Creaton Poh | Health, Wellness & Beauty Business Insights

Turn over almost any supplement bottle and the ingredient list splits in two. Above the line are the vitamins, minerals, botanicals or proteins the customer is paying for. Below it, under "other ingredients", sit the substances nobody asked for: microcrystalline cellulose, magnesium stearate, silicon dioxide, hypromellose, croscarmellose sodium. These are excipients, and they usually account for a large share of what is in the capsule or tablet. This article explains what each class of excipient does, why a manufacturer cannot simply leave them out, which ones regulators have restricted, and what the increasingly common "no fillers, no binders" claim does and does not tell a buyer. Quick answer: Excipients are the non-active ingredients that make a supplement physically possible: fillers give a small dose enough bulk to fill a capsule, binders hold a tablet together, disintegrants make it break apart in the stomach, lubricants and flow agents keep powder movin...

Magnesium is one of the most requested minerals in supplement briefs, and one of the most misread on the label. Two bottles can both say "magnesium 500 mg" and deliver very different amounts of the mineral, because one is describing the elemental magnesium in each dose and the other is describing the weight of the compound that carries it. This article explains what the common magnesium forms are, how much actual magnesium each one contains, what the published absorption studies do and do not show, how the forms behave on a filling line, and what a brand owner should write into the brief so that the number on the front of the pack is the number in the capsule. Quick answer: A magnesium supplement is a salt or chelate of magnesium, and only part of its weight is magnesium. Magnesium oxide is about 60% magnesium by weight, magnesium citrate about 16%, magnesium bisglycinate about 14% and magnesium L-threonate about 8%, so "500 mg magnesium glycinate" contains ro...

Vitamin C is the most requested brightening and antioxidant active in skincare briefs, and it is also the one most likely to arrive on the shelf already half spent. A serum that leaves the factory clear can be pale yellow after three months in a warm shop and amber by the time the customer opens it. This article explains what vitamin C does in skin, why pure L-ascorbic acid is both the best-studied form and the hardest to keep alive, how the stabilised derivatives differ, why the colour change matters, and what a brand owner should write into the brief so that the number on the label still means something at the end of shelf life. Quick answer: Vitamin C (L-ascorbic acid) is a water-soluble antioxidant that skin needs to build collagen and that cosmetic formulas use at 5% to 20% for brightening and photoprotection support. Pure L-ascorbic acid works best in water at a pH below 3.5 but oxidises quickly, turning the product yellow then brown as it loses activity. Stabilised derivat...

Hyaluronic acid is the most widely used hydrating ingredient in modern skincare and one of the least understood by the people who buy it. Two serums can both say “hyaluronic acid” on the front, both list sodium hyaluronate on the back, and still be built from completely different materials at completely different doses. This article explains what hyaluronic acid is, why its molecular weight changes what it does on skin, how “1% hyaluronic acid” on a label can mean far less than it sounds, what the oral supplement evidence actually shows, and where the line sits between a cosmetic serum and a medical device. Quick answer: Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a naturally occurring sugar polymer that binds water, and in cosmetics it is almost always used as its sodium salt, sodium hyaluronate. Its behaviour depends on molecular weight: high molecular weight HA (above roughly 1,000 kDa) forms a hydrating film on the surface, while low molecular weight grades (roughly 10 to ...