Does your supplement brand measure up to standards?

Have you ever found yourself standing in the aisle at a national chain grocery or convenience store trying to decide which supplements are right for you?  Has your doctor recommended you start taking fish oil and you find yourself at a CVS, Walmart or big box wholesaler looking for someone to get informed advice from?

Do you really know what’s in the supplements at these national retail chains and what health benefits they’re actually providing?  How do you decide which product to grab off the shelf and whether it’s the right one for you?

According to a recent New York Times article, these retailers don’t know what’s in the supplements that they’re selling you either.  On February 2, 2015 the New York state attorney general’s office accused four national retailers of selling dietary supplements that were fraudulent and in many cases contaminated with unlisted ingredients.

The reality is that it’s hard to know what’s in those retail chain supplements, and in many cases not only do these products potentially provide no health benefits, they might actually be contaminated with ingredients that may be harmful to your health!

This begs a very important question.  How do you find supplements that will positively benefit your health, are free of dangerous contaminants, and that you can 100% trust?

We’ll break down individual supplements, such as probiotics, fish oil, and multivitamins in future posts, but in general, one of the biggest keys to ensuring that supplements will provide the health benefits you’re seeking is to make sure they are manufactured at Pharmaceutical Grademanufacturing standards.

Pharmaceutical Grade manufacturing protocols ensure that supplements adhere to the same stringent production standards as prescription drugs.  We’ll break down what that looks like below, but sadly, it’s very difficult to find pharmaceutical grade supplements at national chain retailers.  Approximately 95% or more of the supplements sold at most retailers are food grade.  What does a supplement being pharmaceutical grade actually mean for you and your health?

Here are 3 reasons why you need to be taking Pharmaceutical Grade supplements:

Absorption of Key Ingredients

With Pharmaceutical Grade Good Manufacturing Practices, supplements are tested for dissolution and are required to dissolve within 45 minutes.  Absorption, or bioavailability, is vital when taking a supplement.  With Food Grade supplements (the vast majority of retail brands), there is literally no dissolution requirement (it’s not tested at the manufacturing level), which means the product may or may not break down in your body.  If a supplement does not dissolve within 45 minutes, it will pass right through your system and provide no health benefit.  Scary, right?

Raw Material Inspection

Pharmaceutical Grade Good Manufacturing Practices require that raw ingredients be tested prior to production.  This includes tests for contaminants, bacteria, metals, microbials, etc.  At Previnex, if a raw material flags for any reason, we send it back to the vendor, no questions asked.  On the contrary, there is no raw material testing requirement for food grade manufacturers, which is one reason why contaminants were found in many of the supplements sold at the national retail chains listed in the New York Times article, above.  Those brands are not testing their raw materials prior to production. Another scary thought!

Exact Dosage

Pharmaceutical Grade Good Manufacturing Practices require that what is listed on the label will actually be in the product. With Food Grade Manufacturing Practices, it’s more of an approximation.  When it comes to your health, do you want to know exactly what you’re putting in your body or do you want an approximation?  The answer is straightforward, right?

The bottom line is that the majority of retail brands spend a large amount of money on marketing, advertisements, celebrity endorsements, and/or acquiring prime retail space.  For better or worse, they are competing on marketing and pricing, which means that they literally cannot source the highest quality, most clinically-efficacious ingredients possible, or send their products through the costly and stringent Pharmaceutical Grade Good Manufacturing Practices mentioned above (too expensive and they are spending their money elsewhere).

With Previnex, we take all of the worry out of the equation.  All of our products are manufactured following Pharmaceutical Grade Good Manufacturing Practices, meaning all of our raw materials are tested pre-production, each of our products is tested to dissolve and be absorbed into your body within 45 minutes or less, and what’s on our labels will actually be in our products!

To Changing Healthcare Through Prevention!