When it comes to marketing, size matters. Most people view “more” and “bigger” as a better value. From Buy One Get One Free deals to portion sizes at restaurants, this getting more and bigger for our buck is ingrained in our culture. Here, in this blog post, I’d like to turn the “Supersize Me!” and the “Go Big or Go Home!” culture on its head. There’s one industry where smaller, not bigger, is better: nutritional supplements, which include many CBD products on the market.
Spoiler Alert: The smaller the particles contained in any nutritional supplement, the more quickly and effectively those particles will enter the bloodstream and circulate to different parts of your body where they’re most needed.
WHAT IS BIOAVAILABILITY
It all comes down to the word “bioavailability.”
According to Merriam-Webster, the medical definition of bioavailability is the degree and rate at which a substance (as a drug) is absorbed into a living system or is made available at the site of physiological activity. We can add to this definition how much of this substance arrives in its unchanged form and enters the circulatory system.
WHY IS BIOAVAILABILITY IMPORTANT?
It’s not enough to buy CBD or some other nutritional supplement that’s all the rage these days. For instance, curcumin derived from turmeric (most commonly known as an Indian spice) is being praised for its many health benefits, such as its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and anticancer properties.
People buy this product and “call it good,” thinking they’ve got a “magic bullet” for either prevention or maximum health. What they don’t think about, however, is how difficult it is for curcumin to be absorbed into the body. In other words, it has low bioavailability. Sure, they’ve been working on ways to increase the effective absorption of this super spice. But, in the meantime, the many consumers who don’t consciously think about bioavailability buy curcumin from month to month only to walk away with a fraction of its stated value on the packaging.
