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Liquid Antacids Made With Specialty Minerals Precipitated Calcium Carbonates (PCCs)

For heavy-duty heartburn, many sufferers prefer a liquid antacid. It’s fast acting because the antacid particles are already separated; there is no wait for the tablet to disintegrate. The liquid coats the esophagus as it goes down, giving immediate relief.

Liquid antacids are suspensions of insoluble antacid actives, generally in water, with some thickener to give it good mouth feel, and flavor for good taste. As with tablet antacids, calcium carbonate finds wide use as the active ingredient in liquid antacids.

Fine and Nano Precipitated Calcium Carbonates For Liquid Antacids
The best mouth feel can come from using a small particle sized precipitated calcium carbonate to help reduce or eliminate any “chalky” taste that is accentuated when large particled, ground calcium carbonates are used.

The other advantage of using a fine sized precipitated calcium carbonate in a liquid antacid is that the finer a particle is the longer it will stay in suspension, rather than settling out on the bottom of the bottle. According to Stoke’s Law, the rate at which a particle settles is proportional to the square of the radius of that particle. So by reducing the size of the particle by a factor of 10, the settling rate decreases by a factor of 100.

ViCALity Albafil® and CalEssence® 70 precipitated calcium carbonates are only 0.7 microns in median particle size—very small in comparison to the 2, 5 or 10 micron common ground calcium carbonates often used.

The maximum in suspension ability results from using an even smaller Specialty Minerals PCC—a true nano precipitated calcium carbonate, 0.07 microns in size. Nano particles are less than 100 nanometers, or 0.1 microns in size. Sold in the U.S. as Multifex-MM® USP PCC, and in the rest of the world as Calofort® U PCC, these nano PCCs provide outstanding suspension of the active in the liquid antacid, significantly reducing the settling.


California Proposition 65 and Liquid Antacids
Calcium-based antacids manufactured for sale in California must meet the requirements of Proposition 65, which set limits on the amount of lead a consumer can ingest in one day. Specialty Minerals CalEssence PCC products are certified to contain less than 125 ppb lead, and ViCALity PCC products, less than 500 ppb lead, so are the best candidates for a liquid antacid formulation. The UK-manufactured Multifex-MM USP and Calofort U products meet the US Pharmacopeia standard for less than 3 ppm lead, but are generally not low enough in lead for high dosage products that must meet Proposition 65.

 

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