How to Choose Quality Supplements (+ Red Flags to Look For)
Supplements can be contaminated with heavy metals, bacteria, and pesticides before they hit the store shelf, but due to little FDA regulation, they are still available on the market today.
According to Harvard Health, Americans spend about $35 billion on supplements every year.
And I’ll bet you probably have a few in your kitchen cabinet.
Supplements are just that - a bridge to nutrient gaps that cannot be fulfilled by a healthy diet. However, most people are looking to them as ‘quick fixes’ and simply replacing pharmaceuticals with ‘neutraceuticals’, aka supplements, not realizing that they can be potentially harmful.
Most of my clients come to me on a ton of supplements because of their Functional medicine practitioners - but instead of addressing root causes, many of these supplements are just being used as Band-Aids e.g. adaptogens for 'adrenal dysfunction' instead of asking why someone might have adrenal dysfunction and fixing that. People are effectively swapping pharmaceuticals for 'neutraceuticals' under the guise of 'functional medicine', and that is not true root cause medicine.
BEFORE you start any supplement, ask:
Do I really need to take this supplement?
What am I taking this for?
Who’s monitoring me while I take them and when should I stop them?
While it is possible to get all of our vitamins and nutrients through our diet, this has become difficult in our modern society, so I get the need for supplements sometimes. I also take them! The correct supplements can be very helpful and aid healing.
But have you ever thought about the regulation of these supplements? How can you tell if a supplement is good quality, or contaminated? How do you know which supplement brands you can trust?
What is frightening is that some supplements I've reviewed contain a high level of heavy metals like lead - not exactly health-promoting! So when it comes to supplements, less is really more - take only what you need, but do not over-supplement thinking you are doing yourself a favour. You most likely will not be.
Who Needs Supplements?
For starters, how do you know if you actually need to take a supplement?
I always recommend consulting with your primary care physician before adding any supplement to your diet because you don’t know how this supplement could interfere with other medications.
Most healthy adults do not need a wide variety of supplements every day. What you need depend on your diet, your age, your activity levels, special conditions (e.g. pregnancy, children), what medications you are on.
Therefore, I do not believe there is a blanket rule of one single supplement that is good for everyone, even when it comes to multivitamins and prenatal. It’s always best to get a recommendation from an experienced and knowledgeable professional who knows YOUR full health history.
You can go to your primary care doctor and discuss blood work to see if you need a specific supplement e.g. Vitamin D, iron studies, B12, or more functional markers of cellular B12 status like homocysteine and methylmalonic acid, red blood cell zinc, and magnesium, omega 3 index - these may not be covered by insurance so check first.
Now... if you need a supplement, how do you choose a good one? Let’s take a look!
What’s in Your Supplements?
Do you know what’s in your daily supplements?
If you don’t, you’re not alone. Most people taking supplements and vitamins do not take the time to read the label or research the active ingredients present. Oftentimes, I see clients taking multiple forms of the same vitamin in different products e.g. Vitamin A in an immune support formulation, and then again in a skin support formulation - it is important to ensure you are not doubling up and overdosing on the same vitamin.
The non-existent regulation
On top of that, many supplements and vitamins are contaminated, but due to little FDA regulation, they are still available on the market today. You can see the start of a long and incomplete list by the FDA here, which includes the most commonly tainted supplements: supplements for weight loss, muscle building, and sexual enhancement.
Supplements can be contaminated with heavy metals, bacteria, and pesticides before they hit the store shelf.
FDA Regulation of Supplements
At the moment, there is little regulation of supplements by the FDA. This means that there can be discrepancies in the ingredient label, the batches can differ from bottle to bottle, and there is no guarantee that a supplement is safe to consume.
Because of this lack of testing provided by the government, third-party testing and certifications have become the primary source of comfort to monitor supplements.
Third-party testing is not required by law, but it is becoming more common to uphold public health standards. Some factors they test for are consistency in the product, potency, purity, and free from harmful chemicals and substances.
4 Red Flags to Look for When Buying Supplements
Red Flag 1: No Testing or Certification
First and foremost, always avoid supplements that are not tested or certified from a reputable source, unless you know the person who made it and trusts them. There is no telling what is in the supplement or if it will be effective.