How to Choose a Nutritional Supplement Brand: Key Considerations

More than two-thirds of U.S. adults take some form of nutritional supplement. Growing awareness about nutrition and lifestyle and the marketing of nutritional supplements as an option to promote health and wellness have contributed to their popularity. The U.S. nutritional supplements market is flooded with products, including vitamins, minerals, botanicals, amino acids, enzymes, and probiotics. From conventional capsules, tablets, and powders to mass-appealing gummies, drinks, and energy bars, nutritional supplements are available in multiple formats. 

When you are considering a nutritional supplement to promote your health and wellness, the obvious question is how to choose a supplement brand. Therefore, in this post, we will explain the key factors you should consider when choosing an excellent supplement brand, and why you should always choose an advanced supplement formulation. Use the links below to jump ahead to a topic of interest.

What Makes A Trusted Supplement Brand?

Before considering including any nutritional supplement in your diet, you should remember that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not regulate nutritional supplements in the same way as over-the-counter and prescription medications. Supplement manufacturers may sell products without first submitting to the FDA evidence of safety and efficacy of a supplement’s ingredients. This makes it difficult to choose a supplement brand that addresses your nutritional support needs. 

Whether you are browsing the websites of online supplement retailers or shopping the aisles at your local pharmacy to find the right supplement for you, the following pointers will help you determine a reliable brand. 

• Labeled information about the supplement: A supplement brand should display on the product label all the information about both the active and inactive ingredients in the formulation and the recommended daily use of the product.

• Relevant third-party certification: Independent third-party testing organizations, such as NSF International, provide testing of nutritional supplements, including label claim review, toxicology review, and contaminant review. A supplement manufacturer highlighting such third-party certification on the product label adds credibility to the brand name. 

• No misbranding or false advertising: A reputable supplement brand avoids inaccurate or misleading claims about the product or its ingredients. 

Now that we’ve looked at how to determine a reliable brand, let’s look deeper into how supplements interact with your metabolism.

The Basics of Bioavailability

No nutrient is completely absorbed in the body. The proportion of a nutrient that is digested, absorbed, and metabolized through normal body pathways is called its bioavailability. So, the amount of a nutrient present in a supplement formulation does not ensure its efficacy. Instead, the bioavailability of the nutrient makes the difference in its efficacy. 

A nutrient’s bioavailability depends on several factors, including: 

• Chemical properties of the nutrient.  The natural solubility and stability of a nutrient, along with its interactions with the various proteins and enzymes in the body, will impact its bioavailability. 

• Its route of administration. A nutrient can be consumed through oral, nasal, sublingual, buccal, and intravenous routes. The bioavailability of a nutrient is often affected when taken orally owing to factors such as dissolution, transit time, intestinal permeability, biotransformation, and gastrointestinal and liver metabolism. 

• The type of formulation. A supplement’s formulation type (solid or liquid) impacts the bioavailability of its ingredients.  

For example, the naturally low molecular stability of curcumin results in its poor oral bioavailability. As a result, a standard curcumin supplement might provide only minimal health benefits. In contrast, a highly bioavailable curcumin supplement offers significant health-promoting benefits even when a comparatively smaller amount is used. 

The following table highlights the importance of nutrient bioavailability in formulating better supplements. 

Of course, enhancing nutrient bioavailability and manufacturing supplements with bioavailable ingredients is expensive. This is why not all nutritional supplements are effective. You should always choose a supplement brand that is committed to creating nutritional supplements with optimally bioavailable nutrients.  

Understanding Delivery Technologies

Ineffective bioavailability through nutrient co-supplementation might improve their bioavailability but sacrifice the formulation’s tolerability and safety. For example, piperine, a component of black pepper, makes curcumin more bioavailable; however, excessive piperine can cause side effects, such as loose stools. 

The following table highlights advanced pharmacological approaches that can avoid ineffective bioavailability enhancements. 

How to Choose A Supplement Brand — The Checklist

When you choose a supplement brand, you should primarily focus on the safety and efficacy of the brand’s products. The information you gather about a supplement brand from its website and from its product labels should satisfy your concerns about the purity and potency of the ingredients. The following checklist can help you with your search for finding the best nutritional supplement brand.

While ticking off the checklist, you should be aware of: 

• Misleading certification: Brands claiming ‘Non-GMO certified’ or ‘USDA Organic’ can be highlighting the sourcing of the ingredients, which does not necessarily ensure the safety and efficacy of the supplement’s formulation. 

• False or misleading claims: A brand can claim that the supplement promotes or supports a specific health function, but such claims should be followed by a disclaimer that the claim has not been evaluated by the FDA and that the supplement is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.  

Selecting an Advanced Supplement Formulation

Now that you know how to choose a supplement brand, your final decision is selecting advanced supplement formulations from such a brand. 

Tesseract Medical Research is a trusted supplement brand that is widely recognized for its innovative formulations developed with advanced nutrient delivery technology. Tesseract supplements are formulated with proven nutrients that utilize the most scientifically advanced analytical techniques and a well-designed quality control system at a GMP-certified manufacturing facility. 

Tesseract’s proprietary CyLoc® – DexKey® nutrient delivery nanotechnology enables the targeted delivery of active nutrient molecules while maintaining nutrient integrity during its transit through the gastrointestinal tract. CyLoc® technology encases each molecule and creates nano-sized particles. The accompanying DexKey® reactors release the CyLoc®-enclosed molecules at the desired point in the intestinal tract for maximum absorption. 

Tesseract’s revolutionary technology enhances the bioavailability of nutrients, such as curcumin and glutathione, which are naturally difficult-to-absorb molecules. The unprecedented absorption of nutrients also enables micro-dosing, which means a lower amount of the active ingredient can be used in the supplement’s formulation than previously required to achieve the desired health-promoting benefits.