What to know when choosing a dietary supplement

A dietary supplement is not a medicine, but a food. You could say it is a "bun, a banana or anything" compressed into a capsule.

Bringing a dietary supplement to market is not a very complicated procedure. You only need to notify the food authority. There is no effect testing, and you do not have to prove what is inside. It is enough that the paperwork shows amounts that are still within the permitted limits. When approving them, authorities are actually careful to ensure that supplements cannot contain an amount of active ingredient that would have a meaningful health effect. Only medicines may contain active substances in effective amounts.

Since active ingredients do not have to be proven, they are often mentioned in general terms (for example, "rosehip extract"). Manufacturers are not required to prove how many potential active substances a rosehip extract contains. Nor is it required to examine whether the preparation has any health effect.

And here is the main difference! For medicines, the manufacturer must indicate very precisely the composition and quantity of the substances in the tablet/capsule, and must prove the effect with years of experiments.

There may be a need to take dietary supplements

Taking dietary supplements may be necessary, but make sure you take active ingredients in proper quality and quantity. Choosing is difficult because manufacturers and distributors, by exploiting simple rules, often display information on product boxes that make it harder to compare products and to find out the actual active ingredient content.

Some important things worth knowing

• The mg value shown on the box of a dietary supplement product usually means how much raw material (the "drug") was used to make the tablet, capsule, etc., and not how much active ingredient it actually contains!
• For example, on the box of a tablet weighing 200 mg this may appear: Rosehip extract 5000 mg. This amount is 5 grams, which would mean a tablet larger than a cherry — one you could not swallow! Yet you only received a tiny "pill." Why is this?
• The part of the plant etc. that contains the active ingredient is called the "drug." This can be the leaf, stem, or root.
• An extract is made from the drug — that is, the "concentrate" of the active substances in the drug.
• You can calculate the actual "concentration" of the extract made from the drug if you know the drug:extract ratio (DER).
• For example, if you find a label of 2000 mg on a product box, it means it was made using 2000 mg of drug (for example, fruit).
• If the extract ratio is 4:1, then a single tablet or capsule contains 2000:4 = 500 mg of active ingredient. If it is 40:1, then it contains only 2000:40 = 50 mg.
• On the box both products list 2000 mg of drug, but in one preparation the actual amount is ten times less. This leads to a very significant difference in effect! And you might pay more for less!
• Therefore, the higher active ingredient content is more important than the amount of drug!
• Do not be fooled by the large numbers on the packaging, because they can mislead you!
• Only buy products that list both the amount of drug and the drug:extract ratio! If both are provided, the seller is less likely to be trying to deceive you from the start!
• Of course, even then a dietary supplement is not necessarily free from contamination, hormones, or drug residues. Freedom from contaminants can be verified by a separate test. Request the product's purity test report (from the distributor). However, this test only applies to the product manufactured on that specific day (the so‑called LOT). If the report mentions a different LOT, then the testing does not apply to the product you have, but to a product manufactured on another production day — when different batches of raw materials may have been used!
• This need for caution is especially important for athletes and pregnant women, because possible contaminants, hormones, and drug residues can ruin an athletic career, cause problems carrying a pregnancy to term, and may even harm the fetus.