Feeding, Hi form, Joints, Muscles, supplements
Lifting the Lid – the truth behind the hype
Aug
In my opinion equestrians are being led down the garden path, I felt it time to put my fingers to the keyboard once again. Speaking to prospective customers, I feel their pain. I was there once upon a time and I feel the utter desperation of trying to fix a problem. You may say, why on earth are you, a supplement company, writing this? Well, the answer is that there are supplement companies and supplement companies, and I think it is time to make a stand to help every rider gain a better understanding of precisely what they may be supplementing their horse with.
The old adage rings mostly true on this one: you pay for what you get in most cases, but in some cases, you are also paying for what you don’t get. Plus, there is also the placebo effect of you wanting it to work – so you believe it does, I was there! What I would also say is that there is no magic; it can take a number of months to improve the health of a horse whose system has been out of balance for most of its life, so you can’t expect a miracle. Sound confusing? Well, let’s try to get to the bottom of it.
NATURAL
Beware the hype – The equine supplement market overuses the word natural, to drive sales to the equine consumer.
Natural doesn’t always mean powerful or strong enough to do any good.
Natural Therapies, sometimes termed complimentary therapies, can be described as a treatment or substance that uses natural methods to restore and maintain health. Here at Hi Form mineral tissue sales, specific vitamins, organic herb extracts, wild crafted herbs, specific amino acids and trace elements – all human grade – is what you will find in our black tubs.
FILLERS
Go straight for the analysis on the label or the website. This should help you greatly.
In liquid supplements, go and look at the “moisture” content = water. More often than not, it is in the 90% region, leaving 10% of the product to “drive the magic”, who is kidding who? ***
In powder supplements, it is a little more difficult, but you will find a variety of alfalfa meal, linseed meal/expeller, molasses resting in those tubs; often, you will find above 40% of the supplement are these fillers. You may need to do a little mathematics to calculate it—they don’t tell you, why would they? Just remember the basics: 1000 grams in 1Kg and a 1,000,000 mgs in 1Kg, then you can pretty much crack it, give or take as some ingredients are listed in IU.
Fish oil – yes I did say fish oil – often used for the EPA and DPA elements . Vegan omega or plant-based omega-3s provide mainly alpha-linoleic acid or ALA and are not abundant in EPA and DHA except for algae and seaweed. But not just any seaweed as we know much of the oceans are contaminated with micro plastics. At Hi Form the use of organic King Island Bull Kelp from the clean waters of Tasmania are used in some of our formulas, this is a safe plant-based source of EPA and DHA. The body naturally converts ALA into longer-chain omega-3 fatty acids, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which is essential for brain health, and eicosatetraenoic acid (EPA). A number of supplements contain fish oil and this is definitely not suitable way to supply these omega fatty acids to our strict herbivores!
The by-product whey powder is another commonly used additive. My horse hasn’t known how to process milk since he was weaned. Then, of course, we have maize starch, sodium chloride (salt), dextrose, sucrose, glucose, and my personal favourites: Blackcurrant, banana, or vanilla flavourings.
MOULD INHIBITORS
Yes, they are used in some supplements, mostly in liquids, and frankly, anything that has these in them, I would not put anywhere near my horse. The culprits are mainly sodium benzoate and potassium sulphate—go do a little Googling. These products are used as preservatives and to prevent the growth of bacteria. If you hit Google, you will find links to blurred vision, risk of inflammation, oxidative stress, and allergic reactions.
INGREDIENTS THEMSELVES
Oh!! What a delight this is. Ingredients predominantly split into tech grade ingredients or human/pharma grade ingredients. The words you are looking for are there, but in what form and are they readily absorbed? Tech or feed grade are the lowest grade in purity and quality. It is why you have to feed a ton of it—normally in the region of 50 to 60 grams per day! This grade is not fit for human consumption and frankly, if I can’t eat it, then I am not putting it anywhere near my horses; they are far too precious. On paper, it looks okay, but you have no idea where the tech grade ingredients have been sourced from or the levels of impurity such as metals. As it is tech grade, it does not have to meet the stringent levels of pharma grade, which has microbiology requirements and storage levels that all have to pass for human consumption.
Think calcium carbonate, dicalcium phosphate, magnesium oxide, calcium glutamate, iron citrate, Monocalcium phosphate as examples—these are all cheap tech grade ingredients costing pennies per kg. Vitamins can also be tech grade or human grade. The difference in the raw ingredient prices is staggering; in a cheap tech grade vitamin, you are looking at about £4 to £5 per kg, for human grade £50 to £60 per kg.
Yes, a veritable minefield, as there are not many of us out there who have the knowledge to work all this out.
Without having a degree or PhD, how can you work it out?
Well, it’s simple, really: just check that the tub has HACCP certification. This does all the work for you; it tells you that the ingredients are all fit for human consumption.
LIQUID V POWDER
This I find frankly hilarious, and one that is used to sell liquid supplements. Apparently, the ingredients are more readily absorbed with liquids. Oh dear, then those that pedal this message are clearly not in touch with a horse’s way of working. If they did, they would understand that the ingredients are absorbed in the mouth, into the mucous membrane, which goes into the bloodstream. So top-notch human grade ingredients are required for maximum absorbency. Powder or liquid, it is the quality of the ingredients that count! For clarity, liquid herbal extracts are also excellent but as I have said before you need to be able to distinguish between herb extracts be they liquid or powder or powders and liquids that are not extracts.
SENSORY ADDITIVES
Another wry smile on this one. This is for you!! To make you think you are doing a good job. Your horse couldn’t care less. It basically makes it smell or taste better, but if you are using pure, clean ingredients, why on earth would you need them?
POWER
Just because it says an ingredient is in there, doesn’t mean it is doing that much good. For the most part, you need extracts of many of the herbal ingredients.
My favourite example is Turmeric; it is a spice, but it is also a medicinal herb. Well, the curcumin is. The curcumin is what we are interested in. However, it is not particularly strong nor is it easily absorbed—yes, you guessed it, that is where the pepper comes in. Back to strength, if you look at the labels of many of these horse supplements advocating the use of turmeric (in our opinion, they should be talking about Curcumin or curcuminoids), you will see the turmeric word and then in brackets (5% curcumin). At that sort of level, you would need to be feeding about 500 grams a day to your horse. Look for the companies that use extracts; you will see it labelled 100:1, for example. Rosehips is another—you should look for Rosa Canina extract.
So yes, I can go to my local health store and mix together some herbs for a few pounds, but it’s not going to do my horse much good—it is simply a powdered plant. Frankly, unless you are using a herbal extract, herbs in their tea bag powdered form are not much good at all.
Then we get into the extracts themselves. Many extracts are extracted in the cheapest way possible using ethanol—we would also not be in favour of this method. From a purity standpoint, only extraction processes using steam are pure and are the only ones used in Hi Form’s formulas. As an example in one of the Hi Form products, we use an Aloe Vera extract 300:1. The cost of this as a raw ingredient is £170 per kg.
ANIMAL DERIVATIVES
What!! Oh yes, we are happily putting animal derivatives into our strict herbivores. They may be okay for you and I as omnivores or for our cats and dogs as carnivores, but not for our grass and herb-eating ponies.
Glucosamine is a natural compound found in cartilage — the tough tissue that cushions joints. In supplement form, glucosamine is harvested from shells of shellfish or made in a lab. There are several forms of glucosamine, including glucosamine sulfate, glucosamine hydrochloride and N-acetyl glucosamine. This form of Glucosamine is not suitable for a strict herbivore. There are some vegan options coming onto the market the manufacturing process of vegetarian glucosamine typically involves fermentation of plant sources, such as corn or wheat. The specific steps may vary among manufacturers, but the general process involves converting the plant material into glucose, followed by fermentation using specific strains of bacteria.
Then there is commercial chondroitin which comes from natural sources, such as shark and bovine cartilage, or synthetic production.
Now, I realise that I may be lambasted for this little blog of mine, but hey, I think that it is time that the lid was lifted and people were given the basics to be able to read labels and begin to understand what they mean.
SO PLEASE GO AND READ LABELS AND FORGET THE MARKETING HYPE. CLEVER WORDS DON’T SOLVE PROBLEMS, THE TRUTH IS IN THE QUALITY OF THE INGREDIENTS.
*** Please note – herbal tinctures of high extraction quality should not be likened to the liquid supplements referred to.
