too” products
designed primarily to ride the wave of public interest in
preventative health.
To understand the need to be informed about vitamin and
nutritional supplements, you must understand the regulatory
environment that currently exists in the vitamin supplement
industry in the United States.
Do Vitamin Companies Regulate Themselves?
In October of 1994, President Clinton signed into law the
Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA).
The DSHEA was written to help empower Americans to make
choices about their own preventative health care strategies.
Under the DSHEA it was decided that nutritional supplements
would continue to be regulated as a food product rather than
the more restrictive regulations that drugs fall under.
While this made vitamin and nutritional supplements widely
available it also allowed nutritional supplement
manufacturers to practically regulate themselves, since
there was no agreed upon standard of good manufacturing
practice (GMP) and no government pressure to be true to the
label on their products.
It was’t until March of 2003, nine years after the DSHEA
became law, that the FDA proposed new regulations to require
current good manufacturing practices (CGMPs) in the
manufacturing, packaging, and holding of nutritional
supplements.
According to the FDA, this is what prompted the new
regulation proposal:
“In recent years, analyses of dietary supplements by a
private sector laboratory suggest that a substantial number
of dietary supplement products analyzed may not contain the
amounts of dietary ingredients that would be expected to be
found based on their product labels”. For example…
“Five of 18 soy and/or red clover-containing products were
found to contain only 50 percent to 80 percent of the
declared amounts of isoflavones”.
“Of 25 probiotic products tested, 8 contained less than 1
percent of the claimed number of live bacteria or the number
of bacteria that would be expected to be found in such a
product”.
The proposed rule will, for the first time, establish
standards to ensure that vitamin supplement ingredients are
not adulterated with contaminants or impurities, and are
labeled to accurately to reflect the active ingredients and
other ingredients in the product.
The proposed new regulations will be phased in over the next
three years so as not to disrupt the production of
nutritional supplements.
While the DSHEA has helped ensure that dietary supplements
remain easily accessible without excessive regulation,
(doctors prescriptions, etc.), it also has created a “wide
open” atmosphere for manufacturers who aren’t yet in
compliance with good manufacturing practices (at this time,
GMP compliance is voluntary).
It’s very easy for a supplement company to jump on the
bandwagon of the latest fad and put together a product with
little or no research and poor quality (and cheap!)
ingredients, and then market it with over-blown,
unsubstantiated claims and pure hype.
Some of the most common products that this formula is used
for are weight loss, HGH (human growth hormone) and multi
vitamins.
Supplement users are in the position of having to trust
vitamin supplement manufacturers to regulate themselves.
Although the dietary supplement industry has an excellent
track record of safety, it’s been verified by the independent
product testing of consumerlab.com that some supplements do
not contain what is stated on their label and are sometimes
contaminated.
While some vitamin supplement manufacturers are working hard
to meet the new FDA guidelines, not all are. At this time,
you have to do your own research and take extra precautions
to find high quality nutritional supplements.
Tips for Choosing Nutritional Supplements
Vitamins, minerals and other nutrients work best when
they’re combined in a way that mimics nature as closely as
possible. Look for nutritional supplements that have
nutrients combined to make use of the natural synergy
between them.
Companies willing to give a full disclosure and description
of their ingredients have usually put more effort and
research into their product. For example, instead of just
saying “Calcium” the label should be more detailed like this:
“Calcium (from 2430 mg Citrate, Malate, Ester-C)”. This
description indicates that higher quality ingredients and
more up-to-date research was used for the supplement.
Verify that the supplement was produced at a pharmaceutical
GMP (good manufacturing practices) facility. Since
compliance to GMP standards is voluntary it’s important to
do your own research to verify that macro-biological testing
is done at every stage of production.
(This issue shouldn’t be taken lightly – as mentioned above,
studies by Consumerlab.com have shown that some supplements
don’t have the true amount of ingredients as stated on the
label, or may harbor toxic contaminants.)
Pharmaceutical grade supplements (sometimes called
nutriceuticals) are made for “professional” use in the health
care field by natural health care providers and consumers
who want the best.
In the past decade pharmaceutical grade supplements have
become more availableto the general public and this type of
nutritional supplement will provide the health benefits that
you’re looking for, often for a very reasonable price.
Max Wardlow is the webmaster of advanced-vitamin-formulas.com where you’ll find current information and resources on the best vitamin supplements [http://www.advanced-vitamin-formulas.com/vitamin_supplements.html] and natural health supplements [http://www.advanced-vitamin-formulas.com/herbal_remedies.html] for many common health issues.
