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Title: Buyer Be Wise! The Consumer's Guide to Buying Quality Nutritional Supplements by Karolyn A. Gazella ISBN: 1-890694-04-5 Publisher: Impakt Communications Pub. Date: January, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (1 review)

Rating: 3
Summary: An Overpriced Mixed Blessing
Comment: Buyer Be Wise is a 93 page book intended to be a consumer's guide to buying quality nutritional supplements: vitamins, minerals, herbal supplements, hormonal products, homeopathic remedies and glandular extracts. (The description says 108 pages, so they must be counting the acknowledgements and forwards.) Four of the pages are either entirely blank or have only one quote on them, and many other pages have extremely wide margins occupying 1/3 of the page! The bulk of the book is interviews with experts in natural medicine who explain what to look for in nutrition supplements. Although the information on choosing vitamins and minerals, is good, it's incomplete, and not consolidated into an easy to use format, such as a bullet pointed checklist. There are also some omissions re. the other types of supplements, that I find irresponsible. Although the description lists Alan Gaby (a well respected holistic M.D.) as a co-author, he only wrote the forward.

The chapters are as follows:

Introduction - A 3 page lengthy explanation of the book, which could have been made in 3 paragraphs.

Chapter 1, "General Guidelines" - This awkwardly written chapter takes 4 pages to make the point that cheaper products are usually not the best quality products. However, there are several excellent quoted paragraphs from experts in the field explaining why this is so, and a good interview explaining label reading.

Chapter 2 "Building a Strong Foundation" - Scattered throughout this chapter is information on choosing quality multivitamins/minerals. While this information provides a basic foundation, one could follow all this advice, still be confused at the supplements counter, and still choose a poorly absorbed supplement. The important topic of choosing minerals that will be well absorbed is not addressed. The chapter also contains pretty good discussions of why supplements are necessary in the author's opinion, and natural vs. synthetic. However, while the reader is told to choose the natural forms of vitamins D and E, there's no mention of how the natural form of vitamin D is listed on the label.

Chapter 3 "Buying herbal supplements" - About half the chapter is an excellent discussion of the different forums of herbs such as tinctures, fluid extract, standardized extracts, capsules. However, there are several pages on what herbs are used for what conditions, which seem to be filler that's readily available in other books.

Chapter 4, "Buying hormonal supplements" is the largest chapter (20 pages), but doesn't give much information on how to buy these supplements, other than dosing. Furthermore, there's zero mention of the fact that hormonal supplements cause your body to down-regulate (decrease) production of the supplemented hormone. Instead, there are very gung ho discussions on the benefits of DHEA, progesterone, melatonin and other common hormonal supplements. Not once is it suggested to see a physician and get these hormonal levels tested before messing with one's endocrine system.

Chapter 5 discusses homeopathy and glandulars. If I hadn't read several books on homeopathy, I probably would have been confused by this chapter. There is not enough information in this chapter for one to choose the proper homeopathic remedy for their health condition. However, if a doctor prescribes a particular homeopathic remedy, say rhus tox for poison ivy, this chapter can help the patient choose from several rhus tox options. The discussion on glandulars is very pro-glandular, and makes no mention of the fact that these animal products can come from sick and contaminated carcasses.

Chapter 6 is a very brief chapter containing a good discussion distinguishing credible supplement literature from sales hype. The book also contains a glossary/index of terms. There's also a 2 page recommended reading list, mostly entire books on individual supplements. My favorite book on this topic (not on Gazella's list) is Michael Murray's "Encyclopedia of Nutritional Supplements."

Overall, this book is an overpriced mixed blessing with the best information in chapters 1, 2, 3, and 6. The book is worth checking out of the library or buying used at half price or less. I definitely do not recommend buying this book at full price.