Silica Dosage

[queenspence]

Is 11mg of silica enough for growth? GNC has a bottle with 11 mg in it. I think someone mentioned 500mg or maybe grams, not sure the difference with the calculations. What are your recommendations?

 

[queenspence]

bumping for responses

 

[nomoweavesfome]

This is a good ?. I have no idea. I currently take oatstraw tea everynight which is high in silica and I don't even know how much is in that! hmmm..

 

[Victorian]

Horsetail and similar herbs commonly come in 500mg doses, but they are standardized differently, which means the amount of actual silica you get varies. If it isn't standardized, then you have no idea. Usually you see 7 or 8%, which means for each 500mg pill you take, you get 35-40mg of actual silica. Most brands I've seen that are standardized to 7-8% say to take 2-3 pills per day, so it seems you should at least be aiming for around 100mg of silica per day. I've seen some brands that claim to be standardized to 10% as well.

There are other ways to get silica like liquids and gels, which seem to be more efficient ways of getting your silica, although they are also usually more expensive. BioSil by Jarrow is pretty popular and is known for yielding good results.
Also KAL has a supplement called Super Silica Plus which contains a few different sources of silica for a more well-rounded approach. I believe it also has a little bit of MSM in it.

Anyway, the take home points are
1) Just 11mg of silica probably isn't going to do it
2) The mg of horsetail/oatstraw or whatever in the pill is NOT the amount of silica you're getting. Look for guaranteed potency herbs so you'll know how much actual silica is in it.

 

[queenspence]

Thanks nomo and blackcardinal

 

[nomoweavesfome]

wow I didn't know that- i'm going to finish off this tea ang go with something a little more potent.