Some recent online articles about the herbal supplement industry have had people asking my advice about safety concerns. The FDA is still not regulating supplement production, choosing instead to leave quality control in the hands of the manufacturers. There’s a lot of tainted and mislabeled product out there, and too many unsuspecting people are spending a lot of money on what amounts to herbal placebos. Or worse, they are buying and ingesting product tainted with trace elements of arsenic or lead.

When you can buy supplements on every streetcorner, how do you know what you’re buying is safe and effective? 

• Do Your Homework. There’s an excellent group called ConsumerLab that works just like Consumer Reports; they buy just like you and I do, off the shelf, and test/rate supplements for quality and safety (our practice’s Natural Apothecary is a voluntary member of ConsumerLab). There’s a yearly fee to subscribe; check out their website for more information and testing results.
• Buy pharmaceutical-grade. I know it’s easy to throw a few products in your cart at the supermarket, but you may be throwing your money away. The only way to guarantee quality and safety is to buy supplements from a reputable supplier whom you trust.

Here’s more information on the supplement industry, in a recent article posted by the Associated Press: http://tinyurl.com/llz6xx