Excipients are chemicals added to supplements or medicines, to help carry the main ingredients, or ease the manufacturing process. It comes from the Latin word “excipere“, which means to receive or intercept.
Many manufacturers use excipients to aid the flow of powder through the machine and into the capsule.
Why Use Excipients?
When you are making millions of capsules per day, you have some major problems to solve.
- you need to keep the machine running smoothly.
- make sure the products are being manufactured to specification. That means you need each capsule to reliably hit 500mg if a product is meant to have 500mg per capsule.
Excipients are a very easy way to solve both of these problems. In the UK and Europe, Magnesium Stearate is the go-to excipient. Prior to encapsulation manufacturers mix small amounts of Magnesium Stearate (also called Stearic Acid, or C18) into the supplement powder.
What is magnesium stearate and what does it do?
It is a waxy, fatty substance. Mixing it into the supplement powder coats the active ingredients, and allows them to flow smoothly through machines and into capsules without sticking or clumping. This helps stop machines jamming up, and makes it easier to hit a target weight in the capsules. This increases the speed of production for the encapsulation company, thereby maximizing profit.
Is magnesium stearate bad for you?
Maybe. The industry is hotly debating whether or not magnesium stearate is directly bad for the consumer. Regardless of the true answer to that question, the fact is, it is perfectly possible to manufacture without magnesium stearate or any other synthetic excipient in most cases.
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Are excipients used at G&G?
Manufacturing without excipients requires a higher level of operator skill, and a much more hands-on approach to the manufacturing process. This is where G&G excels.
How does G&G manufacture without excipients?
Our encapsulation process uses our custom-designed semi-automatic machinery. Highly skilled encapsulators operate these machines, many of whom have been working those same machines in excess of a decade. Their understanding of how different powders will behave on the machinery using various settings allows G&G to manufacture products without excipients.
We are happy to run the machines that little bit slower to keep the product and your label clean. We also run a wide variety of encapsulation machines. This means we can try other machines if a powder will not run well on one machine, rather than being forced to add magnesium stearate, until we find one that suits the powder.
Conclusion
In summary, excipients in capsules are often unnecessary. They are there for the purpose of maximizing manufacturer profit. We leave them out because they are not ever present for the benefit of the consumer.
If you like the sound of excipient free supplements, Contact Us for details.