Good quality CBD is a product that can stand on its own. For most applications, CBD oil is already as effective as it is. The addition of other ingredients can rarely make it better. This can make it difficult for CBD companies to “reinvent the wheel” so to speak. Unfortunately, those that cannot offer anything new and unique are often culled from the market. However, Zion Medicinals seems to have found a USP that will likely attract a specific buying demographic. Let’s find out what that is.
The company & third-party testing
Zion Medicinals seems to be a small, individually-owned operation that sprung out of personal necessity. According to the website, the owner found all other CBD on the market to be inadequate in treating his wife’s condition. He wanted something stronger and more potent. This is why he made his own CBD using a unique process not typically used by CBD companies. This resulted in Zion Medicinals’ “spagyric” CBD oil which we’ll look into later.
If spagyric CBD sounds unfamiliar to you, don’t let it put you off from checking out Zion Medicinals. They do use third-party testing and this is what’s important. Their lab results should tell you all that you need to know about their CBD and so far, the results show that they may be worth considering. It should be noted though, that while their products are tested for cannabinoid potency, terpene profiles, pesticides, and mycotoxins, they don’t have results for heavy metals and residual solvents.
Based on what I can see on the website, Zion Medicinals’ looks like it’s trying to appeal to a specific type of consumer. It is likely that they are targeting those who like buying handmade, small-batch, artisanal stuff.
The products
Zion Medicinals offers only 4 product types: spagyric CBD oil, salve, soap, and hemp face masks. First, let’s look at their CBD oil since it is what goes into all their products.
What is Spagyrics?
While most other companies are busy exploring advanced technologies to extract CBD, Zion Medicinals seems to go the other way by using an alchemy-based extraction process. Alchemy is practically “ancient chemistry” and spagyrics is the process of making medicine using alchemy. In their FAQ, Zion Medicinal says that they were able to produce a more potent CBD extract of higher medicinal value using this unique process. Personally, I find it hard to believe that an ancient process can actually produce a better CBD extract than commercial CO2 extraction. We discuss some of the most popular extraction processes used by modern companies in Why is CBD Oil Expensive?
In their FAQ, Zion Medicinals provides a brief background on alchemy, spagyrics, and the advantages it offers over conventional extraction processes. However, from what I’ve read on their FA, they just use an extraction process with ethanol as the solvent. They then add the minerals and salts extracted from the calcinated hemp mass to the CBD oil. Apparently, the calcination process makes the minerals in the hemp mass water-soluble. In essence, the whole spagyric process attempts to extract everything from the hemp plant, acids, oils, salts, minerals etc.
I’m not entirely sure about the science behind spagyrics. But as mentioned previously, only the lab test results matter at the end of the day and Zion Medicinal’s CoA speaks for itself.
Soaps, salves, and face masks
Zion Medicinals’ spagyric CBD is what goes into their soaps and salves. I must admit, I like how pretty their soap looks like. Their small-batch Hemp charcoal CBD soap is an appetizing black slab of activated hemp charcoal mixed with poppy seeds for gentle exfoliation and tea tree oil which is naturally antibacterial, antimicrobial, antiseptic, and anti-inflammatory. It is also vegan, organic, and non-GMO.
Likewise, their hemp salve sticks also seem very soothing and relaxing. In addition to CBD, these salves are also packed with popular natural remedies. Ingredients include arnica, St. John’s Wort, cayenne, camphor resin, and peppermint/rosemary/eucalyptus essential oils. All these ingredients are known to be beneficial in their own right. Surely there are consumers who would want to buy a product that has all of these ingredients in one package.
Zion Medicinals also sells hemp face masks. It may seem kind of random but it actually makes sense. As a CBD company, they would have a good source of hemp fiber. These are not ordinary disposable face masks though since they are imported from Kathmandu and are made out of Himalayan hemp and Nepalese cotton. They also have an additional layer of hemp paper filter for better protection.
Conclusion
As mentioned in Zion Medicinals’ website, spagyrics is indeed an ancient practice that has been around for thousands of years. It follows the principles of alchemy which is practically the precursor of modern chemistry. However, spagyrics is typically lumped as pseudoscience along with homeopathy, naturopathy, alternative medicine, and similar practices. Whether these are actually effective or not is still a highly controversial topic. One thing is for sure though, while they may not be totally compatible with the scientific method, some of the principles do overlap. In some cases, scientific studies have been able to confirm the claims of these practices. In the case of Zion Medicinal’s CBD oil, it can be hard to say whether the spagyric process actually does yield better CBD.
Price-wise, their CBD oil is somewhere around the middle at $0.14 per mg which isn’t too bad. If you happen to be a believer in non-conventional treatments and healing practices, then Zion Medicinals is something you may want to try out.