Comment · Tue, August 30, 2016 · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
What is the current best Rhodiola brand?
Original post in this thread
MauledByPorcupines · 15 points
Many of the older brands I can find by searching are discontinued. Can anyone recommend a good brand?
Gaia has popped up in the past as being a notably good brand, but they only standardize to rosavins and not salidroside. Why are they so highly recommended?
Also, is the idea that salidroside is stimulating and rosavins are calming, or something like that?
I'd prefer whole herb caps if possible, although I know a lot of people like Ceretropic's extract.
What they were answering
strangesencha · 1 points
i'm not sure why there has recently been a consensus that rosavins are inert and pointless to standardize to, considering the majority of human clinical trials showing results have used SHR-5. It's obvious that companies are standardizing to rosavins because they generally reflect the natural 3:1 ratio of rosavins:salidrosides, and so its easy enough to judge potency that way, but it is also seems evident that there is definitely some kind of synergy happening and to single out any individual ingredient as being the root of all effects is probably not very wise.
In the very rhodiola despair study that you guys appeal to as evidence that rosavins are inactive, it says "A fixed combination of rhodioloside, rosavin, rosarin and rosin was more active than any of the individual components alone, indicating a synergistic effect of the ingredients in RR extract."
So unless i'm reading this wrong, it appears that not only are rosavins important, but they are possibly even essential for an effective rhodiola formulation. this could be why rhodiola rosea is a more effective herb than its other rhodiola relatives (crenulata, sachalinensis, etc). Since rosavins are unique to rosea, maybe the synergy only occurs in RR.
beyond this, there appears to be some preliminary evidence that salidrosides are sedating.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
Nobody is saying rosavin is inert. The statement was that it was not the compound leading to the stimulatory/antidepressant action of Rhodiola. Also, we have tested a bunch of different extracts with differing levels of rosavins, and found the ones with higher rosavins and lower salidroside to be more sedating, whereas the ones with higher salidroside are more stimulating. Also, our Super Rhodiola is just pure tyrosol and salidroside, and it is more subjectively stimulating than extracts with rosavins in them. It contains zero rosavins, and is still very stimulating. I've tried rosavin, tyrosol, and salidroside all by themselves, and found tyrosol to be the most acutely stimulating, salidroside to be the most endurance enhancing, and rosavin to be sedating. Nobody is saying it is inactive altogether.
In the very rhodiola despair study that you guys appeal to as evidence that rosavins are inactive, it says "A fixed combination of rhodioloside, rosavin, rosarin and rosin was more active than any of the individual components alone, indicating a synergistic effect of the ingredients in RR extract."
I've talked about this before, but I think the reason for that was that they never tested differing combination of them. So a fixed combination of all of them is certainly going to be more stimulating than each individually, as it contains both salidroside and tyrosol. If you read through the full paper, it goes into detail on their methods. The abstract simply forgets to mention tyrosol in that statement you quoted. The actual statement from the study is this:
However, a strongest effect was observed with fixed combination of compounds 1–5, each at a dose of 0.26 mg/kg, reduced the immobility time compared with the control by 81.08%, strongly indicating a synergistic effect of the active ingredients in RR extract.
Compound 2 in the study is tyrosol, and that inclusion is what is affecting the stimulatory action of the mixture, not the rosavin. If they had simply done a combination of just salidroside and tyrosol, I believe it would be even more stimulating than all of them together. They even make the following statements:
The highest anti-depressant effects were exhibited by tyrosol (2) and rhodioloside (1). Rosavin, rosarin (4) and rosin (5) were inactive in this test, as were the possible metabolites of the phenylpropanoid glycosides 3–5, namely, cinnamic alcohol (6), cinnamaldehyde (7) and cinnamic acid (8). Cinnamaldehyde, indeed, showed a significant depressive effect in the Porsolt assay.
Tyrosol (2), an in vivo metabolite of 1, was the most active ingredient of RR reducing the immobility time significantly (by 52.98% compared with the control) at a dose of 0.006 mg/kg. Rhodioloside (1) showed the strongest anti-depressant effect with a reduction of 76.94% in immobility time (compared with the control) at a dose of 0.26 mg/kg. In studies involving humans, rhodioloside has been shown to exhibit an anti-fatigue effect and also to improve mental ability (Aksyonova, 1966; Panossian and Wagner, 2005).
So they even state that rosavin, rosarin, and rosin are inactive by themselves, according to the antidepressant effects. However, tyrosol was the most active on its own. So it stands to reason that a combination of all 5 would be the most stimulating, as you have both tyrosol and salidroside in them. That does not magically make rosavin active in that test. You can try all this on your own. Try tyrosol, salidroside, and rosavin by themselves and see how they make you feel. Then try fixed combinations of each of them in different ratios. That's what we did when developing our Super Rhodiola.
beyond this, there appears to be some preliminary evidence that salidrosides are sedating.
That was 55mg/kg via intraperitoneal injection in mice. It did not reduce sleep latency at 25mg/kg, though. Even corrected for allometric scaling, that is much higher than human dosages. So the lowest dose in mice, which is higher than any human would ever take, did not reduce sleep latency. I would hardly throw out all the human evidence for salidroside being stimulating from this one mouse study using extremely large dosages.