How to Choose Quality Supplements in a $40+ Billion Industry

In this informative episode of Beyond the Pills, host Josh Rimany takes a deep dive into the multi-billion dollar supplement industry, guiding listeners on how to make informed choices when selecting high-quality supplements. With the supplement market valued at over $40 billion, Rimany emphasizes the importance of choosing products that are verified for purity, potency, and quality. He shares valuable insights on identifying reputable sources by checking for third-party certifications and relying on consumer lab studies to confirm a supplement's authenticity and effectiveness.

Rimany warns listeners about the prevalence of fake credit card purchases tied to low-quality supplements and offers tips to help avoid these common scams. He underscores the importance of consulting with a qualified healthcare provider when adding supplements to one’s wellness routine, especially for supplements like Omega-3s, which should be backed by scientific research or clinical studies for optimal health benefits.

Through practical advice, Rimany teaches listeners how to research supplements thoroughly, including understanding ingredient lists and being aware of possible interactions with medications. He also shares criteria for selecting supplements backed by scientific evidence, helping listeners make choices that support their health and wellness goals. Whether you're new to supplements or looking to refine your current regimen, this episode offers critical insights on navigating the supplement industry and prioritizing health.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• 00:00:00 - How to Choose Quality Supplements in a $40+ Billion Industry
• 00:01:07 - Navigating the $40 billion supplement industry for quality products
• 00:04:24 - Importance of third-party certifications and consumer lab studies for supplement validation
• 00:06:54 - Beware of fraudulent credit card purchases when buying quality supplements
• 00:10:24 - The significance of reading supplement labels for transparency and validity
• 00:11:43 - Science-backed supplements are safer and more effective
• 00:13:18 - The importance of quality and potency in Omega three supplements
• 00:14:45 - Spreading valuable information about supplements to friends and the community

Links & Resources:

• Dilworth Wellness Center
• Josh Rimany on Twitter
• Josh Rimany on LinkedIn
• Josh Rimany on Facebook

Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Beyond The Pills? Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!

A 40 plus billion dollar a year industry.

I don't even know if that stat is even valid this days is probably larger than that.

But if it's a billions of dollar industry, well, there's a good chance that there's some bad eggs out there making the bad stuff or even harmful stuff like coming from China or India.

There's these places where I've heard of drugs actually being in the supplements and can be very harmful to people even cause deaths.

So, Amazon has actually, it's funny if they've actually admitted that they have sold and do sell counterfeit supple.

So be very careful that you're getting ingredients or supplements that are coming direct from the person that's making it or you vetted that source.

Everybody.

My name is Josh Remini.

I am the pharmacist that dep prescribes drugs by giving people health and wellness tips, tricks hacks to moving their health from maybe not so good to vibrant.

Follow along if you're ready to go Beyond the pills.

All right, everybody.

Welcome to another episode of Beyond The Pills.

My name is Josh Rimini and today we're gonna talk about quality of supplements.

This is a conversation that I have all the time with my clients is how do I choose the best supplements?

Because there's a whole lot of stuff out there.

And so today we're gonna talk about how to choose the right supplements.

Supplement industry is a $40 billion industry.

So there is a lot of supplements out there and choosing the right ones over my time.

And my experience as a health care practitioner, especially in functional medicine.

I've gotten used to what I would say, my vernacular, the things that I use when I choose supplements.

So I thought I'd share this with people because there isn't a lot of scrutiny out there.

You can literally make a supplement in your garage and pretty much sell it in the marketplace within a week or two.

And so not to scare anybody, but to understand why you're gonna choose the right supplement.

We really need to know a couple of things.

The first and most important part I think is looking at quality quality matters when we moved into our pharmacy and we created the Wellness Center vibe.

I made a really big point of creating and getting rid of all the crappy supplements and really moving towards what I would call professional grades.

So the highest quality and when I talk to my clients, a lot of times I tell them quality matters.

And when I say that from a simplistic point of view, because you know, this podcast is all about wellness made simple, right?

And so I usually say the supplements usually good for your wallet or good for your body, but not generally both our Dilworth brand, which we use in the brick and mortar and some of the companies that I use, I really vet all the qualities because once you get to the high quality stuff, they're all pretty much the same.

They have some nuances between them from the standpoint of single ingredient supplements.

Then I try to blend the sweet spot of what's the best price point for the best quality.

So when we talk our Diller supplements and people that buy them locally, we just say it's the best on the planet for the price guaranteed.

You can't get a better quality and a better price point.

So today we're gonna talk about all this stuff.

What does it mean when you talk about professional grade?

Ok.

That's kind of like the companies we use Vin Co V Inc O for our private label supplements.

Meta Genetics is one that people have known quite a bit about and there's nuances between all of these by the way.

So we'll talk about them as we go through our podcast.

But Designs For Health is one company that I've really been partnering with lately, that's just really in charge of getting supplementation into pharmacies, quality supplementation, professional grade.

So what does professional grade mean?

Well, first part is it needs to be third party certified and what does that mean?

It means that they take their product and then they send it off to a third party to test it for purity, to test it for purity, to make sure that basically everything on the label is exactly what's in the bottle.

So third party organizations like US P which is the US Pharmacopeia consumer Lab dot com is another one N S F. Some international.

Some people will hear that those are standard people that test these supplements on their labels to ensure purity.

And they actually will also publish especially consumer lab dot com.

They published their studies to show which guys didn't make the mark either.

So I encourage people to make sure if you haven't validated your source, then let someone else do it for you like a professional, right?

Someone that's gonna be a qualified health care professional to vet those for you and not all professionals do that as well.

I vet all of my sources so these organizations can help you kind of look at purity potency and quality.

That's number one third party for cert certification.

Another thing that I can look at is just quality ingredients, make sure that they have the highest quality bioavailable, which means that it's going to absorb in the body.

Because what happens with the supplement is you either absorb it or you excrete it when you swallow it, right.

So make sure it's got high bioavailability and we'll talk a little bit about that, but that just means it's well absorbed in the body.

Look for things that they use natural whole based sources of ingredients, but quality matters.

And if you can't see it on the label or the supplement company can't give you the information on the bottle or backed by some of those things where they get their ingredients or if you call them and they won't tell you those are kind of the buyer beware things, but just don't assume what's in the bottle and on the label is actually what's in there when we're looking at standardized quality Amazon or what I'd say, like buyer beware of getting supplements on the internet because a lot of them are indeed counterfeit.

There's a lot of counterfeiting in this industry.

You think about it?

It's a 40 plus billion dollar a year industry.

I don't even know if that stat is even valid this days is probably, it's larger than that.

But if it's a billions of dollar industry, well, there's a good chance that there's some bad eggs out there making the bad stuff or even harmful stuff.

Like coming from China or India.

There's these places where I've heard of drugs actually being in the supplements and can be very harmful to people even cause deaths.

So, Amazon has actually, it's funny if they've actually admitted that they have sold and do sell counterfeit supplements.

So be very careful that you're getting ingredients or supplements that are coming direct from the person that's making it or you vetted that source.

Quick story for me is when COVID hit, we would get people randomly buying some of our quality supplements from a different state like California and they would buy some of the professional grade stuff and I'd be like, this does not sound right.

So when we go back and we'd look at the order and we'd call the patient or we call the number that was on the order.

It turns out that people were using fake credit cards to buy my quality supplements and then they would resell them on the market because it's that wonky out there.

So be careful with that, make sure you have the correct dosage for your supplement.

Dosages may be too low, they're not effective too high.

They may cause potency issues like toxicity.

We've got fat soluble vitamins, things that store in the fat cells can become toxic if we take too much.

The way I look at dosage is from a health care provider.

Standards don't look at R D A R D A is really the recommended daily allowance.

What that actually means when we created the dietary supplement laws way back in the day like, and some of these supplement laws that were started the regulation process.

Well, R D A is really designed around what's the deficiency.

In other words, if you don't get that much, what the R D A says, you actually get the disease associated with that deficiency.

So, calcium, for example, or vitamin D, they'll have an R D A on there.

But it's so you don't get rickets because that's the disease associated with the deficiency or scurvy for vitamin C. So, if the R D A of vitamin C is, let's say 60 mg 60 mg, that's how much you need not to get scurvy, but we don't get scurvy because we have enough vitamin C. So that's how much you need not to get the disease associated with the supplement deficiency.

But we really need to look at optimal dosing.

Ok.

So when we take correct dose, we're looking at the optimal dose.

Usually that's been studied in some way, not a double blind placebo controlled study, like a prescription, but studied in some way that knows optimal dosing.

And we'll talk about that when we talk about our specific dosings on what I've used in practice and what I think is optimal.

Give you an example on vitamin C. We're one of only two mammals in the world that don't make vitamin C. We have to eat it.

You have to get it from food or supplementation and it's essential for the body, right?

Immune system, energy collagen production.

There's a lot of different reasons why we use vitamin C. But if 60 mg is the R D A but goats, goats are about the size of a dog, right?

Or they're smaller midsize animals, they make 50,000 mg a day of vitamin C. So you can look at the spectrum of 60 mg versus 50,000.

We're looking at a wide spectrum.

So dosing sometimes can look like it's too hot because the R D A is like 5000% but it might be optimal for what you're using it for.

So just remember on current dosage, make sure it doesn't have harmful additives or any additives that are not good for the body.

Things like artificial colors, flavors, preservatives.

You know, when you see red dye 40 all those types of things, it's just bad for you.

You don't need them.

They can have negative effects and you can be sensitized to them even in the micro amounts they're using.

So just make sure it's free of all those things and it can sometimes even reduce its effectiveness.

Big thing is really reading labels, ok?

Making sure labels on supplements and being able to read them one.

I think that's gonna be a good podcast just in itself how to read supplement labels.

But really looking at transparent, labeling, clear, transparent, full list of ingredients, dosages, potential allergens, you know Dilworth brand, I'm just looking at it, Omega three.

It says no wheat, no gluten, no corn, no dairy, no soy yeast free.

It's molecularly distilled for purity.

It gives the ingredient list.

It tells you to refrigerate it after you open it, it tells you all the things.

It's needed on here from the labeling perspective, but it also validates it because I know this company uses third party testing.

So whatever they're saying on there has actually been validated.

So just make sure that labeling looks like it's legit.

If it doesn't, I would just say throw it away or don't buy it a really big one for me, which really distinguishes the professional grade supplements versus let's just say anything on the marketplace or the big box retailers have the big big bottles that are really inexpensive and they buy one get one free.

Remember it's good for your wallet or your body generally not both.

So you have to find that sweet spot for price point.

I'm not asking for telling people to go buy the most expensive either because there's a gamut here.

But finding that sweet spot.

But what really in my mind delineates using supplements for outcomes, things that you're looking for if we don't make claims on supplements.

So if someone's making a claim on their bottle or a claim in advertising like this will regrow your hair or increase your testosterone by 10 X. If they're making claims like that, it's actually illegal, you cannot make claims on supplements.

So again, buyer beware on those types of things, but purified scientific research.

When things are backed by science or research or studies, these supplements are more likely to be effective and safe.

So a lot of these things blends if you will from the nutraceutical companies.

That's a fancy word for saying prescription grade supplements that are available over the counter professional grade is they'll have a list of ingredients on there, but they'll scientifically tell you on the patient information sheet, which we usually give all of our clients that are attached to these things, the data behind it.

And if the third page on most of these patient information sheets will list all the studies that they've referenced when they've formulated that particular supplement.

So using things that are backed by science, super important and lastly freshness, you know, making sure that you're getting fresh quality supplements, checking the expiration dates, storage instructions like Omega three, it can be stored on the shelf.

But when you open it, it should be refrigerated.

I mean, high quality Omega three, we'll talk about that.

When we do a deep dive on Omega three, it's just make sure that it stays as potent as it needs to be because if it's expiring or becoming rancid or any of those things, well, then it's can be less effective or could be harmful.

And then always if you have any questions, you should consult with a health care provider.

When I say that one that's qualified to talk about supplements.

Sometimes your doctor or your pharmacist, they're great.

But we, I'm a pharmacist.

We haven't been classically trained in supplements.

I got a week of this stuff in pharmacy school, but I've studied this for years as a clinical nutritionist in functional medicine, these are pathways that I've learned all the science and behind the supplementation.

And so finding the right person.

This is why I believe pharmacists are key ingredient to learning supplementation because it's just like a drug.

It has a mechanism of action, it has potency, it has dosage forms, it can be looked at from a studied perspective.

So they actually look and feel like drugs because they do stuff in the body.

Similarly, they have mechanisms that do things, but they really are designed around improving your biochemistry, which is a little bit different.

So when someone says to consult a health care provider, just make sure that they're qualified or they've studied it enough to at least give you a confident decision on that, right?

These are things that are super important for me.

And so I think really important for you guys to just understand quality matters when choosing a supplementation.

That's where we got that one.

This was important.

I hope this was valuable to you guys if it was remember to share with your friends like us in any medium that you're seeing or hearing this stuff because it's super important for me to get this word out to you guys to give you low or low cost or no cost value in your wellness.

Stay well.

Thanks for listening to the Beyond the Pills podcast.

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Thanks again for being a part of the Beyond the Pills community.

We'll see you next time.