Shilajit Extract, Fulvic Acid Standardised

Shilajit is a blackish-brown exudate that seeps from rock strata in the Himalaya and other high mountain ranges, formed over long geological periods from humified plant material. Ayurvedic texts know it as Shilajatu; pharmacopoeial and trade listings use the name Asphaltum punjabinum. Raw exudate is not a finished ingredient. As scraped from the rock it carries mineral debris, soil, microbial load and whatever elemental contaminants the parent geology contributed. Thovek supplies only purified material, taken through aqueous extraction and filtration and then either dried to a free-flowing powder or reduced to a viscoelastic resin, and standardised on fulvic acid content. The two forms are the same purified base presented differently: the powder is the workable option for tablets, capsules, sachets and premixes, while the resin is the format consumer brands jar and sell by the spoon. The fulvic acid figure is the part a buyer should read hardest, because the market quotes numbers produced by methods that do not agree with each other. ISO 19822:2018 separates humic acid from hydrophobic fulvic acid and weighs the ash-free residue; it is slower and more expensive than the alternatives but it is the arbitration method, and purified resins have been reported in the region of 41 to 64 % on it, against the 15 to 20 % commonly quoted for native unpurified shilajit. Total-organic-carbon, titrimetric and colorimetric shortcuts routinely return inflated values, and independent retail testing has found fulvic acid per serving varying across the market by orders of magnitude. Thovek therefore prints the method next to the number on every certificate and will run ISO 19822 gravimetry on request, so that two competing offers can actually be compared. Dibenzo-alpha-pyrones and DBP-chromoproteins, the other characteristic constituents, are specified and assayed separately where a buyer wants them on the label. Quality control is dominated by elemental contaminants and by adulteration. Lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury are limited and determined by ICP-MS on every lot, thallium is screened because it has been reported in commercial shilajit, and tighter limits are set for buyers selling into California Proposition 65 territory. Synthetic material sold as shilajit is a documented market problem, so identity is confirmed on the whole fingerprint rather than on a single marker. Purification is aqueous only: no cow's milk, ghee or other animal-derived processing aid is used at any point. That matters commercially, because some classical shodhana procedures do use milk, and a milk-purified lot can be declared neither vegan nor dairy-free. Material as supplied is vegan and vegetarian and free from milk, egg, soy, fish, crustacean, gluten and nut inputs, with no bovine, porcine or marine content.