Dry vs. Wet Herb Use

Our manufacturing process utilizes dry herbs rather than fresh ones. There is a lot of misunderstanding about the benefits and drawbacks of using dry or fresh herbs. We at Herbal Sciences believe that using dry herbs offers more advantages. Drying has several desirable effects:

• Removes water from the herbs
• Coagulates unwanted materials
• Concentrates desirable compounds
• Preserves active compounds from oxidation

Furthermore, by extracting dry herbs, the final product will have smaller amounts of tannins, mucilage, sugars, and other compounds. We consider most of these compounds undesirable since they do not have any medicinal properties. Compounds that have bio-rejuvenation properties will survive the drying process, which is usually very short and only lasts about 2-4 days.

A drawback to utilizing fresh herbs is that they are saturated with water. Grinding these fresh herbs releases enzymes from the cells. These enzymes immediately start to destroy all present compounds and consequently lower the concentrations of active and desirable materials.

When a fresh herb undergoes the drying process, it loses about 90% of its weight. By extracting wet herbs, we can usually gain a 1:1 (alcohol : herb) extraction ratio. With dry herbs we can gain a 1:10 or higher concentration calculated on dry weight.

A simple example to illustrate this principle is making tea. Try it for yourself. Make 2 cups of tea from the same herb, but one cup from fresh herbs and one from dry herbs. You will be able to see that the difference is substantial; the tea from the wet herb is not as pleasant as the tea from the dry herb. The important thing to realize is that dry herbs enable us to gain higher concentrations of desirable compounds, thus providing higher quality products. And this is what we are offering to you. Our tinctures are 8-10 times more concentrated and of higher quality than the competition.