Sticking with the baby theme this week - when someone is pregnant, the vast majority of us know that they should take a prenatal vitamin. (Ideally, many doctors suggest starting one when women are trying to conceive and continuing through the first weeks of breastfeeding). But after most any trip to the vitamin aisle (or worse online) it's easy to feel overwhelmed and confused by various marketing claims and touted health benefits. (Especially when you're hormonal!)
That's why at Inspired by Dawn we love this resource we discovered recently that rates various types of vitamins by brand. It's called LabDoor.
"LabDoor buys dietary supplements and energy drinks off retail shelves and sites. Then, we send each product to an FDA-registered laboratory for a detailed chemical analysis. Our technical team then collects the laboratory results and builds algorithms to translate this data into simple grades and rankings."
They provide detailed rankings of "25 of the best-selling prenatal vitamins," as well as prenatal DHA supplements (often recommended for pregnant women as well). But, of course, they go far beyond just prenatals and rank a wide variety of multivitamins and various other vitamins and supplements that any of us might be taking to maintain our health - probiotics, fish oil, vitamin D, etc. In fact they even break out multivitamins for men, women, kids, 50+, etc.
We're so glad we stumbled upon this site. After all we all want to take better care of ourselves. But it's also good to know what unintended ingredients we might be taking along with our daily vitamin. Knowledge is power!
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