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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – It’s back to school time again. Each year you buy the traditional school supplies to make you feel at ease — your favorite pens, notebooks and calculators that will get you through the year successfully. Focusing on getting good grades and having fun are what most students and parents have in mind, however, staying healthy should be added to the list as well. Herbal remedies such as teas, syrups, encapsulated herbs and extracts can be a great addition to your school supply list because they can be used easily and successfully on all age groups to maintain a healthy immune system, especially at the onset of a cold or the flu.
But today we often hear questions about how can parents today feel comfortable with the quality, safety and integrity of the herbal products that they use a family?
The dietary supplement industry has been under a great deal of scrutiny recently within the regulatory community. This has caused significant concern for consumers and retailers alike. For years consumers have voiced concerns about adulteration of herbal products and have expressed confusion about proper label identification of plant parts (e.g., roots, flowers, or seeds), and about proper botanical genus and species identities.
Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs) for dietary supplements are now mandatory for all companies that manufacture, package, or label dietary supplements. However, for companies that pride themselves on best quality practices, there remains some gray area, that GMPs just don’t address. So, in the mean time, many companies are taking their own initiatives to assure practitioners and consumers alike, that their companies are putting forth high quality, safe products, with absolute assurances of raw material sourcing. And the technology now exists to interact with buyers, practitioners, educators, and consumers to easily disclose the type of information that the public has a right to know.
Take for example, Gaia Herbs located in western North Carolina. Because this herbal manufacturer has always believed that each herb needs to be held to the highest standards of purity and integrity in order to ensure maximum potency, they have embarked on an industry first, herbal traceability program that offers consumers real accountability. This program, called Meet Your Herbs™, was designed to meet physician and consumers’ needs for quality assurance backed by transparent accountability. Through this program, Gaia is merely extending to consumers proof of what they have always done in their commitment to unsurpassed quality. By typing the Meet Your Herbs™ ID number on each Gaia Herbs product into the Gaia Herbs website or in an available mobile application, consumers can track the life story of each herb in that bottle.
Each step of each herbal ingredient’s life cycle in every product–from where it is grown, to how it is certified, extracted, and validated–is presented transparently to consumers in this program. The Meet Your Herbs™ summary page also identifies that each product has passed rigorous purity and integrity tests. Gaia further provides a link to the Certificate of Compliance, providing test outcomes and qualified laboratory staff signatures, for each finished product.
There is something you can do to help. Always demand full accountability from the companies that make dietary supplements. Get online and do your homework. And for those of you that have iPhones, be sure to download this free app. You and the kids will love it.
Dr. Keri Marshall is a licensed Naturopathic Doctor who specializes in pediatrics, women’s medicine and chronic disease management. Dr. Marshall has published several scientific papers, magazine articles, has written a book on proteins and amino acids, appears regularly on nationally syndicated radio shows, and has appeared on ABC’s “A View from the Bay” and PBS’s “Health Quest.” Dr. Marshall has served as a scientific adviser to Citizens for Health, a nutrition advisor to the United States Sugar Association, and as a nutrition expert in her local public school district. In addition, she currently serves on the Natural Medicine Journal Editorial Board and the Alternative Medicine Review Editorial Board. She maintains a small private practice in Washington, DC.
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