Go to any grocery store, health food store or vitamin specialty shop and you will see shelf after shelf lined with colorful well-designed vitamin and supplement bottles. It’s confusing to say the very least. Comparing labels, you see many of the exact same ingredients. It is natural to assume the products to be “the same”, but what about quality and potency?

Are all supplements created equal?

Labeling can be deceptive. Many vitamin companies do not even produce or formulate their own products. They buy and relabel. The standards vary greatly from one company to another.  Quality and age of ingredients drastically affects absorption.

Vitamins begin to lose potency from the time they are created. Only 90% potency of what is listed on the label at the time of shipping is what is mandated. Light, heat, moisture, and oxidation can cause potency loss rather rapidly. Vitamins, Supplements, and Nutraceuticals are all perishable. Therefore, there are expiration dates on all bottles.

Synthetic vitamins may also be mislabeled as natural as the word natural can be misleading on a technical level. A manufacturer can use a mix of 10% natural and 90% synthetic and still label the product as natural. This greatly reduces the production cost, but it also reduces the effectiveness. Vitamins can also contain fillers which are potentially questionable such as hydrogenated oils, metals, inorganic elements, titanium oxide and magnesium stearate which hold no health benefit and could be potentially detrimental.

Ideally, our vitamin intake should come from our diet. It is not easy to eat perfectly and due to soil, which can be nutrient depleted, many fruits and vegetables do not pack the nutritional punch they used to. Because of this supplementation is often necessary.

On your own without testing, it is hard to know what your body really needs. Buying and taking vitamins can be like throwing everything at a wall to see what sticks. It is expensive to do so and often you are literally just flushing money down the drain. Visiting a Nutritional Response Therapist can allow you to pinpoint exactly what your body needs to complete your nutrient profile and fully support your health.

When working with Nutrition Specialists of Florida we use only top quality well-established companies that you can trust. We have chosen to work with Standard Process and Energetix.

Both companies produce all of their own products themselves, sourcing only high-quality, organic ingredients.

We can be reached at 239-947-1177 or by going to our contact page and sending an email.