Tiny's Blog

Tiny's Blog

Tiny's Blog

What Are Compound Ingredients and Why Should You Care?

What Are Compound Ingredients and Why Should You Care?

Continuing with our vitamin and mineral series, in today’s blog post I will be discussing compound ingredients and the labelling requirements that apply to them. I’ll begin with the admission that I only learned about compound ingredients in vitamins and minerals very recently while developing a new product that I hope to have with you later this year.  I had never given much thought to them before then – I think I just assumed that vitamin B1 powder was made only of vitamin B1, that vitamin C powder was made only of vitamin C, and that magnesium citrate powder was made only of magnesium citrate.  Beyond the vague notion that they must be made in some sort of laboratory by chemists, I had really never considered that vitamins and mineral powders might themselves be made with other ingredients.  I suppose I thought of them as being extracted from things rather…

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Fill Weights and Label Claims: Do the Numbers on Your Vitamins and Minerals Add Up?

Fill Weights and Label Claims: Do the Numbers on Your Vitamins and Minerals Add Up?

In last month’s blog post I discussed the kinds of things you need to look for when choosing a good quality multivitamin supplement.  I talked about how there should always be a table of facts on vitamin and mineral supplements and I said that sometimes brands use these tables to make false claims about their products.  In today’s post, I want to cover tables of facts and label claims in more detail.  I’ll show you what a good table of facts should look like, I’ll talk about elemental yields of minerals, and I’ll give you some tips for weeding out misleading label claims.  If you haven’t read last month’s post and you’re fairly new to the world of vitamin and mineral supplements, please go back and read that first so that you can get the most out of this month’s post. A good vitamin and mineral supplement always contains a table that…

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Tiny Tips for Choosing a Good Multivitamin

Tiny Tips for Choosing a Good Multivitamin

This month, I have decided to start work on a series of posts about vitamins and minerals, focussing in particular on multivitamin supplements.  I am very passionate about this topic and anticipate having lots to say, so I will be splitting it into several shorter essays so as not to bore everyone too much in one go!  At this stage I am not 100% sure what each post will cover, but in today’s post I plan to discuss in fairly general terms what sorts of things people should look out for when purchasing vitamin and mineral supplements.  In subsequent posts, I will talk about understanding label claims, especially the elemental yield of minerals, and I will discuss compound ingredients and labelling laws.  Later in the series, I will hone in on the particular considerations that people with interstitial cystitis need to keep in mind when choosing high quality, bladder-friendly vitamins…

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Trick or Treat?

Trick or Treat?

With Halloween just around the corner, no doubt many of you will soon be visited by children playing Trick or Treat.  Those of you with young children might even be supervising Trick or Treat outings of your own!  I thought I would get into the Halloween spirit myself by using Trick or Treat as the theme for this month’s blog post.According to Google’s English Dictionary, provided by Oxford Languages, a trick can be defined as an illusion, or a cunning act or scheme intended to deceive or outwit someone.  A treat can be defined as an event or item that is out of the ordinary and gives great pleasure.  We could think of a trick as something with a misleading first impression that generates an unexpected outcome.  Although this might be positive, as in magic tricks or artistic illusions, in everyday life the word more usually implies a somewhat negative…

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Does Boswellia Help with Interstitial Cystitis?

Does Boswellia Help with Interstitial Cystitis?

In this month’s blog post I want to talk about Boswellia serrata, also known as Indian frankincense.  There are several types of Boswellia, including sacra, papyrifera and dioscoridis, but in this post we will only concern ourselves with Boswellia serrata.  Throughout this post you should therefore take all references to Boswellia to mean Boswellia serrata.  For ease of both writing and reading, I will dispense with the italicised styling normally used for Latin plant names unless I am directly quoting other material.  I am sorry if this offends any botanists! When Boswellia serrata is used in medicine or food supplements, it is normally in the form of a gum-resin extract taken from the bark of the tree.  This extract consists of several types of terpenes, but the most important active constituents are the four main boswellic acids:  β-boswellic acid, acetyl-β-boswellic acid, 11-keto-β-boswellic acid and acetyl-11-keto-β-boswellic acid 1.  If I refer to…

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What Does Tiny Eat in a Day? (August 2022)

What Does Tiny Eat in a Day? (August 2022)

This month’s blog post is a special one, because it was requested by a reader!  I was ready for a break from writing about aloe vera anyway, so I appreciated the suggestion!  The lady wanted to know what I eat in a day and I do get asked this a lot, so it does make sense to answer the question in a blog.  I’m actually asked this question so often that I am writing a cookbook to address it in more detail, but until that is ready, here is a snapshot of the sorts of foods I eat on a normal day. Regular readers will be aware that I have a number of food intolerances, including gluten, dairy, potatoes, rice, egg whites and corn.  I also avoid excess sugar and I don’t drink alcohol.  It is important to note, however, that I don’t follow the IC Diet and nor do I react particularly…

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All About Aloe: Are Cheaper Capsules Really Cheaper?

All About Aloe: Are Cheaper Capsules Really Cheaper?

Welcome to part two of our blog post detailing how you can select a good quality oral aloe vera product suitable for long-term use!  Please do not read this until you have read part one, or else you will miss out on lots of information! When you purchase an oral aloe vera product, it is crucial that you know what concentration you are getting; otherwise you cannot make proper product comparisons.  A reputable brand will always, always have the concentration marked on the packaging, ideally in the product information table.  Without the concentration is it impossible to calculate how much fresh aloe equivalent is in each capsule.  I would never purchase an oral aloe vera product that did not explicitly display the concentration of powder used. Thinking back to a single strength concentrate (explained in part one), 1 gram of aloe = 1 gram of aloe, because nothing has been removed or added.  For…

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All About Aloe: How Do You Know if it's a Good Product?

All About Aloe: How Do You Know if it's a Good Product?

This turned out to be a very long post, so I have split it into two parts!  In this first part, we will talk about how to choose a good quality oral aloe vera product suitable for long term use.  In part two, we will learn how to check whether an aloe vera product is really as economical as it might appear.Some of you might know that long ago, before I became interested in nutrition, I studied maths at university.  I actually worked as a maths tutor for many years and have been known to spend leisure time completing old exam papers for fun!  This blog post is therefore going to be quite exciting for me, as we will be combining two of my favourite subjects by using maths to compare aloe vera labels!  Continuing with the ‘All about Aloe’ series, this instalment explains how to interpret information on aloe…

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All About Aloe: Introducing Tiny Pioneer Aloe Vera Products!

All About Aloe: Introducing Tiny Pioneer Aloe Vera Products!

Continuing with our ‘All about Aloe’ series, in this post I want to formally introduce our range of aloe vera products!  Some of these have already been on sale for a few months, but I have not yet written about them in detail.  I don’t even think a lot of you even spotted them when they appeared, to be honest!  A couple of newer products went on sale last month, so now seems like an opportune moment to finally introduce them all together. Two questions that I have been asked several times over the years are:I really want to try aloe capsules, but I can’t afford them – can you give me a discount?I can’t take capsules – is it okay to empty them out into water instead? My answer to the first question was always, “I’m sorry, no.”  I know from personal experience how costly chronic health issues can be and…

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All About Aloe: Anthraquinones and Aloin!

All About Aloe: Anthraquinones and Aloin!

In the previous blog post, we talked about polysaccharides, particularly focussing on acemannan.  In this post, we will be talking about anthraquinones, particularly focussing on aloin!  Once again, it might be quite boring, but it is important and will help to put some of the other blog posts in this series into context. In chemistry terms, anthraquinones are just molecules that have a particular shape.  If they bond to a simple unit of sugar they are known as anthraquinone glycosides.  Note that we are referring here to sugar in the true chemical sense and not to the sweet white powder sucrose.  Anthraquinones occur naturally in various plants, including rhubarb root, senna leaves and fruit, cascara bark, and aloe vera.  In aloe vera, they occur in a thin layer known as the latex layer that is found between the green outer skin and the soft inner gel. Anthraquinones have a wide range of…

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