Herbs & Plants

What is actually inside a herbal supplement

A herbal supplement is a plant, or one part of a plant, in a measured dose. The part matters. Root, leaf, bark, seed and berry each carry different compounds, so milk thistle seed and milk thistle leaf are not the same product. A label that names the plant part and the dose tells you more than one that only names the plant.

Three preparations cover almost everything in the botanical section of our full supplement range. Whole herb powder is the dried plant, ground and put into capsules. An extract concentrates the plant using water, alcohol or CO2, then dries it into a powder. A tincture keeps the plant in liquid, so you dose by drops and can move up or down slowly.

Extract ratios and standardisation, in plain words

Two numbers decide how strong an extract is.

• The extract ratio, written as 10:1. Ten grams of dried plant were used to make one gram of extract.
• Standardisation. The maker guarantees a fixed percentage of one marker compound, for example 5% withanolides in Ashwagandha.

Standardisation is the more useful of the two. It fixes the amount of the compound you are actually paying for. A high ratio on its own says nothing about which compounds survived the process. Whole herb powder is cheaper and closer to traditional use, but you need a larger dose for the same amount of active compound. Neither is better in general. They answer different questions.

Price gaps in this category come mostly from extract strength and from branded raw materials. A branded extract costs more because the maker pays for the trials and the batch testing behind it. That is worth paying for when you want to match a dose used in research. It is not worth paying for when a plain, well dosed powder does the same job.

Why we keep the language careful

Health claims for plant ingredients are still unresolved in UK food law. Almost none are formally approved. So any shop promising you a specific result from a herb is going further than the rules allow. We would rather give you the plant, the part used, the extract strength and how it is traditionally taken, and let you judge.

How we choose the herbs we stock

We look at three things: the plant part and preparation, the dose per serving, and whether a combination makes sense. We prefer a standardised extract when the marker compound is well defined, and an honest whole herb powder when it is not. We skip products that bury a herb inside a proprietary blend, because you cannot see the dose. Herbs act slowly, so plan to judge most of them after two to three weeks of daily use. Every product passes our compliance team, we test batches ourselves and independent labs spot-check them. See how we select brands and products.

Who this collection suits

This page suits you if you already know which plant you want and need to compare forms and strengths, from single herbs such as turmeric extracts with curcumin to multi-herb formulas. If you are starting out, take one herb at a time for a few weeks. Then you know what is doing what, and you add a second only when the first has earned its place. Tell your GP or pharmacist which herbs you take, especially if you use prescription medicine or have an operation coming up.