The catalogue lists three strip products: Melts™ Brain-Fuel at 30 strips for $40.00, Melts™ NAD+ at 30 strips for $38.92, and Melts Pro™ Selank + Semax at 20 strips for $109.20.
Each is priced by strip count rather than by mass, which is the fact that shapes everything else. This covers why per-strip content is the governing specification, how the three compare on cost, and when the format earns its premium over a vial. The material is supplied for laboratory research only.
| Compound | Vial strengths | Molecular weight | Amino acids |
|---|---|---|---|
| Melts™ NAD+ Dissolving Strips | 30 strips | — | — |
| Melts Pro™ Selank + Semax Dissolving Strips | 20 strips | — | — |
From the Restate Health catalog records. Lot-specific values are on each certificate of analysis.
A unit-dose format changes the question
A vial is a quantity of material from which the user takes what they need. A strip is a fixed unit, manufactured to contain a stated mass, and the user takes units rather than measuring.
That shifts the burden of accuracy from the user to the manufacturer. With a vial, the certificate establishes what is in the container and the user's arithmetic does the rest — reconstitution arithmetic covers that calculation. With a strip, there is no user arithmetic at all, so the manufacturing consistency is the specification.
The consequence is that content uniformity is not one test among several for a strip product; it is the test. Dissolvable strips explained makes the same point, and it is worth restating because strip listings routinely show a purity figure and nothing about uniformity, which is close to the wrong way round.
What content uniformity actually measures
Uniformity testing samples individual units from a batch and measures the content of each, reporting both the mean and the spread. The mean tells you whether the batch is on target; the spread tells you whether any given strip resembles the mean.
A batch with a correct mean and a wide spread is the failure mode that matters, because every summary statistic looks fine while individual units vary. For a format whose entire purpose is to deliver a known quantity without measurement, spread is the number that determines whether the product does its job.
Two manufacturing stages generate it. The casting step, where the solution is spread to a film — uneven thickness becomes uneven content directly. And the drying step, where differential drying across a sheet can concentrate material unevenly before cutting. Neither is visible in the finished strip, which is why the testing exists.
Comparing the three on cost
| Product | Strips | Price | Per strip |
|---|---|---|---|
| Melts™ NAD+ | 30 | $38.92 | $1.30 |
| Melts™ Brain-Fuel | 30 | $40.00 | $1.33 |
| Melts Pro™ Selank + Semax | 20 | $109.20 | $5.46 |
The three strip listings on cost per strip
The first two are close enough that the choice between them is about content rather than cost. The Pro listing is roughly four times the per-strip price and contains fewer strips, which reflects a different composition rather than a premium for the format.
Cost per strip is the right comparison between strip products and the wrong comparison against vials, because a strip and a vial are not units of the same thing. To compare a strip product against a vial you need per-strip mass, at which point the comparison becomes cost per milligram and price per milligram applies. Without a stated per-strip mass, that comparison cannot be made at all — which is the single strongest argument for insisting on it.
Where the format earns its premium
Strips are generally more expensive per milligram than the equivalent vial, and there are three situations where that is money well spent.
Where no reconstitution capability exists. A strip needs no diluent, no sterile technique and no calculation, so a setting without those is better served by a unit-dose format than by a vial it cannot prepare properly.
Where consistency between units matters more than cost. Hand-prepared solutions vary with whoever prepared them; manufactured units vary by the batch specification, which is measured and reported.
And where the quantity needed is small relative to a vial. Buying a vial, reconstituting it and discarding most of it before the re-test date is more expensive per milligram actually used than a strip, even when the strip is dearer per milligram on paper.
NAD+ formats: vial, spray and strips compared and Semax and Selank formats work through the same comparison for two specific compounds.
Counting as a specification
A strip listing states a count — 30 strips, 20 strips — and that number is part of the specification rather than packaging detail.
It matters for two reasons. The count and the per-strip mass together give the total material in the pack, which is the figure needed to compare against a vial at all. And a sachet that arrives short is a quantity discrepancy of the same kind as an underfilled vial, which means counting on receipt belongs in the receiving check.
Receiving and inspecting a peptide shipment covers the protocol; for strips the addition is simply confirming the count before the packaging is discarded, since afterwards there is no way to establish what arrived.
Reading a strip certificate
A strip certificate has two layers and both should be present.
The first is the material: identity and purity of each active component, established before it went into the film. This is the ordinary peptide or small-molecule documentation and nothing about the format changes it.
The second is the product: per-strip content, uniformity across units, and often strip mass and dimensions. This layer is specific to the format and is the one most often thin or missing, because it requires testing finished units rather than the material that went into them.
A certificate carrying only the first layer has documented an ingredient, not a product. It is a necessary half of the answer and not the half that tells you whether the strips in the sachet each contain what they should. What a certificate of analysis does not test for covers the general shape of that gap.
What a strip cannot do
The format has limits that follow from the same properties that make it convenient.
The quantity is not adjustable. A strip delivers what it was made to deliver, so any work needing a quantity between units cannot use the format at all. A vial reconstituted to a chosen concentration can be measured to whatever is needed; a strip cannot be divided reliably, because content is not necessarily distributed evenly across its area.
Loading is bounded. There is a limit to how much material a thin film of a given size can carry while remaining uniform and physically sound, which is why strips tend to exist for compounds used at small masses and not for those used at large ones.
And composition is fixed. A multi-component strip has the same locked-ratio problem as a blend vial, with the additional constraint that each component has to survive the casting and drying process. Blends and single vials covers what a fixed combination costs in flexibility and documentation.
Storage and the packaging
For a strip the packaging is part of the product in a way that a vial's box is not. The barrier properties of the sachet are what keep a thin film dry, and a film with a large surface-to-mass ratio takes up moisture far faster than a lyophilised cake in sealed glass.
Two practical rules follow. Keep strips in their original sealed packaging until use, rather than decanting them into another container. And treat a damaged or previously opened sachet as compromised, because there is no way to assess from appearance how much moisture a film has absorbed.
Storage temperatures: what the specification means covers reading the stated conditions, and for strips the supplier's statement should be followed closely rather than generalised from peptide vial practice.
What to ask before ordering
Per-strip content for each declared component, stated as a mass. A content uniformity result with both mean and spread, not only a mean. And confirmation that the certificate is for the batch being shipped rather than a representative document.
A strip product without a stated per-strip mass is a count of units of unknown content, and no certificate line compensates for that absence. How to verify a certificate of analysis covers confirming the document with the issuing laboratory.