Is there viagra in your supplements?
A study tracking supplement data for 9 years found pharmaceuticals in 776 different supplements, including products marketed for sexual enhancement, weight loss, and muscle building.
Viagra was in the ED supplements, sibutramine in the weight loss supplements, and, get this, synthetic steroids were in muscle building supplements.
20.2% of the products studied contained more than one unapproved ingredient.
I'm not sharing this data to scare you away from supplements, but I do want to scare you away from cheap, low-quality supplements.
How can you tell if a supplement is high quality or not?
The most obvious test is to look at the name, and avoid products with unscientific words like "boost" or "max" or "shred."
It's may be true that supplements, unlike pharmaceuticals, are not approved by the FDA for effectiveness or safety, but that just means it's up to you to figure out if the ROI is worthwhile.
That doesn't mean, however, that all supplements are a total free-for-all.
Supplements don't need approval before they hit the market, but there are still systems in place to help promote the companies who are making high-quality products.
If a company is GMP registered it means they observe Good Manufacturing Practices which was specifically established for the supplement industry, and includes things like ingredient testing.
Similarly, if a supplement brand is NSF registered it means they agree to annual audits and periodic retests of each supplement they produce.
NSF also has "NSF Certified for Sport" which screens supplements for 280 substances banned by most major athletic organizations as well as undeclared ingredients including stimulants, narcotics, steroids, diuretics, beta-2-agonists, masking agents and other substances.
It's nice to know my creatine doesn't contain steroids.
My top 5 rules for supplements:
Rule #1: If you're going to put it in your body everyday, buy the highest-quality product you can afford.
Rule #2: Cover your bases first. Vitamin D, magnesium, fish oil, a multivitamin, and a multimineral. Also, creatine (without steroids) if you're resistance training. Then experiment.
Rule #3: Take your buddy's advice with a grain of salt. There's a spectrum of evidence when it comes to what you need to do to improve your health. Your buddy's advice is low-quality, a doctor on a podcast is medium-quality, and a doctor who makes personalized recommendations for you is the highest quality.
Rule #4: Stick to single ingredient products to ensure you're getting a therapeutic dose. Many supplements, especially related to testosterone, have 10+ ingredients which means that each ingredient is too low of a dose to be effective, or you need to take 10 capsules daily which makes it too expensive.
Rule #5: If the product is made by an influencer then it's probably low-quality (IE not NSF-GMP registered, multiple ingredients, low dose, steroids, etc.)
The top 4 brands I recommend the most often:
Pure Encapsulations, Nordic Naturals, Thorne, and Integrative Therapeutics.
Notice how all their products have boring labels, and boring names, yet they're 3rd party tested and high-quality doses.
It makes a difference.