“Crucial 7 Points To Help You Choose The Best Rated Multivitamins for Women, Men and Children. Anything Less, You Are Compromising On Your Health!”
Honestly, you are not really looking for the best rated multivitamins. What you really want is a strong, healthy heart, a boost in emotional well being, enhancement in your body’ s immunity system, increase in energy level and vitality. Last but not least, you are also looking at improving your skin tone, texture and much much more. We know because just like you about 3 years ago, we set out to search for the best multivitamin our money can buy. We have been doing a comparison of the various brands of multi-vitamins for almost a decade now and you can trust us because we have really done quite a fair amount of research, consumed a dozen of different multivitamin brands to arrive at these 7 points.
But before we go on any further, you should know that as much as we consume only high quality supplements, they are just that. Supplements. Multivitamins tablets are not miracle pills, they do not and should not replace; good diet (wholefood), regular exercise (weekly cardio & muscle workout), ample sleep (at least 8 hours)and meaningful work (self-actualization).
Now that we get these things past us, let’s come back to the 7 points to help you choose the best multivitamin:
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1. Integrity
Is the producer of the said multivitamin brand able to proof the integrity of their products? Cases of supplement label over-stating the amount of ingredients and their effectiveness in their products are quite common. Such level of transparency & honesty in the amount & quality of ingredients used is often lacking as supplement manufacturers unlike drug manufacturers are not required to seek the approval of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before putting their products on the market. As such it is not uncommon to find claims from them that are nothing more than hype, with little or no scientific evidence & clinical studies to substantiate.
A good mutlivitamin manufacturer should be able to produce what is known in the industry as the COA (Certificate of Analysis) for each batch of supplements they produce. This is an indicator of the quality of the supplement. It is a documented evidence of the Quality Control Testings carried out which gives the exact details about the Compliance and the Quality of the product.
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2. Safety
Are the multivitamins safe to consume & are manufactured in a safe environment? Does the producer adhere to stringent safety standards at their manufacturing facilities, look for companies that follow pharmaceutical GMP(Good Manufacturing Practice) compliance, the same standards that pharmaceutical drugs manufacturers adhere to.
This standard is among the most rigorous and stringent manufacturing standards for dietary supplements in the world. By using supplements that adhere to pharmaceutical GMP compliance standards, you can be sure the product you are buying is free from harmful contaminants and contains the actual ingredients listed.
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3. Bioavailability
Bioavailability is used to describe the degree at which a substance is absorbed into our living system. When a supplement is administered intravenously, its bioavailability is 100%. However, when it is administered via other routes such as orally, its bioavailability decreases due to incomplete absorption.
Many supplements will pass through the body with the active ingredients never being released. Other supplements will lose their effectiveness when active ingredients are released in the stomach and they are converted to less potent “salt” forms by the hydrochloric acid present in the stomach. A good multivitamin supplement should offer a good delivery system or else it will be rendered useless.
To prevent this from happening, lookout for supplements that use a delivery technology known as enteric coating. This enables the active ingredients to be released in the upper intestine, thus avoiding damage to any of the nutrients. It also binds various active ingredients with larger molecular sizes to selected enzymes, which when released in the upper intestine, break the molecules down to a smaller size to enable easy transfer of the nutrients through the intestinal wall into the blood stream and then on to the liver.
Quite simply, as far as possible the nutrients from the supplements should be able to get into your system without getting wasted.
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4. Synergy
Synergy is important because it is what happens when many different vitamins, minerals, herbal extracts, and specialty nutrients work or interact with one another for an advantageous outcome. Simply defined, it means that the effect of the whole is greater than the sum of the effects of the individual parts. This can only happen when vitamins are blend with the right balance of minerals, herbal extracts, enzymes, and other nutrients in order for it to be effective. Case in point, calcium needs vitamin D to be absorbed.
As good as it sounds, this requirement for synergy can present a vast array of problems too. On one hand, we have consumers in their ignorance who do not realize that many ingredients can end up cancelling each other out, have harmful side effects when combined, or not be effective due to another specific nutrient being needed for that nutrient to function correctly.
On the other hand, there are those who understand the importance of consuming supplements synergistically but find it almost impossible to consume 10 to 15 tablets a day. This in itself results in them eventually not taking the supplements altogether due to the high cost, time and hassle associated with it. So, as a smart consumer, you should look for multivitamin companies that are transparent in communicating how their ingredients are synergized to work in your body.
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5. Transparency
Essentially, the last 4 points are all functions of quality in a good multivitamin. Are you buying your supplements from a manufacturer or a marketing agent? Dietary supplement is a multi-billion dollar industry, you should not be surprised that many ‘good’ supplement companies on the market selling vitamins are no more than just middlemen. They purchase bulk raw ingredients from a wholesale distributor, have very little quality control and do not invest in any research or development. It is also very common for supposedly ‘good’ companies to use cheap ingredients & fillers. Synthetic ingredients of lower quality are often used simply because they are cheaper than natural ones.
There are some that just buy supplements already packaged in an unlabelled bottle to add their own label. This is a very common industry practice and it is the main reason why poor quality supplements exist. Our advice is for you to buy from a reputable company that does invest in research & development, demonstrate their quality control procedure and most importantly proof to you the source of their ingredients in the manufacturing of their supplements. Do not be surprised if you find these companies a rare commodity.
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6. Guarantee
Is the company confident of their products that they are willing to offer a money-back guarantee clause? We are not just talking about a perfunctory 30 or 60 day guarantee. Personally, we have been purchasing our multivitamin from this company that offers a full one year refund, no questions asked policy which brings to our next most crucial point of the 7.
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7. Efficacy
Efficacy is the capacity to produce an effect. And we are of course taking about positive effects. Do you experience an overall well being & increase in energy level using the best multivitamins?
You could be a young men or an elderly lady reading this, or a concerned mother looking for multivitamins for your children. Efficacy differs from person to person, and we are all uniquely formed with different chemistry make-up within our body first differentiated by the virtue of our sex, health conditions, lifestyle, food we consume and the work we do. In an ideal world, all of us should consume customized multivitamins based on our body needs. But that a product like this would have been out of reach for the common men on the street and simply does not make economical sense.
This further led us to believe and hopefully you would soon too that a reasonably good multivitamin should cater to men, women and childrent of varying ages. But the bottomline is this, if your multi-vitamins fulfill the 7 points above and yet you do not feel stronger, healthier after consuming it, then it’s probably time to re-evaluate your options.
Thank you for following us this far. And you might have guessed it and must be wondering, so what do we consume then?
Our List of Best Rated Multivitamins
Well, in the course of trying out different multivitamins, we have pretty much narrowed down our options to the following top brands which fulfills 95% of the above criteria listed:
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