You may have heard the saying “You are what you eat,” but we believe a more accurate statement is "You are what you absorb". Otherwise known as bioavailability—how easily you absorb nutrients is one of the most important (and little talked about) factors of wellness and could be the secret key you’ve been missing to unlock your ultimate wellbeing.
All food or supplements ingested by the body go through a process which breaks it down into vitamins, minerals, and amino acids (depending on the type of food or supplement consumed) and it can go one of two ways:
- Food or supplements with a high bioavailability means the body can use all (or most) of the nutrients it contains.
- Foods or supplements with low bioavailability will get broken down by the body, but most of the nutrients will be lost through the digestion process or excreted by the body.
A powerful example is looking at the differences between various CBD products. It would be easy to assume that higher milligrams of CBD would be better than lower milligrams in any given product—but what really matters is how bioavailable the CBD is. Is it full spectrum and made with the whole hemp plant (high bioavailability) or was it made using “isolate” or “pure CBD” (low bioavailability)? So, even if something has a high dosage of CBD, it doesn’t necessarily mean your body will absorb it all or even most of it.
What Are the Main Factors For High Bioavailability?
There are lots of factors that contribute to which ingredients and what doses actually get utilized in their active form by your body. Some include source quality, age and preparation, as well as your biochemistry and your body’s ability to break things down. But here at Sagely Naturals, we have found that there are two crucial factors that will give you the most “bang for your buck” when it comes to maximizing bioavailability (and especially when it comes to supplements):
1. Formulation: How Reliable Is Delivery to the Body?
How something has been formulated determines how “body ready” it is, and how well all the good stuff (nutrients) get delivered to where it’s needed in your body. The absorption of hemp oil is a good example because one key challenge faced by CBD consumers is its low absorption rate into the digestive system. The answer? A reliable courier! By creating a water-soluble formula (i.e. soluble in the digestive tract) that means higher bioavailability of the hemp oil and thus more efficiency per mg of CBD.
2. Synergy: Find “Meant to Be” Pairings
When you start to research foods with high versus low bioavailability you might be discouraged to find some of your favorites low on the docket. But before you cross them off the shopping list for good, ask yourself “Are there other ingredients that can help to create synergy?” Turmeric root is a great example—by pairing it with Piperine (an active ingredient of black pepper) the bioavailability of turmeric skyrockets by 2,000% (no, that is not a typo!)! And that’s exactly why we created this match-made-in-heaven for our capsules.
So before accepting claims on any label about how beneficial a particular food or supplement is, do some digging to 1) Check its bioavailability and then 2) Find out how your body needs it to be delivered, and finally 3) Look into whether it has a “meant to be” pairing that are known to boost its efficacy. The concept of bioavailability is often overlooked in the pursuit of feeling better—give your body the upper hand in absorbing the nutrients it needs to rejuvenate and return to balance.
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