Four nutrients, at length
Biotin, vitamin B12, folate and vitamin B6 — the figures as printed on the panel, and what each nutrient is understood to do.
Thirteen nutrients are declared on the Gelagen panel. Four of them get a longer treatment here, chosen because their figures are the largest or because the form printed beside the name changes what the figure means.
Every amount below is transcribed from the Supplement Facts panel as printed, per serving of two gummies. What follows each one describes the nutrient as it is generally understood. None of it is a claim about what this finished product does, which has not been studied.
Biotin
5000 mcg per serving
Start with the arithmetic, because it is the striking part. The daily value for biotin is 30 micrograms. A serving here carries 5000, which is why the percentage column prints a number in the tens of thousands rather than in the tens.
Biotin is vitamin B7, a water-soluble B vitamin that acts as a cofactor for five carboxylase enzymes. Those enzymes sit in the metabolism of fatty acids, glucose and several amino acids — including the amino acids that keratin, the structural protein of hair shafts and nail plates, is assembled from. That connection is what put biotin on this category of label decades ago and keeps it there.
Outright deficiency is rare on an ordinary diet, and where hair or nail trouble has a cause other than nutrition, a high biotin figure is not addressing that cause. The figure is what the panel declares; what it does for any particular person is not something the panel claims.
Vitamin B12
6 mcg per serving
The panel names the form as well as the amount: methylcobalamin, at six micrograms, which is 250 per cent of the daily value.
Form is worth noting on a B12 line. Cyanocobalamin is the cheaper and more common supplemental form and has to be converted before the body uses it; methylcobalamin is one of the forms it uses directly. Both raise B12 status, and a label that names the form is at least telling you which one it chose.
B12's established roles are in DNA synthesis, red blood cell formation and nerve function. It works alongside folate — the two appear together on this panel and in the same metabolic step, where B12 passes a methyl group that returns folate to a usable state.
Folate
442 mcg DFE per serving
This is the line most worth reading slowly, because the unit is doing real work. DFE means dietary folate equivalents, and 442 mcg DFE here comes from 260 mcg of folic acid.
The conversion exists because folic acid from a supplement is absorbed more completely than the folate in food, so a smaller quantity of folic acid counts for a larger quantity of folate. Comparing a DFE figure on one label against a plain microgram figure on another is comparing two different measurements, and the difference is not small.
Folate itself supplies the single carbon units used to build DNA, which makes it matter most in tissue that divides quickly. The basal layer of the skin is among the fastest dividing tissue in the body, which is how a nutrient named after a leaf ends up on a skin label.
Vitamin B6
2 mg per serving
Two milligrams, given as pyridoxine hydrochloride, which is 118 per cent of the daily value.
B6 is unusual in how widely it is used: in its active form it is a cofactor for well over a hundred enzyme reactions, most of them in amino acid metabolism. That is the same chemistry that supplies raw material for structural proteins, which is the thread connecting it to the rest of this panel.
It also takes part in the synthesis of several neurotransmitters and in haemoglobin production, neither of which has anything to do with skin — a reminder that a nutrient on a beauty label is rarely there for one reason only.
The remaining nine
Vitamins A, C, D and E, pantothenic acid, choline, iodine, zinc and inositol make up the rest of the panel, each with its own figure. The complete table, with the macronutrients and the full other-ingredients list, is on the homepage.
The limit of this page
No trial has been published on Gelagen. Research into a nutrient describes that nutrient, usually at doses and in populations unrelated to any particular gummy, and nothing written above should be read as a claim that this product treats or prevents anything at all.