Description
Nettle root extract at a 10 to 1 ratio, 300 mg a serving, 60 servings at about 37 cents each. Three hundred milligrams of a 10:1 concentrate stands in for 3 grams of dried root. The word root is doing the important work on this label: nettle root extract is a different article from the nettle leaf sold beside it, with a different composition and a different research literature, and the two are regularly conflated.
Label figures
| Plant | Urtica dioica, root |
|---|---|
| Amount | nettle root extract 300 mg per serving |
| Ratio | 10:1, so equivalent to 3 g of dried root |
| Not | leaf, which is a separate product |
| Servings | 60 per bottle, about 37 cents each |
| Price basis | per milligram of extract, printed under the price |
| Testing | species, plant part and contaminants per lot |
Root and leaf, and why a nettle root extract label says which
The root carries sterols, lignans and lectins. The leaf carries a different profile and is the part traditionally used as a spring vegetable and a tea. Most of the clinical work in the men’s category used root preparations, and most of the cheap nettle on the market is leaf because leaf is easy to harvest.
A milled powder looks the same either way, so the plant part is printed on the panel and confirmed by identity testing on every lot. Extract ratio, plant part and marker compound are the three figures that make a botanical comparable, as the herbals page sets out.
What a 10 to 1 ratio means and does not mean
Ten kilograms of dried root yielded one kilogram of extract. It is a concentration figure, so 300 mg of a 10:1 is not comparable to 300 mg of milled root, and a product listing 500 mg of nettle root without a ratio could be either.
What a ratio does not tell you is the content of any particular compound, which is why ratio and marker are separate specifications. For this plant there is no single universally agreed marker, so the ratio and the identity test are what we can publish honestly.
What the published trials used
Studies in this area have generally administered 300 to 600 mg a day of root extract over eight to twenty four weeks, with endpoints including urinary flow rate measurements and the International Prostate Symptom Score questionnaire. A number of trials used nettle root combined with saw palmetto or pygeum rather than on its own.
Those are the doses administered and the instruments read in the literature, including the detail that much of it is combination work. Nothing in that is a claim about this bottle, which is a food under United States law and described here by composition.
Why it is sold on its own here
Because combination capsules fix the ratio between ingredients for you, often at amounts below what each was studied at individually. Saw palmetto and pygeum are both stocked separately with their own marker percentages on the men’s page, which lets you build the combination at the studied amounts instead of accepting whatever fitted into one tablet.
Why nettle root extract is sold at 300mg rather than by the gram
Because a 10 to 1 concentrate does the volume work for you. Three grams of milled root would be a tablespoon of powder, and nobody takes nettle root extract that way. The concentration step is what makes a capsule format possible at all for this plant.
The cost of concentrating is also why a nettle root extract capsule is priced above a leaf tea and below a standardised branded extract. Per milligram of starting material it is usually the cheaper route.
Interactions worth a pharmacist
This plant has documented interactions with blood pressure and diuretic medication, and anyone taking either should raise it before starting. The NCCIH herbs at a glance series gives a free government summary of what has been studied, which is a better first stop than a product description.
Testing
Species and plant part are confirmed on every lot of nettle root extract by an independent laboratory, with heavy metals, pesticides and microbials on the same certificate. Root material grows in soil, so the metals lines matter here. Off identity lots are withdrawn and the failing report stays published.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.