Call Us Toll Free (800) 688-5956
FDA’s top official on Wednesday announced the creation of a working group within his agency to improve oversight of the dietary supplement industry, reflecting concerns over FDA’s ability to manage risks in a sector that has grown 10-fold over the last quarter century. “I’ve formed a dietary supplement working group within FDA to take a…
Cognition is described as the ability to think, learn and remember. As people age, the brain naturally changes, affecting memory, learning and other cognitive functions. Some older adults suffer from mild cognitive impairment, in which they have more memory or thinking problems than other people their age. Dementia is the loss of cognitive function and behavioral abilities to…
The microbes in the gut produce neuroactive compounds that connect to the brain, affecting behavior and mood. There are more than 100 million neurons in the gut—nerve cells, which are normally perceived as brain cells. In fact, the gut is sometimes called the little brain because it is the largest area of nerves outside the…
Patent filings directed to sports nutrition continue to generally grow year over year. The trend is particularly pronounced on a global scale. The increase in patent filings (through 2016) of sports nutrition products has been occurring outside the United States, with a large portion of filings in China. Brazil and Russia, which are not usually…
FDA investigators who inspect dietary supplement manufacturing facilities for compliance with cGMPs (current good manufacturing practices) are still often finding the same deficiencies more than a decade after the regulations were adopted. In fiscal year 2018 (FY18), 75 inspections—or about 24 percent of firms that received a Form 483 inspection report for “observations,” or alleged…
The international unit (IU) has been used to measure fat-soluble vitamins—vitamin A, D and E—for decades. The IU is an arbitrary amount based on the amount of a given nutrient needed to produce a biological effect. Different than milligram or microgram, the IU measurement describes something that we cannot see; the potency or biological activity…
Sleep aids are rapidly growing in popularity across the globe, posting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.5 percent between 2012 and 2017 to reach retail sales of US$2.3 billion in 2017, according to market research firm Euromonitor International. Driven by an increasingly stressed and sleepless consumer base, particularly in the developed world, sleep…
Branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) are incredibly popular with hardcore athletes and body builders. BCAAs include leucine, isoleucine and valine, which are essential amino acids that humans only get from food and beverage because the body doesn’t make them on its own. Among the benefits of BCAA products are stimulation of muscle protein synthesis (MPS), prevention…
Qualifying and quantifying the market for products that address anxiety, stress, mood and sleep is a little like trying to nail jelly to the wall or define “obscenity.” Regarding the latter, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously remarked in 1964 that “I know it when I see it” to describe his threshold test in Jacobellis…
According to the Council for Responsible Nutrition’s (CRN) Economic Impact Report, more than 750,000 Americans are employed by the dietary supplement industry in the United States. The industry is an eclectic bunch, spanning all age groups and backgrounds, specializations and skill sets, but one common trait exists: a desire to make an appreciable difference in people’s…