Products & Markets

Medox® contains a lot of natural anthocyanins

Power Berries

As our society ages, the importance of a healthy lifestyle is growing. Nutritional supplements contribute toward mitigating deficiencies in our daily diet. Evonik is helping improve human nutrition by contributing its scientific expertise to develop ingredients with documented health benefits and through formulation technologies improve their stability and bioavailability.

Nearly 20 years ago, Sjur Svaboe (76) worked with the University of Bergen to develop the manufacturing process for MEDOX®. In 2016, Evonik bought the MedPalett company, which made the nutritional supplement in Sandnes. MEDOX® contains an extract from bilberries and black currants (anthocyanins) that have been proven to promote heart health, circulation and physical well-being

Supplying the human body with essential nutrients has become a lifetime preoccupation for Svaboe, who once studied mathematics: “Let your food be your medicine and medicine be your food!” he says, citing Hippocrates of Cos. “His advice is easily 2500 years old, but we still don’t follow it as much as we should. The roots of many diseases, like arteriosclerosis or diabetes, lie in improper nutrition.”

Scientific research

Sjur Svaboe (76) is still active in the MedPalett management team.

Small, blue, valuable: In Scandinavia, blueberries, also known as bilberries, are very popular.

The wild Scandinavian berries are colored through and through - in contrast to the cultivated culture blueberry

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Wind, rain, temperature changes: The harsh Scandinavian climate intensifies the formation of anthocyanins in the berry.

The bilberries can be found in many parts of Norway.

The home of the berries are forests and fields.

Capsule, powder, concentrate: The anthocyans in Medox® are gently extracted from the berries.

The capsules are sealed directly in Sandnes in blister packs.

In Norway, Medox® has been successful on the market for years.

The health effects of anthocyanins from dark berries, for instance—the primary component of MEDOX®—have thus far been investigated in some 20 independent, placebo-controlled, double-blind studies at university hospitals. “These have shown that taking anthocyanins leads to lower LDL-C— so-called ‘bad cholesterol’—and increased HDL-C — ‘good cholesterol’,” says Einar Bakstad, the research director at the Biolink Group, which included MEDOX® producer MedPalett before the company was acquired by Evonik. “That’s particularly interesting with respect to cardiovascular diseases,” notes Baksad, a professor at Norway’s University of Stavanger who teaches synthetic organic chemistry.

The University of Stavanger is currently collaborating with Kings College London on a study involving about 200 subjects to investigate the influence of MEDOX® on dementia prevention. The results of an earlier study had indicated that taking highly concentrated anthocyanins could slow down the development of dementia; the results of the present study, expected in 2020, are therefore awaited with high interest.

What makes MEDOX® unique, says Einar Bakstad, is the multistage refinement process, which leaves 17 anthocyanins from blackcurrants and bilberries intact, in high concentration.