Supplements

Examine

We have no conflicts of interest: Our team is composed of scientists; all we do all day, every day, is analyze studies on nutrition and supplementation, to answer your questions.

LabDoor

As consumers, we'd like to think that the vitamins and supplements we buy are effective and safe. In reality, this isn't always the case. Labdoor is an independent company that tests supplements. We find out whether products have what they claim and if they have any harmful ingredients or contaminants. Then, we grade and rank those products, write reports, and publish that information for free, so consumers can confidently buy the best supplements for their health.

ConsumerLab.com

To identify the best quality health and nutritional products through independent testing.

The Fine Print of Dietary Supplements

What’s on the label doesn’t necessarily match what’s in the bottle.

A new report heaps more skepticism on vitamin D and calcium supplements

If you’re taking vitamin D and calcium supplements to maintain strong bones and prevent fractures, it might be for naught.

The hidden drugs in your favorite supplements

When you take a prescription drug in the United States, you can be reasonably sure of what's in it. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires that all pharmaceuticals be thoroughly tested in humans, that they contain whatever ingredients are listed on the label, and that they have evidence to back their marketing claims. Unfortunately, the same isn't true for dietary supplements.

The Illegal Ingredients in Your Dietary Supplements

Consumers are taking dietary supplements with illegal—and potentially harmful—ingredients, a growing body of evidence shows. A new study published online in JAMA Internal Medicine this week found experimental stimulants in dietary supplements both before and after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued public warnings about the stimulants.

The three types of supplements you should never buy

Supplements are regulated, but not in the way that you or I as consumers would ever think that they would be regulated. They’re regulated under The Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act, which the industry helped to get passed. The law forbade the FDA from requiring that supplement manufacturers have to prove that their products are safe or effective before selling them.

The Top Five Supplements You Should Not Take

Many of the best-selling supplements have little or no evidence to back up their claims, and the vast majority of people will not benefit from taking them. So here are the top five dietary supplements that you should not take...

The Top Five Vitamins You Should Not Take

The vitamin and supplements industry, which is immensely profitable, relies on the intuition that if a little bit of something is good for you, a bit more can't hurt. Right? Wrong. If you don't have a serious vitamin deficiency, taking supplemental vitamins doesn't provide any benefit, in almost all cases that have been studied. What's even more surprising is this: routinely taking mega-doses of vitamins might actually harm you.

There are only two supplements proven to help you build muscle

A balanced diet is best, but these additions could help.

Dietary supplements are mostly a waste of money. But if you must buy them, try this.

Let me be clear: I’m not a fan of supplements. After writing about them for the past several years, I have come think they should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.

No Government Oversight of Dietary Supplements? Enter LabDoor

With the government abdicating its responsibility to ensure that dietary supplements are all they're cracked up to be, the door is wide open for LabDoor, a service that promises to bring the facts.

The Vitamin Myth: Why We Think We Need Supplements

Nutrition experts contend that all we need is what's typically found in a routine diet. Industry representatives, backed by a fascinating history, argue that foods don't contain enough, and we need supplements. Fortunately, many excellent studies have now resolved the issue.

Are Supplements Killing You? The Problem With Vitamins, Minerals

In two recently published studies, researchers suggest that supplements can do more harm than good if taken in addition to a healthy diet.

Do Vitamins and Supplements Make Antidepressants More Effective?

The multibillion-dollar supplement industry spews many dubious claims, but a new study suggests that some nutritional supplements, including omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D, may boost the effectiveness of antidepressants. If so, the supplements might help relieve symptoms for the millions of people who don’t immediately respond to these drugs.

Five Vitamins and Supplements That Are Actually Worth Taking

Science tells us that taking most vitamins is worthless—but here's a few that buck the trend.

Glucosamine - The Bubble is Burst... Maybe...

Just about everyone you know who exercises or has joint pain has taken glucosamine at one time or another, and most people swear by it. Yet recently several studies have demonstrated that the benefits of glucosamine are overrated. So, are you wasting your money?

How Your Supplements Interact With Prescription Drugs

St. John’s Wort, lavender, garlic and others can alter drug potency, cause side effects.

It’s Possible To Get Too Much Of These 5 Essential Nutrients

We’ve all been schooled about the unhealthy things we should limit, like sugar and sodium. But there are also some healthy things that, in excess, can do more harm than good. In other words, even when a nutrient is vital, more isn’t necessarily better. Here are the risks associated with going overboard on five key nutrients — some of them may take you by surprise.

I’m In: Let’s Talk About Dietary Supplements

Times are good for probiotics. Fatty acid supplements — those derived from fish and krill oils — are struggling. Sports nutrition is on an upward trend (and has been for several years). Weight loss supplements — Garcinia cambogia and green coffee beans in particular — well, perhaps this category is best not mentioned right now. There is no escaping the fact that the dietary supplement industry has received a great deal of media attention over the past year.

Meet the New Snake Oil, Same as the Old Snake Oil

No longer the exclusive province of carnival barkers and traveling salesmen, the snake oil of today is made by countless companies and sold at GNC, Target, Walgreens, Walmart, and thousands of other retailers on and off the Web. I’m referring to dietary supplements, products such as echinacea, ginseng, ginkgo biloba, and other “herbs,” variously marketed to provide relief from colds, enhance stamina, improve memory, relieve aching joints, or deliver other benefits.

Neither Herbal Nor Supplements

one thing that nutritional supplements do offer—apart from a sense of awe at their enormous commercial success—is a placebo effect. That can be very real. Unfortunate as it will be if today's news deprives anyone of some placebo-driven sense of ginseng-induced vitality, better still to address apparent institutionalized fraud.

One Of The World's Top Aging Researchers Has A Pill To Keep You Feeling Young

Elysium Health hasn't discovered the fountain of youth, but their new supplement—with the backing of some of the world's foremost authorities on aging—could change how you get older.

Skip the Supplements

But the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t regulate dietary supplements as drugs — they aren’t tested for safety and efficacy before they’re sold. Many aren’t made according to minimal standards of manufacturing (the F.D.A. has even found some of the facilities where supplements are made to be contaminated with rodent feces and urine). And many are mislabeled, accidentally or intentionally. They often aren’t what they say they are.

Studies Show Little Benefit in Supplements

Some can be harmful or interfere with prescribed medication. Tell your doctor what you take and be sure the information is recorded in your chart.

Supplements - So Which Ones Should We Really be Taking?

Have you taken your vitamins today? But are they really necessary or a waste of your hard earned money. A healthy, balanced diet may be all you really need!

The $37 billion supplement industry is barely regulated — and it's allowing dangerous products to slip through the cracks

"Consumers should expect nothing from [supplements] because we don't have any clear evidence that they're beneficial, and they should be leery that they could be putting themselves at risk," S. Bryn Austin, a professor of behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told Business Insider. "Whether it's on the bottle or not, there can be ingredients in there that can do harm." Despite many such warnings, the supplement industry's market is as much as $37 billion a year, according to one estimate.

The Stuff Legally Allowed in Your Bottle of Supplements is Alarming as Hell

"People don't want prescription medicine, but they'll take an unregulated substance that is misrepresented with bad labeling."

The Truth Behind Your Supplements

The right supplements can provide a benefit, when properly matched to your unique needs.

Vitamins - Do They Work?

Vitamin supplementation, except for vitamin D, does not reproduce the protective effect of natural food stuffs. So, why do we persist on taking them?

Vitamins and the Failure of Free-Market Health

The booming dietary-supplement industry is plagued by outlandish claims, undermining credible science, and seeding confusion.

What’s in Those Supplements?

The authorities said they had run tests on popular store brands of herbal supplements at the retailers — Walmart, Walgreens, Target and GNC — which showed that roughly four out of five of the products contained none of the herbs listed on their labels.

When the Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: Why Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Still Beat Dietary Supplements

When you take a supplement, you’re basically taking a purified form of an element, such as iron, vitamin D, or calcium. When you eat an apple or an onion, however, you’re also ingesting thousands of phytochemicals (antioxidants are a form of phytochemical).

Which Supplements, if Any, May Be Worth Your Money

But as a scientifically trained journalist, I feel obliged to help others make rational decisions about which, if any, dietary supplements may be worth their hard-earned dollars. I’ll start with the bottom line on the most popular of these, the daily multivitamin/mineral combo: If you are a healthy adult with no known nutritional deficiencies, save your money.

Why Did Vitamins Disappear From Non-GMO Breakfast Cereal?

Remember when Cheerios and Grape-Nuts went GMO-free? That was about a year ago, when their corporate creators announced that these products would no longer contain ingredients made from genetically modified organisms like common types of corn, soybeans or sugar beets. When they actually arrived on supermarket shelves, though, there was a mysterious change in their list of ingredients. Four vitamins that previously had been added to Grape-Nuts — vitamins A, D, B-12 and B-2 (also known as riboflavin) — were gone. Riboflavin vanished from Cheerios.

Why You Should Not Stop Taking Your Vitamins

The concept that nutritional supplements "could be harmful" to women flies in the face of all reasonable facts from both intervention trials and outcome studies...

Stop wasting your money on dietary supplements

For years, public health experts have practically begged people to stop wasting money on dietary supplements. For one, many of these pills don't work. Study after study has demonstrated that favorites like multivitamins don't actually improve outcomes on a number of health measures, from staving off cognitive decline to preventing cardiovascular disease and cancer. The health benefits of probiotics are wildly exaggerated, and taking antioxidants like beta carotene and vitamin E might even kill you faster.

5 Myths About Nutritional Supplements

Much of what you assume about vitamins and minerals may be wrong. Here are the biggest misconceptions.

7 Signs You May Have A Vitamin D Deficiency

So what should you watch for if you're concerned you might not get enough? Here are a few signs you might need more vitamin D.

Supplement Police

SupplementPolice.com is a product review website which aims to introduce some much-needed honesty and transparency to the world of online reviews. At Supplement Police.com, visitors will find detailed reviews of popular products currently available online. Those products come from categories like nutritional supplements, financial products, and online business ideas. Unfortunately, these categories traditionally have more scams than other product categories.

Council for Responsible Nutrition

The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), founded in 1973, is a Washington-based trade association representing ingredient suppliers and manufacturers in the dietary supplement industry. CRN members adhere to a strong code of ethics, comply with dosage limits and manufacture dietary supplements to high quality standards under good manufacturing practices.

Natural Medicines

Natural Medicines approaches the subject of natural medicines from a completely objective and unbiased perspective. It seeks to answer questions about natural medicines by systematically identifying, evaluating, and applying scientific information. As a result, it curtails perpetuation of myths and age-old beliefs and replaces them with reliable scientific data.

Natural Products Foundation

Naturalproductsinfo.org is a part of the Natural Products Foundation, your source for science-based vitamin and supplement information.

Critical Health News

Critical Health News brings together select alternative health voices, whose perspective and expertise offer evidence of the bodies natural ability to heal its self. Our goal is to create and gather the most meaningful health related information together as a service to give our readers the tools to empower themselves.

Fake Food Watch

Folly, fun, and fraud in U.S. industrial food.

List of Supplements

Examine.com is an independent and unbiased encyclopedia on supplementation and nutrition. We are not affiliated in any way with any supplement company. Founded in early 2011, we have one goal - to be the unbiased source for supplements and nutrition. We have spent tens of thousands of hours collating the latest scientific research. This site is run by editors who examine primary research. Users are encouraged to submit corrections and any research we may have missed.

My Supplement Advice,

When creating My Supplement Advice, we dreamed about a website providing readers with honest, easy-to-understand information on health remedies, tips and products.