Trazodone is a drug compound that was initially designed to treat depression and anxiety disorders but has also become widely used as a sleep aid. Because of its increasing popularity, we thought we would test it in our Lucidity LC-UV. It’s typically found in pill form in 25mg to 100mg pills. We got our hands…
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While eating breakfast with my kid, they asked me about the dyes in the cereal. That got me thinking about the different dyes in food and how these dyes were analyzed. I thought that a UV-Vis instrument would be the best choice. But, what about an HPLC with a UV detector? I figured a UV…
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Amino acids are the building blocks of life. Every living thing uses amino acids to build the proteins needed to do various functions within the organism. Where do amino acids come from and how many are needed to function? For humans, there are a total of 20 amino acids that are necessary for your body…
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Vitamin C is a water soluble, key nutrient found in fruits, vegetables and berries. Unlike many animals, humans cannot synthesize their own vitamin C and must get it from their diets. One way to supplement the intake of vitamin C would be to take a vitamin. I decided to test 3 different vitamins for vitamin…
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Folic Acid, Folate, or Vitamin B9 is a key vitamin used by the human body to generate new healthy red blood cells, form DNA and RNA, and break down a certain amino acid, homocysteine, that can be harmful in high amounts. The need for Folic Acid is especially important during pregnancy, which is why there…
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It only seems appropriate during cold and flu season that we do something on soaps and hand sanitizers, and interestingly enough, we have some customers who are analyzing exactly that. One of the active ingredients our customers are looking for is BZK (Benzalkonium chloride), also known as BAC, BKC, and BAK. BZK is an antimicrobial…
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Continuing on from last week with the gummy bear sample preparations, I decided to take a look at the different things in that gummy bear. The gummy bear in question is a multivitamin that contains a multitude of different vitamins, so I decided to first focus on Vitamin C or Ascorbic Acid. Preparing the sample…
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With gummy candies becoming more common as a matrix for things like cannabinoids and multivitamins, it’s important to have a simple, fast, and repeatable sample preparation in order to obtain reliable values for analytes of interest in these gummies. I started with a multivitamin fiber gummy, and I thought to myself, how do I get…
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Like most people, when the new year comes around I always make a resolution to eat healthy and lose some weight. This year I decided to cut back on the amount of sugar I eat on a daily basis. Sugar is a major additive in foods and beverages. The American Heart Association recommends that…
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It was a wonderful day at my friend’s house. After several years, they were finally going to welcome a baby into the world. They were excited but also nervous about the new responsibilities they had. They asked me about something they had read in a book about not giving spinach to their child and why…
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