If you’re reading this blog, you take some form of active interest in your health. I don’t have to convince you that taking care of yourself is important: you already know it.

You probably even know in what ways it’s important to take care of yourself, so you prioritize exercise, sleep, nutrition, and stress elimination as key factors of a long and enjoyable life.

What you may not know is that some seemingly straightforward ways you take care of yourself may actually be complicating your health journey. One such example is the multivitamin.

It might surprise you to learn not all multivitamins are created equal. Not every pill from the drug aisle can take care of all your vitamin needs.

Today I’ll walk you through the vetting process you should follow to ensure you choose a multivitamin that’s up to the job.

Why You Need a Multivitamin

Taking a daily multivitamin is a fundamental need. The quality of nutrition in our fruits and vegetables has degraded over the years. This deterioration of nutrients is a result of conventional factory and commodity farming, which favors persistent pesticides, monocrops, not rotating and caring for soil properly, and long routes from farm to table.

Add that to the cultural shift of American diets getting fewer than two servings of vegetables per day (when we should be getting 8–10), and you can see that we have a dearth of nutrition that requires supplementation.

Now, those 8–10 recommended servings are what we need every day to maintain our health. We need even more than the daily recommended amount to prevent disease.

The bottom line? We’re not getting enough vitamins and nutrients from food alone. A quality multivitamin can lower our risk of disease and increase the likelihood of maintaining our good health.

How to Find a Quality Multivitamin

The vitamin and supplement industry is full of options — not all of them good, and some downright bad. It can be easy to get lost in that sea of marketing.

There are hundreds of nutritional companies out there, and only about a dozen or so manufacture multivitamins I consider excellent and comprehensive. I personally use — and recommend to my patients — Pharmanex Multipack Vitamins. Pharmanex uses a well-defined, self-imposed, stringent six-step process that I wish were the standard in vitamin supplementation manufacturing.

Here’s how Pharmanex describes its process:

[W]e maintain quality, efficacy, and safety controls through each and every stage to ensure unsurpassed results that meet only the highest standards and comply with all relevant government requirements. The key to this consistent quality in our products is what we call our 6S Quality Process. This process involves a set of rigorous, highly integrated activities and includes multiple layers of scientific testing and attention to detail.

The six steps of Pharmanex’s 6S Quality Process are:

1. Selection has to do with the ingredients they incorporate.
2. Sourcing means evaluating and determining where the ingredients come from.
3. Specification involves safety and quality.
4. Standardization refers to the effectiveness of the concentrations.
5. Safety tests are conducted for various contaminants and allergens.
6. Substantiation proves Pharmanex’s claims are backed by research.

Because the people at Pharmanex put so much thought and care into their process, I trust them, I endorse them, and I point to them as leaders in the industry.

Final Tips

 

In your search for a high-quality, effective vitamin, here are a couple tips to help you find your way.

1. Take capsules, not tablets. Whatever vitamin you end up with, make sure it’s a capsule, not a tablet. The absorption of a capsule is much better than a tablet.
2. Expect to take multiple capsules. A good multivitamin requires multiple capsules.
3. Find a company with high standards. Even if you don’t use Pharmanex products, look for a vitamin manufacturer with the same philosophy and a similar process.

Information on Pharmanex’s 6S Quality Process came directly from the Pharmanex website, www.nuskin.com. Jupiter Concierge Family Practice and Dr. David Rosenberg are proud to carry Pharmanex products for patient convenience.