Ask an HerbalistAug 8, 2025
We love talking about herbs and herbalism, and we especially love answering your questions about those topics. That's why we brought in our team of herbal experts to respond to some of the most common questions and concerns we hear.
Our herbalists have decades of combined experience working with herbs — and the people who take them. They answer your most pressing questions, in our regular column “Ask an Herbalist.”
Various herbs can contain vitamins and minerals. However, tinctures and glycerites are not traditionally consumed for their vitamin and mineral content and do not typically contain significant amounts of vitamins and minerals.
This is connected with the extraction process of tinctures and glycerites. Just like in chemistry, for the most part “like dissolves like”, so alcohol and glycerin best pull out the plant compounds that are alcohol-soluble and/or fat-soluble. Alcohol is the most versatile solvent to pull out a wide range of phytochemicals, but not all.
Since vitamins and minerals are often water-soluble, generally herbal infusions and decoctions, commonly referred to as herbal teas, are the preparations of choice. While vitamin and mineral content is dependent on extraction method, we opt for using predominantly alcohol-based menstruums. This is because alcohol is considered a more universal solvent for a broad array of other phytochemicals that water-based extractions cannot pull out.
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