How do you know if you are getting all the vitamin D your supplement claims on its label? Unless the product has been analyzed by an impartial laboratory for purity and quality and it comes with a certificate of analysis guarantee, you don’t.

Neither the Food and Drug Administration nor any other state or federal agency routinely evaluates vitamin D or any other nutritional or herbal supplements to ensure their quality. “Quality” means:

• the product contains the amount of the nutrient claimed on the label

• the product is not contaminated with substances such as lead, and

• that supplements in the form of tablets or capsules disintegrate properly in the body

No one likes to get cheated, but when it comes to buying nutritional supplements, consumers are being cheated all the time. Here we focus solely on vitamin D, partly in reaction to a preliminary report from Johns Hopkins University (June 14, 2010), in which a research team from University reported what they found when they evaluated ten over-the-counter vitamin D supplements.

Johns Hopkins Evaluation

Of the ten supplements tested, the Johns Hopkins researchers found that the mean actual dose of vitamin D was only 33.5 percent of what the label claimed. The range of actual vitamin D in the supplements was 0.24 percent to 81.7 percent.

The Hopkins report looked at supplements with labeled doses ranging from 400 IU to 10,000 IU, and they found that the lower-dose products tended to be more true to their claimed amount, although the worst sample in the batch was a 400-IU sample. The ten samples included both national in-store retail brands and online brands.

In the interest of full disclosure, Dr. Norman Haughey at Johns Hopkins, who oversaw the testing of the supplements, reported that their report is preliminary, and that the testing necessary to ensure they extracted all the vitamin D from the samples (called extraction efficiency testing) had not been performed yet.

The Johns Hopkins study was presented at the meeting of the Joint Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers and America’s Committee on Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis. Vitamin D supplements are recommended to people who have multiple sclerosis both to help prevent osteoporosis, which is a common complication of the disease, and for its immune system benefits.

ConsumerLab.com Results

ConsumerLab.com conducted its own quality evaluation of 30 vitamin D supplements (some of which also included calcium and/or vitamin K) sold in the United States. Here, in a nutshell, is what the independent lab found:

• Three of the supplements did not pass the test because they contained a lesser amount of other ingredients (calcium and/or vitamin K) than was stated on the labels; that is, the products contained only 63.4 to 87 percent of claimed ingredient(s).

• All 30 products contained the amount of vitamin D listed on the labels, except four in which the levels could not be measured accurately

How Much Vitamin D Do You Need?

In the United States, the Food and Nutrition Board at the Institute of Medicine has established the recommended daily intake of vitamin D for adults: for ages 19 to 50 it is 200 IU, for those 51 to 70 it is 400 IU, and for those 71 years and older, 600 IU. Many experts agree that these amounts are too low.

The International Osteoporosis Foundation, for example, announced on May 11, 2010, that people who are obese, have osteoporosis, have limited exposure to the sun, or who do not absorb vitamin D well need 2,000 IU daily. Harvard School of Public Health also recently stated that everyone age one year or older should take up to 2,000 IU of vitamin D every day, and that people who have darker skin, who spend winters at high latitudes, and anyone who does not get much exposure to direct sun may need 3,000 to 4,000 IU daily.

Vitamin D is critical for many reasons, including maintaining bone and joint health, supporting prostate health, preventing diabetes and heart disease, and helping prevent certain types of cancer. Pregnant women benefit from higher doses of vitamin D, as do people who have rheumatoid arthritis.

You can get vitamin D in three ways: exposure to sunlight, supplements, and food. Although food sources are not optimal, sunlight and supplements can fill the requirements. In a new report published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, the researchers calculated the amount of sun exposure people need so the body can make a sufficient amount of vitamin D. They determined that 10 to 15 minutes at least twice a week to the face, arms, hands or back without sunscreen is usually enough. Where you get this sun exposure and its “quality,” however, make a difference.

For example, if you are a darker skinned Caucasian, to get the equivalent of 1,000 IU of vitamin D requires full sunlight at noon for 6 to 15 minutes if you are in Miami or 9 to 19 minutes during non-winter months if you are in Boston. Sun exposure times are about 33 percent shorter for people who have very fair skin and twice as much for those with dark skin. To get only 400 IU, your time in the sun would be 40 percent as long. However, the researchers concluded that “oral supplements of vitamin D would probably represent the safest way to increase vitamin D status.”

JoMo: The 100% Guaranteed Vitamin D Source

If you rely on JoMo for your daily source of vitamin D, you never have to worry about whether the product contains the 2,000 IU promised on the label—it’s guaranteed. More than 70 percent of supplements fail a basic test of purity, quantity, and quality of ingredients. With JoMo, you never have to worry about these three critical components, because every bottle of JoMo comes with a Certificate of Analysis Guarantee.

Part of that guarantee is the fact that JoMo does not contain any artificial ingredients—no unnatural additives, flavors, colors, sweeteners, or many other chemicals you will see in other supplements (see the JoMo disclosure on what it doesn’t include).

When you take JoMo, you also never have to worry whether a tablet or capsule is breaking down properly in your body: JoMo is a liquid supplement that your body can easily and readily assimilate. No other liquid form of vitamin D on the market provides this high dose of vitamin D along with the highest quality and purity. Guaranteed.

JoMo provides 2,000 IU of guaranteed pure and natural vitamin D in every dose. For overall health as well as bone and joint health, there is no other choice—JoMo.

References

Eckstein C et al. Vitamin D3 content in commercially available oral supplements. CMSC-ACTRIMS 2010; 33-34

Harvard School of Public Health. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/vitamin-d/index.html

International Osteoporosis Foundation: http://www.iofbonehealth.org/news/news-detail.html?newsID=327

Terushkin et al. Estimated equivalency of vitamin D production from natural sun exposure versus oral vitamin D supplementation across seasons at two US latitudes. J Am Acad Dermatol 2010; 61(10): 929