In four years of practicing and living an optimal lifestyle, I have realized I spend more time doing one specific thing more than anything else: Reading labels! Whether it's food or supplements, the first thing I do before deciding whether to give this particular food to myself or my family is scan the label. I look for whole ingredients. Everything inside that package must be something that I can pronounce and that I have as a spice or flavoring in my pantry. It must be free of preservatives, dyes, and chemical flavor enhancers. When I recommend a supplement for patients, I feel as intense about my label-reading job as I do about my food choices. Through two years in the Fellowship in Integrative Medicine with Dr. Weil and Dr. Low Dog in Arizona, I learned a lot about quality. I have also done hours and hours of personal education on the subject and believe the lack of quality is a giant problem in the supplement industry.

Most supplement companies do not grow or produce their own components. Instead, they bring in the raw materials from outside and put them into their products. Companies that do it right (whether the raw material comes from outside or inside the company) will test the raw material before they ever begin production. They test for purity, contamination, whether it be metals or bacteria, and ensure the right form was acquired. This is a necessary step, and one that often gets skipped by the mass production, low cost supplements. For these companies, the raw material, which often comes from China or India is brought in, the Certificate of Authenticity (CoA) is read and off to production it goes. You or I could make a CoA on our home computers, and the regulations of the source country are much lower than they are in the U.S. This is why it is essential for quality companies to throw away the CoA and test the material for themselves. It is also essential for companies to test their end product as well to ensure the same quality standard is met with every bottle they put out. At GladdMD, I have specifically reviewed the supplement production practices of the companies offered here and inspected the labels with rigorous critique.

You may see over time that the supplement offerings change. This is because this field and industry are constantly changing. Whether it is a new study about a specific form that drives us to change, a company begins to decrease their quality practices to cut corners, or independent testing has found problems, you can be certain that what you get at GladdMD is at the forefront of quality.

It's a Lifestyle,

Dr. Jeffrey Gladd, MD