Supplements are big business. You see them advertised on television, on the back of buses, and in pretty much every magazine. Sales of supplements are forecast to reach £559m by 2025 according to Mintel research, with statista.com claiming that in 2024, the average spend on supplements per person in the UK will be just over £9.
The claims that brands make are enticing: better sleep, stronger nails, shinier hair, improved energy, or even a catch-all solution to your health woes. Sometimes, they can indeed help, but they are definitely not a solution for everything or for everyone. They won't compensate for a poor diet and for some, they may cause more problems than they solve.
Since most people regard supplements as 'natural', not much thought is given to what the tablet, capsule, liquid or powder actually contains.
Like food packaging, the information on the label of your supplement can tell you a great deal once you know what to look for. It's worth giving the label a read before adding a supplement to your shopping basket.
The active ingredient in a supplement is often a very small proportion of what makes up the tablet or capsule and in order to turn that active ingredient into something that is saleable, that ingredient is combined with what are known as excipients - anti-caking agents, thickeners, colours and coatings. There is much in the news about ultra-processed foods, and in some cases, supplements are the vitamin version of that. The benefit of taking that supplement is often outweighed by the work your body has to do to deal with all of the added ingredients that you've swallowed in your quest for a healthier you.
Before buying a supplement, look at the label and see how much of the active ingredient it contains in each dose. Often it's not very much of the recommended daily allowance, the RDA, of the nutrient that you are looking for to give you that boost and so it probably is not going to be worth the spend, especially if there are lots of excipients as we discussed above.
Looking beyond the label and what is in your supplement, the main reason we don't talk about supplements in a general sense is because there are occasions where taking supplements with a prescription medication could potentially spell danger. Some combinations can cause medication to stop working as well as it needs to or it works more than it needs, giving a larger dose than the one prescribed. Essentially, by not checking for interactions between medication and a supplement can stop medication from working effectively. We don't say that to worry you, but it is absolutely worth double-checking that any supplement you are taking is not interacting with a prescription medication.
And that's where we come in. If we have a client who is already supplementing or is interested in supplementing, we will ALWAYS check rigorously for any interactions between their medication and any supplement. Unless we are absolutely sure that it is safe, we won't recommend that the client take anything at all. Of course, as Registered Nutritionists, our focus is always food first and our aim is for our clients to obtain the nutrients that they need in a balanced way from the food that they eat, but there are times when recommending a supplement is, as long as it is safe, the right thing to do. The supplements that we recommend contain a higher, therapeutic dose of the active ingredient which means that, although they are more expensive, we will generally suggest that they are taken for a time-limited period only, long enough to be effective but once their work is done, we will recommend that the supplement is removed from the client's plan.
If you'd like to find out more about how you can power up your diet so that you can obtain all of the right nutrients from your food, or if you would like to know more about possible supplement interactions, please do get in touch.
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