What is an excipient?

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What's an excipient? What are those “other ingredients”?

When you look at a bottle of vitamins, on the nutrition facts panel at the bottom you will see a section called “other ingredients,” followed by a list of additives the manufacturer has put into the formula which are considered “inactive” or “inert” and as such are thought to be harmless. The law requires that these ingredients be disclosed to buyers, and while all of them are generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the FDA in the very small amounts that would supposedly be used in making vitamin pills, the actual amounts of these ingredients do not have to be listed as long as they are 2% or less of the total weight of the product. So, if you have 5 “other ingredients” that are 2% each, they could comprise 10% of the total product, by weight.

This is cause for concern. While the FDA might consider an ingredient safe enough in amounts not exceeding 2%, if you are taking multiple pills multiple times per day, as many of us do especially as we get older, 2% here and 2% there can add up over the course of a year. For example, let's take a 500 mg pill. 2% of an additive would be 10 mg, and if you're taking 4 pills a day that would be 40 mg of just this one additive in just this one supplement per day. Multiply that out by 365 and you get 14,600 mg of just this one additive per year. That's about 5 ounces. Let's say there are 4 other additives in this pill, so that get's your total up to 25 ounces. Following this reasoning, if you're taking 5 different supplements your total ingestion of other ingredients would be about a gallon, over the course of a year.

If you drank a gallon of, say, motor oil, all at once it would likely kill you. But what the FDA and many, many supplement manufacturers are saying is that if you just do a little bit--one part of 365--of these “other” ingredients every day it won't hurt you. This matter is the subject of hot debate going on right now between supplement-makers that use excipients such as magnesium stearate in their products and those that don't. Each side claims to have good science behind their views. The opposition to mag stearate cites scientific studies that show ingestion of this excipient can cause:

-creation of an intestinal biofilm that reduces absorption of nutrients

-suppression of T-cells, one of our immune system's primary defenses

-cell death (heart tissue cells were used)

-decreased cell membrane permeability

Proponents of the use of magnesium stearate in supplements (manufacturers) counter by saying that all of these studies used large amounts of mag stearate, much larger than what is found in supplements, and therefore do not prove it is unsafe at low levels, and argue that it is needed to ensure uniformity of ingredients in each pill and to keep production costs down.

At the Natural Health Allegiance, we strongly believe that the best supplements are those that are excipient-free. Those where, after “other ingredients,” it states “none.” These are always in the form of powders or whole foods. Then there are supplements that come in capsule form, where the only “other” ingredient is vegetable cellulose, which is what the capsule is made from. This is harmless and we fully support the use of vegetarian cellulose, or Vcaps as they are known. They break down easily in the body, allowing the nutrients to be readily absorbed. We are not as fond of the use of gelatin (as in gelcaps) because of the animal source, but we do carry one product (New Chapter WholeMega fish oil) that uses it, because it is by far the best fish oil.

But now we come to the issue of tablets. Tablets cannot be made without the use of some kind of “binder,” a substance that holds the pill together. If you pressed raw material enough you could make a tablet, but it would break apart easily in the bottle. On the other hand, if the bonding agent is too strong it will prevent the tablet from breaking down properly in your digestive system. There is also the problem of how to maintain uniformity and prevent “clumping” of the product as it goes through the tabletting machinery. Some manufacturers solve this problem with a lubricant called “stearic acid,” which is the unadulterated form of the primary ingredient used in creating magnesium stearate. Because it is a naturally occurring substance, these manufacturers argue that it is safer than artificially created stearates. As a final touch the tablets are coated with “food glaze,” which is the binder that keeps tablets from disintegrating in bottles.

Are stearic acid and food glaze safe? We would say they are certainly safer than the plethora of excipients, such as magnesium stearate and titanium dioxide, that are found in most supplements, yet we would also say that ideally even these additives should be avoided. Tablets are convenient, and are compressed so you don't have to swallow as many pills as you would with capsules, but they are not the best form of supplementation. Still, if you cannot find the supplement you are looking for in a whole-food form, or in a Vcap, it may be necessary to go with a tablet or a gelcap.

The Natural Health Allegiance will always do its best to supply you with the purest, cleanest form of any supplement. We encourage you to question anything and everything that goes into your body--where it comes from, how it's made, what studies have been done on it, and so on. We are committed to helping you maximize your health potential! Helping you understand what “other ingredients,” if any, are in the supplements you take is a vital part of our mission.

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