Maca Liquid Extracts

What Is An Herbal Extract?

Herbal extracts have been used for thousands of years to help maintain and improve health. They are made by combining an herb or food with a solvent, which “dissolves” the active health promoting constituents of the plant.

The main advantages of herbal extracts in comparison to the whole foods or herbs are:

• Freshness and longer shelf life - this is due to preservation and suspension of the active nutrients of a plant in the extract medium.
• Better bioavailability - By extracting the active constituents of herbs from both indigestible cell wall components and inactive constituents such as starch, herbs in a concentrated liquid form enter the body in a more pre-digested state. This is great for people with sensitive digestion.
• Faster acting - dry herbs may take more than an hour to digest, while liquids begin to assimilate in about 15 to 20 minutes. When extracts are held under the tongue before swallowing, active ingredients are absorbed even quicker and directly into the blood stream.
• Ease of use herbal extracts are convenient to use, can be easily carried with you and can be taken at any time of the day.

Why We Use Glycerin for Our Maca Extracts

Common solvents used to make extracts are water, alcohol and glycerin. We’ve chosen vegetable glycerin to make ours as we’ve found them to be superior to alcohol on various levels.

1. Our glycerin Maca extracts are suitable for children, people with alcohol sensitivities and diabetics. Glycerin also tastes slightly sweet which makes taking Maca much easier for more people.
2. Unlike alcohol, glycerin does not affect or denature active constituents of Maca. In fact it preserves Maca’s aromatics, enzymes, and polysaccharides.
3. Glycerin preserves the natural taste of the Maca, which is important to maximizing its benefits. Glycerin on its own also initiates an immediate salivation response, bringing enzymes essential to absorption into action.
4. Glycerin is low on the glycemic index as it converts to sugar very slowly. This means greater potential for overall absorption of nutrients.
5. Glycerin is a compound that is a part of all plant and animal tissues. It occurs everywhere in nature as far as living systems are concerned, always bound with fatty acids (also called ‘lipids’). That’s why it absorbs in our body so well, and it is so natural to our body systems. Alcohol, of course, is not.
6. Gycerin is very pure, sterilizing bacteria by depriving them of water.
7. Gycerin by itself has some nutritive properties and has been shown to aid in removal of toxins from tissues, especially the liver, a quality not shared by alcohol.

The Process of Making our Maca Extracts

Before we committed to making Maca extracts we researched many different companies to produce them. We finally settled on a great small US based company that has a unique 4 part process for extracting the maximum amount of active health promoting constituents from our Maca. Their proprietary process produces the best tasting and most potent extract that we’ve come across.

A Note On Certified Organic

We use our certified organic Maca powders for our Maca extracts. However, we can’t claim that the whole product is certified organic. The vegetable glycerin we use comes from red palm. It is grown without pesticides or chemical fertilization and is harvested sustainably. It, however is not yet certified as organic. Our supplier is currently working to obtain that certificaiton. The only viable alternative for certified organic glycerin at this time is corn oil. We have chosen not to use corn based glycerin because it is impossible to verify that it is GMO-Free.

If you have any questions about our extracts or anything else please let us know. We look forward to serving you.

Enjoy the day!