Manufacturers of dietary supplements choose what supplement delivery systems their product will employ. Delivery systems carry ingredients into the body where they can be used best. A pill is a delivery system, for instance.
There are a variety of pills. The field of medicine first used pills to get people to take their prescriptions. Many older-generation people will remember, and not fondly, the “horse pills” they had to try and swallow in their youth.
The trouble with pills, besides size, is they are not very efficient. Some pills break up too soon, spilling their contents in the stomach’s acidic environment.
Other pills are made with enteric (of, or relating to, or occurring in the intestines) coatings. (An enteric coating is a polymer [plastic or natural] barrier applied on oral medication. – Wikipedia) These try to protect the ingredients long enough to get them past the stomach and into the lower digestion tract area, where absorption to the bloodstream takes place. But these often pass right through the body intact!
A brief inspection of the toilet bowl after evacuation proves they pass through untouched, or only partially used. That would be a pure waste of money. It happens all the time.
Capsules are an Improvement
Encapsulation as a supplement delivery system is an improvement over pills. However, some capsules are formulated with filler ingredients that may, or may not, be natural. The capsule itself may be made of natural or synthetic material, and possibly contain allergens. Still, they are better than most pills. Some have within them smaller capsules, beads, designed to slow-release the ingredients over time.
If you’ve ever eaten cotton candy, you know that for the first split-second after it hits your mouth a rather cloying feeling spreads through your mouth before your body heat melts the sugar. If you’ve ever eaten a chlorella capsule, or a vitamin capsule that broke open in your mouth or before your stomach, you know the disagreeable effect dry powders have on your palate.
Along the same line as the cotton candy and vitamin capsules, putting minerals into your body in powder form would not be a pleasant experience .
Calcium & Magnesium are Essentials
Since calcium and magnesium are considered “essential” minerals, they must be added to the diet on a daily basis. (Essential means the body needs them daily, yet cannot manufacture them, requiring regular supplementation from external sources to avoid health complications.) In powder form they are not palatable. However, liquify the powder — dissolve it into a liquid form — and it becomes easy to ingest, while the pace of its effects speeds up.
Calcium helps to contract muscle and build bone density, and magnesium relaxes muscles and calms nerves. Drinking your minerals makes the most sense for a supplement delivery system that brings great relief fast.
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