When referring to the value of a product, many people immediately think of cost. Cost and value are two totally different things. In the case of natural health products, the value should be based above all on the potential benefit, and the price of the product should be an element of comparison with what is available on the market. The great difficulty in this area is that the potential benefit depends on many characteristics that are usually little known to users and even health professionals.

We are therefore going to discuss this topic by considering the following 5 main facets:

  1. Is this Canadian product made by a serious company?
  2. Are these standardized ingredients?
  3. Do the dosages of the ingredients respect the dosages demonstrated in clinical studies?
  4. How many capsules?
  5. Are you feeling the benefits?
  6. Are you paying too much?

1. Is this Canadian product made by a serious company?

If you are not able to easily tell where it came from, beware. Many products are sold by foreign companies. Sometimes they are imported. The production standards abroad are not the same and the ingredients could be of lower quality. Idunn Technologies, which markets Vitoli® products, is a Canadian company founded by a researcher (https://esimard.com/en/), whose products are manufactured here in Quebec, with its pharmaceutical manufacturing license. These are the highest standards in the industry.

2. Are these standardized ingredients?

Standardization is the use of the dosage of an active ingredient or a marker. For some plants where the precise active ingredient is known, it can be dosed in order to guarantee its presence in sufficient quantity. For example, for ginkgo biloba, it would be glucoflavonoids (24% flavone glycosides) and terpene lactones (6%). For this product, there is therefore a double standardization.

Standardization thus allows greater efficiency, but also the production of safer products. In addition to confirming the presence of the active molecules, this also makes it possible to confirm more precisely the origin of the extract while also avoiding adulteration. In some cases, further analyzes are necessary. For example, for Vitoli® Menopause, we don’t just guarantee the soy isoflavone, we also guarantee the quantity of the two active molecules, daizin and genistein. Idunn Technologies, which markets Vitoli® products, is the only company to guarantee that all the extracts used are, in fact, standardized.

3. Do the quantities of the ingredients respect the dosages demonstrated in clinical studies?

The clinical demonstrations carried out, which are also referred to as conclusive data, always correspond to the quantities of active elements which are necessary in order to make the benefits of the study possible under the same conditions (duration, population, targeted benefits, etc.).

Unfortunately, Health Canada allows the use of amounts that are sometimes only 10% of the doses used within clinical demonstrations. This is due to several reasons. For example, Health Canada allows the addition of potential effects of plant extracts based on possible similar mechanisms of action. You should know that the benefits of the ingredients used are rarely additive. Thus, 5 plant extracts at 20% of their respective doses, in the same formula, will probably not give a 100% equivalent effect.

Here again, Idunn Technologies guarantees that all the ingredients used are at the necessary dosages to allow effectiveness.

4. How many capsules?

Many people are influenced by the number of capsules offered. It is important to know that often, even when taking 6 capsules of a competitor’s product, you still won’t have the equivalent dosages of the ingredients present in Vitoli® products from a single capsule. They are very concentrated extracts allowing to reduce the number of capsules to be taken each day. For example, one capsule of Vitoli® Healthy Aging is the equivalent to 46 non-concentrated herbal capsules. The bottle of 30 capsules, for one month, therefore corresponds to 1380 plant capsules. Do you think that the product which contains the most concentrated, best characterized ingredients, which also allows you to take only one capsule per day, has a greater value than the product of which you have to take 46 capsules per day?

5. Are you feeling the benefits?

This is probably the most important facet for the majority of applications. Feeling a benefit, or simply feeling better is of course the desired outcome. Some applications, however, have little or no perceived benefit, as is the case for supplementation with certain minerals or certain vitamins. On the other hand, some supplements for sleep or stress, for example, should provide quick benefits, if they are of good quality. Vitoli® products have stood out in recent years thanks to their greater efficiency.

6. Are you paying too much?

Finally, back to value. If the quality is present and the benefit is felt, now is the time to assess the cost at which the product is offered by comparing it with what is available on the market. Some companies sell very expensive products to support a “high-end” positioning that does not always correspond to quality or efficiency. A product at $55 a bottle is not necessarily of better quality or more effective than a product at $24.99.

Vitoli® products were created to make more effective products available, at more affordable prices, for everyone.

 

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