Quality Control

Quality is Everything

This issue alone can make or break the success of your quest for health. If you’re going to invest the time and effort – and money - don’t you want the best possible opportunity to make that work for you? Isn’t that the whole point?

So don’t compromise. Keep reading … there are some things you need to know before you run out to your local discount store or health food store to buy your herbal supplements.

Here’s What You Need to Know

All herbal supplements are not created equal. Quality starts from the seed and goes from there … to where and how herbs are grown, how and when they’re harvested (even the time of day is important to maximize potency), how they’re shipped, how they’re tested and processed all the way to the integrity of the final product. All of these factors determine whether or not you’re getting the nutrients and therapeutic compounds in the products you buy. You want all of the good stuff, and none of the bad stuff (like dirt, mold, bugs, etc.)

These are a few of the reasons why I personally use Nature’s Sunshine Products (NSP), and also use them for my family, friends and clients. As the industry leader, NSP is genuinely dedicated to providing pharmaceutical grade herbal supplements and essential oils.

NSF International Certifies Nature’s Sunshine Facility

NSF International, a non-profit, non-governmental organization and world leader in standards development and product certification, recently presented Nature’s Sunshine with the NSF Good Manufacturing Certification. NSF is a leading, third-party auditor of companies involved in the health and public safety sectors. Their certification of our manufacturing facility means we passed an extensive audit by NSF staff, including an examination of production equipment and a thorough evaluation of our policies and procedures and our manufacturing processes.

Take a Look at NSP’s Manufacturing Process

Weeding Out Inferior Products

Samples of herbs from around the world come to NSP, where they are put through extensive laboratory tests. The company then contracts with the best suppliers to buy the needed amount of raw herbs.

If a supplier fails to meet the quality standards mutually agreed upon, NSP returns the products at the supplier’s expense. If weather conditions ruin a crop, the company has alternative sources, world-wide, to draw upon.

Each new shipment arriving at NSP’s loading dock is immediately slapped with a hold sticker to prevent its use until it passes inspection. A sample of each shipment is then put through a series of lab tests to ensure that the herb meets quality standards. Equally important, the herb must actually be what it claims to be … no ginseng branches in place of ginseng roots.

State of the Art Laboratory Tests

NSP Has 600 Tests at their Disposal to Guarantee Quality. A few of these tests include: Microbiological, Anaerobic, Organoletpic ID, Microscopy, Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC), Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), High Performance Liquid Chromatography, Ash, Acid Insoluble, Gamma Counter, Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry, Dissolution, Disintegration, Salmonella poisoning, alflatoxins, and many more.

New Testing Procedures and Methods Provide the Safest Supplements

Salmonella poisoning seems to make the news every few months and leads to an exhaustive recall of many tons of food along with health concerns. Of course, we cannot risk salmonella contamination in our raw materials or our finished products, so we test both for the presence of this tiny bug.

We also test our raw herb material for aflatoxins, a dangerous byproduct of fungus metabolism that can lead to illness, including liver damage. Sometimes fungus levels are undetectable in raw material. But if we use HPLC and test for the presence of aflatoxins, we can tell if fungus is present.

Last fall, baby formula in China was found to contain melamine—a chemical that can boost apparent protein count in a tested sample. As a result of this unscrupulous action, over 50,000 children were sickened and four infants died. Many consumers worldwide switched to soy milk products. Shortly thereafter, soy products from China were also found to be similarly contaminated. NSP markets 68 products, including Phyto-Soy®, that contain soy or its derivatives.

We rigorously test all of our incoming soy material to ensure that our products are free from contaminants.

An estimated 15 million Americans are gluten-intolerant. NSP’s new Ultimate GreenZone® formula is guaranteed to be gluten-free. NSP goes to great lengths to test for gluten in all of Ultimate GreenZone’s ingredients. This expensive testing ensures a safe product for our gluten-sensitive consumers. “Most other herb companies aren’t testing for this,” says Lynda Hammons, Vice President of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs. “But at Nature’s Sunshine, if the label says something about our product, we test for it personally.”

NSP Stays on the Cutting Edge of Technology

We purchased a new Inductively Coupled Plasma/Mass Spectrometer in January 2009. Our former ICP/MS was not broken or “outdated,” but the newest one offers brand-new technology that lowers our elemental detection limits and increases our dynamic range. It also has the added advantage of an octopole reaction system (ORS), which effectively eliminates potential interferences with certain elements like arsenic, selenium, chromium and iron. Its price tag, $175,000, is just one example of our commitment to providing the finest quality products to our distributors and customers worldwide.

Why is this Cutting Edge Technology so Important?

Imagine discovering that the ginseng root you’ve been purchasing was actually ginseng branches, which have none of the properties of the root. Or worse, that it contains contaminants like dirt, bugs, mold, or pesticides. Or that the Chickweed you’ve been taking for several months was tainted with radiation. Sound impossible?

Remember the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in 1986? The fire resulting from the meltdown spewed a plume of radioactive fallout (400 times greater than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima) into the atmosphere over an extensive geographical area above the Ukraine. This plume drifted over large parts of western Soviet Union, and most of Europe.

As a result of this fallout, the chickweed grown in France was affected. When a shipment of this chickweed arrived in the U.S. for NSP, it met the FDA’s safety standards, but not NSP’s. They rejected it.

NSP suppliers have learned to provide the company with only the best. “We are one of the largest buyers in the world. Because our standards are so strict, suppliers offer us the best raw materials first in order to get our business” says NSP’s Director of Quality Control. “The rest goes to the competition”.

What are Lab Tests Looking For?

Here’s a few examples: the thin layer chromatography test takes a sample herb which has been made into an extract and put into a device that separates the herb’s identifying qualities. The results are compared to a file sample. Each plant has its own “fingerprint” which must be correctly verified with the file sample before the herb is passed along for further testing.

Liquid chromatography tests chart the sample’s unique characteristics. Further inspection under a microscope identifies foreign material such as insect parts or dirt and reveals the herb’s cellular structure for positive identification. With a mounted micrometer, NSP’s quality control experts can even measure the thickness of various cellular parts. In this way, NSP can be sure you don’t get anise when you ordered licorice.

The liquid chromatography tests also analyze vitamin content and other ingredients in raw materials, and check for uniform potencies in herb and vitamin combinations.

Lab technicians also test for radiation contamination, especially for shipments coming from Eastern Europe. Even though the accident at Chernobyl happened several years ago, NSP wants to be absolutely sure that herbs bearing the NSP label are completely safe.

Herb samples are also tested for 70 different minerals. Through this procedure, lab technicians can detect toxic heavy metals such as lead and mercury. NSP’s equipment can measure quantities a thousand times below government allowances for toxic residue.

Microbiological testing finds any contamination of unhealthy bacteria. Each herb requires its own special testing procedures. For example, Cascara Sagrada takes two days to fully test in order to verify that it has been cured for at least a year. It takes that long for chemical bianthrones to change into anthraquinones in order to prevent nausea when ingesting the herb.

The testing procedure isn’t complete after the initial testing. Quality control tests each batch of product before, during and after the manufacturing process. Even tablet disintegration and dissolution, under conditions that imitate the digestive system, are tested to make sure the human body can assimilate them. Throughout the manufacturing process, samples are taken and kept on hand for seven years.

Experience

When it comes to making quality products that yield results, there is no substitute for success. With over 35 years of experience, no company in the health supplement industry works harder to provide quality products.   Nature’s Sunshine takes pride in their team of scientists, each chosen for their specific knowledge of product research, development and quality control. With Nature’s Sunshine you can be sure you’re getting the highest-quality, best-formulated products available.  NSP scientists work with top researchers at renowned universities to study and test the products and their active constituents.

Technology

NSP meets or exceeds current government Good Manufacturing Practices and pharmaceutical quality standards. The 250,000+ square-foot facility includes a climate-controlled warehouse and cutting-edge laboratory equipment. This allows NSP to manufacture consistently high-quality products for our customers all over the world.