From Hanna’s perspective, this was wasteful.  Why throw out part of the plant that may have healing benefit  for the sake of producing a drug-like substance that requires a very unnatural approach in it’s production?  Especially since the benefits of the plain leaf, by itself, had been noted for over two thousand years!

After some searching, a manufacturer was found that could produce an extract using the natural solvent water, at a smaller concentration of 10%/2.5% (as opposed to 24/6), while preserving the other as yet undiscovered compounds of this wonderful healing herb. This later became known as a full-profile extract. Hanna further improved on the concept by removing the commonly used, nutritionally empty, flowing agents that these extracts use to keep the material from gumming up the encapsulating machinery; and replaced them with some of the raw material itself. In this case, plain, unadulterated Ginkgo leaves!

The problem of encapsulating a difficult extract was solved and in the process a new way of looking at herbal extracts was born.  She had made a product that the body would accept readily as food with the advanced efficacy of an extract!

We later took this concept that Hanna pioneered with the Ginkgo and applied it to other herbal extracts creating our Complete Concentrates^® line of supplements that we are very proud of.

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When we take herbs for our health we have a certain expectation that what we are taking is the best, most potent botanical available. This is not always the case. One problem that occurs is misrepresentation of the correct species. This often happens when a cheaper more readily available species is substituted for the correct one.  There have been concerns recently about Black Cohosh Root coming from China that is not Cimicifuga racemosa but another variety that does not have the same properties. It is one of the reasons that I only buy domestic Black Cohosh for Hanna’s formulas.  Another tool I like to utilize is buying our herbs in whole or partially cut form. If the herbs are bought in powder form they cannot be properly identified through sensory tests such as sight, smell, taste and touch.  This is known as organoleptic testing.  Also powders can have chemical spikers added to them that can make them appear to be the real McCoy even to a detailed chemical analysis.

Of course knowing your vendors makes a huge difference as well and after putting Hanna’s recipes together for the last twenty years I have been able to find plenty of trustworthy and reliable sources.  I like to pass this type of information on to people so they can feel comfortable taking Kroeger formulas and know that even though these adulteration issues are now becoming a concern for people, we have been aware of them all along and it is nice to see the rest of the industry starting to take it seriously as well.

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