Known as Good Sleep GABA 365, the star ingredient of the tablet product is fermented L-glutamate GABA powder.
The ingredient, developed by Amorepacific R&I Center, was approved by the South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) earlier this year for its safety and its efficacy in improving sleep quality with a daily intake of 375mg.
“VITAL BEAUTIE is focusing on the wellness sector as we enter an era of an increasingly ageing population.
“We saw that sleep – which immensely impacts overall health – is a key interest area for people leading the modern lifestyles. We thus developed a new functional ingredient and launched the product,” Eric Yoo, who leads the VITAL BEAUTIE brand team at Amorepacific said in response to queries from NutraIngredients-Asia.
Good Sleep GABA 365 has been launched on August 8 on VITAL BEAUTIE store on Naver and Amore Mall.
“The product was designed as a small tablet that is easy to swallow with water before sleep, with a recommended daily dose of two tablets, and does not contain any of the three additives, namely titanium dioxide, magnesium stearate, and silicon dioxide that are commonly used for making a tablet,” Yoo added.
The brand’s first sleep aid supplement is Easy Sleep launched in 2019. Unlike the new launch, it uses rice bran extract as the key functional ingredient. The product, however, is no longer on sale.
Trial findings
Supplementation of fermented L-glutamate GABA powder has shown significant improvements across seven sleep-related indicators in a two-week human study.
These indicators are 1) sleep efficiency, 2) sleep latency, 3) total sleep time, 4) non rapid eye movement sleep stage three, 5) total awakening time, 6) awakening time after sleep onset, and 7) Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index global score and components.
Fifty-six adults with an Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) of eight and above took part in the placebo-controlled study, according to a report published on Food Safety Korea.
“The structure of fermented L-glutamate GABA powder is the same as sleep-related substances naturally present in our bodies,” said Yoo.
It took the firm four years to develop the powder, beginning from material research, to human application test, and developing the powder etc.
It is also the firm’s sixth individually recognised raw material approved by the MFDS.
At present, other commonly used ingredients meant for sleep aid include lactium derived from milk protein, rice bran extract, and the extract of the brown algae ecklonia cava.