WIN Products

I’ve always been very wary of the claims of the supplement industry.

“Lose 80 pounds in 5 minutes while scratching your nose!” Or, “Our magic ingredient from sea shells makes you lose weight, have more energy, and jump higher than Michael Jordan!” Then there is, “Our pill makes your sex drive increase more than Bill Clinton!”

The rules regulating the supplement industry are much more forgiving than the rules that the prescription drug manufacturers have to play by. The prescription drug people have to produce something called a product insert (PI), which is then carried in the publication called the Physician’s Drug Registry (PDR). The PI is supposed to list,among other things, the research supporting the drugs claims, as well what exactly the drug can be used for. Unless there is solid research to back every claim, the manufacturer can’t make claims about what their drug can be used for. Companies that violate this policy due so at their peril, as Eli Lilly discovered recently when they had to pay a fine over 1 billion dollars for making unsubstantiated claims about their drug Zyprexa.

The supplement industry, by comparison, gets a pretty free ride. As long as they aren’t killing anyone, they can pretty much make any claim that they want about their product, without being required to produce proof to back up their claims. Thus you see the wild claims that many supplement manufacturers have made over time without a shred of supportive proof.

So with this in mind, I was pretty skeptical when some of my colleagues, whom I respect, approached me about a supplement company that they deal with, called WIN
(Wellness International Network).

WIN makes a variety of supplements for weight loss and energy, among other things.
When I first looked at their product line I was skeptical--it just looked like a classier supplement line, but still a supplement line, making unsubstantiated claims.

When I looked further, however, I was pleasantly surprised by some things that I discovered, such as the fact that WIN has several products listed in the non-prescription version of the PDR. There are a million supplement companies out there, but only a few get this privilege. In order to be in the PDR, a supplement has to meet minimum manufacturing and product quality control standards.

For example, consider their Omega 3 pill. Omega 3s are a supplement that I have supported for years. There is great epidemiological data supporting that they decrease the risk of sudden death and heart disease, as well as being useful and safer for arthritis.

Omega 3s are high in poly unsaturated fatty acids. Some supplement manufacturers have been caught putting up to 30% saturated fats in their pills. As a consumer, that is akin to putting your mouth directly on the french fryer vat and your local burger chain.

There is a prescription version of Omega 3, called LoVaza. It meets FDA standards for purity. It is marketed by Glaxo, the world’s biggest pharmaceutical company. However, Glaxo doesn’t manufacture the fish oil. It turns out an independent company makes it. They send half of their output to Glaxo and the other half to WIN. The WIN omega 3 sells for about half of the prescription version and is identical to it, literally coming off the same assembly line as Lovaza.

We have been trying many of the WIN weight loss and metabolism products and
much to my surprise--they work! People lose weight, have no side effects, and have more energy. They are a great alternative for our patients that don’t want or have maxed out on the benefit or prescription drugs. So the first time WIN makes a product that looks to good to be true, I’ll be the first one to jump on it. However, as for now, we have become a WIN distributor, able to offer their products to our patients at a steep discount, and I’m excited.