supplement facts

Practitioners are used to seeing the vague 'We use only the purest ingredients' in the promotional materials of almost every dietary supplement company. Perhaps these companies truly believe that. Perhaps they don't know any better. Nevertheless, Thorne Research, for 21 years, has been the standard by which companies in the industry are judged for product purity. Practitioners rely on Thorne as the company they trust for their extremely allergic, chemically sensitive, and immune-compromised patients.

For example, instead of purchasing pre-diluted, powdered vitamin K, as other companies do, Thorne performs its own dilution to avoid detrimental ingredients, such as the preservatives or lactose that are found in the commercially available dilutions. Why must vitamin K be diluted? Because it's a oil which resembles molasses in consistency. To ensure proper mixing, it must be made into a powder that flows, and one gram of vitamin K cannot merely be added to 300 kilograms of powder to achieve a homogeneous mix. At Thorne, pure pharmaceutical vitamin K is first mixed with pure mixed tocopherols, and the resultant powder is then blended with hypoallergenic magnesium citrate powder. The resulting powder is then run through a high-speed mill while liquid nitrogen is injected to eliminate heat and stickiness. The final powder is blended again in a large tumble blender and subsequently analyzed. Not only is the final product stable, it is hypoallergenic and can be mixed homogeneously with other powders. In addition, the mixed tocopherols utilized by Thorne are obtained from the largest vitamin E manufacturer in the world. Their production line is literally stopped while drums of the pure vitamin E are pulled off for Thorne, and Thorne alone. Then the rest of their vitamin E production is standardized with soybean oil and sold to all other companies. Just as with vitamin K, Thorne utilizes similar processes for its other raw materials, leaving it to other companies to purchase commercially available raw materials filled with unacceptable ingredients and preservatives.

Going beyond the choice of therapeutic raw materials and quality control standards that are necessary to produce truly hypoallergenic finished products, there yet remains in the industry tree the 500-pound gorilla with the excipient-laden bad breath. Universally lacking in the promotional rhetoric of those companies who are now boasting of product purity because they are 'GMP certified' is any attempt on their part to address why they utilize excipients in their manufacturing processes - such as magnesium stearate, stearic acid, or ascorbyl palmitate. SEE OUR SUPPLEMENT FACTS BROCHURE (PDF)These excipients are utilized as flowing agents to ensure maximum productivity is obtained from capsuling and tableting machines. One company labels ascorbyl palmitate as a vitamin C source in its products because ascorbyl palmitate is a fat-soluble form of vitamin C, albeit developed as an antioxidant for oils. At a minimum, this company should list ascorbyl palmitate in the 'Other Ingredients' panel at the bottom of the product label, along with the other excipients, since it is utilized as a flowing agent. Nevertheless, if a company cannot manufacture products without using excipients, they should not allude to being either 'hypoallergenic' or 'pure.'

The bottom line is that Thorne has been, for 21 years, the only hypoallergenic company, with the highest degree of purity. You cannot lie to an allergy patient, and Thorne is the product of choice for the severe allergy and sensitivity patient - and the product line you can trust.