PogoHealth is an independent, personalized, science-based online information service on health supplements. We provide everything you need to make your own informed decisions about supplement use by providing reliable, practical information and recommendations in terms you can understand.

No. To stay unbiased and free of conflicts of interest, PogoHealth does not sell vitamins or supplements. You won't find PogoHealth-branded supplements anywhere because there's no such thing. If you like, PogoHealth will make your shopping more convenient by generating shopping lists based on your nutritional needs and shopping preferences but we do not profit from supplement sales.

The fees enable us to remain unbiased and free of conflicts of interest, concerned only with offering you independent guidance on supplements personalized for you. Since PogoHealth does NOT sell supplements, fees are needed to support having expert nutritional scientists available as well as technologists to develop processes that select information for your personal needs.

In short, you get everything you need to make informed personal decisions about supplements all in one place. You get truly personalized evaluations and recommendations based on additional information about your diet, health conditions, drug and supplement usage and lifestyle. A nutritional evaluation not only identifies the vitamins and minerals (essential nutrients) you're receiving and recommends the right amounts for you, but also identifies other nutrients that may have health benefits, cautions about supplements that require consulting a physician, and warns about supplements to avoid and possible drug interactions. You're told about products containing the right amounts of the recommended nutrients and you can get a personalized shopping list if you like. You can choose a shopping list that includes only quality-tested supplements or one with products just from your preferred retailer. You'll also have unlimited access to evaluations of specific supplement products based on label information and independent third-party quality testing, profiles of health conditions, and PogoHealth advisories based on new information relevant to your identified health and nutritional issues. Finally, PogoHealth makes extensive educational and reference resources available, enabling you to learn as much as you want about supplements.

We take your privacy seriously. We promise to use your personal data only for the purposes to which you have agreed. We'll never sell your personal data to any other company such as third party list brokers or direct marketing companies.

You can trust PogoHealth's recommendations because we don't sell supplements, we have distinguished medical experts with great expertise in nutrition drawing on comprehensive, continuously updated databases of peer-reviewed scientific information, and our evaluations and recommendations systematically take into account the things that make you unique.

Not without a world of time and an advanced degree. Getting information equivalent to what PogoHealth offers would take real knowledge of nutritional science plus time and effort to apply that knowledge to your own situation. You would need to know how your personal nutrition is affected by dietary intake, prescription and over-the-counter medications, and health and lifestyle issues. You would have to search for relevant, reliable information in an ocean of confusing and conflicting myths and unsubstantiated claims, and adapt the reliable information correctly to your unique personal characteristics. This will probably require many separate steps: searching for supplements by name one at a time to see how each supplement could affect your health conditions; searching for health conditions one at a time for information about how they might be affected by supplements and nutrition generally; searching specifically for drug/supplement interactions, entering both the names of the supplements and the drugs you take, again one at a time. Then you'll need to read food and supplement labels and nutritional guides to determine how much of each nutrient your diet and any supplements provide. You'll also have to consider how your medical profile, exercise habits and other aspects of your lifestyle affect your need for nutrients. Based on all this, you'll have to determine your individual need for each specific nutrient. Then you'll have to find products containing those nutrients in the right amounts, look for the results of any quality and purity testing performed on those products, and check the availability and pricing of those products at the places you like to shop. It's a lot to do and keep track of. PogoHealth personalization considers all the relevant factors without making you enter information repeatedly in separate steps. PogoHealth then makes expert, personalized, science-based recommendations and generates a personalized shopping list based on your shopping preferences. We think you'll find PogoHealth much quicker, easier and more accurate than trying to do all this on your own.

Some other sites recommend products based on answers to a questionnaire, but they also try to sell you the products they recommend. Some sites only recommend their own brand of supplements! They usually provide no convenient way to consider products from other companies and compare prices, ingredients or independent testing of quality and purity. PogoHealth's personalized recommendations draw on products from many manufacturers and retailers and never include products sold by PogoHealth because PogoHealth doesn't sell any.

No two people are alike, which means that the amount of vitamins and minerals you need can vary greatly. Yet general dietary guidelines are based on population averages. But we're not satisfied recommending averages when information can be tailored just for you and your unique needs. That's why we look at who you are and how you live, including things like age, weight, diet, lifestyle, health conditions, exercise level and drug and supplement usage, to determine exactly which nutrients you need and which supplements you may wish to consider.

It's all about personalizing information for you. The interviews are streamlined and take only two to five minutes each. You mostly just click on the answers that are right for you. You can do the interviews one at a time in any order whenever it's convenient. The first interview on basic health and lifestyle enables PogoHealth to make a baseline recommendation, starting with the general recommendations of essential nutrients by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences, then adapting those recommendations based on your answers. These basic recommendations for you provide the foundation for all other evaluations and recommendations, but the recommendations are modified based on your answers to the other interviews on dietary intake, vitamin and supplement intake, prescription and over-the-counter drug intake, and health conditions. Those interviews enable PogoHealth to provide information and guidance very specific to your personal needs.

Your personalized evaluations, recommendations and other reports are available as soon as you finish the interviews needed. All you have to do is click. And you can change information and rerun reports as often as you like and whenever you change your supplements, drugs, diet or lifestyle or you experience a change in your health.

The general recommendations on supplement packages are not the equivalent of a physician's judgment about the appropriate dosage of a prescription drug for you. The package information is not the equivalent of the FDA-approved prescribing information that comes with a prescription drug. It is extremely difficult to be certain you are taking the right amount of a supplement based on your health, lifestyle, other supplements, prescription drugs, etc.

The regulation of health supplements is limited. Manufacturers are not required to submit proof of quality, purity or effectiveness or even to register products before selling them to you. Manufacturers are sometimes held accountable for problems supplements cause after consumers buy them and some consumers begin to experience problems. You have to be concerned about whether you might be one of the unlucky consumers whose adverse experience leads to a recall or restriction on the sale of the supplement. By then, it's obviously too late for you. When you try to take precautions before taking a supplement, you should be aware that the information provided with supplement products is not the equivalent of the FDA-approved prescribing information that comes with prescription drugs.

You should definitely consult your doctor, but you need to understand that a personalized supplement analysis is complex and places great demands on the busy schedules of physicians. PogoHealth is a tool available to physicians and healthcare providers to assist in providing you up-to-date and appropriate advice. We will also give you a Physician Report to enable you and your doctor to partner more effectively in maintaining your health.

You control whether PogoHealth furnishes information to others, including healthcare providers. You can authorize PogoHealth to email the Physician Report or you can mail or hand-carry a printed version of the report to your doctor. Your healthcare provider may also tell you about PogoHealth and ask you to complete the PogoHealth interviews.

PogoHealth has developed and continues to develop and expand the most comprehensive database of scientific studies of health supplements. This provides the foundation for personalized recommendations. Our science-based model and process were created by MDs and PhDs with great nutritional expertise and have undergone rigorous testing. "Science-based" refers to information verified by evidence gathered in controlled scientific studies, and excludes anecdotal sources, rumor and unsubstantiated claims. PogoHealth's approach is open to scientific peer-group scrutiny and validation by physicians and experts in medicine, nutrition and genetics. The approach is constantly being updated and improved. You can count on PogoHealth for information truly based on scientific knowledge and personalized for you.

This remains open to debate. There are supplements that some physicians recommend for certain ailments, but your physician is the best source for such information. If you have a specific disease or condition, you should definitely consult a physician or healthcare provider before self-treating the problem with any possible remedy, including supplements. You should never self-diagnose and self-treat with supplements. Sometimes symptoms can indicate something serious that only a physician would recognize. PogoHealth doesn't attempt to 'treat' diseases or other health conditions. We just empower you to make better informed decisions.

With today's busy lifestyle, many people's dietary habits are NOT optimal for meeting all nutritional needs and maximizing current and future health. Supplements are being used to fill gaps in nutritional needs, improving people's health and well-being as well as providing possible insurance against some future diseases. Supplements offer additional value when science confirms their effectiveness in prevention or treatment of health conditions.

Over 50% of Americans take supplements on a daily basis (see reference 1) and 85% of Americans have taken supplements at some time (reference 2). The US supplement industry is estimated at over $24 billion in revenues and growing rapidly (reference 3). However, of consumers taking supplements, 92% are not aware supplements could interact with commonly prescribed medications for diabetes, high blood pressure, birth control, and so on (reference 4). This alarming statistic underscores the need for better information and education about supplements.

1. Council for Responsible Nutrition, July 2006
2. Bent S, Ko R. Commonly used herbal medicines in the United States: a review. American Journal of Medicine, April 1, 2004; 116(7): 478-85
3. Nutritional Business Journal, September 2006
4. Harris Interactive®, November 4, 2005