Why Should I Buy Supplements Through A Healthcare Provider?

These days you can purchase supplements from so many places. You will find supplements in health food stores, grocery stores, pharmacies, discount stores, big-box stores, and a variety of places online as well. So does it matter where you purchase your supplements?

If you are like many consumers, you might not give a lot of thought to the purchase, assuming all the brands are basically the same. The quality of dietary supplements, however, varies a lot from manufacturer to manufacturer. Sometimes, products are not what they are advertised to be. For example, an investigation by CBS News in 2015 revealed that when blind testing was done on various brands in stores in New York, some of the supplements didn’t contain the contents they claimed on the bottle. 

Less expensive brands sometimes include fillers in their supplements that can cause problems for customers with allergies. Anyone who is gluten or dairy sensitive should always check the inactive ingredients before making a purchase. One woman, thinking she could save money on her biotin, was surprised to find that the capsules she almost purchased at a big-box store contained wheat. “I was so surprised,” she told us. “It was just biotin. I thought it wouldn’t really matter. I’m so glad I looked. I would have gotten sick and not known what I was eating.”

Something else to consider, especially as you age, is whether the supplements you take have a wax coating on them.  Stomach acid often decreases as you age. If the vitamins you take have a wax coating and your body is unable to break down that wax, the vitamin will simply pass straight through you and will not be absorbed.

Online purchases also require discretion, as an earlier article published on health.com points out. More than one customer has told us that products they purchased at discount sites were not equal in quality to the same product they purchased from a healthcare provider. 

If you purchase products from a healthcare provider, you can have the assurance that the brands they recommend have been clinically tested for quality. When a healthcare provider recommends a line of supplements, they are backing that company with their own reputation as well.

Another important factor to consider is that your healthcare provider will have the knowledge of how various supplements interact with prescription drugs or over-the-counter drugs that you might be taking.  There are supplements that should not be taken if you are taking certain drugs. A healthcare practitioner, especially a pharmacist, will direct you toward which supplements are safe to take in those circumstances.

On the flip-side of that, while providing benefit to your health, some prescription drugs also deplete your body of specific vitamins and minerals. Your healthcare provider, especially your pharmacist, will be able to tell you what supplements you can take to make sure your body continues to work at peak performance.

So, why should you purchase supplements from a healthcare provider? At least two things to consider are that not all supplements are created equal and because a healthcare provider can give you the detailed information required to make sure you take the best supplements