Vitamin B is among the most common deficiencies in the western world, so to some, it can seem like an energy panacea, easing frazzled nerves, improving sleep, and invigorating your days. Many diseases and medications can reduce absorption of B12, and folic acid levels tend to decline during pregnancy. Symptoms of deficiency can be hard to pin down, so if you’re …

Obviously, everybody needs vitamins. The question is, are balanced meals enough to supply your body with sufficient nutrition, or do you need vitamin supplements? 68% of Americans use dietary supplements, and the numbers are still climbing. 44% of them do so to improve their general wellbeing, but indiscriminate use can be benign at best and harmful at worst. Supplements can …

Grand View Research expects the nutritional supplement market to reach $275 billion globally by 2024. Sports nutrition products alone are expected to generate $37 billion by 2024. Culture of Nutrition Diet trends have been coming and going for decades. Avoid this nutrient, increase that intake, achieve results: you’ll see messages like these everywhere. In the Information Age, consumers have more …

Chemistry touches everything you do. If The Food Babe had strong knowledge of the topic, her paranoia about chemicals would have dissolved into a lake of dihydrogen monoxide. Even the most benign things sound dangerous when you lack knowledge, and everything from yoga mats to human cells is made of chemicals. A little chemistry knowledge can help you stay healthy, relieve stress …

The supplement industry will be worth $278 billion by 2024, and North America accounts for 28.5% of the market. Forget Big Pharma. Big Supp is profit-friendly enough to support you if you navigate it wisely. Amino acids generated about 14% of the revenue share in 2015, while dietary capsules were worth $26.42 billion. Omega-3 took up much of that category. …

In the words of Ben Goldacre, telling snake oil from remedy using online studies requires you to make sense of “a glorious, necessary mess.” Clinical trials have to confound the bias of researchers, publishers, and patients alike, otherwise their results are unreliable. Double blind, randomized human trials are the only gold standard that shows genuine efficacy. Animal and in vitro …

The same manufacturers behind Prozac and painkillers frequently make your nutritional supplements, but they’re regulated differently. Congress’s Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act removed almost all the hoops supplements had to jump through, standards to which prescription and over the counter drugs are still held. This leaves the FDA responsible for regulating nutritional supplements. Though regulated differently than prescription and …

Probiotics have been the beauty and healthcare industries’ darlings for years. Even The Wall Street Journal has joined the hype, so it’s tempting to invest in them. Yet, as is often the case, so-called “natural” remedies are often bogged down by pseudoscience. Probiotics are live bacteria that straddle scientific and alternative medicine. They replete your bacterial ecosystem, but not all of …

In many ways, the FDA requirements for cosmetics are more impenetrable than those for medications. They’re subject to conditions related to everything from branding to safety, all of which are outlined in the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. These regulations outline general conditions of safety and honesty, but more specific laws and guidelines aren’t always as easy to comb through as you …

The supplement industry is lucrative and dynamic, but it’s not as flooded as you might think. There is an excess of brands, but a scarcity of high quality products. This leaves plenty of market share behind for those who want to enter the industry. The FDA regulates these products using current good manufacturing practice (GMP or cGMP) guidelines, which assure consumers …