Products I Do Not Recommend

Dr. Mercola' s Way Healthier Full Spectrum Light Bulbs
I ordered a set of these for our office. The people that work with me complained that the lights were "cold, harsh, and reminded us of the horrible lights we remember in grade school." We returned them. The good news is Mercola's company reversed the charges on my credit card immediately. On a lighter note, the videos of Mercola on his site, www.mercola.com, make him look ghoolish. It's almost as if he's suffering from taking too much valerian root or its medical counterparts, with sunken cheeks and dark eye sockets, as he stutters and stammers blearily through his sales pitches. Maybe he's using his own lights during video production? Maybe he's taking too much valerian root to reduce the stress of selling products this way. On the other hand, I feel sorry for him. Where he once was a champion who produced valuable information about progressive health, he appears to have fallen into partnership with some "direct-marketing" people, who use people with the credibility he has attained to deliver fear-based sales pitches and deceptive marketing to sell products on television and now the internet. (Am I being too blunt?)

Dr. Mercola's Whole Foods Multi-Vitamins.
Seeing this product being sold by Dr. Mercola was a great surprise. He has never gone so far in destroying his credibility. The top of the page greets you with "WARNING - YOUR MULTIVITAMIN MAY NOT BE ALL IT CLAIMS TO BE..."

Fear-Based Selling Usually Indicates Deception
As happens with companies that sell "whole-foods-supplements" in health food stores, selling products based on creating an illusion that other types of vitamins are "toxic" is almost always a tip-off that the manufacturer is lying to you and selling you products of less real value than other quality vitamin products.

While there are a few inferior multi-vitamin products being sold, the vast majority of multi-vitamin products you can buy in thousands of quality health food stores around the USA have been tested and shown to be exactly what they say they are. They are also safe and effective.

Deficient Formulation And A Poor Value
Inspection of Mercola's formula shows that at $19.95 per month it is not a good value. For instance, it contains no calcium or magnesium or Vitamin D, so it doesn't even supply the RDA of all the essential vitamins and minerals. It is not a "complete" multi-vitamin, multi-mineral formula. Furthermore, in most cases, the nutrient potencies, including tiny RDA amounts of B-vitamins, are far too low to provide optimal benefits. (Click here to read my fully-referenced document on optimal vitamin dosing.)

As evidence of the lack of substance he shows in selling this product, he promotes the vitamin with fear tactics saying, "Synthetic alternatives to whole foods are known as “isolates”. Your body will only absorb a small percentage of an isolate form of vitamins and minerals — and utilize even less (Your body absorbs much more of the whole food form.) On top of that, there may be side effects, depending on the quality of the isolate."

This statement is meant to scare people into buying his vitamin formula, but it is nonsensical. All of the 200,000 studies that show the benefits of taking dietary supplements use the very same vitamins and minerals he describes in scary terms as "isolates."

This is doublespeak. Isolates are the best type of nutrients if you wants optimal absorption. Vitamins in foods generally do not absorb as well as isolated nutrients, because your intestine can only absorb nutrients in their isolated "free" state. (Click here to read my article with 46 medical journal references that details this.)

Ninety-nine+ percent of the vitamin products sold in quality health foods stores, like Whole Foods Market, are isolated vitamins and minerals. They are sold there because quality studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals over the last fifty years prove that they can work safely to make you healthier.

On inspecting the product he sells as "Whole Foods Multi-Vitamins" we find that it contains small amounts of the very same isolated vitamins sold everywhere - along with some added food materials, so he can call them "Whole Food Vitamins." Nonsense.

"Homestatic-Type" Vitamins And Minerals.
Provided in doses to low to provide optimal benefits. Claims are made that they have magical absorption and magical effects that are not supported by any independently published studies.

"Whole-Food-Probiotic-Type" Nutrients.
Including "bio-cultured-type" nutrients, "whole-food-probiotic-type" nutrients and "food-state-type" nutrients, which are provided in doses too low to provide optimal benefits. Claims are made that the nutrients' absorption is many times better than the vitamins sold by all other companies (does this make you suspicious?) and that they have magical effects that are not supported by any independently published studies. The first problem is that if the small amounts of nutrients provided in these types of formulas were gleaned from the foods you eat, they would give you too small an amount of food to sustain you from day to day. These products give you tablet amounts of foods, like 1000 milligrams. Mice might live with these amounts, but not humans who need 480,000 milligrams (one pound), which is the amount of food on a plate called a meal. Does this make some kind of sense?

The few studies that exist that look at these products are manufacturer-sponsored studies. Only three of them have been published in peer-reviewed medical journals. However, even these studies do not support the claims of superior absorption that are made to sell these extremely high-priced products. Imagine spending $150 to $200 per pound for tabletted foods. Read more by clicking here.

Michael Mooney
www.michaelmooney.net