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Here you can download everything you need to know about granules free of charge: Dosing granules as an ebook
You want to know exactly? Voilà the definition from the European Pharmacopoeia:
"Granules are preparations consisting of solid and dry grains, each grain being an agglomerate of powder particles of sufficient solidity to admit of various handling. Granules are intended for ingestion. Some granules are swallowed, others are chewed or dissolved in water or other suitable liquids or allowed to disintegrate before ingestion.
They contain one or more active substances with or without excipients and, if necessary, colouring agents and flavouring agents approved by the competent authority."
Our TCM granules are generally concentrated extracts that are sprayed onto one or, in rare cases, several carriers (= excipients) and are available in dried form.
Variants: 1. pure extracts without excipients. 2. granules to which ground raw drug has been added.
The effect of an extract granulate corresponds to that of a decoction from the raw drugs, from which the water has been removed and which now has a concentrated effect. As the concentration capacity varies depending on the source plant and the different ingredients (e.g. carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, essential oils) of a plant can be extracted to varying degrees, each extract is assigned a recommended daily dose, which corresponds to the quantity of the traditional decoction and the raw drugs used for it.
You can download everything you need to know about granules free of charge here: Dosage of granules as an ebook
Our prescription programme Compleweb www.compleweb.ch contains daily dose recommendations for each granulate. These include the individual extraction conditions for each herb and each formulation and the optimisation of the active ingredient yield by the manufacturers based on the substance group-specific turnover rates from the raw drug to the decoction and from the decoction to the granules. This also reflects the differences in expertise from manufacturer to manufacturer. Experienced TCM people from Taiwan and China, who have many years of clinical experience in handling granules, also have a decisive influence on the daily dosage recommendation.
You can download everything you need to know about granules free of charge here: Dosage of granules as an ebook
Such a conversion is not recommended because it takes too little account of which active ingredients are transferred from the raw drug to the decoction and from the decoction to the granules. You are better off using the daily dosage recommendations. KF and DEV are purely technical parameters that concern the manufacturers of granules. They have little to do with the clinical effect. KF and DEV are parameters that the authorities also require from manufacturers and which they use to assess a product. See therefore the information on the recommended daily dose for each product at www.compleweb.ch.
Here you can download everything you need to know about granules free of charge: Dosage of granules as an ebook
The biggest advantage is certainly compliance, as there is no need to cook at home and patients can take the granules with a little warm water. Granules also prove their worth when travelling. If you don't like the consistency or flavour of the granules, you can have them pressed into tablets.
At Complemedis, every batch of herb is tested by an accredited Swiss laboratory for pharmaceutical/botanical identity, for the content of important ingredients and for purity (pesticides, heavy metals, aflatoxins, environmental contaminants and microbiological impurities).
Use our compendium in Compleweb. It contains the most common standard works on TCM and you can use the search function to find the answer to your question.
Herbs contain many ingredients. Some herbs have so-called lead substances or main active ingredients, such as menthol in peppermint or ginsenosides in ginseng. However, herbs can also contain dozens or even hundreds of other ingredients, some of which are present in such small quantities that they are not even detectable or can only be detected with great effort. These substances often interact with each other, but despite scientific endeavours, this is often not fully understood. TCM assesses the effect of a herb based on the totality of its ingredients and does not emphasise the quantity of a single or a few main active ingredients. Depending on location, care, weather and processing, herbs contain different amounts of main and secondary active ingredients from batch to batch. TCM formulations are therefore deliberately not standardised to the presence of a specific quantity of a single substance. If Complemedis nevertheless measures such substances, it is for the purpose of quality assurance and not in relation to the clinical effect. In this way, we can ensure that the herb fulfils the regulatory requirements and is expected to have the desired clinical effect. The top priority for the intended effect is the diagnosis by the TCM-experienced person.
TCM recognises hundreds of classic formulas that have been produced with the same herbs in the same quantities for up to 2000 years. The most frequently requested classical formulas are cooked together (decocted) by granulate manufacturers, i.e. extracted and concentrated (thickened by gently evaporating the water) and then granulated. If such a formulation is not currently available, Complemedis mixes it from the individually granulated herbs. We cannot claim with certainty that the effect is exactly the same. In most cases, according to the experience of patients and therapists, it seems to be. If this is not the case, you can experiment with adjusting the dose upwards or downwards. TCM remedies are not standardised in terms of ingredients compared to Western conventional medicines, so that variations can occur from batch to batch or from manufacturer to manufacturer anyway. Complemedis endeavours to have standardised classical formulations in stock at all times, which is unfortunately not always possible with around 1000 products. Unexpected situations can always arise and certain herbs or formulations can suddenly be in high demand, see Covid-19.
We stock around 380 individual remedies in the form of concentrated extracts (known as granules) and around 400 formulas (classic and modern formulations) as granules.
We also offer more than 300 individual herbs, minerals, mussel shells etc. as dried goods (known as raw drugs in technical jargon).
Some herbs are offered in different processing stages (so-called Pao Zhi).
In our prescription programme Compleweb www.compleweb.ch you can check your desired herbs and formulations for their current availability by entering them in the prescription line.
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