How to avoid buying fake supplements

I wanted to pass along some important information I recently learned that can make a difference in your recovery efforts.

Buying your supplements from the right place can be as important as matching the supplements to your condition and taking the right amount.

Sadly, I’ve learned that not all supplement sellers are legitimate. There are people who sell fake supplements on reputable online platforms like Amazon.com and Ebay.com.

While it’s one of my favorite shopping websites, Amazon does not validate the authenticity of every seller and/or product sold through its website. It just can’t.

Amazon’s anti-counterfeiting policy states they will terminate a company’s selling privileges if they determine their products were illegally manufactured. But how do they determine this? They rely on other people to report them. Only then will they take them off the site.

Otherwise, Amazon does not police their sellers or try to determine in advance if the goods they are selling are legit. While many suppliers do sell legitimate products on Amazon, how do you know which ones are real and which are not?

Without sending them to a lab for analysis, you can’t.

What about user reviews?

While user ratings would seem like a good safeguard of authenticity, they’re not. Amazon has a policy of assigning the same high-star rating to all the products it believes are identical to any original manufacturer’s products that have received a high-star rating from actual users.

And be particularly cautious if supplements are priced below market prices. Some counterfeiters lure customers in by offering savings.

It is very important to buy your supplements from trusted sources. This way, if the supplement did not work for you, you can rest assured it was not because it was a fake. 

My solution

First stop buying supplements from Amazon or Ebay. And big chain stores like Walmart, Target, Walgreens and CVS are not good places to buy supplements either.

About a year ago, a bunch of supplements were pulled off these shelves and tested by an independent party. The testing revealed that only 10 percent of these supplements actually contained the active ingredients promised on the label.

This is easy to do with supplements because there is no governing body, like the FDA, to regulate supplements. That’s why it’s best to deal with reputable brands that do their own self testing.

It’s also best to purchase your supplements directly from these manufacturers. However, it’s time consuming to go to each individual company website and some manufacturers don’t sell directly to the public.

Here’s the solution I came up with after asking my health practitioner colleagues what they do.

Their solution was to use supplement dispensary that purchase directly from the makers then sells directly to customers.

The dispensary I’ve been using is called Full Script and I absolutely love it.

My clients and I love it too because it’s so easy. I make all my supplement recommendations and add instructions in one place. It’s easy to sign up and purchase. And you know you are getting the real deal.

The prices on Full Script are equal to Amazon’s, so there’s no price premium for guaranteed authenticity.

Another cool feature

I love that Full Script lets me create supplement plans for my clients, but it also allows me to create categories of favorite supplements for common conditions I see often.

Find out what supplements I recommend for SIBO, candida, h. pylori, parasites, leaky gut and adrenal fatigue right here. You have to create a Full Script account first.

And, of course, this is for educational purposes. It’s always recommended to work with someone to personalize the recommendations to your body and situation.

So you are free to purchase the supplements, but I suggest you take them under the guidance of a health care practitioner.

The supplements I recommend contain no bad but common ingredients to irritate the gut. Some examples of this are maltodextrin (derived from corn), carageenan or sugar alcohols. These common ingredients in supplements can cause reactions.

Featured supplement

One of the supplements you’ll see in the recommendation is NAC.

Short for N-Acetyl Cysteine, this amazing amino acid has many important benefits.

It offers amazing detoxification supporting to the liver, while also breaking up the biofilms that form around pathogens to make them resistant to treatment. If you are having trouble with eradicating pathogens, it’s a good idea to start breaking up biofilms.

Biofilms are created by bacterial or fungal populations to help them hide from natural or pharmaceutical antibioitics. For example, bioflims may be the reason why a two-week course of triple therapy antibiotics often does not wipe out an h.pylori infection.

NAC breaks through the biofilm shield, exposing the bugs underneath to eradication. NAC  is effective in inhibiting biofilm formation and destroying developed biofilms. 

Another side benefit of NAC is it helps the liver process alcohol and can prevent or greatly reduce a hangover, if taken right.

I use NAC in the rare instances I drink alcohol because my body is so sensitive to it, but NAC supplementation prevents suffering the next day.

Shipping

One of the great benefits of Amazon, especially for Prime members, is the free shipping. Fullscript also offers free shipping on orders over $50.

If you are still feeling overwhelmed, I offer discovery sessions to tailor supplement programs to your needs and health history. You can buy and schedule a session on this page.

Regardless of if you use my services or not, I wanted you to have a safe place to buy supplements.

How it works.

This link will take you to the Fullscript dispensary homepage, to create an account and get access to my supplement checklists.

Have questions?

Shoot me an email through the “contact me” tab on the sidebar of my website.

Learn more about Full Script here.