Fighting Fraudulency: Exposing Fake NMN and How ProHealth Longevity is Taking Action
The rise in popularity of supplemental NMN has seen a subsequent increase in disreputable companies flooding the market with adulterated and fake versions of this NAD+ precursor. As more and more positive research on the potential benefits of NMN is released, numerous counterfeit or low-potency NMN products are being sold on Amazon and other supplement websites.
Since we began carrying NMN, ProHealth Longevity has been fighting to ensure that ours is of the highest quality, purity, and potency—and we now have the third-party data to back it up.
Third-Party Testing Reveals Fraudulent NMN on Amazon
In fall 2021, leading NR (nicotinamide riboside) supplement manufacturer Chromadex tested 22 NMN brands with the highest market shares on Amazon for potency. The results were striking, with 14 out of 22 brands containing less than 1% of the NMN they claimed on their supplements.
Less than one-quarter of the brands had NMN content just below what their label stated—about 88-99% of the label claim. Notably, ProHealth Longevity was one of only three brands that contained 100% or more of the reported amounts of NMN.
This investigation confirms that you shouldn’t always trust inexpensive supplements you find on Amazon—even if there are positive reviews. As Consumer Lab states, “Interestingly, many of the products found to contain virtually no NMN have hundreds or thousands of positive reviews on Amazon and some display images of certificates of analysis indicating that they provide their claimed amounts of NMN.”
How to Find Reputable NMN
As detailed in this Medium article, fraudulent companies are attempting to out-price competitors by using fake ingredients to gain market share, which is ultimately not fair to the consumer or the reputable companies that spend time and resources to ensure their NMN is safe and pure.
But NMN is not the only supplement to be affected by adulteration—the supplement industry as a whole is subject to fraudulent formulations, false claims, and unapproved or even dangerous ingredients. With over half of American adults consuming dietary supplements and contributing to a $149 billion industry in 2021, addressing this growing issue is critical.
Supplements are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration; rather, they fall under the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), avoiding the strict premarket safety and efficacy testing that pharmaceutical drugs undergo. Unlike pharmaceuticals, supplements are like the wild wild west—now a highly saturated industry with thousands of products that have not been tested for purity or safety.
So how do you know if your NMN contains what it says it does? And, further, that it doesn’t contain harmful or unmentioned ingredients and contaminants? To start, supplements should have easily accessible and recent Certificates of Analysis, with third-party lab information recognized on the form. Certifications like the U.S. Pharmacopoeia (USP)—a third-party quality standards agency that establishes standards for pharmaceutical and supplement development and manufacturing—and cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practices) can also lend credibility to a supplement brand.
The ProHealth Advantage
ProHealth Longevity uses Uthever NMN (manufactured by Effepharm), creating products of exceptionally high quality, potency, and purity. The Uthever Scientific Quality Standard Setting Team is under the direction of a former USP scientist who ensures that Uthever NMN is in strict accordance with quality standards. Plus, clinical research from 2022 looked at the safety and efficacy of Uthever NMN supplements, finding 300mg of NMN per day to significantly boost NAD+/NADH levels within 30 days.
With this research, ProHealth Longevity Uthever NMN is the first NMN on the market that's been in a published peer-reviewed, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical study—plus, it’s manufactured in an FDA-registered, GMP-certified facility in the USA and each batch is third-party tested.
Our partnership with Effepharm and the use of Uthever NMN should give you peace of mind that the NMN you order is authentic, pure, and safe—but don’t just take our word for it; check out the third-party testing that backs this up.