There's a small piece of notation on the Immune Plus label that carries more information than any word on the front: (4:1). Per 2 capsules, the label declares olive leaf extract (4:1) at 285mg and echinacea extract (4:1) at 285mg, alongside 700mg of vitamin C from a tri-ascorbate blend. That ratio is a formulation decision, and it's worth sixty seconds of your attention — because most labels hope you'll never ask what it means.
What a ratio actually says
A 4:1 extract means four parts of raw herb were concentrated down into one part of finished extract. So 285mg of a 4:1 olive leaf extract started life as roughly 1,140mg — a little over a gram — of raw olive leaf. Same for the echinacea row: 285mg of 4:1 extract represents around 1,140mg of starting herb.
Read it precisely, though: a ratio is a statement about concentration of starting material, not a guarantee of potency. It tells you the herb was extracted and reduced rather than simply ground up and encapsulated. It does not tell you exactly which compounds survived the process, and 4:1 does not mean "four times better". It means four times more raw material went in per milligram that came out.
Why extract instead of raw powder
Capsule space is the honest constraint every formulator works inside. A vegetable capsule holds roughly half a gram of material. If we filled Immune Plus with raw ground olive leaf and raw echinacea at the amounts the extracts represent, plus 700mg of vitamin C, a two-capsule dose would become a six-or-more-capsule dose — and almost nobody takes six capsules a day for a season.
Extraction solves that. Concentrating the herb 4:1 lets a practical two-capsule serving carry the raw-herb equivalent of well over two grams of botanicals and a meaningful vitamin C dose. That's the entire reason the 4:1 notation exists on our label: it's how two capsules do the work of a handful.
The vitamin C row has its own form story — 700mg per 2 capsules from a tri-ascorbate blend rather than plain ascorbic acid. Buffered ascorbates are gentler on the stomach at repeated daily doses, which matters in the exact months you're most likely to be taking them.
The hierarchy of honesty on any herbal label
When you pick up any herbal product — ours included — the ingredient rows will sit somewhere on this ladder, from most informative to least:
- Standardised extract with a percentage — e.g. our Prosta Care declares saw palmetto 25% (8:1) at 300mg: a ratio and a declared level of the compounds that matter. The most checkable claim a label can make.
- Ratio extract with milligrams — like the 4:1 rows on Immune Plus, or the 490mg of astragalus 4:1 in our Astragalus capsules. You can compute the raw-herb equivalent yourself.
- "Extract" with milligrams but no ratio — better than nothing, but you can't tell whether it's a gentle 2:1 or a concentrated 10:1.
- Raw powder — legitimate for some uses, but 300mg of ground herb is a very different object from 300mg of a 4:1 extract, and plenty of labels quietly rely on you not noticing.
- A herb name with no number at all — walk away.
The move we'd teach anyone: find the ratio or the percentage, then do the multiplication. If a label gives you nothing to multiply, that's your answer about the product.
The honest bit
A ratio can't tell you everything. Extraction methods differ, harvests differ, and 4:1 notation doesn't name which constituents were concentrated — that's why a standardised percentage, where it exists, is stronger information than a ratio alone. And a blend like Immune Plus makes the trade every blend makes: three ingredients sharing two capsules means none of them is at the maximum dose you could take as a dedicated single. We've said it before and it stays true — if you want one ingredient at full depth, buy that ingredient. A blend earns its place on convenience and coverage, not on beating the singles at their own job.
Reading on
Flip any herbal bottle in the house and look for the ratio. If you'd like a second pair of eyes on a label — any brand's — message a consultant, or take the 2-minute quiz to see whether a blend or a single suits the way you actually live.
From the range
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— The Vivid formulation desk
