Avoid These Three Ingredients in Your Health Supplements

Health supplements are an effective way to increase your overall well-being. They can enhance your immune system and protect from certain health risks. Unfortunately, sometimes manufacturers of health supplements are adding certain ingredients which might have adverse effects on your health. Here are three of the most prominent such ingredients.

Hydrogenated Oils

This type of oil is the main component of margarine, and this fat product is known for being unhealthy. Hydrogenated oils are also added to other food products with aims to save money and increase shelf-life.

Sadly, hydrogenated oils are responsible for the rise of bad cholesterol levels, which is known as low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and it is the main cause for cardiovascular diseases in the United States. Manufacturers use it as a filler in supplements to increase the size of a pill, which makes us think that it’s more effective.

Artificial Food Coloring

Adding artificial food coloring to foods and supplements is one of the best ways to make them appeal to young kids. Bright colors are associated with fun and eating a bright red alien vitamin is way more exciting for a child than swallowing a boring white pill.

Unfortunately, some artificial colors, especially Red (No.3 and No. 40) are associated with adverse effects on young child behavior. Specifically, the red is linked with increased hyperactivity. For this reason, it’s better to choose vitamins with no added artificial colorings, to avoid a potential impact on your child’s behavior.

Mercury

Mercury is a toxic liquid metal, which through extended exposure can lead to a plethora of health risks, for example, weakness of muscles, loss of vision, and even damage to neural network and cognition. Fortunately, no manufacturer on the market adds mercury in its supplements, but this toxic metal can find its way to fish oil supplements.

This type of supplement is notorious for decreasing inflammation, enhancing cognition and reducing the risk of cardiovascular diseases. We should be worried about fish oil supplements because fish which are used to make fish oil, are high on the food chain, which means that they carry a lot of mercury.

Some brands of fish oil supplements are incapable of reducing the mercury content in their products and that in turn makes them more toxic than healthy. To avoid mercury in your fish oil supplements, only choose prominent and well-established brands. If you cannot afford a premium product, it would be a wise choice to skip on this type of supplement altogether, because of the possible risk of ingesting mercury.

Things to Remember

Before jumping on the health supplement train, always conduct research about the full ingredient list of your chosen supplement. Some, like artificial food coloring and hydrogenated oils, can be avoided easily, while others, like mercury, is more difficult to avoid. Fortunately, with enough precision, diligence, and homework, all potential health risks from ingredients in health supplements can be avoided.

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