When purchasing supplements and herbal products from the health food store, there is often a lot of uncertainty surrounding efficacy and potency (along with reputability of brands and standardization) that consumers face in the supplement aisles.

If you’ve been overwhelmed at the number of choices and ingredient lists of herbal or nutritional supplements, you’re not alone. Knowing which product to choose and which product to trust in terms of quality and potency is difficult, especially if you do not have an expert herbalist or naturopathic doctor recommending the product. The underlying reason for this is that the supplement industry is self regulated (meaning not overseen by the FDA), so the quality and potency standards for nutritional and herbal supplements has an enormous range. Everything from questionable sourcing and iffy ingredients all the way to the gold standard of good manufacturing practices and the highest quality products are sold in thousands of stores.

Testing herbal products and supplements for efficacy:

There was some uproar regarding this article from 2015. The NY attorney general had several random supplements taken from major retailers subjected to DNA barcoding methods to deduce what the contents of the herbal supplements actually were. Unsurprising to them, the tested herbal supplements contained little to no DNA of the actual marketed product, leading to a massive sales halt of many supplements and “buyer beware” tactics spread internet wide about the safety of herbal supplements due to lack of oversight and regulation.

But here’s the thing: DNA barcoding is not an appropriate or anywhere near accurate way of testing herbal products. Professional and expert herbalists know that DNA gets denatured or broken apart based on extraction methods such as alcohol (for tinctures), or grinding (for encapsulation). Most of the time the genomic material is not considered an active principle in the extract. The secondary metabolites produced by the plant are biologically active and what are extracted and used primarily as the medicine. Someone may be DNA barcoding an echinacea supplement that appears to have no full DNA sequences of echinacea, yet the entire supplement could in fact, still be echinacea and potent medicine. This is not an appropriate way to test herbal supplements.

Just because the FDA does not regulate or oversee the supplement industry doesn’t mean you need to run away from all of those products that say “…These statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration…” on the back of their label. On the contrary, lack of FDA regulation is a very good thing for all of the smaller companies that are doing it right and continue to manufacture high quality products. With FDA regulation comes an enormous amount of red tape and paperwork, quality testing, standardizations, tracking, and third party analysis. All of this is usually a good thing for monitoring good manufacturing practices and safety (minus the hefty stack of paperwork). However, small local companies are held to the same standards as multi million dollar companies, making it impossible for them to stay in business when the professional herbalists are having to invest tens of thousands of dollars trying to prove to the FDA (who are not experts in herbal medicine) that a dandelion is a dandelion.

So, without this current oversight, how does one know what herbal products and supplements to purchase and what is reputable?

1. When purchasing herbal products, we would recommend purchasing from smaller companies that are certified organic (or very close), that really specialize in herbal products alone (not a bunch of other, foods, cosmetics or other products) and have legitimate third party research to back up their products. This specialization makes their products usually more specific, higher quality and well researched. We recommend Gaia Herbs, New Chapter, Herb Pharm, Oregon’s Wild Harvest, and Mountain Rose Herbs for excellent quality herbal supplements.
2. When purchasing fish oils, make sure they are always tested for heavy metals and go through the IFOS third-party testing. You can read further specifics about choosing a fish oil supplement from our previous blog post, Fish oils: Do the Benefits Outweigh the Risks.
3. If you take supplements regularly or have been recommended a supplement by your doctor/health care provider to take long term, we would suggest shopping for supplements at a reputable store that actually has high standards about what they will carry. These stores usually have strict guidelines about what companies they will carry and what companies need to provide in order to be sold at their stores (like research-based evidence to back up claims, certified organic seals or non-GMO verification and absolutely no harmful filler ingredients). Typically these will be more expensive supplements and rightly so – the companies are investing in good quality raw materials, research and expert staff. You get what you pay for with nutritional and herbal supplements.

If you are looking for support in using supplements or re-evaluating your health goals, consider making an appointment with one of our naturopathic doctors.