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Natural Supplements…How Do I Find Quality?
As the supplement industry continues to grow, they must respond to the consumers in order to stay in business and develop a good reputation. Leaders in this industry believe that QUALITY is the hallmark of their success. Others who choose not to conform to QUALITY standards will eventually be squeezed out of the marketplace. In the United States, the National Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA), founded in 1935, now called National Products Association (NPA), is the largest natural products trade organization. Members who manufacture dietary supplements must submit the label of every product they produce to the NPA Director of Science and Quality Assurance as a condition of membership. The NPA randomly tests specific supplements through independent laboratories to evaluate whether the ingredients listed on the label are what the lab results report. If there is a discrepancy, the NPA Compliance and Label Integrity Committee (ComPLI) informs the manufacturer of the discrepancy and requests immediate action to correct the situation. If action is not taken immediately, the NPA will make their findings public through their official trade newsletter. To find out if your supplement is manufactured by an NNFA company, please visit their website. Even if a product passes the random analysis, the manufacturer is prohibited from using this information to promote the product. The reason is that leaders in the natural products industry believe this type of QUALITY should be inherent in the product and that anything less than this should be unacceptable. Reputable dietary supplement manufacturers follow very strict manufacturing practices (GMPs). Because of the lack of uniform self-policing within the industry, a 1994 law entitled the “Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act” (DSHEA) was passed. This requires the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to impose uniform GMPs for the entire dietary supplement industry, whether they are an NNFA member or not. GMPs are modeled after good manufacturing practices for foods, not pharmaceuticals. This is because dietary supplements are much closer to foods in nature than drugs. Which is another reason why taking supplements is a good idea. In fact, dietary supplements rarely cause illness or death. And if you doubt the safety of dietary supplements over the last decade, just compare the incidence of deaths from all causes. These are reported in the Journal of Emergency Medicine and the American Association of Poison Control Centers. And don’t forget about all the deaths reported by regulated FDA drugs that have been consuming our national headlines over the past few years. The idea behind the GMPs is to assure that consumers are provided with safe non-adulterated or misbranded products. However, you should use some common sense too. Look for products that have an expiration date to ensure potency and a lot number. If there are any questions about a product, consumers can obtain a “Certificate of Analysis” from the manufacturer. The certificate lists what is in the product. Another great and growing resource to find QUALITY in natural supplements is the ConsumerLab website. This site provides consumer and healthcare professionals results from independent labs on several dietary supplements. It’s a good site to do some comparison shopping and to learn more about the companies that are producing these products. Another good link is The Natural Pharmacy. This site enables consumers to make sound decisions on natural dietary products. It provides a balanced approach of how to evaluate the need of healthcare interventions from both the conventional and natural prospective. All of the above resources will assist you as a consumer to make valid decisions when purchasing dietary and herbal supplements. Be sure to stay connected to www.preservion.com for more consumer friendly tips…. Copyright © 2010, Preservion, Inc. All rights reserved
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