The Best Brand for Vitamins ?

[PlateletGal]

Which brand of vitamins do you buy and are your vitamins made in China ??


SHIJIAZHUANG, China -- If you pop a vitamin C tablet into your mouth, it's a good bet it came from China. Indeed, many of the world's vitamins are now made in China.

"In less than a decade, China has captured 90 percent of the U.S. market for vitamin C, driving almost everyone else out of business."

link to article:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003732744_vitamins03.html

[PlateletGal]

I take 200 mg daily, as recommended by CFS expert... Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum. I do have the capsules and will try your suggestion. I'm assuming that you mention mixing it with olive oil, because it will be easier to digest.. correct ?

[deepdiver]

PlateletGal,
How many mg. of CQ10 do you take? It should be at least 200mg and if it's in powder
form open the capsule and mix it into a little olive oil.

[PlateletGal]

Thank you to everyone who replied. I will definitely take these options into consideration and do more research. As many of you are aware, I have CFS and part of my treatment is taking supplements. The only supplements that I believe are helping me are the COQ10 and the powered magnesium. However, the brand that made the powered magnesium discontinued that product altogether.

[stacygulick]

I take Vitality. It's made in the USA, but that's not the only reason I take it. They use a different compound for their minerals called oligofructose complex. It prevents oxidation of the minerals (which creates free radicals) and makes them more absorbable.
I buy them only from melaleuca.com, they can't be bought in stores.

[Paxiled]

Oh, one other comment.  Some of the best herbal and natural supplements in the world are made in China.  Also some of the worst.  Remember, China and India have the longest written science of natural medicine use in the world and the most sophisticated formulas.  But there are also a lot of poorly regulated fakes running around making contaminated products.  As I said above, it's complicated.

[Paxiled]

My experience is managing health food stores for 18 years -- though not for the last 7 years.  So I do have a bit of an advantage from having met a lot of the people who started these companies, who independently tests their products, etc.  My experience is that no one manufacturer makes the best of all products.  I do have to disagree with the naturopath Dr. Dunn, though.  I don't think Standard Process is the Rolls-Royce of anything except marketing.  By selling through professionals, they operate just as pharmaceutical companies do by putting the health professionals essentially on their payroll since you can only buy their supplements from professionals.  Many of their supplements use additives that aren't the safest or best, and often use the most inexpensive but not best absorbed nutrients.  I personally wouldn't use them, which is just an opinion, but there you have it.  I would also never use NOW products.  They're a discounter, which means they also use the cheapest though not best absorbed ingredients, also use too many of the not safest additives, and their plant was notoriously dirty for many years.  They have improved recently, but along with Solgar since it was purchased by the manufacturer of Centrum is one of the best known brands to constantly fail random tests of whether the ingredients match what's on the label.  (Solgar is again independent, I think, but don't much about them now).  What I personally stick to are brand that were founded by herbalists and naturopaths before this became big business and who never thought they would ever make money from it but believed in what they were doing.    What you don't want to do with herbs and supplements is buy from discounters (I mean manufacturers, not retailers).  You never know what corners they're cutting to keep the price down.

But this is a difficult world to operate in.  Everyone lies, not just pharmaceutical companies.  Studies are rarely double blind, and regulation is spotty, not because FDA lacks the power, as is often claimed, but because pharmaceutical companies don't want FDA to put its imprimatur on natural products.  Also remember many of the products sold as natural today aren't, and many are new and so don't have a long record of use.  Standardized herbs, which one respondent here supports, are one such product; there is not long history of standardizing for herbs, and nobody has ever figured out what ingredient makes an herb work.  Plants are just too complicated.  You also have to alter the natural makeup of an herb in order to standardize it.  That's not to say I don't use standardized herbs, but it is to say it's a move toward the pharmaceutical model and away from the natural model, and as such has no record of use.  Remember, St. Johns Wort was originally standardized for hypericum but that turned out not to be the most important ingredient, hyperflorins did (not sure of the spelling there).  But it also depends on what you're using the herb for -- St. Johns Wort is best known to the public as an antidepressant, but it has historically been more widely used as an anti-viral.  Every herb has many traditional uses, and herbs are traditionally used in formulas, not as singles.  It's very complicated, which is why it's good to see someone like Dr. Nunn to help play around until the right combination is found.  In the old days, you could go to the best small health food store in the area and find incredibly overqualified people working retail who just believed in this -- I was trained as a lawyer -- but Whole Foods has so monopolized the market most of these people, including me, are now out of the industry or working for manufacturers.  It's sad, but that's capitalism.