Nutritional Dispensary

Not for Profit
Our Nutritional Dispensary is offered to complement our practice, as a not-for-profit service. It is our goal to make top-quality supplements affordable for our patients, providing you with the best supplements we can find, near our break-even point. Any profit made on supplements is donated to charity*.

Supplement Quality is Critical

We make every effort to locate the most effective and most cost-effective nutritional supplements. If you believe that an herb or nutritional supplement might benefit you, we suggest that you try a top-quality product. If it works, then you know what to expect. If you then wish to try a less-expensive brand, you will know what effect to look for. In other words, if our brand of glucosamine doesn’t help, then it is unlikely that any brand will help. You can move on to something else with minimal loss of time.

Alternate Sources

For another source of top-quality supplements, we suggest the Tahoma Clinic Dispensary at 888-893-6878, which carries a wide selection of quality supplements from a number of manufacturers. For our patients in Sequim, we suggest the Sunny Farms nutritional supplement store. You can order Thorne products directly from the manufacturer at 208-263-1337 with our prescription (but check prices first as they will not give the discount we do).

Thorne Research

The most competent manufacturer of supplements in the United States is Thorne Research.  Read about their quality control procedures here.   This is the only manufacturer I am aware of that adds absolutely no adulterants to their products.  This is costly. Remove magnesium stearate from your product and you can run your encapsulating machine at less than half the speed of your competitor.  Magnesium stearate is a soap-like substance that lubricates the product allowing it to flow quickly through the machinery and into an easily closed capsule.  Most people can take a few such capsules without problem. Try to take more than a few, however, and many people experience digestive upset. By the way, use ascorbyl palmitate as your soap-like flowing agent and you can label it as "Vitamin C."

Independent Quality Reviews

The only somewhat independent analysis of commercially available supplement brands and quality is ConsumerLab**.  While you must pay a fee to read their reviews, they are also supported by the companies whose products they test, a potential conflict of interest eschewed by Consumer Reports, for example.   For a review of glucosamine products, click here.  

To learn more about the American nutritional supplement industry, read on.

When supplements go wrong
The American health supplement industry is largely unregulated. Although it’s true that the Food and Drug Administration does not want the manufacturer to give information on their labels about health benefits from supplements, there are very few rules concerning what is actually inside the bottle.

Labels can lie
Ginseng, for instance, is the most famous medicinal plant of China. It has been used for millennia for many illnesses and for its anti-aging properties. Many so-called ginseng products contain no traces of ginseng when analyzed. As another example, commercial sources of Echinacea have not always been reliable. Several authorities have estimated that from time to time, well over half of the Echinacea sold in the United States has actually been Missouri snakeroot, an entirely different plant.

Herbs can have impotence
Two fields of corn may look similar, but one can be mouth-wateringly sweet and the other tasteless. Similarly with herbs, different strains of the herb are more effective than others. The best nutriceutical companies have decades of experience in developing the most effective strains of medicinal herb.

Herbs are not forever
The Saw Palmetto that went into the bottle was top-rate, but how do you keep it from going bad? The industry leaders know how.

Herbs should be "organic"
In evaluating herbal products it is important to check for toxic metals such as mercury and lead and for bacteria. Sometimes herbs are purified by means of solvents which can remain in the herb you buy and cause toxicity.

All that glitters is not gold...
Even if an herb does not contain this kind of impurity, the herb can be toxic just on its own account. Comfrey is one example; unneeded DHEA or melatonin is another.

Can you absorb this herb?
Quercetin is a bioflavonoid that is very helpful in certain autoimmune and allergic conditions. Unless it is specially formulated it is only about 20% absorbed.

Even an herb can be on drugs
Some herbs coming out of the Orient have been found to be very effective for anxiety. On analysis they contained opium, Valium, or mercury.

The Lactobacillus died
The journal Obstetrics and Gynecology (1990; 75:244) reported on 10 Lactobacillus acidophilus products bought off the shelf. On testing, 9 of the 10 contained no living acidophilus. Also, researchers test different strains of acidophilus and find some are better than others at establishing residence in the human GI tract and reducing symptoms. Our acidophilus is chosen to be effective.

All supplements can die
Oxygen is required for human life, but it can cause certain supplements to lose their effectiveness while they are sitting on the shelf. At the rate of 5% of potency per month or faster. The anti-oxidants in our multiple vitamins are coated to prevent contact with oxygen in the bottle. Cod liver oil is processed in nitrogen, and kept refrigerated here in the office.

But truth marches on?
The label on one brand of vitamin E says natural (in prominent letters) but independent analysis shows some synthetic vitamin E in there, too. And the company involved will have a price nobody can beat.

A multiple vitamin label may list lots of vitamins and minerals. But the chromium and the vitamin A may have combined with each other in the capsule, and so do not do you a lot of good.

We deal only with companies that list everything on the label. Many companies have a label that looks as if they have only vitamin E in the bottle. They too have other ingredients to make the tablet fall out of the tablet press or to prevent the tablet from disintegrating in the bottle-- they just don't tell you because they are not required to. We have spoken with people at every company we deal with to check on their quality control procedures and labeling policies. We give you an honest product and an honest label.

Value for money
We offer our supplements and books at a discount. We give you a money-back guarantee. We want to serve you over the long term. Please let us know if you are finding our products elsewhere for less.

Conclusion
Not all nutritional supplements are the same. At our clinic we research the companies we do business with and carefully choose the products we carry. We do the homework for you and provide information sheets on most of the products we carry. Our goal is to help you become healthy and self-sufficient.

Footnotes

*Patients receive a 10% discount, with a further 5% discount available to anyone purchasing over $100 in supplements. Profit netted from the dispensary is donated to United Good Neighbors of Jefferson County (UGN) at year's end. Financial reports on the Nutritional Dispensary are published quarterly in our clinic newsletter.

**  ConsumerLab doesn't review companies that sell supplements only through physicians, such as Thorne Research.

5/06