As the pace of life continues to accelerate and work pressures increase, mood-relieving supplements are becoming increasingly popular. So what are the trends in this market? And what are some popular and innovative ingredients?

Mood Support Supplements

Research and development activities in the mood support supplement space are increasing day by day as suppliers and brands strive to offer mood support supplement products with better efficacy backed by clinical data.

While some traditional ingredients still hold a strong market position, the emergence of new ingredients provides formulators with more modern compounding options. At the same time, improvements in quality control and manufacturing processes have led to better standardized production methods and more efficient extraction techniques, as well as a number of innovative synergistic formulations involving multiple mechanisms of action. Below we present the top 5 trends in the current mood supplement market.

Trend 1
Mood supplements are gradually becoming independent

Although some natural ingredients have mood-improving properties, in the past, these ingredients were marketed as sleep health supplements. However, the latest trend shows that mood and sleep are starting to diverge into different categories.

Scott Dicker, senior market insight analyst at SPINS, says that at this stage, consumers are looking for supplements that relieve stress and relax the mind and body, without the need for ingredients that make them drowsy.

This difference in demand has widened with the emergence of supplement formulations that have no sleep-supporting properties, but only mood-stabilizing properties,” Dicker said. Researchers have also begun to further differentiate between mood-supporting and cognitive-healthy ingredients, while suggesting that the two can work synergistically to help each other.”

Dicker noted that the growing demand for functional beverages with specific mood support claims is further evidence that mood support is becoming a vertical. data from SPINS shows that the market share of wellness products with mood support features is growing at a CAGR of more than 500%. In addition, the ingredient with the highest growth rate is one without sleep-inducing features.

“South African intoxicants are one of the hottest ingredients in this category, growing at a 94% CAGR and totaling $91 million in revenue. Other popular ingredients are gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), chamomile, theanine and kava.” Dicker said.

Trend 2
R&D is becoming more scientific and efficient

As modern mood support supplements continue to evolve, suppliers and brands are beginning to favor more reliable scientific methods for extracting ingredients and formulating products.

David Foreman, a registered pharmacist and founder of Herbal Pharmacist Media, says that mood support supplement research has increasingly begun to utilize a clinical approach when evaluating study results. Many of the ongoing mood supplement-related studies utilize the Profile of Mood States (POMS) and the Positive-Negative Affect Scale (PANAS). He went on to add, “Focusing on changes in metrics such as cortisol, blood pressure, or blood glucose levels can also reflect changes in positive mood.”

Foreman says suppliers of mood-supporting ingredients are working to optimize extraction techniques and standardize processes in hopes of extracting more active compounds from raw materials. On the formulation side, brand parties are working on new products in hopes of blending multiple ingredients with different mechanisms of action to create more versatile supplements.

Trend 3
New Ingredients Emerging

Research into mood-supporting ingredients has confirmed the link between gut health and mood, providing an opportunity for probiotics and phospholipids to play a role in emotional health.

Peyton Rudy, global marketing manager for the Active Living direction at Nutiani, says that mood-supporting ingredients are now advanced enough to regulate hormone levels at different ages. In addition, she explains that the natural decline in brain phospholipid levels associated with age stages provides a significant market opportunity for more accurate and effective use of different doses of phospholipid ingredients in mood support supplements.

Rudy explains, ” Functional foods and beverages are only just emerging, but their market demand is growing by the day. Low (no) calorie mood-supporting functional beverages with educational and botanical ingredients are becoming more and more popular, and there is still plenty of market space for more products. Broad-spectrum phospholipids are well suited to be made into snacks, such as chunky snacks and yogurts.”

Nutrifresh, the B2B health solutions brand of Fonterra, recently launched the second phase of Project Happy with Sun Genomics. “Project Happy is a six-week randomized clinical trial designed to validate the results of a previously conducted consumer research pilot.

The pilot was conducted on 52 consumers who had used Sun Genomics’ B2C product Floré and focused on the effects of Nutrifresh’s proprietary probiotic strain, LactoB HN001, on these consumers. All subjects were screened for mental disorders and excluded from all psychiatric disorders. All 52 subjects took a probiotic preparation containing the LactoB HN001 ingredient once a day and completed the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (QHQ) at baseline and after 30 and 60 days of exposure. The study showed an increase in the average score of their mental health scores after 60 days.

Another rising star in the emotional support market is also beginning to show an important role. False horsetail extract is an herbal ingredient derived from water hyssop that has been shown in clinical trials to have multiple mental health benefits.

A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of Vendure’s Bacognize product was conducted in 2021.1 The trial examined the effects of false horsetail on the subjects’ mental health in 89 healthy adults who reported poor sleep.

Subjects completed the Bergen Insomnia Scale (BIS) and the Depression and Anxiety Scale of the DASS-21 at baseline and at the end of the study. During the course of the study, subjects’ salivary cortisol was measured once a day in the morning and once a day in the evening, along with a daily measurement of dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S), a biomarker of stress, trauma, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The program lasted 27 days and subjects were randomly assigned into two groups, one taking 2 Bacognize capsules per day and the other taking an equal amount of placebo.

After 27 days, the Bacognize group improved their scores on emotional well-being by 14 percent, while the placebo group only improved by 6 percent. In terms of sleep monitoring, the study authors said the placebo effect was unusually pronounced. While Bacognize performed about the same as placebo in sleep support, the product did outperform placebo in emotional support in terms of 36-item Brief Health Status Scale (SF-36) scores, that author said. The author also suggested that further research on the anxiolytic effects of pseudomalpighia may be necessary.

Marshall says that the category of mood support supplements is gradually moving away from the traditional disciplines of products that would have an effect on mood. More specifically, companies are currently trying to position the mood support supplement products they develop based on the mechanism of action of the product’s effect on mood.

Trend 4
Diversifying Product Formats

While taking pills is relatively convenient and quick, experts say that more flexible ingredient release systems are an important prerequisite for opening up the market in the emotional wellness space, and to appeal to a broader consumer base, companies are looking for ways to increase the effectiveness of mood-supporting ingredients in liquid solutions and gummies, according to Maggie McNamara, director of marketing at Gencor. and gummies.

As ingredient release technology continues to innovate, so does the effectiveness of the ingredients in products,” McNamara said. New technologies are improving the efficacy and speed of release of these ingredients. For example, Gencor’s brand, HydroCurc, has the best bioavailability of curcumin in a single dose of any comparable product on the market due to its patented Lipisperse release technology, and this has been clinically proven.”

Lipisperse is a cold water dispersion technology that allows solid, powdered lipophilic ingredients that traditionally have low bioavailability and poor solubility to be easily dispersed in cold water.

Gencor has also developed another classical release system, AquaCelle. a customizable self-microemulsifying drug release system that optimizes the bioavailability of lipophilic ingredients such as resveratrol. As ingredient release technology advances, it will further advance research and testing in the form of product applications for mood-supporting ingredients.

Trend 5
Consumers are looking for multifunctional solutions

Industry trends change rapidly, and some are only fleeting, but experts say the growth momentum in the emotional support ingredient segment is expected to continue further.Kristen Marshall, digital marketing manager at Verdure Sciences, says the emotional support segment will continue to grow. She noted that consumer demand reflects the current broader societal discussion on topics such as mental health and balanced lifestyles.

Consumers are looking for more targeted product features that actually address their needs,” Marshall said. They want to be able to get multiple benefits from one product. As consumers come to recognize the direct link between different areas of health, the need for multifunctional solutions to support them is emerging, which is further spurring product innovation. For example, dual fatigue from both mental and physical sources can lead to a compromised immune system.”

Emotional support supplements have attracted more attention from consumers and suppliers in recent years, and emerging ingredients are becoming more cutting-edge. As more and more consumers begin to seek out natural solutions for their health, the field is poised to attract more people and usher in further research and development. The emergence of personalized solutions and multi-functional mood support supplements will further empower the future growth of the mood support supplements market as they form a separate market category.