A Guide to Dietary Supplements

The legislation that governs dietary supplements is called DSHEA, and it enumerates nine different categories. This guide explains what they are and what they mean.

 

---

Key Takeaways:

• The legal definition of a dietary supplement in the United States is a product (other than tobacco) intended to supplement our diet that contains one or more of the following: vitamins, minerals, herbs or botanicals, amino acids, dietary substances used for increasing total dietary intake, concentrates, metabolites, constituents, and extracts.

• The article provides definitions and examples of each of these nutrient categories.

• Essential nutrients are amino acids, vitamins, fatty acids, and minerals required for normal physiological function that cannot be synthesized by our body in sufficient quantities. 

Related Products:

• Matter for brain aging: Contains three essential nutrients, vitamins B6, B12, and folate, which are clinically proven to slow age-rated brain atrophy. Matter combines the tri-vitamin complex with an advanced omega-3 formulation and is doctor-recommended for supporting long-term brain health.

• Format for immune aging: Consists of a daily immune supplement and a twice-monthly Senolytic Complex. The daily immune supplement contains the essential nutrients vitamin C, selenium, and zinc and powerful plant extracts with antioxidant, immune-supporting, and cell renewal properties. 

• Basis for cellular aging: Contains nicotinamide riboside (NR), which is an essential nutrient (vitamin B3) and a precursor to the critical coenzyme NAD+. Basis combines NR with pterostilbene to support healthy DNA and target cellular aging.

• Signal for metabolic aging: Contains nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), which is a derivative of vitamin B3 and an efficient precursor to the critical coenzyme NAD+. Signal combines NMN with plant-derived honokiol and viniferin to support mitochondrial health. 

---

 

The dietary supplement market in the U.S. is estimated at more than $30 billion (based on industry group stats and projections from McKinsey), with more than 50 percent of U.S. adults taking one of the more than 77,000 estimated supplements on the market. That means you’re probably taking one — and likely educating yourself about its role in health, too. But how does the government, which regulates dietary supplements, describe them? And what do those words mean?

The legal definition of a dietary supplement, codified in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DHSEA), describes a “product (other than tobacco) intended to supplement the diet that bears or contains one or more of the following dietary ingredients: a vitamin, a mineral, an herb or other botanical, an amino acid, a dietary substance for use by people to supplement the diet by increasing the total dietary intake, a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract” or a combination of any of these.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which supervises dietary supplements, offers some insight as to how one should think about these categories when it issues “guidance” to the industry, which it did most recently in 2016, but there remain large gaps, which we aim to clear up here with some straightforward definitions and examples in each category. These are our interpretations, not definitions from a regulatory body, and they’re meant to help better understand what you’re seeing on a supplement label — not to recommend any particular supplement.

 

In This Article:

What Are Essential Nutrients? What Are Vitamins? What Are Minerals? What Are Amino Acids? What Are Herbs or Botanicals? What Are Concentrates, Constituents, or Extracts? What Are Dietary Substances? What About Everything Else I See in Health Food Stores?

 

---

 

What Are Essential Nutrients?

A handful of nutrients are considered “essential,” meaning that humans can’t synthesize them in sufficient quantities endogenously, but we need them for normal biological function. These numbers have changed over time (and may well again), but currently the list of essential nutrients includes nine amino acids, two fatty acids, 13 vitamins, and 15 minerals.

Amino acids: threonine, valine, leucine, isoleucin, methionine, phenylalanine, tryptophan, lysine, histidine

Fatty acids: alpha-linolenic acid (an omega-3 fatty acid) and linoleic acid (an omega-6 fatty acid)

Vitamins: A, C, D, E, K, thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pantothenic acid (B5), biotin (B7), pyridoxine (B6), folate (B9), and cobalamin (B12)

Minerals: sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, zinc, selenium, iodine, copper, manganese, fluoride, chromium, molybdenum 

---

 

What Are Vitamins?

WHAT THEY ARE: 

Vitamins are organic compounds required by the body for biological functions, but which aren’t created in sufficient quantities endogenously. That means we need to get them through diet. There are 13 vitamins — actually, most of them are families of vitamins with different chemical structures but similar biological activity — which play a variety of roles, most commonly as precursors or cofactors in enzymatic reactions, which means they help move along the chemical reactions that make up our metabolism. The prevalence of multivitamins notwithstanding, humans get most of their essential vitamins through the diet, either through whole foods or through fortified processed foods.

COMMON VITAMINS:

The families of vitamins are A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, B12, C, D, E, and K. The vitamin B3 family, for example, includes niacin, nicotinamide, and nicotinamide riboside, which are precursors of varying degrees of efficacy for the coenzyme NAD+, and are also involved in other processes like lipid metabolism.

 

---

 

What Are Minerals?

WHAT THEY ARE:

Like vitamins, minerals are fairly straightforward: They’re chemical elements (that is, from the periodic table) from the earth required for biological processes, which make their way up the food chain from the soil. Humans get them from eating plants or animals. Minerals act similarly to vitamins, primarily as cofactors in enzymatic reactions. Magnesium, for instance, is required for hundreds of enzymatic activities, including ATP synthesis and the synthesis of DNA and RNA.

Sodium is another classic example of an essential mineral, and it’s used for signaling pathways in the central nervous system.

Again, like vitamins, minerals are usually available in the diet with whole foods or in fortified foods.

COMMON MINERALS:

Calcium, potassium, sodium, magnesium, chlorine, phosphorus, iron, zinc, manganese, copper, iodine, chromium, molybdenum, selenium, cobalt.

 

---

 

What Are Amino Acids?

WHAT THEY ARE:

Amino acids are essential molecules used in protein synthesis and vital for various functions in the body. There are 20 different amino acids, and you need all 20 of them to help your body function properly. Nine amino acids are classified as essential and must be obtained from food. The body produces the remaining 11 nonessential amino acids.

Essential amino acids can be found in a variety of foods, including beef, eggs and dairy. You can usually get all the essential amino acids your body needs by eating a healthy, balanced diet.

COMMON AMINO ACIDS:

Essential: histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, valine. Non-essential: alanine, asparagine, arginine, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine, proline, serine, tyrosine.

 

---

 

 

What Are Herbs or Botanicals?

WHAT THEY ARE:

An herb or botanical is a plant, alga, or fungus; a part of a plant, e.g., bark, leaves, stems, roots, flowers, fruits, seeds, berries; or their exudates like sap or resin. These are not endogenous and not traditionally considered essential to physiological function. Records from Mesopotamia and Egypt indicate that plant-based products have been used for health purposes for millennia, and from the pharmaceutical perspective, the compounds in plants are the foundation of discovery for new drugs meant to activate metabolic pathways or inhibit pathways — and that’s because compounds from plants can be very active molecules.

A classic example is acetylsalicylic acid, or aspirin, which was derived from the bark of the willow tree Salix alba L. Herbs and botanicals can often be found in the produce aisle, or as supplements in a variety of forms — teas, extracts, and concentrates, for example.

Because herbs and botanicals are natural, they’re often thought to be safe, but the reality is that some are and some aren’t, and in many cases the full extent of their relationship to biological processes isn’t well studied and understood.

Interestingly, while vitamins, minerals, and amino acids can be synthetic under FDA guidelines, synthetic versions of herbs and botanicals (as well as constituents, extracts, or concentrates thereof) can’t be sold as dietary supplements.

COMMON HERBS AND BOTANICALS:

Garlic, curcumin (turmeric), ginko biloba.

 

---

 

What Are Concentrates, Constituents, or Extracts?

WHAT THEY ARE:

A concentrate is a substance with most of its base component or solvent removed, e.g., water, such that the original material has just been reduced in volume (i.e., to fit into a smaller capsule or container) and what remains is a solid, semi-solid, or syrup. Extracts are also concentrated forms of the original substance, but usually they are the concentrated form of just the active ingredient, which has been extracted using a solvent (methanol and ethanol, for example) to separate a class of compounds. From an efficacy standpoint, the end goal with concentrates and extracts is similar to using an herb, botanical, or extract, which is to activate or inhibit pathways. A constituent, finally, might just be one molecule isolated for a specific use.

COMMON CONCENTRATES, CONSTITUENTS, AND EXTRACTS:

Green tea extract, ginkgo biloba extract, elderberry extract, ginseng extract.

 

---

 

What Are Dietary Substances?

WHAT THEY ARE: 

Characterized as “something that increases total dietary intake,” this sounds like it could theoretically be anything, but “substance” here means something that’s commonly used as food or drink — i.e., that it’s in the food supply either as a food or as an approved food additive, which is another category of ingredients the FDA oversees.

The most recognizable example of a dietary substance today is probiotics, live microorganisms found in foods like yogurt and kombucha, which are isolated and sold as supplements.

As a dietary substance, probiotics should be recognized as safe by the FDA in food before they can be used in supplements.

COMMON DIETARY SUBSTANCES:

Probiotics.

 

---

 

What About Everything Else I See in Health Food Stores?

A handful of products that you’ll find in the supplement aisle don’t fit neatly into the categories above, most glaringly fatty acids, two of which are essential nutrients (alpha-linolenic acid and linoleic acid) and play critical roles in multiple biological processes, including regulating the structure and function of cell membranes, intracellular signaling, and gene expression. Fatty acid supplements appear commonly as fish oil or flaxseed oil supplements, which could be filed under extracts, metabolites, or constituents.

 

Get Elysium news, subscriber-only product offers, and a monthly digest of new research in the field of aging. Sign up for our newsletter.