Plate I.
In plain words
Three products. Which one, and what to expect.
These are capsules and tablets you swallow. They are food supplements, not medicines, and not one of them is a treatment for hair loss. What they do is supply nutrients that a growing follicle draws on, in amounts printed on the pack and checkable against the tables further down this page.
Alpha Biselen
Capsule, 30
Zinc, selenium and biotin, each at the full European reference amount, with pine bark and nettle extracts. The starting point of the three.
Alpha Biselen Intense
Film-coated tablet, 30
The same three nutrients alongside hydrolysed collagen, grape seed and green tea extracts, iron and tocotrienols. The fuller formulation, not a stronger one.
Alpha Biselen DHT
Softgel capsule, 30
Saw palmetto, pumpkin seed oil and black cumin seed oil. There is no vitamin or mineral in it at all, and no authorised European wording for anything in it.
How many, and when
The daily amount is printed on each carton and is not yet on this page. It will be, once we have checked it against the approved artwork rather than from memory.
What these will not do
None of these will bring back hair that has already gone, and none of them treats a medical cause of hair loss. If hair is coming out in patches, or came out suddenly, or arrived with any other change in health, the person to see is a doctor and not a pharmacist. And whatever anyone takes, the follicle keeps its own schedule. Nothing becomes visible in less than about three months, which is a fact about hair rather than a promise about a capsule.
Before you choose, one test
One ingredient here deserves a sentence of its own. Alpha Biselen carries 20 mg of iron and Intense carries 30 mg, which is 143 and 214 per cent of the European reference amount. Both sit inside the 40 mg a day that EFSA set as a safe level of supplemental intake for adults in 2024, so neither is a safety problem in itself. But iron is the one nutrient in this range that should not be taken on spec. Low iron stores are a genuine and common cause of hair shedding, and they are also easy to measure: a ferritin test settles it. Roughly one person in two hundred of northern European descent carries a genetic condition that makes them absorb too much iron, and long-term supplementation is the wrong thing for them. If you do not know your ferritin, that is the test to ask for before choosing between these three.
00 / The hair cycle
Three products.
One question each.
Hair is not one problem, so we did not build one product. The follicle runs to a schedule, and a schedule can fall short for more than one reason. Each of the three below answers a different reason. None of them is a stronger version of another.
01 / What it runs on
The follicle is expensive to run.
Growing a shaft is among the fastest protein syntheses in the body. It draws on zinc, selenium and biotin, on iron carried as ferritin, and on the collagen scaffold around the papilla. European law authorises a claim for some of these and not for others. These are the five we are permitted, in the exact words they were authorised in.
Zinc contributes to the maintenance of normal hair
Selenium contributes to the maintenance of normal hair
Biotin contributes to the maintenance of normal hair
Copper contributes to normal hair pigmentation
Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of skin
02 / The three
Segmented by cause, not by strength.
There is no entry-level version here and no premium one. The three formulations answer three different shortfalls, and the right one for a given patient is decided by the reason, not by the budget.
01
Alpha Biselen
Capsule, 30
Zinc at 10 mg, selenium at 55 mcg and biotin at 50 mcg. Each of those supplies 100% of the European Nutrient Reference Value, which is the threshold that permits the three hair claims above to be made at all. Vitamin C at 80 mg, niacin at 16 mg, vitamin E at 12 mg, pantothenic acid at 6 mg.
Pine bark and nettle extracts and silicon are in the formulation. None of them carries an authorised European claim, so we make none for them.
02
Alpha Biselen Intense
Film-coated tablet, 30
The same three nutrients, at higher provision. Biotin at 90 mcg is 180% of the reference value. Zinc at 7.5 mg and selenium at 50 mcg remain well above the threshold. Copper at 1 mg is the reason this is the only one of the three that can carry the hair pigmentation claim. Vitamin C, niacin, B6, folate and vitamin D each at 100%.
Hydrolysed collagen, grape seed OPC, green tea EGCG, tocotrienols and the amino acid complex carry no authorised European claim. Collagen was assessed by EFSA and refused one, and methionine and cysteine were refused hair claims specifically.
03
Alpha Biselen DHT
Softgel capsule, 30
Saw palmetto at 320 mg, pumpkin seed oil at 300 mg, black cumin seed oil at 100 mg. There is no vitamin or mineral in this formulation.
Every botanical in it sits on the European Commission’s on-hold list, and in April 2025 the Court of Justice closed the route that let companies use on-hold claims anyway. So we can tell you exactly what is in the capsule and how much of it. We can tell you nothing about what it does. We would rather print that sentence than write around it.
04 / What is in it
All three, in full.
Every number below is printed on the pack. The column on the right is the amount another company may include and still carry the identical sentence on the front, because European law sets the threshold for a nutrient claim at fifteen per cent of the reference value rather than at the reference value itself.
Alpha Biselen, one capsule
Nutrient and form
In ours
Of reference value
Legal minimum
Vitamin C, as L-ascorbic acid
80 mg
100%
12 mg
Vitamin E, as acetate
12 mg
100%
1.8 mg
Vitamin B3, as nicotinamide
16 mg
100%
2.4 mg
Vitamin B5, as calcium D-pantothenate
6 mg
100%
0.9 mg
Zinc, as bisglycinate
10 mg
100%
1.5 mg
Selenium, as L-selenomethionine
55 mcg
100%
8.25 mcg
Biotin, as D-biotin
50 mcg
100%
7.5 mcg
Iron, as Miron
20 mg
143%
2.1 mg
Pine bark extract, Pinus pinaster
100 mg
no NRV
no minimum
Stinging nettle extract, Urtica dioica
75 mg
no NRV
no minimum
Colloidal silicon dioxide
10 mg
no NRV
no minimum
Alpha Biselen Intense, one tablet
Nutrient and form
In ours
Of reference value
Legal minimum
Collagen hydrolysate, type I, fish source
175 mg
no NRV
no minimum
Grape seed extract, over 95% OPC
100 mg
no NRV
no minimum
Mixed tocotrienols, palm TRF
100 mg
no NRV
no minimum
Vitamin C, as L-ascorbic acid
80 mg
100%
12 mg
Green tea extract, 50% EGCG
50 mg
no NRV
no minimum
L-methionine
40 mg
no NRV
no minimum
Iron, as Miron
30 mg
214%
2.1 mg
Vitamin B3, as nicotinamide
16 mg
100%
2.4 mg
Inositol
10 mg
no NRV
no minimum
Choline bitartrate
10 mg
no NRV
no minimum
L-lysine hydrochloride
10 mg
no NRV
no minimum
L-cysteine hydrochloride
10 mg
no NRV
no minimum
Zinc, as bisglycinate
7.5 mg
75%
1.5 mg
Vitamin B6, as pyridoxine hydrochloride
1.4 mg
100%
0.21 mg
Copper, as gluconate
1 mg
100%
0.15 mg
Folate, as folic acid
200 mcg
100%
30 mcg
Biotin, as D-biotin
90 mcg
180%
7.5 mcg
Selenium, as sodium selenite
50 mcg
91%
8.25 mcg
Vitamin D3, lichen source
5 mcg
100%
0.75 mcg
Colloidal silicon dioxide
5 mg
no NRV
no minimum
Alpha Biselen DHT, one capsule
Nutrient and form
In ours
Of reference value
Legal minimum
Saw palmetto extract
320 mg
no NRV
no minimum
Pumpkin seed oil
300 mg
no NRV
no minimum
Black seed oil
100 mg
no NRV
no minimum
Biotin at fifty micrograms, not ten milligrams. Hair supplements commonly carry one to two hundred times the reference value. At those levels biotin interferes with immunoassays, including thyroid function tests and troponin, and can make a healthy person’s results read as disease. Ours sits at the reference value, so a patient taking it does not have to stop before a blood test.
On the choice of salt
The panel cannot tell two salts apart.
Percentage of reference value is calculated on the element, not on the compound that carries it. Ten milligrams of zinc as oxide and ten as bisglycinate both print one hundred per cent, and both carry the same authorised sentence. Where a form in the tables above was chosen for absorption rather than for cost, this is the reason, and this is its limit.
Zinc, as bisglycinate
A randomised crossover in fifteen adults, given ten milligrams of zinc, which is the amount this capsule carries, measured fractional absorption at 49.9 per cent from zinc oxide against 61.3 from citrate and 60.9 from gluconate. Bisglycinate was not in that trial. A separate crossover in twelve women found bisglycinate about forty-three per cent higher than gluconate by area under the curve. Taken together, the spread between the best and the worst of these forms is on the order of one and a half times. That is worth having and it is not worth exaggerating. A 2024 review of this literature is candid that the trials are small and rest on serum zinc, which is an imperfect marker.
Selenium, as L-selenomethionine
Selenomethionine is taken up into body protein in place of methionine, so it is retained on a different schedule from the inorganic salts. Retention is not the same thing as effect and we do not present it as one. Alpha Biselen uses it. Intense uses sodium selenite. The difference between two products in the same family is with the manufacturer.
Vitamin B3, as nicotinamide
Nicotinamide and nicotinic acid are both vitamin B3 and both count identically towards the reference value. Nicotinamide does not produce the flushing that nicotinic acid can cause at these amounts. That is a tolerability choice rather than an absorption one, and it is not a claim about bioavailability.
Extracts named to their marker
An extract with no marker content stated is not a dose, it is a description. The formulation this one replaces carried ten milligrams each of grape seed and green tea with nothing said about strength. Intense now carries a hundred milligrams of grape seed standardised to more than ninety-five per cent OPC and fifty milligrams of green tea standardised to fifty per cent EGCG. That is ten times the grape seed and five times the green tea, and for the first time a figure a practitioner can check. It also places the EGCG at twenty-five milligrams, well below the intake at which EFSA identified liver signals for green tea catechins taken as supplements. Neither extract carries an authorised claim and we make none for either.
None of this is a statement about a person. How much of a substance is absorbed is a property of the substance. Add three words, so it works better, and it becomes a health claim. Then it is no longer ours to write.
03 / The line
What a claim cannot tell you.
European law lets a supplement say that a nutrient contributes to the maintenance of normal hair, and it sets the bar for saying it at fifteen per cent of the reference value. A product containing 1.5 mg of zinc therefore carries exactly the same sentence as one containing ten.
That is the whole reason the table above exists. A claim cannot separate a considered formulation from a legal minimum, which makes the front of a pack the least informative surface on it. Only the composition tells them apart, so ours is printed in full.
There is one thing we will not say. Pattern hair loss is a classified condition, and a supplement presented as treating it becomes an unlicensed medicine. If hair loss follows a pattern the person to see is a dermatologist, and the answer may be a prescription rather than anything we sell. We would rather be the company that says so first.
Elsewhere in the range
For healthcare professionals: the hair cycle, the workup, and the evidence behind these nutrients.