I notice that there is a variety of vitamin pills available on the market, often with a substantial difference in price. For example, Walgreen’s sells a house brand daily multivitamin that lists 100% of the RDA for a whole list of vitamins. They also sell other name brands with largely similar lists and amounts of vitamins, except the name brands can cost from 3 to 10 times as much.
Is there really and difference between the cheap house brand and the expensive name brands as far as effectiveness? Is there any reason not to base one’s choice on price, assuming the listed contents are essentially the same?
I’m not a chemist, but I’d be very surprised if there were actually differences in effectiveness. Vitamins are just chemicals, and if the pills contain a given amount of a given vitamin, your body doesn’t care if they come from a name brand pill, a Walgreen’s pill or an apple (which is not to say that eating fruit doesn’t have any advantages) because it wouldn’t be able to tell any difference. So if the listed contents of the drugs are essentially the same (and I guess in the developed world, the food and drugs supervising authorities are pretty quibbling when it comes to lying on the ingredients labels), there’s no reason not to base your choice on the criterium of price.
My GF has tried various brands of ritalin, and she did indeed notice a difference. While the active ingredients were identical, the binders were different. Enough so so that the generic brand didn’t work for her at all.
I’m no chemist, but I imagine that the same thing might hold true for viamins.
People do say that for prescription medication there are differences between pills, especially branded vs. generic. Large-scale studies do not back this up. It may still be true for a given individual, IOW, but for the mass of users no statistical difference in effectiveness shows up.
There are obviously fewer large-scale tests for OTC vitamins. There’s no reason to go to that expense. I’ve read quite a bit on the subject, though, and my impression is that all quality vitamins are the same. At one time, cheaper tablets were less likely to dissolve properly: your body can’t absorb vitamins from a lump. But that was 20 years ago and techniques are far better today.
The real problem is that there is essentially no way to know if the pills are working. Hardly anybody in the U.S. gets a vitamin deficiency disease with or without the pills. Vitamins’ role in maintaining overall good health is controversial and no consensus at all exists on the value of high doses of any given vitamin.
I buy cheap or house brand vitamins all the time. And yet I’m a physical wreck. There seems to be a contradiction there. Yet I cannot make myself believe that spending five times as much per pill will make any difference in my life. Maybe I should try it and see what happens.
I’d be curious how she would respond if she did not know she was getting generics or branded product. Placebo effects are well known to exist but not entirely understood.
Well I’ve noticed differences in drugs simply comparing 3 or 4 different generics of the same thing - and unless I’m showing bias towards pills I consider the prettiest I doubt it is all placebo effect. For example, I find pills that have higher weight per dose (more binder) or have a coated binder work a lot worse for me than smaller pills of equal dose. It also seems pills that have a corn-starch binder work a lot better than the really sweet (what is that, lactose?) powdery binders for same dose. This is disregarding time release pills that are a whole other cup of tea - same medication, same dose will range from either not absorbing at all to absorbing very quickly depending on the time release capsule manufacturer. Am I just weird? I mean, I guess it could all be placebo effect but wouldn’t I then have better luck picking OTC drugs that work first and any subsequent brands suffering from ‘inferior brand’ problems? That is not the case.
While this is true for foods, pharmaceuticals (OTC and prescription medicine, marketed as such) and cosmetics, it is not true for vitamins (except prescription brands) and homeopathic medicines. The FDA (United States), HPFBI (Canada) and other equivalent authorities in the “developed” world do not currently supervise the manufacturing, testing, packaging, effectiveness, identity or quality of these products. This is supposed to change in the nearish future, last I heard about it, but for the moment, you pretty much have to trust the manufacturer to be sure that you are getting what they claim you are getting. While I doubt that most manufacturers of these products are selling placebo under the name of “ginseng”, there’s still a chance that your 500mg capsule doesn’t contain that, or contains too much, or whatever. No one is checking up on them to ensure that you get what you’re paying for.
As for generic vs name brand effectiveness, when it comes to unregulated products, then you really might want to ask why the generics are so much cheaper. I have no actual knowledge about any product/manufacturer, but you should know that the risk is still there.
For regulated products, I have a feeling the placebo effect has quite a role in people’s individual experiences, as well as selective memory when it comes to the “effectiveness” of products they’ve consumed. The regulatory agencies require proof of equivalence before a generic can be put on the market, and to date
FTR, I’m an analytical chemist for a large generic drug manufacturer… making many of the generics originally created by it’s brand-name parent company! Though it is not at all true that you get the “same pills, different bottles”… they are manufactured separately and tested/approved separately.
Here’s my experience with generics: In general, I don’t see any differences.
The one exception is my thyroid hormone. I take Levoxyl (actually a generic of Synthroid). One time the pharmacy gave me a generic of Levoxyl, some chemical sounding name, and it was not as effective. Not as effective to the point of my doctor saying to have “Dispense as Written” on the prescription. His explanation was that the pills may be slightly different from slightly different pressures on the machines when shaping the pills, giving rise to different absorbtion rates.
Another thing to consider, at least in the case of my thyroid medicine is that my dose is 88 mcg, so my body absorbing a bit less, say 1 mcg, would have a lot more effect than my body not absorbing 1 mg of a 200 mg pill.
Hmmm… another possibility is people are more sensitive to variations in hormone replacements than other drugs. I understand diabetics are very sensitive to using different brands of insulin. Why, even my dog was using a specific brand of insulin (Humulin-L)!
Yeah, I know, a generic of a generic. What is this world coming to?