AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS, October 23, 2003

Shoppers are usually lost when they amble down the aisles of health food stores in search of herbal supplements that work. How do you distinguish one bottle from the next? Common sense suggests you choose products with the highest concentration of a key constituent or molecule, right?

Wrong, says herbal researcher, educator, author and long-time formulator Paul Schulick, who has pioneered higher standards in the nutritional supplement industry for the last 20 years.

“Manufacturers tout ‘standardization’ as the key to ensuring that herbs deliver optimal results for consumers. However, excessive loading or spiking of active ingredients – a basic method of standardization – is counterproductive,” says Schulick, CEO of New Chapter, Inc. of Brattleboro, Vermont. “Standardization chooses one compound but may sacrifice synergies with other active ingredients in plants that are often critical for delivering greater efficacy and safety. Artificially favoring one compound or molecule out of hundreds in a plant is equivalent to creating a drug or pharmaceutical and marginalizes rather than expands the spectrum of herbal intelligence.”

Schulick, a Visiting Faculty member at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst for 2003, is leading a course in “Medicinal Botanicals: Principles and Practice.” He cites the case of turmeric to illustrate the flaw of standardization. Many herb manufacturers draw on the “single molecule” research conducted by pharmaceutical companies for developing new drugs. Unfortunately, this approach overlooks other essential active ingredients. For example, the majority of research on turmeric focuses on curcuminoids but omits turmerone compounds, which have profound additional antioxidant and anticancer effects.

“When formulators miss the mark by going on incomplete or inaccurate information, they create a black mark against the entire herbal supplement industry,” says Schulick. “Herbal formulas are sometimes accused of being ineffective and they often are if devoid of powerful synergistic interactions between the multiple active ingredients.”

Schulick emphasizes potency assurance over standardization in formulating herbal products. With potency assurance, an herb’s active and unique compounds are identified and a standard is set that must be met for each in every product batch. In contrast to standardization, potency assurance does not call for isolation or spiking of one marker over another and reflects the “best case scenarios” that actually occur in nature. “Potency assurance is a way to guarantee the presence of active levels of compounds we know have a beneficial effect in the body while also providing the time-tested advantage of all of that herb’s additional synergistic compounds,” explains Schulick. “Crude or simple herbal powders may deliver only a small percentage of a compound found in standardized extracts and yet be far more effective thanks to the synergies of the whole plant.”

Schulick has been the driving force behind potency assurance in the supplement industry. He also introduced pharmaceutical-grade supercritical extraction, which prevents the degradation of herbal potency through heating and avoids the use of toxic chemicals like hexane and acetone, which have been standards in mainstream extraction.

ABOUT NEW CHAPTER, INC.

New Chapter, Inc. of Brattleboro, Vermont, manufactures 70 herbal organic supplements. For more information on the company and published or in-process research studies, please contact Dean Draznin Communications: Dean Draznin 641-472-2257 dean@drazninpr.com or Cynthia Terpstra 561-445-8715 cynthia@drazninpr.com.