Posted by bleauberry on September 28, 2009, at 18:48:09
In reply to GNC Brand supplements, posted by psych chat on September 26, 2009, at 18:17:10
With the exception of a very few brands, I do not think brand is a reliable factor when choosing supplements.
For Rhodiola Rosea, there is one clear winner. The Mind, Body, Spirit brand. Others may or may not work to varying degrees and may have unexpected side effects. MBS almost always surprises.
For SJW, if you visit the forum swjinfo.org and roam the archives it will become apparent that brand shopping doesn't work. What does work is the trial and error process of tossing a dud brand and replacing with another. It is amazing how many people found a brand that worked great when 4 previous brands didn't. Sometimes the magic brand was Spring Valley from WalMart, and sometimes the magic brand was Perika or New Chapter. You just can't predict. The key is to randomly try another. They are all quite different.
Kira does feel similar to an SSRI. Perika or New Chapter feel different, often more stimulating. In contrast to those, Spring Valley is yet different from all of them. Every brand is different. I believe the differences can be accounted for by a wide variety of factors: country grown; region grown; general climate; time harvested; time to production; extraction method; encapsulation method; shelf time.
I recall one person at sjwinfo.org loving the GNC brand and another hating it. So go figure.
As far as SJW not working, that is usually one of two things: wrong brand; not enough time. Some people have tried up to 5 brands before they finally found the good one they were looking for. Some people have not even noted a hint of improvement until 2 months, and a full kick-in at 4 months. Most feel it within a couple weeks, but generally speaking it needs some healthy time and commitment.
The reason Kira is often recommended is because it is the clinical brand formula LI-160 used in many of the international clinical studies and research. Nature's Way Perika is another one of the clinical research studies. That in no way means other brands aren't as good or better. It just means they weren't used in studies. I find it fascinating how a lot of people find the cheapest brands to be the best. For others, they prefer a New Chapter or Perika. My favorite was Spring Valley, way better than Kira. My second favorite was Whole Foods house brand. Kira was ok. Perika didn't sit well at all. We're all different and so are the brands. Gotta try several, give each some time, and not get discouraged.
Another factor hardly anyone ever thinks about...
SJW is a rather potent antimicrobial against many bacteria, viruses, and fungi. If there is any unsuspected infection within a person they are not aware of, some of what might be perceived as "allergic reaction", "worsening of depression", or "no effect" is actually due to a die-off process. The real antidepressant effect of SJW will not kick in until it can over-ride that die-off process, which means the die-off process needs to be toward its end rather than beginning. Which may account for why some people feel headache, tired exhaustion, and such, and wait 2 months before feeling any benefit. In my opinion, those are not side effects. Those are direct effects of toxin removal. In my opinion that is one of the mechanisms by which SJW works.> Is GNC pretty dependable?
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> I heard Blue Bonnet for CoQ10, Kira for St. John's Wort, etc. I think I wasted my $ on supplements in the past. Worse than wasting money is wasting time (and hope) on things that don't work.
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> Kira St. John's Wort is completely different than the last brand I tried. It's just like taking an SSRI, though I don't know if it's going to be effective yet. But to think I gave up on SJW years ago when it didn't do a thing...grrr..
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> It's not necessarily the price, it's the brand. For example, Kira is cheap...then again, Blue Bonnet CoQ10 is $55. I'm just wondering how GNC holds up, in general.
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poster:bleauberry
thread:918618
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20090727/msgs/918869.html