I had to laugh (and shake my head) when I read an Omega XL review by a "doctor" who acknowledged that only 2 of the 30 fatty acids had been disclosed by the manufacturer AND that there were no amounts listed for the 2 that were disclosed. He then asked the rhetorical question "So, are these worth recommending?" and answered "A resounding YES!!!"
You need to read the list of ingredients. Some things are bulked out with cellulose, so you get less of the active ingredient. I buy supplements in the pharmacy and they seem to work just as well as the expensive, branded ones.
I don't buy the cheapest and I have gone back to Swansons and they have their own products and I HOPE they are quality...I have gone to the mid range popular brands like NOW, Life Extension and others and normally have purchased from Iherb and other good companies......I fear the cheap stuff have loads of synthetics and no foods in them..... BTW: Swansons has been in business since 1969 and offer a lot, like food types and a lot of other health things....
chelated magnesium helps my rotater cuff...plus..less activity with that arm .. as far as where the supplements are derived..what they contain.. i am am lousy at researching anymore.. i just swallow and hope
Way too many people are "sold way too fast" on many supplements, just like we have been. As the old saying goes, "cheaper doesn't always mean better" is very true. And, depending on a person's health status/problems, some supplements work, while others don't. IOW, we are all trying to find things to make us feel less, or even no pain, and many times, that simply doesn't happen. We take a Probiotics for our diarrhea problem, but still end up with diarrhea. The only thing that really controls our diarrhea is Pepto Bismol.
Because of a conversation on another forum, I went through my supplements to cull out those that are made in China. The country of manufacture is tough to find on a couple of brands (Solaray and Nutricost.) Both of those APPEAR to be made in "FDA Approved Facilities," so I assume that they are not offshore manufacturers. Or they may make their foreign manufacturers promise to comply with FDA rules & regs as some other manufacturers do. I started out looking at the Walmart Spring Valley vitamins I take. Their chewable Vitamin C supplements are made in Canada, while the Vitamin C tablets are made in China. In fact--except for the chewable Vitamin C--all of the Spring Valley supplements I take are made in China: -Vitamin C tablets -Alpha Lipoic Acid -B100 -Cranberry extract -D3 -Equate (another Walmart brand) Multi Vitamins I'm sure that most other Spring Valley products are made in China. You can read the labels for each product on Walmart's website to see the Country of Origin. For what it's worth, Alpha Lipoic Acid is known for having a heartburn side effect, and the Spring Valley ALA gives me heartburn, so it contains the advertised ingredient. Most of the other manufacturers I looked at state they are made in the USA from "globally sourced ingredients." Even Swanson's website says that they source globally, and require their suppliers to self-certify that the products are compliant with Swanson's specs. But self-certification is a meaningless assurance, especially with China. Also, Swanson cannot identify the source country for any specific vitamin/mineral because sources change frequently depending on current market conditions. Swanson says that they spot-test the ingredients they receive. So I'm not sure how much more risk there is with "Made in China" compared to "Made in the USA From Globally Sourced Products That May Include China or Other Unsavory Places." None of it is 100% reassuring. On the other hand, since there is no way to know for certain where the ingredients for any of this stuff originates, there's no sense in wasting time trying to figure it out.
I think most of the ingredients of everything are made in China, and some are combined in the U.S., Canada, or India. Sad that we have outsources the ingredients of both supplements and prescription and OTC drugs to offshore locations, mostly China.
I'm not sure there is an American company that gets all of its ingredients in North America. In fact, I know very little about the specific ingredients that go into a given supplement. The minerals are kind of self-explanatory, but the vitamins are less so. I was shocked when Swanson said "We cannot tell you the specific nation where the ingredients in any of our supplements come from."