Is your supplement all it’s cracked up to be!
Is your supplement all it’s cracked up to be
By now you’ve heard many remarkable claims regarding supplements. How they can slow the aging process provide you with better skin, increased energy, weight loss, supporting joint health, and allowing you to feel younger.
Supplements can be very helpful in maintaining your health. However, many are not as good as they look. Even some doctors endorse supplements that may not be the best quality.
Even experts can be fooled! If you do not know what to watch out for, you could end up taking a supplement that’s worthless!
Supplement companies can play many tricks to hide the fact that their products fall short. Sometimes, you can’t even tell how much a product contains by looking at their labels.
Example: A
Supplement facts
- Amount per serving daily value:
- Vitamin C (50% as ascorbic acid)…200mg
Example: B
Supplement facts
- Amount per serving daily value:
- Vitamin C (5% as ascorbic acid)…1,000mg
If you are like most people, you may think the example B is better than the example A. After all you can see it gives you 1000 mg of vitamin C versus hundred milligrams of vitamin C.
The truth is the example A is better! This is because the higher quality product actually gives you more of the vitamin C available for use.
In order to tell how much vitamin C is in a supplement, you have to know the strength. If you look at the example B closely you’ll see the 5% of ascorbic acid that means only 5% of the thousand milligrams is actually vitamin C. If you multiply 1000 mg by 5% you get 50 mg. Example B gives you just 50 mg of vitamin C.
When we look at example A; it actually uses 200 mg of a higher quality product. Therefore 50% of 200 mg is actually 100 mg of delivered vitamin C. In example A; you would actually get twice the amount of the product from example B!
Another sneaky trick that some supplement company’s use in describing their product is “proprietary blend.” This proprietary blend often contains multiple ingredients that are unknown. This is done so the company can be set aside as unique.
This allows the product to look as though you’re getting a lot for your money. A proprietary blend basically tells you nothing about the product.
Another example is to use a dosage in micrograms instead of milligrams. An example of this is vitamin C 200 mg or 2000 ug. If you look at these labels, you can tell these products both contain the same ingredients. But the 2000ug appears as though it has a larger amount of product.
However it takes 1000 micrograms or ug to equal 1 mg. To convert micrograms to mg you divide it by 1000. If you look at it this way the 2000ug only allows you 2mg of vitamin C. It would take you 100 pills of this last example to equal the 200mg.
This is not a good deal!
I cannot stress how important it is to watch out for these sneaky label tricks when choosing any supplement. In order to get the benefits from supplements it is important to know what you’re taking and understand how to read these labels if you are uncertain of the quality of your product you should take it to a qualified health practitioner who understands dietary supplements and have them review your supplements with you so that you know you have a quality product.
At Serenity Health Care Center we are happy to help you determine if your supplements are quality or not. Serenity Health Care Center offers quality supplements that you can depend on.