Notes

- Astragalosides are considered saponins. Assuming 0.1% saponins and 10% polysaccharides in dried astragalus root, a 70% polysaccharide extract might contain 0.7% saponins, if the saponins and polysaccharides come out in the same proportion (which I have no particular reason at this point to believe, other than convenience of calculation). Thus, the NOW tablets might contain...200mg x 0.7% = 1.4 mg of saponins per tablet. Further assuming 10% of the saponins are astragaloside IV, that leaves 0.14 mg astragaloside IV per tablet... Interestingly, the Solaray astragalus root tablets are listed as being 70% polysaccharide as well, and they're claimed to be about 0.83 mg of astragaloside IV per 200mg tablet. I may need a purer source...

Just got word back from NOW Science & Nutrition - they don't measure the saponin content of their astragalus extract. However, they did provide me with two links about astragalus polysaccharides and polysaccharides in general. The first - okay, nice, but not really what I was looking for. The second - gee willikers, let me google that for you. Really, Mr. Salesman, it's okay if you don't know off-hand what the rotational speed difference cutoff is on the anti-lock brakes - you don't need to give me detailed specifications about the cupholders to make up for it. On the plus side, the response to my query was very prompt.

Let's see if I can follow these calculations... for 1 molecule of astragaloside IV per cell, allow 0.05 mg of root / 2.2% passed through the stomach = 2.27 mg of consumed root, per molecule that makes it into the bloodstream, per cell. That seems...really low. 10 grams of raw root should in theory deliver an average of 4,400 molecules of astragaloside IV per cell, which seems way higher than the 14.52 molecules per cell noted as an "effective dose" using the old GAIA herbs astragalus extract formula. I feel like somewhere there's either an extra milli or a missing milli. 30 grams of raw root, by the same calculation, works out to about 13,200 molecules per cell. ...yeah, that's about a factor of a thousand. Hrm. Come back to this later.

Another angle: Target astragalosides consumption per day = 5 mg. Average astragaloside concentration = about 28 mg/100 grams astragalus root. Target astragalus root consumption per day = about 17 grams, or about 7,480 molecules per cell.