Selecting a good Vitamin & Mineral Supplement Part I

The Three Most Important Issues Concerning Selecting a Vitamin/Mineral Supplement:

#1. Is the supplement safe to take?

Vitamin supplements are simply an encapsulated group of ingredients taken from plants, or created in a laboratory. Inside the capsule can be many harmful substances - both immediate hazards and accumulative ones.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR.

Contamination - Scientific-based nutrition companies (not the supplier of ingredients) will test ingredients for contaminants. Companies that do test for contaminants reject as much as 30% of the ingredients due to contamination from so called "contamination free" ingredients.

TYPES OF CONTAMINANTS:

Pathogens - agents that cause disease.
E.coli - a bacteria that causes severe bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps.
Salmonella - can cause diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps.
Pesticides - Cause everything from immediate mild skin irritation, vomiting, convulsions, tremors and coma to long-term accumulative illnesses and diseases as well as birth defects in offspring. 300 different chemicals are sprayed on 95% of the crops in the United States every year.

Reference: Living Organic (Clarke, Porter, Quested and Thomas).

Toxic Levels - Toxic levels from vitamins & minerals can result from inconsistencies in the strength of raw materials. Therefore, scientific-based nutrition companies will test the strength and purity of each batch of pills to substantiate that not only does each pill contain the same strength and purity, but when the consumer reorders the product next month (or next year) that they will still receive the exact same strength and purity.

Call the Company - As a consumer it is difficult to know whether companies do their own testing for contaminants and toxic levels or rely on the manufacturer's claims - you must call the company and ask. If there is no contact information available, do not use the product.

#2. Does the supplement get absorbed?

Supplements ( as well as food) travel from the stomach, to the intestines, to the blood stream and to their final destination - if everything goes right. There is a lot that can go wrong.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR.

The supplement you choose should use the USP (U.S. Pharmacopoeia) designation on the label. It will read, "conforms to USP requirements..." This indicates that the product meets one or all of the following high standards:
Disintegration - indicates how fast a tablet or capsule breaks down into small pieces so the nutrients can disolve.
Dissolution - is a measurement of how fast a supplement dissolves. If a tablet or capsule does not dissolve, the nutrients can not be absorbed.
Strength - is the ammount of a specific vitamin, mineral, or herb in each tablet or capsule.
Purity - assures that the product is within a range for acceptable impurities (from contamination or degradation).
Expiration date - must be listed on the label indicating the date beyond which the supplement may no longer meet USP standards of purity, strength, and/or quality.

Minerals are difficult for the body to absorb. A process called chelation (pronounced: key'-lay-shun) substantially increases absorbtion. With some minerals absorbtion can be lower than 10%! The absorbtion of amino acid chelated minerals is much higher. Your label should read, "Zinc (as Zinc Chelate);" "Magnesium (as Magnesium Chelate);" etc.

#3. Are there proven health benefits?

Companies will boast superior ingredients, liquid vitamins being better than capsules, capsules being better than tablets, etc. Don't be distracted by the hype. Bottom Line - have they proven health benefits from taking the supplements.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR.

There is a difference between proven ingredients and a proven product. A proven ingredient means that a study has been conducted to prove an ingredient (such as vitamin C) has health benefits. A proven product, which might contain several ingredients will have done a clinical trial to prove there are health benefits from taking the product.
There are several hundred-thousand brands of vitamin supplements, many claiming to be the "best." But, most vitamin brands use the same few suppliers for their ingredients. So what's the difference between all these companies other than packaging? Not much.
There are a few companies that do things differently. They have large scientific staffs that do research, they own farms that grow plants, they own testing equipment to ensure quality, strength & purity, and they do clinical trials on their products. The most reliable studies are, "randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies."

The way you as a consumer can isolate a good nutrition company, therefore a good product, is whether their products or their ingredients are proven through clinical trials.

IF YOU AREN'T TAKING A PRODUCT THAT IS PROVEN EFFECTIVE, WHAT KIND OF PRODUCT ARE YOU TAKING?

QUALITY OPTIONS

1. Master Batch Records
2. Validation Documentation
3. Raw Material Physical and Analytical Testing
4. Shelf-Life Stability Testing
5. Finished Goods Physical and Analytical Testing
6. Retention Sampling and Lot Traceability

From the options listed above, items 1 through 6 are required for the Pharmaceutical (drug companies) and the Over The Counter (pharmacies) industries, but only 1 & 6 are required for the Nutrition industry. It is at the sole discretion of the supplement company whether they validate the ingredients (2), test raw materials (3), confirm shelf-life (4), and prove the finished product is effective (5).

1. Above information compiled from literature published by the Health Awareness Foundation. For scientific references, you may visit their website at: www.healthawarenessfoundation.org