Herbalism is an ancient tradition of wildcrafting, growing, harvesting, processing, utilizing, and consuming plants and substances from nature for the benefit of human health, consciousness, and sustenance. For thousands of years, humans have been looking to the natural world for solutions in regards to health and wellness - long before the advent of modern medicine.
Given thousands of years of human consumption, herbs have a verified track record of positive health benefits with an extremely low occurrence of side effects when properly utilized, compared to modern medicines utilizing isolated substances. Our collective understanding of herbs and how to prepare them has come a tremendous way over the generations. Yet, in some ways, it has devolved into a nutraceutical mindset in recent times.
Wildcrafting Evolves
Back when humans first started experimenting with plants, they were simply wildcrafting (harvesting plants fresh in nature in their wild state) and experimenting with them by tasting them. In those times, people would use their senses to feel how the plant was affecting them, as there was not the vast body of herbal knowledge that we have today.
They would listen and sense if the herb dried out their mouth or if it caused saliva to form. They would notice if the substance could relieve pain or cause stomach cramps, and in some cases, people would not be so fortunate and they would get severely ill eating the wrong thing. They would notice the energy of the plant and pay attention to if the plant made them feel hot or cold, or if they felt more relaxed or energized. People would taste leaves, berries, barks, stems, roots, pollens, and just about whatever else they could find in their localized environment to gauge whether or not something could be used for medicine or food. In many cases it was a matter of survival and necessity.
People observed how animals would instinctively lay on certain plants to heal wounds, or eat particular shrubs and demonstrate a heightened sexual prowess. These types of observations would provide clues to how a plant could be used. At first, they would eat these herbs in their raw state. Then people discovered that adding these herbs to foods and soups made them more powerful and allowed better digestion, but it would also concentrate the plant and amplify its effects. Teas and soups were some of the first ways that humans started extracting plants and other substances, realizing their potential healing applications, qualities, and benefits.
With the vast herbal knowledge passed down over the generations, much has been learned about the therapeutic application of herbs for healing, as well as innovative ways to extract and concentrate the valuable substances found in plants. There are many forms of herbal extracts on the market today. Everything from spray dried powdered extracts to concentrated liquid extracts.
Synthetic, Food Based, and Whole Food Supplements
Around 50 years ago or so, scientists were of the belief that if the body has all the macro and micro nutrients it needs (regardless of the source), then the body can survive on supplements alone, eliminating the need for food as we know it. This gave birth to the modern arena of dietary supplements and isolating nutrients to be consumed in a standalone or combined synthetic form.
Years later, researchers figured out that you cannot survive on supplements alone, and that food in nature had many qualities that could simply not be replicated in synthetic form. Not only this, synthesized vitamins don't work nearly as well in the body due to all the missing cofactors than natured typically binds with these substances. This understanding led to a new process, becoming a new category of "Food-Based" supplements.
Reading the words "Food-Based" makes it sound like the nutrients come from food. But if you take a close look at how food based supplements are made, you will notice it is not always food-state nutrients.
They start with taking synthetic lab made nutrients like vitamin C, K, CoQ10, etc. and subject them to a yeast biomass, typically Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which starts a fermentation process that gives the synthetic vitamins more of a living quality. The idea is that this process will help the body bridge the gap and recognize the isolated/synthesized nutrients as real food. Although it is certainly better than isolated synthetic substances, it is still not ideal and it is not nearly as efficiently utilized by the body as natural, fresh food with all the nutrients in proper ratios.
Then companies started making supplements with whole food concentrates. They would use ground whole plant powder, juice powders, and fermented whole foods to create powders, tablets, juices, and capsules containing whole foods. Often, these products have stabilizers, excipients, flow agents, binders, glazes and so on. These added ingredients are often counterproductive to the absorption and utilization of the nutrients. For example, magnesium stearate, which is an excipient used as a flow agent that keeps product from sticking to large machines, is essentially a hydrogenated oil which interferes with nutrient uptake and is not great for the immune system. There are also questionable "natural flavors" that are added to supplements which are almost never "natural" in the pure sense of the word.
At Shen Blossom, we take the whole food and full spectrum extracts that are excipient and additive free to the next level by using traditional preparation methods. We will get more into that later, but suffice it to say that as much as people thought they could create nutrition that was as good or better than nature, it quickly became self evident that nature provides perfect nutrition for us. This is substantiated by the fact that we have had to move back to whole natural foods in order to obtain the best health results from a dietary supplement.
Once we have our basic nutrition needs met through our diet, then we start incorporating different dietary supplements known as herbal extracts, adaptogens, and whole food concentrates into the mix to give our body an extra edge in regards to health, adaptation, and longevity.
Herbal extracts like the full spectrum traditional sake extracts we produce at Shen Blossom are unlike everything that is currently available online or in stores. Before we get into those details, let's look at some common aspects of herbal extracts to understand the different types and processing methods.
Extract Ratios
The first thing you might notice when looking at either liquid or powdered extract labels is the mark to menstruum ratio.
You will see numbers like 5:1, 10:1, 1:4, 1:1 on the label of extract powders and may not know what these numbers mean. This number refers to both how much raw material is used to create the final extract and or the concentration ratio. This ratio will speak to the potency of the extract and if you are metering your dose or requiring a very specific consumption amount, these numbers will help you figure out how much to take to achieve a certain milligram amount per (x) amount of drops. Many companies loosely throw out concentration numbers that are often inaccurate, which can affect what you think you are actually getting. Also, you will want to note that bioavailability/absorbability is different than concentration levels (which we will get to in a moment), but for now let's look at laboratory standards in regards to the mark to menstruum ratios.
If we see a ratio of 1:1 for a liquid extract, for example, this translates to 1g (1000mg) per 1ml of liquid extract. So in a 2oz (60ml) bottle of tincture, it will take 60 grams of raw herb to make a 2oz bottle of extract.
Typically what you see in most health food stores is a 1:2 or a 1:4 from most of the mainstream tincture companies.
So in the example of the 1:4, this translates to 250mg of herb per 1ml liquid extract. Not a very strong sauce.
Now, when you start getting into super high levels like a 64:1 extract, for example, there is no way to hit those numbers if you were using the same techniques used (depending on the raw material) in the same way as described above. Companies typically use a pre-extracted powder substance that then is reconstituted and added to the menstruum to achieve these numbers, which has different qualities than performing a standard dual extract on the herb.
Another aspect in herbal extracts to know about is standardization. Standardized extracts are made in a way to emphasize a particular nutrient or family of nutrients that are naturally occurring. We don't like this idea/method of concentration and standardization, but that level of detail is outside the scope of this article and my intention for bringing this up is to give you a relative basic understanding of different strengths. But suffice it to say that many companies spend a lot of money verifying and creating standardization processes to guarantee a minimum percentage level of a particular nutrient.
Common Extraction Methods
The most common extracts people use on a daily bases are infusions and decoctions.
Infusions are where you soak an herb (like tea) in hot water for a few minutes, then pour off the liquid and consume it.
A decoction is where herbs/foods are added to water and simmered or boiled for a longer period of time. People traditionally cooked down herbs in this way can consumed the tea for nourishment and health. This is really easy and fun to do with medicinal herbs at home and most people already do this when the slow cook a soup for example.
Let's take a look at the most common prepared herbal extracts you find on the market. I am going to go over with broad brush strokes the common extraction processes. Some processes have many stages and redundancies. This will give you a good idea of how different herbal extracts are made.
Spray-Dried Concentrated Powders • These are very common extracts, especially in the adaptogen and Asian herbalism categories. You will see them ranging from 1:1 concentrates to 8:1. In some cases you will see 15:1, depending on the herb being used. Spray-dried powders are typically a water extract, unless it explicitly mentions a dual extract. A dual extract uses both water and alcohol (or other solvent) to extract water soluble and alcohol soluble nutrients.
Most often, if performed by a decent manufacturer, this process starts by first cleaning and soaking the herbs. The next stage involves cooking herbs in water in a huge container, which you can think of like making a giant pot of tea. The reflux extraction process adds more water to the mixture a few times depending on the desired concentration ratio.
After the herbs are done cooking, the liquid is cooled and left to stand, then it is filtered and concentrated, or reduced. This can be done with natural evaporation, boiling down, etc.. After that, the concentration is ran through a spray drying system where they add maltodextrin or magnesium stearate, which is typically corn derived, to keep the herbal extract from sticking to the hoses. The net result is a powdered extract that contains the water-soluble nutrient fractions of the plant. This powder is typically sold in capsules, as stand alone powders, or added to other formulas and protein powders.
There are a few issues about these types of extracts that you should be aware of. These powders, once they are processed, do not do well in respect to stability on the shelf. They tend to degrade rather quickly, especially when they are produced in bulk and sit in a warehouse for a long time before a company comes along and buys them, re-exposing them to air and light as they move the material into new packaging.
Excipients are not something you want in your body. For example, magnesium sterate is essentially a hydrogenated oil which interferes with nutrient uptake and immune function. These are typically added to help keep the finished extract from sticking to lab equipments and hoses during the processing.
We find that these types of extracts tend to gunk up the liver and cause a lot of work for the body to process, especially because of the flow agents and how they degrade quickly over time prior to consumption. Although a body starved for nutrients will make use out of degraded herbal extracts, the energetic signatures and effects will not be nearly as pronounced, if at all.
Tinctures • Another very common way to take herbs is through herbal tinctures.
This is the most common and elementary method of tincturing for amateurs and larger companies alike. This method requires simply soaking the herbs in alcohol for periods of time, intermittently agitating or mixing them, then filtering and pressing the extracted material to squeeze out all the alcohol.
More modern methods include the closed system dual extraction method, which circulates the alcohol through a closed machine so that the volatile components don't evaporate as they do in an open system. This can either be done in a cooked or non-cooked way.
Some companies produce what is known as a spagyric extract, which often utilizes the first method mentioned of soaking herbs and pressing them. But then the herbalist adds another step. They take the pressed herbs out, known as the mark, and they are then burned to ash salts at high temperatures in a kiln. They call the ash salts the body, and add it back into the pressed tincture.
We will explain why the "living body" nutrients that are found in Shen Blossom tinctures are of more use to the body than the highly processed burnt ash that is added to these spagyric style tinctures later.
The pros to liquid extracts is that the shelf stability is excellent compared to powdered extracts.
The down side is that if a company is not aware of the plant chemistry, they can cause damage to the plant nutrient structures by using too high of an alcohol concentration. A good example of this is with ginseng. Ginseng contains phytoandrogens that, when exposed to high ethanol content, will flip into estrogens. That is why we use a living sake for our Ginseng Root extract.
Another issue is that with modern tincturing methods, you can taste the finished extract the day after it is made, and then again a year later and it will taste exactly the same. Properly prepared extracts like our traditional sake extracts will mature and get better with time, like a fine wine. The quality and character of the extract will not only be perfectly preserved, but the living quality of the tincture will gain value from a therapeutic perspective over time. The extracts we produce at Shen Blossom have a living quality and consistency that we haven't seen anywhere on the commercial market.
There are other systems of liquid extraction like gravity systems, Co2, soxhlet extractors etc.., but the dual extracts are the most common extracts that you will find in stores and online.
Essential Oils • Essential oils started to really gain popularity in the early 90's as people started realizing the therapeutic benefits of many popular plant oils that were properly prepared and not damaged by over processing.
There are many different types of equipment and techniques to distill essential oils with, but suffice it to say that these types of extracts mostly contain the volatile oil soluble fractions of the plant or substance, many of which are highly therapeutic in many respects.
So we see that there are different methods and equipment to extract all the different plant parts. The most up and coming over the last decade or so has been C02 supercritical extracts.
Shen Blossom Full Spectrum Extracts
At Shen Blossom, we specialize in what are called full spectrum extracts. What we mean by full spectrum is that our proprietary extracts contain all the water, alcohol, and volatile oil soluble nutrients in the same extract. These nutrients are found in the same balanced ratios as you would find them in the plant, except they are far more concentrated. They contain not only the internal nutrients and the external body, our proprietary extraction processes allows the herbs to be fully expressed including their innate energetic signatures.
Our methods have been passed down for generations and these unique methods and techniques are what account for the clear and specific difference in flavor, appearance, and body feel.
As mentioned before, alcohol is one of the most common ways to extract and preserve herbal nutrients, yet not all alcohols are created equal.
We utilize high grade, traditionally handcrafted sake for our extracts. This "living" alcohol is not the typical maker style alcohol that one might think of when they thibnk of sake. Our sake is produced using proprietary techniques, yielding an incredibly complex and smooth alcohol that maintains is prebiotic and probiotic qualities. When our extracts are produced, infused with this particular grade of alcohol, the formula or single herb extract becomes better over time, like a fine wine.
All of the above results in a final extract that is far more efficacious than what is typically available, maintaining the natural chemistry with balanced ratios of nutrients and co-factors, as well as the more subtle energetic signatures and character of the plants.
If a beneficial plant contains a small amount of toxic compounds, we utilize traditional techniques to neutralize them and make the plant extract safe for consumption. A good example of this is our He Shou Wu formula. We cook down the He Shou Wu for a minimum of 21 days to completely deactivate the natural liver-toxic compounds.
Formulas being safe and effective are at the core of what we produce.
Just like people, not all plants are the same. Even herbs within the same family harvested from the same region can have a different chemical structure/physical expression from year to year depending on what stage or time they are harvested. We understand the peak times to harvest specific plants for specific uses and more importantly, how to adapt the processing to make the best use of the herb if there are natural variants from seasonal and atmospheric influences.
The other aspect of the individual nature of the herbs is that different plants need to be transformed or processed differently. Most producers will treat a wide variety of plants the same way when it comes to extraction or processing. This simply doesn't work as well if you are to produce an excellent and synergistic formula containing multiple ingredients. Different herbs require different techniques to truly maximize their highest expression. Some may require 3 or 4 techniques prior to cooking or soaking. Some may require different degrees of fermentation before or after maceration or a number of other methods.
We go to great effort to make sure we transform each ingredient based on its chemistry and how it interacts with the other ingredients in the formula, and blend them accordingly.
So our Shen Blossom herbs are a completely different category and are produced to standards that are not observed in the commerical or niche herbal markets.
We know exactly where the herbs in our formulas are grown. We know that they are harvested at the proper time in the correct way, and hand processed appropriately to maintain the vital force of the plant.
We take great care to transform the plants in a way to create potent and effective extracts that nourish the mind, body, and spirit, while maintaining a level of vibrancy and character that is simply not available anywhere else.
Check out all of our offerings at www.shenblossom.com