ASSUMING ALL NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS ARE CREATED EQUAL
Think about it – when you get ready to purchase a product, what do you do? Search online, “google” it, find comparable products and compare price, quantity, contents, etc. But how can you compare the “quality”?
Maybe you search the reviews and see what people say about it. Sometimes this helps but it can be pretty random given that not every customer gives a review, even happy ones, and others may have been “incentivized” – so who knows? But what you are looking for in the reviews is “results”, right? Did they get the results you are hoping to have?
And goodness, how many nutritional supplements are out there? WOW, given the shelves and shelves you see in the stores, the number of ads you hear constantly on TV and radio plus the huge realm of products and companies online – OVERWHELM is guaranteed. You cannot try every single one to see what your results are with them. But if you are going to spend your hard-earned money on a nutritional supplement, you want as much bang for your buck as you can get!
So, as I see it, you want to know 3 things about the nutritional supplement being promoted:
1. Does it have in it what it “says” on the label?
2. Is it designed to address the health issue I am having?
3. Can I trust that the supplement will give me the results others say they’ve had?
#1 – Truth on the Label
Dr. Peter Glidden when being interviewed on this subject shared this story: The Los Angeles Times about 20 years ago sent an investigative journalist into health food stores in California and randomly took ginkgo biloba supplements off the shelf. Ginkgo biloba is an herb that was very popular a couple of decades ago and it was thought to promote memory. They took all the random samples to a lab and tested them. Nine percent had nothing in it – it was filler with no ginkgo at all. Twelve percent had less than half the milligram dosage the label claimed it had. He also shared that Ralph Nader’s people have done similar checks on vitamin companies and the industry is just not regulated. Yet they were still able to put the supplement on the shelf and have it be in compliance with federal regulations. He says this is a big problem in the industry.
I don’t know about you, but I am at a loss to figure out how to determine if the product has in it what it says it does – and I just can’t afford to do all those expensive lab tests to find out which ones are truthful. And I am not sure just buying and personally taking different ones and trying to compare the results would be fruitful, much less something I could fit into my busy schedule.
This seems to be a “trust” issue, huh?
#2 – Addressing a Specific Health Issue
Here’s the deal – while I might be having muscle cramps at night as I am trying to sleep, before I got involved with Youngevity, I would just go looking for a product that mentions helping muscle cramps. There are tons! I would never have known that my muscle cramps were indicative of a calcium deficiency until I heard that from Dr. Wallach. But, if I had known it was a calcium deficiency, I would have just gone out and bought a bottle that identified itself as “calcium” and started taking it. I would not have known that you need magnesium to go alongside calcium to get good absorption. And that without enough magnesium, calcium can collect in the soft tissues and cause problems. OMG – how do I know how much and what else needs to go with it?
Dr. Glidden points out that an average calcium supplement is going to be about 60% absorbable, if you are lucky, but Youngevity’s is 95% absorbable. That is a big difference. As explained by Dr. Richard Renton who works with Youngevity’s manufacturing and quality control, the high absorbability comes from being plant-derived minerals as opposed to ground up rock sources.
I am quickly overwhelmed when I start trying to figure out which mineral, vitamin, supplement ingredient in what combination to put together, plus how much of each, and how in the world can I find out the source of their ingredients and their absorbability level? Hmmm, seems we are back at that “trust” issue, huh?
#3 – Getting Results
In addition, how do I know that the product is addressing the underlying cause of my issue?
When I had arthritic pain in the base of my thumbs, I took an NSAID, an anti-inflammatory. Woohoo! The pain was gone….but it came back and the underlying problem was not getting addressed.
Same with the baby aspirin my M.D. prescribed when I had early signs of TIA’s (mini-strokes). As he admitted, he could only give me something to help with symptoms, not the underlying cause. So, I was just an ostrich sticking my head in the sand hoping all the problems would disappear since I couldn’t see them. How could I figure out the underlying cause? I didn’t even want to take a first-aid class, much less learn all about nutrition and supplementation.
When I joined this organization, I was following the co-founder of Creative Memories, Rhonda Anderson, along with my other scrapbooking friends. She built a terrific line of the quality products under Youngevity as we knew she would. She was the person I trusted in leading us through the album- making world with our print and digital photos as she had for so many years. I knew first-hand that her systems and the company products she had spear-headed were the best. In that world, it was easy to test the quality ourselves.
And I will admit, I was not looking for nutritional supplements at that time, even though Youngevity was primarily known for that. Then one day, I heard some fellow album-makers talking about their good results from using Youngevity health products. Ok, I thought, since they are in our line of things we can sell, I might as well try it out.
I did. And what happened within the first weeks of taking the basic product shocked me. I had gotten up to 10-12 Ibuprofen per day for the pain in the base of my thumbs but I just didn’t think about it much because it took care of my pain – picture an ostrich. After a week or so of taking the Healthy Body Pak, I realized one day I had gone through most of the day not even thinking about taking my ibuprofen. Then I realized, I didn’t need it. That was 5 years ago and since then, the total of Ibuprofen I have taken in that time is no more than 10-12, my previous daily dose. Guess you know how much I trust Dr. Wallach and Youngevity now, huh?
So here’s the deal – trust and verify!
Here is what Dr. Peter Glidden, an outspoken advocate of science-based, clinically-verified, licensed and regulated Naturopathic Medicine says. He brings 30 years of clinical experience to bear on what he talks about in the public forum. He has his own subscription website for healthcare education and guidance to assist people in finding health solutions. He does not sell product but says this about nutritional supplements:
“No, all supplements are not created equal….Nutritional supplements are like chicken soup where the recipe is everything. The quality of the ingredients and how they are put together and stored as well as how they are bottled all make an enormous difference in the quality of the product. There are a number of variables that come in to play that will make supplement XYZ really good or really bad depending on the recipe.”
He explains that he developed a questionnaire that he has vitamin companies complete before he uses their products. It is designed to see exactly what their production methodology is. It lets him see their quality control procedures and is designed to help him objectively be able to assess how good their recipes are. He says he has checked over 200 vitamin companies in the last 20 years and only 3 have passed his test. He states, “And the top dog, hands down, way out in front of everybody else—Youngevity.”
To illustrate his point, he states “…you want to have an excellent recipe that’s easy to absorb and produces consistent results. I’ve got to tell you something, nobody does it better than Dr. Wallach and Youngevity.”
So I ask you – are you going to walk every seller of nutritional supplements through your questionnaire like Dr. Glidden? And are you going to enroll in a graduate school to learn all you need to know about the body processes and deficiencies? Are you going to run purchase every product that sounds like it might fit and test it out yourself?
This is Candy McCune, your Guide to Better Health, and remember, Education Empowers you to Engage Better Health!
….and I really would like to hear from you on this: What is Your Biggest Challenge as you consider nutritional supplementation?
Please scroll down and give me your response. I truly appreciate it and will use it as I build our website resource.
What is Your Biggest challenge as you consider Nutritional Supplementation?
