Supplement AbsorptionAnti-aging supplement consumers often totally ignore this factor when comparing brands. This is particularly bad because absorption is critical in determining effectiveness and value for money. How is absorption defined? It’s the proportion of a bioactive ingredient absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract for use or storage in the body.
Nutrients pass through the intestinal wall lining and enter the bloodstream. Then they find their way to target organs and body systems where they go to work. This is how you receive nutrient health benefits. FACT: Under the US Dietary and Health Education Act, dietary supplements are regulated as “food”. Their absorption rates don’t have to be tested. This has created a serious credibility issue in the industry. What does all this mean to you? When looking at an anti-aging supplement label, the listed ingredients and dosages don’t indicate how much is actually absorbed by your body. Factors like...
...all influence the total absorption of a supplement. One reason high-quality supplements cost more is because they’re formulated specifically to allow greater absorption. They come from science-based companies that use sophisticated manufacturing.
Disintegration And Dissolution:
Disintegration just means that the tablet breaks up into small particles that can be distributed. People swallow a tablet and take for granted that this will happen. With cheap, badly-processed supplements, it doesn’t. Professional-grade supplements disintegrate in 20-30 minutes. But it doesn’t end with disintegration. A tablet can disintegrate quickly yet still not be absorbed by your body. It needs to dissolve too. Dissolution refers to a supplement’s ability to dissolve in solution---expressed as a percentage. Supplements that dissolve the fastest have the highest absorption. This is because nutrients have a limited and defined absorption area in the intestinal tract. Non-governmental organizations such as the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) and British Pharmacopeia (BP) set disintegration and dissolution standards for dietary supplements. When a supplement meets these standards, you can have confidence that their formulation process represents the best of cutting-edge science. Reputable supplement companies always voluntarily manufacture in line with the USP/BP standards. Check to see if your supplement company complies. If it doesn’t, you may end up taking an anti-aging supplement that passes straight through your body intact.
Excipients – Those Things Listed as "Other Ingredients"
Excipients are the inactive substances added to a formula to give the desired consistency, shape, and assist in the manufacturing process. The number and type used affect a tablet’s ability to disintegrate. Excipients bind together ingredients in a supplement; they act as glue that holds everything together. Many herbs and other desirable ingredients clump together and don’t mix without excipients. So, although they don’t provide health benefits, these “other ingredients” are essential. Now, there are good excipients and bad ones. Bad excipients lower absorption, because they don’t easily disintegrate. And other cheap ones often cause stomach irritation or allergic reactions. Acceptable Excipients Most frequently used from natural sources:
Undesirable Excipients You don’t want these in your body.
Professionally formulated supplements contain about 5-10 excipients. Any more than that is a red flag. Some supplements contain 50 % excipients. Why? Large amounts are used because cheap supplements are produced in high speed tableting or encapsulating machines. This requires powders to flow very fast without caking or sticking. Excessive fillers are also used. Contract manufacturers add the formula ingredients, and if there’s space left over, they then include fillers to increase tablet dimensions or make the capsule look fuller.
Getting Ingredients Into Your Blood
There are 4 effective ways that nutrients enter your bloodstream:
Nutrients in anti-aging supplements enter the bloodstream through the small intestine. Just like when you eat food---the nutrients are delivered to the intestine for absorption.
PROBLEM: The delivery of nutrients from the stomach to the intestine presents a major difficulty. Stomach acid damages and destroys certain nutrients.
Highly beneficial nutrients like...
...are particularly affected. How do supplement manufacturers overcome this problem? Well, the ones leading the industry use a special delivery system.
Enteric Coating: Protector of Nutrients In the pharmaceutical industry, enteric coating has been used extensively. That’s one reason why drugs work so well and quickly. A lot of supplement companies like to demonize the drug industry. But with delivery systems, pharmaceutical companies lead the way. Enteric coating provides a protective layer on a tablet as it passes through the stomach. Once the tablet reaches the small intestine, the coating reacts to the alkaline environment and strips away. This guarantees a high level of absorption. The decision to use enteric coating rests on many factors---type of ingredients, integrity of the company, and objective of the product. The anti-aging supplement I take has enteric coating. The product is called Total Balance from Xtend-Life Natural Products in New Zealand. Dr. Warren Matthews, chairman of Xtend-Life Natural Products, maintains a blog where he answers questions from people. Here’s a Q & A about the importance of supplements passing through the stomach: QUESTION Why are you concerned about supplements passing through the stomach? I can’t understand the concern about supplements passing through the stomach and being exposed to stomach acid. All food we eat normally passes through the stomach and gets exposed to the stomach acid. Anything that can’t stand our stomach’s acid, but has to be covered in a way to pass the stomach unhindered, can’t be a “natural” product. We should eat as close to “nature” as possible. ANSWER This is a good question. I certainly appreciate what you are saying as it makes sense. But it is not as simple as it may seem. I’ll try to explain. As we get older we need a helping hand with some nutrients. This is because our bodies become less efficient compared to how they were when we were younger. This means both in the ability to extract the nutrients from food and the ability to manufacture certain nutrients. As an example, let’s consider glutathione which is essential for the health of our cells. This substance is primarily manufactured within the body, but as we get older we begin to lose the ability to make adequate amounts. Any deficiency contributes to accelerated aging. So, the logical answer is to supplement with this important nutrient. The problem is that this nutrient is damaged by stomach acid and can only be absorbed through the intestinal walls. To overcome this obstacle, oral glutathione supplementation must abide by two important parameters. The first is to use a small molecular sized glutathione which is known as “reduced” glutathione and the second is to protect it from stomach acid, which can only be achieved by using an enteric coated tablet. Glutathione is only one of the nutrients that needs protecting in this way. Consider enzymes. These are critical for effective absorption. They attach to some nutrients which are too large to be absorbed effectively through the intestinal walls. They then help break down the size of these nutrients to enable them to pass through. When we are young, these enzymes are generally present in sufficient quantities to enable this to happen. But, as we age, there is not enough of them and, as a result, many of the nutrients from food are not absorbed effectively. This contributes to the aging process. However, enzymes are notoriously unstable and very sensitive to stomach acid. You will notice that in all our enteric coated tablets that we use a variety of enzymes. This is the reason why we use enzymes and it is a major factor which makes our enteric coated tablets so effective. Absorption Wrap Up Only well-trained biochemists can develop supplements that offer the greatest absorption. Mediocre companies offer little in this area. Don’t let price influence you too much. As you unconsciously know, if it's cheap, it’s cheap for a reason (and probably not a good one). Be proactive in uncovering the absorption details of your anti-aging supplement. Two good questions to ask:
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