Article by Antonio Colasurdo Board Certified Naturopath at Openspaceclinic.

When clients initially come to me, quite often, a question that I’m asked by those who take dietary supplements is if their current supplement is “good”. Most people buy them online, from a business, or from a company directly. As a professional however, I cannot give a full honest product assessment based off of a label alone, and therefore require more time to look into the product.

Because of that, often times I would need to get back to the client on my opinion once I’ve conducted further research. Often times my process involves emailing the company that created the supplement directly to inquire further into specific areas.

A product label may look good, however this is the potential problem with stopping one’s inquiry at the product label:

Using a data set of 1800 patients, ingesting 375 dietary supplements with subsequent analysis, it was found that only 44% were labeled correctly. The other 56% contained anabolic steroids or other pharmaceutical agents. Problematic product markets included body building supplements, with a 72% mislabeling rate, weight loss supplements, with a 72% mislabeling rate, energy boosting products, with a 60% mislabeling rate, and general health and wellbeing products, with a 51% mislabeling rate.

 

Naturopathic Doctor News & Review – Herbal mislabeling and liver damage

As you can imagine, this is incredibly problematic, and this problem one of the reasons why, as a health professional, I am extremely picky over my opinions on supplement use. Now, I use supplements in practice; however, my recommendations MUST be based in quality, purity, and backed by current and updated scientific literature.

I need the assurance that what is labeled on a bottle, is actually contained within the bottle. This is why my standards concerning supplements is incredibly high, below are some of the things which I look into:

NPN Numbers.

Making sure that a supplement has an NPN Number is paramount. For a natural product to be sold in Canada it needs an NPN and it must be printed on the bottle sold, without one it is illegal to sell the natural product. Now we shouldn’t need to worry about this, however, one time someone walked into my office with a product that lacked an NPN which is why this is worth mentioning.

Third Party Testing.

Personally, I believe that all supplements should go through Third Party Testing; it adds to the credibility that what is claimed to be within the bottle is actually found there. However, many companies don’t perform third party testing as it can be costly. However, this is non negotiable, for me to approve a supplement it must be tested; preferably by a lab that has no affiliations to the supplement company (directly or indirectly).

Product Monographs.

Another important point, not all companies have these readily available for individuals; the only brands, that I know of, which make product monographs are companies that only give access to supplements to health practitioners.

Yes, research on natural compounds, vitamins, and minerals exist and is readily available. However, I believe that research must be performed on the specific product to validate it’s existence. For this reason, the product itself should have research performed on it.

It’s also important to note, for a Medical Doctor to approve any supplement use (or at the very least say that it won’t interfere with any medications, or that it is safe), a product monograph must be provided. Without one, the answer will always be no.

Without third party testing, product research, and product monographs, I stay away.

Certifications.

After all those hoops, I will look at one final point: is the supplement in question certified by a third party organization such as USP, NSF, Informed Choice, Informed Sport, and/or any other professional certifying organization to validate that a product is continuously being tested.

As an example, to maintain an Informed Sport certification each batch of the product in question must be tested and authenticated to make sure that professional athletes in the NFL, NHL, UFC, etc. are not taking something which can get them banned from their sport such as steroids.

If the company which created the supplement decides to discontinue testing, then the Informed Sport certification becomes null and void.

Because of this, some certifications are not only tough to get, but they are also tough to maintain.

Final Product Validations.

Only after I’ve reviewed each of those components do I look at the product label itself. Because if a product fails in any of the pervious stages, I don’t care what the label itself says.

As you can see, a label is really one cog in a much larger machine. Pushing beyond the label is where you’ll discover the validity of a supplement.

It’s easy to sell a supplement on the market, and it’s easy to make cost effective supplements available to the general public; but is the supplement in question actually beneficial for your health? Well that’s another question entirely…

Final Thoughts.

I know that as a natural health practitioner the tone of this article may seem odd; however, I caution the use of cheap supplements as many of them are filled with extra binders, fillers, lubricants, and coatings; and remember, your digestive system has to process all of these.

Not only that, but the form of a supplement will determine if it is absorbed by the body or if it passes through without or with minimal absorption. Many of the cheap supplements use cheap to manufacture forms which are minimally absorbed by the body. Because of this, you may be wasting your hard earned money.