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The vitamin and supplement world is full of crap.
Well, most of it.
There are far too many supplement brands using the term "health" when their products are toxic.
What you really get from them is:
- Mislabeling
- Contamination
- False Advertising
This makes them actually harmful to your health.
(Deadly if you have allergies to any of their hidden ingredients.)
This blog explains how lab testing can guarantee your vitamins and supplements are high quality, pure, and safe for you and your loved ones to take.
Table of Contents
Many Popular Supplements Are Dangerous
How To Find Safe Vitamins And Supplements
Ask For A Certificate Of Analysis
How We Make Most Potent Supplements
How We Test Most Potent Supplements
Supplement Manufacturing Testing
Many Popular Supplements Are Dangerous
The best vitamins and supplements start with the best ingredients.
But...
How do you know what's inside a vitamin or supplement?
How do you know which ones contain hidden ingredients?
Most important:
How do you know which ones are safe?
You don't unless they show you.
Few companies actually grow, harvest, extract, purify, and test every ingredient that goes into their products.
Most supplement brands get ingredients from different suppliers.
This means their suppliers are responsible for creating a safe raw product.
This also means the brands are responsible for making sure their suppliers are giving them safe ingredients.
The best suppliers have a history of honesty and integrity.
The best brands guarantee this with testing.
The minimum requirements for testing supplement ingredients should be:
- Identity: it is what the label says it is.
- Purity: it is pure and clean.
- Potency: it holds power in a usable form.
- Safety: it meets regulations for contaminants and metals.
These aren’t new ideas.
These are the minimum requirements of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP).
Good Manufacturing Practice Regulations were created by the US Food and Drug Administration under the authority of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (See Chapter IV for food, and Chapter V, Subchapters A, B, C, D, and E for drugs and devices.)
Good Manufacturing Practices are determined by the FDA to protect the public. They “help to ensure consumers are receiving quality, consistent, safe products, that also contain the ingredients they are paying for and that those ingredients are appropriately labeled."
The best vitamins and supplements exceed these minimum requirements.
However...
It's very difficult to know who is truly GMP-compliant.
Many companies cut corners.
The biggest brands are the most guilty.
The New York Attorney General Office investigated the biggest natural supplement brands.
And guess what?
4 out of 5 supplements contained NONE of the herbs that were listed on the labels.
In fact, most pills labeled 'natural herbs' contained cheap substances that could be very dangerous to people with allergies.
Even deadly:
GNC packed pills with unlisted ingredients, like powdered legumes, which are closely related to peanuts and soybeans. Peanut allergies can kill.
Walmart was caught selling a fake ginkgo biloba product full of wheat but the label claimed it was wheat-free and gluten-free.
Target pushed a natural sleep aid that tested negative for the herbs listed on the label. Instead, it contained powdered rice, beans, peas and carrots.
Baby food.
Of course not all supplements are filled with fake ingredients.
But...
Many are stuffed with filler ingredients like wood pulp or more riskier substances like magnesium stearate. These are things your body does not need.
You should only give your body what it needs and not overwhelm it with extra junk.
What we leave out of Most Potent Supplements is as important as what we put in.
How To Find Safe Vitamins And Supplements
There are things you can do to make sure the vitamins and health supplements you buy are safe and contain exactly what is on the label.
1. Know What You Need.
Yes, the first step is yours.
Know what you are looking for and why you want it.
Listen to advice from legitimate health professionals:
- Doctors
- Naturopaths
- Nutritional Experts
Learn the terminology. Read real scientific literature. Google Scholar is great and PubMed archives most accredited research.
2. Contact The Company
Is there an easy way to contact the company?
Do they respond quickly?
Do they really know their products?
Do they only recommend the products they sell?
Do they take the products they make?
3. Ask For A Certificate Of Analysis (COA)
A COA is supposed to confirm that the ingredients which are listed on the supplement label, are actually the ingredients in the supplements. A COA should include a batch number, show some quality control, and, hopefully, test results.
Unfortunately, these can be faked. Many brands create fake names for "third-party" or "independent" labs that simply don't exist.
Here is a cropped example of a real COA for our Tongkat Ali:
CLICK HERE to see the full COA for Most Potent Tongkat Ali
4. Ask To See Lab Test Reports.
A lab test report for a supplement or ingredient may also be called a Certificate of Analysis, but they are better. Lab test results certify that the ingredient is really only that ingredient AND they show the quality. They should be from a REAL, independent, third-party laboratory. They shouldn't come from the supplier, the manufacturer, or an "in-house" testing lab. We use Eurofins proudly.
If they don’t have a real COA and they haven’t tested their ingredients, then they probably don’t know what’s in the bottle - or they don't want you to know what's in the bottle.
You should be skeptical if a supplement company refuses to show you a Certificate of Analysis or real testing reports for any of their products.
And you should look for a better supplement brand or test the ones you use now.
How We Make Most Potent Supplements
We hold a higher standard than most dietary supplement companies. And we follow strict practices to meet our own requirements:
1. Research + Search
We are skeptics first.
So before we include any herb, mineral, vitamin, or nutrient in our supplements, we have to study the medical research.
We devote serious time researching ingredients, especially the benefits and the side effects. This includes reviewing studies, discussing with experienced doctors, and measuring our results after extended use.
Let’s be clear:
- We don’t confuse Google Search with scientific research.
- We don’t confuse personal stories with professional studies.
- We don’t confuse media interviews with medical degrees.
- And we definitely don’t trust celebrity “doctors” or “experts”.
We examine the science for every natural health solution we consider.
We come to our own objective conclusions on what works and what doesn’t work.
Then we search for the purest and most powerful natural ingredients that meet our standards.
That's not easy.
2. Pure + Picky
It's worth repeating:
The best vitamins and supplements start with the best ingredients.
We use the highest-quality ingredients that are organically-grown - when we can. (Not everything that is grown organically can be labeled organic, but that’s a different story.)
We avoid genetically-modified organisms (GMO) plants or animals.
We avoid ingredients that come from areas with high pollution.
We choose suppliers who practice sustainable farming and harvesting.
We are picky.
We say it all the time but it's true:
WE TAKE EVERYTHING WE MAKE.
3. Trust + Test
Trust is the foundation of any healthy relationship.
We like to have great relationships with our suppliers.
Before we work together, we get to know each other.
We share.
They share how they grow, harvest, extract, purify, and test the ingredients.
We share our mission and high expectations of our products.
And we go a little further:
For every batch of raw materials, we require our suppliers to send us a Certificate of Analysis, material safety data sheets, and flowcharts for exactly how their product was made. We even visit them when we need to "see it to believe it."
If they can meet our standards, then we agree to work together.
But this is just the beginning of our testing process.
How We Test Most Potent Supplements
Once the raw ingredients reach us, we send samples to Eurofins, our independent, third-party, FDA-approved testing partner, to test the identity, purity, safety, and potency of each ingredient.
Every ingredient passes at least 4 tests before we use them in our formulas.
1. Ingredient Identification
Remember that "Natural sleep aid" from Target?
It contained none of the herbs listed on the label. You know they never test their supplements.
All of our ingredients are first examined under a microscope. Our lab looks for specific characteristics and compares it to samples that have already been authenticated.
Then they test its chemical reactions and use a highly specific and accurate test method based on chromatographic fingerprinting. 1
2. Microbiological Testing
After we know we have a pure ingredient, we test it's purity.
We test for yeast and mold, salmonella, listeria, and escherichia coli (e. coli).
Yuck.
These are a really harmful to have in your foods.
They are even worse to have in your supplements.
Our suppliers test for these microbes and allergens before we even receive the ingredients, but we also test to verify they are clean and above FDA standards.
Food poisoning and food-borne diseases is a serious problem that can be largely avoided if companies held higher standards.
3. Heavy Metals Testing
After we know we have a pure ingredient, we test for heavy metal levels to make sure it is safe for long-term use.
We test for arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. These heavy metals occur naturally in all soils, so all natural plants will have some level of these. But you don’t want too much.
Our suppliers test for heavy metals before we receive the ingredients, but we like to test them again to check their numbers.
In fact:
All Most Potent products are tested regularly to ensure compliance with the FDA, GMP, California's Prop 65, and the strict standards we set for them.
4. HPLC Analysis
High-Performance Liquid Chromatography, or HPLC, is a lab technique that separates, identifies, and measures each component in a material. It's a way to identify an ingredient and different attributes of an ingredient, like potency.
HPLC is great for three reasons:
- It requires a small sample size.
- You can measure many different things within the small sample.
- It produces reliable results.
For example, let's look at Tongkat Ali:
Eurycomanone is the secret sauce in Tongkat Ali. The higher the eurycomanone, the more potent the Tongkat Ali Root Extract.
HPLC is used to identify, measure, and standardize the eurycomanone levels in our Tongkat Ali roots.
Here's how HPLC works for our Tongkat Ali:
- Tongkat Ali roots are peeled and cleaned.
- The clean roots are heated in liquid.
- The roots are reduced to mush, strained, and removed.
- The remaining liquid is evaporated until only the root extract is left. The eurycomanone level is monitored during the liquid phase so the finished product has the desired potency.
- Finally the resulting root extract is then freeze dried into a fine powder.
HPLC also ensures this same potent product can be repeated.
Consistency matters when you expect the best results every time.
HPLC makes Most Potent Tongkat Ali Root Extract stronger and more effective than most Tongkat Ali or Longjack brands.
CLICK HERE to learn more about Most Potent Tongkat Ali.
If an ingredient passes our testing for identity, safety, purity, and potency, then we send it to our final manufacturers for packaging...
Supplement Manufacturing Testing
It might be obsessive but it feels good:
Before our manufacturers even begin to mix the ingredients for our formulas, we have them test the purity one more time.
We want to be sure no pollutants, microbes, or heavy metals have tainted the large bulk powders while Eurofins was testing our smaller samples. This is just one more step to ensure every ingredient meets or exceeds our standards.
All of this excessive testing and strict standards makes our supplements safer than most brands.
But we take testing even further with one more step...
A Special Offer For You
Trust is the foundation of any healthy relationship.
We want to have a healthy relationship with you.
We want to help you reach your most potential.
We are only committed to making the most potent supplements that we would take ourselves and give to our loved ones.
Our final level of testing really helps spreads the love.
Lab tests are comforting, but the real test happens after you try the supplement.
Only then do you truly know how it feels, how it heals, and how it changes your life.
Every time we manufacture a product, whether it is a new formula or a repeat production run - we like to try it first.
We like our loved ones to try it first too.
So...
We send a free bottle to 100 subscribers and ask them to try it first.
After 20 days, we ask about their progress.
After 30 days, we ask for their feedback.
We really want to know how their life has changed.
We may ask:
Did you finish the bottle?
Do you feel stronger?
Do you feel smarter?
Did you feel any side effects?
This is a great way for us to improve our products to help you more.
If you would like to join our 100 Sample Survey Group, reach out to us on our Contact page here.