Many Americans take a dietary supplement, multivitamin, or herb on a regular basis or at least a few times per year. I take a few myself!
You want to be sure that supplements contain the actual ingredients stated on the label! When you are taking a vitamin D supplement recommended by your doctor, you want to be sure it actually has vitamin D in it so you are not just wasting your time and money!
Another possibility is that the supplement contains drugs that are active in your body but not listed on the ingredient label. For example, many “natural” supplements for sexual enhancement have been found to contain drugs like viagra that were not on the label.1
For these reasons, I frequently talk with my patients about how to find a high quality supplement.
Some patients tell me that they “have a brand they really trust.” Call me skeptical, but if a company wants my trust as a customer, they need to prove to me that they deserve that trust.
One of the best ways that we as consumers can find trustworthy supplements is to look for proof of “third party lab testing”. There are several labs that do this kind of “third party testing.” Some of the most common “third party labs” are USP, NSF, and Consumer Labs. The idea here is that the supplement company allowed a lab that they have no financial ties with to come in and test their supplement to verify that 1) it contains what it says, 2) at the stated strength, and 3) doesn’t contain other things that aren’t on the label. Please note this testing and labeling is on a supplement by supplement basis, not a designation the whole supplement company receives. So if you are buying a vitamin D supplement and an iron supplement, even if they are from the same company, you want to look for the “third party lab” label on both of them.
Supplements that have gone through this kind of third party testing earn the right to put an icon from that lab on the supplement label, telling consumers they have passed this kind of testing. You can see some of these labels in the photos included in this post.
When I can, I only buy supplements that have this kind of third party lab icon on the label and I recommend my patients do the same.
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