Comment · Tue, July 16, 2019 · Natrium Health & Nootropics Depot
Your ashwagandha is probably fake. Douglas laboratories is a recommended brand.
Original post in this thread
bssmx · 0 points
Out of dozens of brands, only 2 passed the consumer lab tests.
Many of these brands supposedly use KSM-66 or Sensoril. Still, this claim doesn't make these brands reliable, as many on reddit believe.
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Something is very wrong with the nootropics/supplements industry when almost no brand has decent quality control, unlike with FDA-regulated pharmaceuticals. All of the "reviews" found online are completely useless, and moreover misleading, if they don't do do lab tests. It's a bunch of people writing about their placebo experience.
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Dr. Rudy Tanzi recommends Douglas laboratories
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"The only supplement I take is called ashwagandha, which has anti-amyloid effects. Unfortunately, most of the ashwagandha you’ll find online does not work. The best one comes from Douglas Labs, but you need to get it through a doctor."
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https://www.agingcare.com/articles/only-take-three-supplements-176951.htm
[https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/ashwagandha\_supplements/ashwagandha/](https:/…
What they were answering
bssmx · -2 points
/u/misteryouaresodumb
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Natrium Health & Nootropics Depot
What do you want info on? Ashwagandha is one of the most expensive ones to test properly, as there are a bunch of withanolides whose standards cost a lot. It cost us $2,500 just for the reference standards. Then I had to buy a $40,000 microgram scale, so we didn't have to use all 10mg of each standard to make a stock solution that would only do 10-20 tests. It's very expensive. So pretty much everyone out there is use two marker standards, then running calibration curves for the others. That's shitty analytical chemistry, but is what 99% of the people out there are doing, if they are even doing content analysis at all. That's apart from properly HP-TLC testing for identity and plant part, which nobody really does.
A LOT of the ashwagandha from China is fake. I have not been able to figure out what plant it is yet, but over the past couple years we have had half a dozen batches come through fake. There are no withanolides, and it's a completely different plant extract. We stopped using those suppliers altogether, and go direct to India now. I am not sure about Consumer Lab's reporting, as I am not going to sign up to see their stuff. Maybe I will use fake info to sign up to see the report, and I will sit down with my lab director to analyze it. Based on how scammy their whole site seems, I am not too hopeful they did things right, but who knows.
I did see this article: https://anh-usa.org/what-you-need-to-know-about-consumerlab-com/
That makes Consumer Lab seem very suspect to me. I don't trust anyone anymore. Everyone is a liar or too ignorant to know any better. It's why I have brought as much as I can in-house. When I can sit down with you in my own office and grill you on the details, then walk into our lab and physically see things being tested, only then will I be confident in the legitimacy of things. I think everyone wants to remain blissfully ignorant to what is actually happening in the background, because the truth would mean admitting that everything is a racket.