Bionetic
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Bionetic
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Bionetic
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Almost every ginkgo extract on the shelf is made to the same two numbers. Here's what they mean, and why a tree with no living relatives makes these compounds at all.
The ginkgo is the last of its line. Every other tree in its order is known only from fossils, laid down in rock long before the first flowering plants appeared. It has no close living relatives. Its fan-shaped leaves, with veins running in parallel rather than branching, look like nothing else, and individual trees live a very long time — several in China are documented at well over a thousand years old.
Ginkgo extracts are described by two quite different groups of compounds. The first are flavonoids bound to sugars — the same broad family that colours a great many fruits and flowers. The second group is rarer: a set of cage-shaped molecules found nowhere else in the plant kingdom, along with one close relation of theirs.
That's where the familiar 24/6 comes from: 24% of the first group, 6% of the second. The convention goes back to the standardised extracts developed in the 1960s, and it has been the reference point most ginkgo material is made and compared against ever since.
Holding to two numbers rather than one matters, because the two groups behave differently when the leaf is extracted. The flavonoids come across readily. The cage-shaped ones are scarcer in the leaf to begin with and take a more selective process to concentrate. An extract that meets both figures has been through more work than one that meets only the first.
Bionetic's Ginkgo Biloba is a leaf extract at 24% and 6%, 120 mg per capsule. Food supplements should not be used as a substitute for a varied and balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle.
