This past Tuesday, we were alerted by a press release from www.consumerlab.com that the Attorney General for the State of New York had announced that – based on a DNA analysis of specific herbal medicines at four major retailers – the state of New York was asking retailers to remove these supplements from their shelves. Soon, every major media outlet was reporting this story. The New York Attorney General explained that his office had bought samples of store brands of herbal medicines from four major retailers – GNC, Walmart, Walgreens and Target. The office then had them sent to Dr. James Schulte of Clarkson University, where he was to analyze the DNA in the plant samples and determine whether they actually contained the herbs listed on their respective labels. Dr. Schulte studies reptilian evolution, and is thus familiar with techniques for analyzing DNA and determining what organism it belongs to (this is possible because each species has a distinctive DNA composition that acts like a “barcode” to identify it). What Schulte reported was alarming, and prompted the state of New York’s request, asking retailers to remove the products from their shelves. Retailers were quick to respond and these products were promptly taken off the shelves. In addition, online retailers such as Amazon.com have removed these products for sale on their websites (something we discovered when we looked for one of them this morning). We were quite concerned to read about Dr. Schulte’s findings, as they leave the impression that there could be rampant fraud in the US dietary supplement industry. But as we looked into the story further, we actually found there’s less here than meets the eye.
The herbal products that were analyzed from each retailer were ginkgo, ginseng, St. John’s wort, saw palmetto, echinacea and valerian. The store brands involved were Herbal Plus (GNC), Up & Up (Target), Finest Nutrition (Walgreens) and “Spring Valley” (Walmart). What the analyses found was that only 21% of the products tested had DNA from the herbs that were supposed to be in the supplement – and 35% had plants not listed on the label, including rice, beans, asparagus, wheat, primrose and others.
But this isn’t the whole story. The consumerlab.com press release raised a few red flags about the testing that Dr. Schulte did. So did the American Botanical Council, a non-profit organization devoted to publishing information about herbal medicines. In fact, the American Botanical Council, speaking quite frankly, stated that the Attorney General’s office “misused DNA testing”:
DNA testing is an adequate way of identifying material from actual living and dried plants. However, many, if not most, herbal supplements these days are not simply ground-up herbs. Instead, they are extracts of plants. Plants are soaked in water, alcohol or other solvents that draw out the phytochemicals that are most responsible for the effects the herbs can have on our bodies. Each herb is believed to have specific phytochemicals that may be of benefit for a myriad of illness and conditions. For example, St. John’s wort has hypericin and hyperforin, ginseng has ginsenosides, and ginkgo has flavonoid glycosides. Extracts of plants typically do not contain any DNA – just biologically relevant phytochemicals. While we don’t know the exact composition of each of the supplements that the Attorney General’s office had tested, we can say that, to the extent they tested extracts, they were never going to find any DNA anyhow!
Furthermore, as the American Botanical Council points out, thorough identification procedures for plant materials do not depend on just one test. They typically use a range of tests including microscopic testing and identification of specific phytochemicals. The Attorney General’s office has derided critics of Dr. Schulte’s scientific methods. But these critics are, in fact, correct. Dr. Schulte may be proficient in DNA testing, but he is not an expert in botanical quality control – the field of science called pharmacognosy – and his testing methods were not those best suited to determine whether there is any St. John’s wort in the St. John’s wort bottle you buy at your local GNC.
It occurred to us to see whether there are any independent analyses of the quality of the particular supplement brands in question. We turned to Consumerlab.com, the source of the press release describing the Attorney General’s testing project. Consumerlab.com regularly tests the quality of different supplement brands, and reports on them in their subscription newsletters. We selected St John’s wort, a supplement that is regularly sold in the form of an extract rather than as ground-up plant material, and looked up the Consumerlab.com Product Review for St John’s wort supplements. Consumerlab.com runs several tests on various supplements, including tests to determine whether or not they have the phytochemicals they are expected to have in them. In the case of St. John’s wort, these phytochemicals are hypericin and hyperforin. They also test whether they have excess lead or cadmium, toxic heavy metal contaminants, and whether they disintegrate properly when they are put into a solution to dissolve them (poor quality supplements might pass right through your digestive system without dissolving and would, as a consequence, provide little or no benefit).
The latest version of the Consumerlab.com test results on St. John’s wort was dated October 2014. What we found in their report is that Finest Nutrition, Spring Valley and Herbal Plus St. John’s wort supplements passed all three of their tests. We didn’t see the Up & Up brand on their list and don’t know whether they tested it or not. Now, we haven’t checked all of the herbs the Attorney General’s office had tested, but this discrepancy is certainly an indication that there are problems with the testing that was done.
Of course, this does not take away the concern about the finding of plants not listed on the labels of the tested herbs, some of which are allergens or foods avoided by many people. However, as the Consumerlab.com press release suggests, the sensitivity of DNA analysis means that these identifications could have come from very small traces of the other plant species in the herbal formulas. Trace amounts of a variety of plants and animals are nearly impossible to keep out of any natural food, and, for most people, are of no consequence. We will have to wait for further testing to be done on these products to determine whether they were within the legal limits of contamination, and we certainly hope that the companies involved complete this testing as soon as possible.
In conclusion, the subject of supplement quality is one we’ve been concerned about for many years – decades, in fact. This is why Dr. Block formulates supplements specifically for his patients, and has also carefully selected a few other brands that meet his uncompromising standards for quality and purity.
Dr. Block has developed a comprehensive system for rating supplement quality. Supplements should be rated for ingredient quality, stability, safety, efficacy and bioavailability. Unfortunately, it’s rare to find this depth of information on the supplements available for sale today. However, Dr. Block details this information and explains what you can do to help ensure that you are getting high quality supplements, in a link at the website for his book, Life Over Cancer. You can find it at: http://www.lifeovercancer.com/i_links/page496.html.