In a liquid mixture, molecules can either be in solution, or suspension, or they will precipitate (settle out and usually to the bottom or top). Molecules (in our case, phytochemicals) that have been extracted by a solvent from the plant material, will precipitate out if the solvent is removed.
We remove solvent, and so to prevent precipitation, we encapsulate (surround) the solutes with other molecules to, in a sense, isolate them from the remaining solvent deficient liquid. The microsphere is called a micelle and they range from 1 to a 100 microns in size. Regular tinctures or fluid extracts are usually at saturation or below when newly made, and suffer precipitation due to agglomerization of solutes as they age since their solvents (a mixture of alcohol and water) are left in.
Where the manufacturers try to remove their solvents through evaporation, they get precipitation of the phytochemicals, which they filter off if their final product is a liquid. The mixture can still be at "saturation" (meaning its holding all the molecules in solution that it can) however, part of the herb has been lost (filtered or decanted away). It is no longer "wholistic" at that point. If all the liquid is evaporated, then everything left is a precipitate and the extract is known as a concrete. It may, however, be un-absorbable by the body at this point.
Claims & Warning:
Claims: Information this web site presented is meant for Nutritional Benefit and as an educational starting point only, for use in maintenance and promotion good health in cooperation with a common knowledge base reference...Furthermore,it based solely on the traditional and historic use or legend of a given herb from the garden of Adonis. Although every effort has been made to ensure its accurate, please note that some info may be outdated by more recent scientific developments......
Pharmakon Warning: The order of knowledge is not the transparent order of forms and ideas,as one might be tempted retrospectively to interpret it; it is the antidote....(Dissemination,Plato's Pharmacy,II.The Ingredients:Phantasms,Festivals,and Paints;138cf. Jacques Derrida.).
And as it happens,the technique of imitation,along with the production of the simulacrum,has always been in Plato's eyes manifestly magical,thaumaturgical:......and the same things appear bent and straight to those who view them in water and out,or concave and convex,owing to similar errors of vision about colors, and there is obviously every confusion of this sort in our souls.And so scene painting (skiagraphia) in its exploitation of this weakness of four nature falls nothing short of witchcraft (thaumatopoia), and so do jugglery and many other such contrivances.(Republic X,602c-d;cf.also 607c).
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F.A.Q.:29.What is Micro-Encapsulation?
In a liquid mixture, molecules can either be in solution, or suspension, or they will precipitate (settle out and usually to the bottom or top). Molecules (in our case, phytochemicals) that have been extracted by a solvent from the plant material, will precipitate out if the solvent is removed.
