THE SHORT DESCRIPTION:
Standardized Mono-Constituent (i.e. saturation based methodologies) and Ratio Intact Poly-Constituent (i.e. serialization based methodologies). are the two main approaches to utilizing botanicals and are completely different approaches to each other. The Ratio Intact approach is much more suited to "Herbalism," and its practice, than the Standardizedt apporoach is.
All components in an herb exist in a genetically mandated ratio-based relationship to each other. Vitamins, minerals, enzymes and their co-factors along with primary, secondary and tertiary active constituents exist in a unique naturally occurring ratio to each other. This Ratio Intact factor is programmed into the genetic signature of each and every botanical. This in-ratio-to-each-other factor is believed to be the underlying basis behind the phenomenon called Synergy.
Unlike a Standardized approach to making botanically-based products, a Ratio Intact based approach to making botanical-based products is directed at removing all of a botanical's constituents and compounds, including the secondary and tertiary ones while maintaining their naturaly occuring ratios to each other. This is the major premise behind all traditional healing systems that incorporate herbs into their practices, that have stood the test of tens of thousands of years and are still used extensively throughout the world by over 2/3 of this planet's population.
Though Cedar Bear Naturales™ depends on lab test to ascertain safety & purity issues, Cedar Bear Naturales™ approaches the quality and efficacy of its products with the physical senses like healing masters and doctors of traditional medicine have done for centuries. Fact is, no machine or instrument can match the sensitivity, accuracy and nuance the human body's senses can. Visual qualties, texture, aroma and taste are all senses that can be developed to such a high level that no machine or instrument even comes close. The perfume industry's perfumers (and their highly developed sense of smell) and the flavorists (and their keen sense of taste) of the food/beverage/confectionary industries are the most representative of this.
Cedar Bear Naturales™ knows and understands how to ascertain and analyze a finished herbal product via the senses of the body, including the effects and effectiveness of the herbal glycerite products it produces. Over the years Cedar Bear Naturales™ has highly developed this QA/QC approach and has even fully incorporated it into its cGMP/HACCP compliant and Kosher Certified standards, attesting to the high quality products it produces.
THE LONG DESCRIPTION:
Cedar Bear Naturales™ is a RATIO INTACT Poly-Constituent Extract based endeavor that's aimed at retaining the intrinsic ratio-intact poly-constituent biological viability of a raw herb. This is designated by the "RI" trade symbol in the oval surrounded by the words " • RATIO INTACT • POLY–CONSTITUENT ".
The two main approaches to botanical based products in the marketplace is the Standardized Mono-Constituent based approach (i.e. saturation based methodologies) and the Ratio Intact Poly-Constituent based approach (i.e. serialization based methodologies). They are two completely different approaches that are based on opposite philosophies, theoretical models and practices. The Ratio Intact approach is much more suited to "Herbalism," and its practice, than the Standardizedt apporoach is.
• 'Ratio Intact' means 'preserving intrinsic relationship to...' – the ratios between one constituent to all other constituents, including secondary and tertiary constituents, are preserved to the same ratios relative to each other as in a raw herb.
• 'Poly' means 'many' – all constituents, including the secondary and tertiary ones, also known as complete and whole.
• 'Standardized' means 'a specific constituent/group of constituents being 'standardized' to a predetermined level exclusive of and/or regardless of other secondary and tertiary constituents.
• 'Mono' means 'single' – a single constituent or single constituent group, also known as isolate/fractionate.
• 'Standardized' is a term that has been hijacked by the mono-constituent isolate/fractionate driven phyto-pharmaceutical segment of the botanical products industry to describe only an herbal product that has a guaranteed level of a single constituent or single constituent group (typically potency enhanced) in a product wherein a single marker compound (or single group of compounds) is artificially increased while any accompanying secondary and tertiary compounds are artifically out of their once intrinsic ratio with the primary constituent being pursued. From Cedar Bear Naturales™ cGMP perspective, the more accurate use of the term has more to do with standardizing a process and the finished products resulting therefrom to meet a manufacturing protocol that's consistent with the outcome in which a product meets a uniform standard for product safety, physical qualities (ascertained by organoleptic analysis) and a consistent efficacy standard unique to each product. This more broad definition, and more acurate one at that, is sadly, not well known in the marketplace, having been overshadowed by the more narrow and inaccurately utilized market expedient definition of only pertaining to the measurable constituent level of this or that constituent (also called a marker compound) in botanical extracts that is promoted as a reliable standard for quality... which it is not, when all facts and factors are considered relative to Ratio Intact versus Standardized.
Cedar Bear Naturales™ has therefore settled on the term Ratio Intact to better describe the unique, high efficacy standard and good tasting quality of its products.
In their natural un-extracted state all constituents and compounds in an herb exist in a unique ratio-based relationship to each other. Vitamins, minerals and enzymes and their co-factors are in specific naturaly occurring amounts that have a unique ratio to each other, and these compounds in turn are in specific naturally occurring ratios to other primary, secondary and tertiary active constituents, with all these active constituents (and many "inactive" constituents) existing in a unique naturally occurring ratio to each other. This ratio intact factor is programmed into the genetic signature of each and every plant, to which herbs are no different. In other words, all compounds in an herb, due to its intrinsic genetic makeup, exist in a specific naturally occurring ratio to all other compounds in that plant. It is this in-ratio-to-each-other factor that is believed to be the underlying basis behind the phenomenon called Synergy.
Unlike a Standardized approach to making botanically-based products, a Ratio Intact based approach to making botanical-based products is directed at removing all of a botanical's constituents and compounds, including the secondary and tertiary ones while maintaining their naturaly occuring ratios to each other. This is actually a major underlying premise behind all traditional healing systems that incorporate herbs into their systems, traditional herbal practices that have stood the test of tens of thousands of years and are still used extensively throughout the world by over 2/3 of this planet's population.
When someone refers to the "Whole" nature or an herb it is the Ratio Intact factor they are referring to. It is also what is meant when the term 'Biologically Viable' is used, because when a botanical's constituents are preserved in their intrinsic ratio intact relationship to each other, biological viability is greatly enhanced many fold beyond that of a Standardized type product... many times!
A Ratio Intact poly-constituent based approach to making liquid herbal products is 180º different from a Standardized mono-constituent based approach in its premise and practice both as to quality concerns and efficacy standards.
First, a Cedar Bear Naturales™ glycerite processing technology is based on serialization approaches (as opposed to the saturation approach of Standardized technologies). This means the oft used Herb-to-Fluid (i.e. XX:X) axiom has no relevancy to Cedar Bear Naturales™ glycerite processing technologies because we use the appropriate amount of raw herb, that varies from herb to herb (and herb part to herb part), in a Cedar Bear Naturales™ glycerite process that will give the greatest potency required for synergy-driven efficacy. In other words, the intent is not to super saturate a fluid to the benefit of one compound (and exclusion of all others), but to imbue a fluid with all an herbs compounds, in their naturally occurring ratios to each other. This is all proprietary to Cedar Bear Naturales™.
Also, the fixation with standardizing a specific constituent to a higher potency level than in a Whole product in a Standardized extract also has no relevancy to Cedar Bear Naturales™ glycerite processing technologies. Why? Because if one is attempting to retain and preserve the intrinsic ratio of all of an herb's constituents to each other than standardizing and all that it implies is not only irrelevant but contradictory to making an herbal product that's more in line with the tenents of traditional herbalism, that existed for thousands of years prior, than the pharma-based fractionate/isolate driven approach to herbs, that's only been around in it's current form for less than 100 years (phytopharmacology in its current form for only 35 or so years). When viewed from that perspective one wonders how the traditional tenents were so effectively displaced by easily manipulated scientific fru fru that completely misses the point of biological viability in a finished herbal product.
Cedar Bear Naturales™ approaches the quality and efficacy of its products as all traditional herbal healing systems have done for thousands of years... with the senses! No machine or instrument can match the sensitivity, accuracy and nuance the human body's senses can. Sight, texture, aroma and taste are all senses that can be developed to such a high level that no machine or instrument even comes close.
Take the perfume industry for example. It's an industry that to this day illustrates how tradition still trumps modern technology in its applications. World-class perfurmers are known for possessing smell skills so sensitive that they can detect individual properties in extremely complex perfume mixes, many that science has still not determined the exact chemical makeup of, but are detected all the same... and until something has been determined, its chemical makeup ascertained and elucidated and in most cases able to be chemically synthesized, no machine or instrument can be made and/or or programmed to detect that one isolate only. The nose knowns to an unbelievable level of possibilities.
This same phenomenon exists throughout the food, beverage and confectionary industry, as the flavorists to these industries are known for their keen and highly developed taste senses for working with texture, aroma and flavors, again, without the aid of machines or instruments.
In fact, these indiviudals in the perfume, food, beverage and confectionary industries are one of the most valuable assest these companies possess. And so it is with Cedar Bear Naturales™.
Cedar Bear Naturales™ Quality Assurance/Quality Control team utilize the most extensive organoleptic analysis and testing of herbs from the moment they come into receiving as raw materials to be sorted, visually inspected for texture, color, shade, hue, etc., and then checked for the proper moisture content, then smelled to ascertain aroma quality and make sure there are no other off smells that shouldn't be present, after which the herbs are recorded, logged and batched and put into hermetically sealed containers and placed in quarantine until they are liquid processed, whereupon as they are prepared for the various steps, the herbs are again organoleptically assessed to double assure they are what they are, whereupon they are placed into the special fluid mix to be put through a glycerite processing technology. Throughout every step of the process (which are many) the herbs are organoleptically assessed and tested for aroma, texture, consistency and taste, so as a consistent standard is maintained for each step relative to each herb being liquid processed. When done and before logging into inventory, a small sample of that batch of finished liquid herb is tested by the Chief Master Processor or the Founder, Mr. Robinson. It must pass the visual, texture/consistency, aroma and taste tests of these individuals. If it doesn't pass, the batch is scrapped and a new batch is done again to replace the scrapped batch (which seldom happens due to the multiple points of assessing and testing the various phases of the product during manufacture).
How does all this stack up against the use of analytical instruments and analyzing for specific marker compounds, as opposed to assessing and testing for the intrinsic qualities of a finished product? Welll... consider that analytical instrument based testing is only as good as the calipbration of the instrument, the analytical reagent used, how the analytical instrument is used (which can easily be manipulated to meet most any agenda), and how the data itself is interpreted. All of this is more subjective and prone to manipulation than is the human senses. In fact, once the standards are agreed to and understood for what or what not is a standard for texture/consistency, aroma, taste, immediate systemic effects, and the myriad of subtle nuances that also play a huge role in sensory-based assessment and testing of products, it quickly becomes apparent that maybe the best analytical instrument out there is still the human body itself. Cedar Bear Naturales™ not only believes this to be the case but has proven so since the inception of its unique glycerite processing technologies and the incredible products derived therefrom.
All of this is possible because Cedar Bear Naturales™ glycerite processing technologies are aimed specifically at extracting an herb's constituents and compounds in their Biologically Viable state that is intended to preserve sensitive compounds that would otherwise be denatured and/or rendered inert by heat, alcohol or harsh chemical solvents. This is called a Synergy Sparing approach, and is part of the reason why Cedar Bear Naturales™ glycerite processing technologies result in such potent, consistent, efficacious and good tasting products. Decades of clinical/practitioner preferred use and consumer loyalty, clinical trials & pilot studies and 3rd party independent lab analysis all bare this out. Why extract a given constituent, even on a Standardized basis, if the extraction process itself is going to denature the finished product or render it inert? Oh sure, an instruemtn-based analysis will show those compounds being present in the finished product, but they won't possess a synergy sparing biological viability, which currently, only a thorough sensory-based organoleptic analysis of a finished product will show (so much for the fancy instruments when it comes to an efficacy standard).
A simple taste testing session for any of Cedar Bear Naturales™ liquid herbal glycerite products shows time and again what is being talked about here. The aroma is very present and often smells like the fresh harvested herb, the taste is potent, an immediate systemic energetic sensation is often felt, and the taste is rich and remarkably close to that of the aforementioned fresh harvested herb itself, all indicators of potency, efficacy and retaining a plant's intrinsic ratio-intact synergy in the finished product.
Some years ago Cedar Bear Naturales™ realized the strengths of ascertaining a finished herbal product via the senses of the body, including the effects and effectiveness of the herbal glycerite products it produces. Over the years Cedar Bear Naturales™ has taken the standards of this approach and incorporated it into its cGMP/HACCP compliant and Kosher Certified standards, attesting to the high quality its products represents.
For a review of this study concerning lack of biological viability for a Standardized mono-constituent based product click here for: 'Debunking the "Standardized" Myth –"Content Does Not Presume Efficacy."' You'll need Adobe reader to review the paper.
