by Samaya Cullerton, LAc
Greeting Readers,
As the autumn season rolls in, we at Benedictine Healing Products are very busy producing and educating people on our cold and flu product line. As an Education Specialist, it is often my job to answer questions about our products. This season’s blog we’ll be addressing some of the most commonly asked questions about our products, and some of the reasons our herbal formulas stand out from the competition.
Benedictine Healing Products follows Good Manufacturing Practices to help ensure the quality and safety of our formulations and the transparency of our manufacturing and ingredients. This is done by careful record keeping, use of batch numbers, keeping batch samples, and sourcing our ingredients from only the top reputable suppliers. There are always questions and concerns about importing herbs from Asia due to concerns of contaminants from pesticides and heavy metals. Many of the herbs and solvents we use are certified organic, however we don’t consider that the gold standard for quality in Asian imported herbs. Some certified organic herbs still contain traces of pesticide residues, mold, yeast, or other dysbiotic growth, which is why the comprehensive pesticide testing our suppliers do is a step above certified organic. Our suppliers test for a comprehensive list of over 250 pesticide residues and contaminants, importing only truly pure herbs. Our herbs are not fumigated or irradiated. The herbs we use are identified by top experts in the herbal field for correct specific species, highest grades of freshness, potency, and purity. We use fruiting bodies of medicinal mushrooms, therefore our mushroom formulas do not contain any fillers, and are energetically far more potent than the other medicinal mushroom products on the market. Our fresh herbal extracts are made within hours of harvesting parts and flower, making the formulations potent and vital. We have been growing our own fresh herbs in our herbal garden since we started, and this allows us the ensure the quality control of our fresh herb extracts from start to finish. Our garden herbs are harvested in accordance with their optimal harvest season, they are grown and processed with love at every step along the way. We use filtered, ozonated distilled water. Our tinctures are made from certified organic gluten-free alcohol. Our carrier oils are cold pressed, never deodorized and are tested for purity. We are dedicated to environmentally friendly business practices, and support suppliers who are as well. We are deeply committed to quality control in every aspect of our herbal line.
Our formulas are unique, formulated by an Herbal Master Craftsman. There are a lot of herbal companies making a variety of herbal products, with clever marketing, but you will never find another product like the formulas we manufacture. What makes us so special? Our formulas blend traditional Asian formulas, with Western and Ayurvedic herbs, and homeopathic formulas. To our knowledge, no one makes products similar to ours.
Benedictine Healing Products was founded by Martha Benedict. Martha was an herbalist, an acupuncturist, and homeopath. She was a brilliant practitioner who saw a need in her clinical practice to make both traditional Asian and Western formulas that were high quality, potent, effective, easy to use, and accessible to her patients. Her formulations are her living lineage of her life’s work, and we are honored to continue her legacy by continuing to manufacture her unique formulations. Martha was a kitchen herbalist in a time when there was no organic supplier of formulas, she was growing and creating her own.
The important Asian medicine tradition we maintain is that our formulas are always water extracted and cooked. This makes our products very different than most tinctures on the market. In traditional Asian medicine, this is a cornerstone principal of medicine making. Because our formulas are water extracted and cooked, they pull not only the alcohol soluble phytoconstituents, but also all the water soluble phytoconstituents. They are also highly concentrated. Typical tinctures that are available on the consumer market are 1:5 extraction ratio. This means one-part herb matter in weight to five parts solvent in fluid. Each batch is reduced to approximately a 1:2 ratio fluid extracts. What does this all mean? It means our extractions are more concentrated then most tinctures on the market, for often the same price. Plus, they contain a homeopathic formula within them, giving consumers a good price point for a potent and comprehensive formula. The formulas are organoleptically tested to assure consistency, potency, and effectiveness.
We seasonally adjust our cold and flu formulas. What does it mean to seasonally adjust the formulas? Every year the cold and flu infections are a little different, we change the formulation to be the most effective in the current year. We spend the spring and summer researching the infections in the Southern hemisphere and reading reports about the predictions for the Northern hemisphere infectious season. The ingredients in our formulas remains the same, but the proprietary blended ratios will address the key symptoms reported in the current year. We also take into consideration the weather patterns, and the traditional observation of nature when formulating.
This is our lineage of traditional Asian medicine. It is preventative, energetic, dynamic and individualized. We are not venture capitalists dabbling in the supplement market. We are a group of herbalists, acupuncturists, homeopaths, kitchen witches and warlocks, gardeners, and family. We are a family owned Santa Cruz small business and we are proud to produce Martha’s formulations. We are dedicated to quality control and making products we are confident to give to our children, our families, and the world. We believe Martha’s formulas are a community treasure and a healing cornerstone.
Thanks for taking the time to read about our herbal line. We are grateful for all our supporters everywhere! It’s not easy to be a small, high-grade herbal business in the big corporate global economy. We have chosen to stay small, so we won’t have to compromise our mission to quality. We are here because of your continual support!
