05-11-2013, 22:48
(This post was last modified: 05-11-2013, 22:52 by LookingForward2NBE.)
Fillers are not a bad thing. I love Dr. Oz but this one area he needs to be educated on and he lead to this huge movement against fillers.
1. Fine ground or powered herbs are very if not impossible to run on commercial encapsulator. It causes damage to the pins and excessive pressure.
2. When your blending multiple herbs, you may need an excipient to get blend uniformity. Otherwise, there could be a huge variability between each capsule.
3. Rough herbs don't flow. So you need a lubricating agent to get it to run on equipment.
4. If its a single herb or very low dose extract.. How do you put 25mg in capsule... You can't. You need a bulking agent to fill the capsule to get uniformity.
5. Depending on the dose, it may exceed 1 capsule but enough for 2, yes there are 6 standard capsule sizes but not all manufacturers have all the sizes and even then, you might not be able to neatly fill it. So you need to bulk it up accordingly.
6. You can not partially fill a capsule with quality control as its not possible to do it reliably.
Those are just some of the reason why manufacturers use them.
What ends up happening, manufactures can either:
1. Change the recommended dose to accomodate a capsule or vs. What was traditionally done or researched. Not good IMO. let's say a dose of 2g is proven clinically, but you can only fit 50mg in a size4 capsule, 75mg in a 3, 150mg in 2, 400mg in 1, 600mg in 0, 800mg in 00. U can only use 1 size... What can u do!
If your an honest company: you use size 00 unless your worried of a chock hazard then you would use a 0.
So either you under dose at 2 capsule, 1.6g as the dosage on the bottle
or
YOU use 400mg of an excipient that flows well, doesn't pick up moisture and doesn't draw moisture out of a capsule shell that would make it brittle over time.
These numbers are for illustrative purposes, each ingredient as its own bulk density which effect how much can be put in a given capsule size.
2. Not list excipient and probably not get caught but leads to an issue with compliance and safety as you don't know what's in the product.
1. Fine ground or powered herbs are very if not impossible to run on commercial encapsulator. It causes damage to the pins and excessive pressure.
2. When your blending multiple herbs, you may need an excipient to get blend uniformity. Otherwise, there could be a huge variability between each capsule.
3. Rough herbs don't flow. So you need a lubricating agent to get it to run on equipment.
4. If its a single herb or very low dose extract.. How do you put 25mg in capsule... You can't. You need a bulking agent to fill the capsule to get uniformity.
5. Depending on the dose, it may exceed 1 capsule but enough for 2, yes there are 6 standard capsule sizes but not all manufacturers have all the sizes and even then, you might not be able to neatly fill it. So you need to bulk it up accordingly.
6. You can not partially fill a capsule with quality control as its not possible to do it reliably.
Those are just some of the reason why manufacturers use them.
What ends up happening, manufactures can either:
1. Change the recommended dose to accomodate a capsule or vs. What was traditionally done or researched. Not good IMO. let's say a dose of 2g is proven clinically, but you can only fit 50mg in a size4 capsule, 75mg in a 3, 150mg in 2, 400mg in 1, 600mg in 0, 800mg in 00. U can only use 1 size... What can u do!
If your an honest company: you use size 00 unless your worried of a chock hazard then you would use a 0.
So either you under dose at 2 capsule, 1.6g as the dosage on the bottle
or
YOU use 400mg of an excipient that flows well, doesn't pick up moisture and doesn't draw moisture out of a capsule shell that would make it brittle over time.
These numbers are for illustrative purposes, each ingredient as its own bulk density which effect how much can be put in a given capsule size.
2. Not list excipient and probably not get caught but leads to an issue with compliance and safety as you don't know what's in the product.