TO FILL OR NOT TO FILL, that is the question...

If you are looking at the list of ingredients on a vitamin bottle, it’s not always entirely obvious what anything is, why everything is included in the mix or why you should choose one brand over another.  So when I created Kansha Alchemy, I wanted to cut through all the noise and ensure, firstly that anything we created would really help people (as well as myself), otherwise, what is the point?  And secondly, I wanted to go one or two steps further to ensure the efficacy AND quality would make them easy to select – that it wouldn’t need a science degree to see why they were better than whatever else was on the shelf.

Just The Good Stuff

In this quest for goodness, we have insisted on nothing artificial and zero fillers because fillers and binders and the like, have zero health value and can be detrimental to the results - and we want results!  This means we only include active ingredients – just the good stuff - in our Good Hair Nutrient Complex formula.  Fillers are either ‘bulking agent’ used to fill out a product so it fits the machine’s tablet size or ‘anti-caking’, flow agent which lubricates the whole mixture so that it doesn’t stick together and flows through machines quickly and easily.  You can create vast amounts of tablets at high speed if you use flow agents and this saves so much time and money.  Because of this, almost every brand does it (especially the big guys).

Extras On The List

The main ‘extras’ you see listed are Stearic Acid, Magnesium Stearate, Silicone Dioxide or Propylene Glycol – or even 'natural flavours' which is the euphemistic term for MSG.  You definitely don't need these yet you see them listed just under the active ingredients panel as ‘inactive’ or ‘other’, or even right at the top as the first or second ingredient, meaning the most abundant.  How bad can they be when they are ubiquitous and obviously passed for consumption in more than just trace amounts - indeed, they are mostly derived from a vegetable source.  The problems is, if you are taking a few supplements, these minute but regular doses soon add up and similar to how they make the active ingredients glide through machines, they pretty much do the same 'glide through' in your body – when instead, you want to metabolise and ingest these actives as much as possible.

But what is that source? 

Stearate Acid or its derivative Magnesium Stearate (not to be confused with highly beneficial Magnesium) are either sourced from animal fats or from Cotton Seed, one of the most heavily pesticide sprayed crops, Canola Oil (often GM) and Palm Oil, so apart from the sustainability concerns and the destruction of the homes of orangutans, they are inert fatty acids that are refined, deodorized and bleached, so that the end result is a synthetic additive. 

Nothing Is Inert

Whilst these may claim to be inactive, the body doesn’t recognise highly processed synthetic ingredients or have an obvious way to process these, yet everything we consume still has to be metabolised by the liver, assimilated by the digestive tract and prepared for removal by the kidneys.  This is definitely an extra burden for the organs, diminishing the absorption of the nutrients and the benefits you are taking them for in the first place.

Access Your Nutrients

On top of this extra work, the role of Magnesium Stearate (and other flow agents) is to coat all the active ingredients so they are great with machinery but once in the digestive tract, the coating has to be dissolved first before your body can access the nutrients.  In tests, dissolution went from 90% within 20 minutes (the time it would take in your stomach), to only 25% when stearate was added; so the added stearate only allowed a quarter of the ingredients to be accessed when near total was possible.  Part of the cause of thinning or lacklustre hair is the inefficient absorption and assimilation of nutrients in the first place.  And the first point of digestion where this dissolution happens, the stomach, is key to kick this process off, so anything that slows it down or disrupts it here, will affect the benefits in a major way.

Fast Assimilation, Great Results

These fillers and bulking agents are not going to kill you, but we want to get our hair back to healthy growth so I had to ensure Good Hair Nutrient Complex was going to work really hard without any unnecessary interference.  I searched far and wide to find a UK manufacturer to develop the precious Good Hair formula, who was conscientious about using high quality, pure and natural ingredients without any artificial additives or GMO’s and definitely not Magnesium Stearate.  This was no easy task and together with the hand processed production, has meant a gap in availability in the UK.  I think sticking to our ethics and removing obstacles to achieving the best results for healthy hair possible, has paid off with the new and improved Good Hair Nutrient Complex and I hope you all agree.

If you have any questions about this or other hair issues, please email me at info@kanshaalchemy.com I’d love to hear from you.