NOW Foods St. John's Wort

Mood imbalances, even in the most modest sense, can keep us from functioning at our best. NOW Foods St. John's Wort, a perennial extract that blooms from June to September has been shown to help support a positive, balanced mood state.

St. Johns Wort (SJW) is a perennial plant that has oval-shaped leaves and golden-yellow flowers. This plant has been used as an herbal remedy for many centuries. St. John's Wort is used to help heal wounds, as a balm for burns, a treatment of neuralgic conditions such as back pain, and also as a diuretic. A renewed interest in SJW occurred during the past decade, and it is now a component of numerous herbal preparations for the treatment of anxiety and depression.

Let's look at the chemistry behind SJW. The anthraquinone derivatives hypericin and pseudohypericin are thought to be the two agents responsible for the psychoactive effects of this herb. In addition, a plethora of flavonoids with awful sounding names such as kaempferol, quercetin, quercitrin, isoquercitrin, amentoflavone, luteolin, myricetin, hyperin, hyperoside, and rutin, as well as hyperforin and adhyperforin are also present.

As with many natural products, there are a variety of analytical methods that can be used. NOW first looks to official methods. DAC 86 is the older German Pharmaceutical Codex method, designed primarily to detect total hypericins in dried SJW herb material. A different method is DAC 90, which uses an analytical column to separate hypericin and pseudohypericin from the herbal material, and precisely quantify each of them.

The Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC) International is currently in the process to establish an official method for SJW raw material and finished products. The method in consideration can analyze nine ingredients in SJW samples simultaneously. They are hypericin, pseudohypericin, hyperforin, rutin, quercetin, quercitrin, isoquercitrin, hyperoside, and I3,II8-biapigenin.

In order to make sure that NOW uses the best methods available, NOW has adapted the DAC 90 HPLC method especially for our products, and now they are working on the AOAC method for the analysis of our SJW products. In this way, we work to continually ensure the quality of our products by using the most up-to-date methods available.

NOW's Mission
The NOW mission is - To provide value in products and services that empower people to lead healthier lives. NOW Foods is an award-winning and highly respected manufacturer of vitamins, minerals, dietary supplements and natural foods.

In 1948, with the natural food and supplement industry in its infancy, entrepreneur Paul Richard paid $900 for the purchase of Fearn Soya Foods—a Chicago based manufacturer of grain and legume-based products. This began a six-decade legacy of providing health-seeking consumers with high-quality, affordable nutrition products.

History of NOW
In 1968, NOW Foods was founded under the belief that good health was not a luxury available only to the wealthy. For the past forty years, NOW has made it their life's work to offer health food and nutritional supplements of the highest quality, at prices that are fair and affordable to all those who seek them. Today, NOW Foods is one of the top-selling brands in health foods stores, an award-winning manufacturer, a respected advocate of the natural product industry, and a leader in the fields of nutritional science and methods development. And while NOW has grown considerably over the past four decades, one thing has never changed – NOW's commitment to providing products and services that empower people to lead healthier lives. :" ":ould be primarily influenced by the desires and needs of NOW customers. The decisions that NOW makes should be based on accurate information and therefore NOW places a high value on knowledge and learning within their organization.

Quality and Value Oriented - Acting in the best interest of NOW customers, NOW endeavors to produce the highest quality products at competitive prices. NOW's first priority is to maintain quality where it counts the most – in the products. NOW's exceptional cost-conscious team of employees then focuses their energies on driving costs down. Nurturing this competency of value drives NOW's ability to provide high quality products at the very best prices.

Natural is Better - NOW is convinced that natural products are better than their synthetic counterparts and produce better results in human health. Therefore, wherever possible, NOW strives to provide products that contain natural ingredients because they are better for their customers. NOW Science
NOW's experienced professional and technical staff formulates their products to be of the highest quality. NOW has a group of biochemists, chemists, nutritionists, and food technologists who review current science and nutritional parameters, and formulate our products to be effective for the intended use. NOW's structure/function claims are based on science for active ingredients, and on nutritional science for nutritional content. Serving sizes are based on doses from clinical studies and other published data. NOW's contemporary formulas are designed to meet the health and wellness needs of today’s consumers. NOW uses ingredients that have been tested for effectiveness in clinical trials and laboratory studies. The heart of NOW science is third party independent research. NOW investigates and review clinical studies and other lab studies conducted on their ingredients and their formulas. Best science is used to support best formulations which lead to best quality. NOW products are constantly being tested in clinical trials conducted at top universities and research centers around the country and in various parts of the world. NOW products are being tested to determine such things as effectiveness for joint support, quality of life for cancer patients, cardiovascular support, and athletic endurance. Effective products mean health and wellness benefits, which mean quality.

GMP Quality Assured
NOW’s GMP certification covers standard operating procedures, employee training, product specifications, expiration dating, vendor certifications and much more. Standard operating procedures include sampling and testing incoming materials according to NOW Foods specifications, inspecting manufacturing processes, and testing finished products to specifications. Tests include organoleptic evaluation (human senses such as sight, taste, smell), physical testing of tablets and capsules, chemical identity of ingredients, potency and contamination testing by the company’s in-house state-of-the-art analytical testing lab, as well as microbiological testing by NOW Foods’ in-house rapid analysis microbiological lab.