Sourcing Supplements
In today's health, fitness, and wellness world, we are constantly bombarded with information on different supplements, vitamins, proprietary cocktails and all sorts of what not. It can become increasingly difficult to know what is worth the time and how, and how to know what things you can trust and what not too. So today I am going to cover how I source supplements.
First off, the FDA does regulate supplements, but not to the scrutiny that they do pharmaceuticals. A study in 2023 looking at the actual amount of melatonin in a product found that “the actual quantity of melatonin ranged from 74% to 347% of the labeled quantity. Twenty-two of 25 products (88%) were inaccurately labeled, and only 3 products (12%) contained a quantity of melatonin that was within ±10% of the declared quantity.” My main take away from this study is that supplements are not well regulated and you largely have to go off of what the company says about it.
So how do you know what to trust? First is to take a supplement label and to check if it is sold in other countries that regulate more strictly than the US. Two such countries are the UK or Canada, and their databases are in English which helps me. Now there are many companies that don’t have a reach that's international so what can we do about them?
Another list that I like to look at is products on the NSF Sport Certification list. NSF International is an organization that supplies third party testing, certification and auditing for many different products, with supplements being one of them. The NSF Sport Certification is given to supplements that pass their quality standards. This is the certification that is recognized by both the NCAA and USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency). This means that the products are not only of a very high quality, the ingredient amounts are correct, and it is also free of banned supplements. This all adds up to be a very safe and high quality product. Informed Sport is another third party testing company that has a database of tested products. Both NSF and Informed Sport also use active compliance testing, meaning they will continue to retest products to make sure that the standard is being upheld.
If a product is not on either of those two lists, I seriously consider not using it and often find a similar product that is.
In closing, I want to say a couple things about supplements in general. There are a lot of supplements, and you could spend nearly infinite amounts of money on them. The question is what should you do? Over the next few weeks, I will cover some, emphasis on some supplements and vitamins and break down their pros and cons. I do want to introduce one concept though, and that is the difference between a statistically significant outcome and a clinically significant one. When researchers do a project and they compile and analyze their data, they look for statically significant changes. Which is amazing and exactly what they should do. The looming question is that if something is statically significant, will it produce an outcome in your physiology, because that is what we are all after. We want to use products that give us a desired outcome. The unfortunate answer is not always. Some things, while producing outcomes that look good on paper, don’t actually translate to meaningful changes.
In closing thoughts, always, always, always check the supplements you take to make sure they have in them what they say they do. And always attempt to stay informed on what products actually have clinical outcomes.
Here are links to the NSF Sport Certification list and the Informed Sport Certification list:
Cohen PA, Avula B, Wang Y, Katragunta K, Khan I. Quantity of Melatonin and CBD in Melatonin Gummies Sold in the US. JAMA. 2023;329(16):1401–1402. doi:10.1001/jama.2023.2296
