Inset: The sustained fascination with “bioavailability,” which often is limited to apparent absorption only, engenders assertions of greater bioactivity and superior efficacy. But are the data ever really there to substantiate these claims?

Setting: NutriStar retail store, flagship location, public seminar room. 3.29.18; 22 May 2010.

NutriStar corporate store manager, Jamie Kelvin: “Good evening and thank you all for coming tonight—we have standing room only! We are very privileged to have Dr. Ian Corey, a medical doctor and integrative medicine expert, the author of several nutrition books, and the leader of the scientific advisory board for BioKinetica—one of the best selling brands in our stores. Here is who you’ve all come to hear, Dr. Corey, and his talk ‘Avail Yourself to Bioavailable Supplements.’”

Ian Corey, MD: “Jamie, thank you so much for the introduction and the privilege of being here. If any of you have questions I encourage you to raise your hand at any time during my presentation. Let’s dive right in. You are not what you eat or ingest but what you absorb. What is put into a dietary supplement is perhaps, to a large extent, less important than what gets ‘put’ into your body and delivered to ‘target’ tissues, like the brain, liver, muscle or eyes.

“Case in point: We have done two studies comparing equal doses of calcium—from calcium carbonate and from our nanoparticulate calcium citrate in Cal-Kin. As you can see from this graph, when the subjects received a 500 mg calcium dose from Cal-Kin the amount appearing in the blood over four hours was 26-33% higher than from calcium carbonate. We also showed 10-16% less urinary calcium excretion, despite greater absorption.

“How many of you take coenzyme Q10, or ‘CoQ10’? Wow, about half of you. How many of you take a form of CoQ10 in a softgel or a chewable tablet, not a tablet or dry capsule? And you take the chewable or softgel form because you read or were told that you would absorb more, correct? Well, we compared 12 weeks of a 600-mg daily dose of CoQ10, from a leading softgel and a leading chewable form, to our nanoparticulate Q-Kin in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Here we found significantly higher blood CoQ10 concentrations after 12 weeks, compared to either the chewable or the softgel.

“Our nanoparticulate Kin technology is proven to increase the bioavailability of both calcium and CoQ10, and we are now doing studies on vitamin C, silymarin, lutein and even PQQ with this technology. These studies will…[sees hand go up]...You have a question?”

Woman stands up, from the middle of the room: “Good evening Dr. Corey. I’m a nutritional pharmacologist at Stellarbosch University and my father [looking down at the man next to her] asked me to join him at this seminar. I wanted to ask you about the research you presented. You used the word ‘bioavailability’ yet you didn’t present any findings describing greater action with the Kin products—like a greater suppression of parathyroid hormone, or reduced biomarkers of bone turnover with the calcium, or improvements in muscle or brain energy metabolism or symptoms in the Parkinson’s patients receiving your CoQ10. The data are all related to pharmacokinetics and do not reveal any greater efficacy or ‘tissue targeting,’ the kind of efficacy that a person like my father, who has Parkinson’s, and my Mom, who has osteoporosis, would be best served by. Did you perform any pharmacodynamic or outcome measures?”

Dr. Corey: “Um, we…these were just our first studies, designed to show that our Kin nanoparticulate system leads to greater absorption. We are planning to do the kind of studies that you mentioned—and thank you for that. I’d like to get your card after this talk. And maybe we should exercise more stringency in our use of the word ‘bioavailability’…”