Comment · Sun, April 25, 2021 · ND Owner
What is the general shelf life/do most nootropics lose potency over time?
Original post in this thread
wewillwewont · 3 points
I am new to nootropics and I am debating if it is worth getting a large amount. Specifically, NALT, lion's mane, polygala, and sabroxy. Do these have a long shelf life?
What they were answering
spread_nutella_on_me · 2 points
This question is why I would love if ND put a best before or expiration date on their products.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
The FDA says that you should not put an expiration date unless you have valid scientific evidence for that claim. This doesn't just mean the product itself. You have to do long-term stability studies of the product in that specific packaging at different temperatures and humidity ranges. Almost nobody in the industry does that. They just slap 2 years from production date and call it a day. That's a violation of FDA guidelines, though. If you look at the last digits of your lot number, that is the production date of your bottle/jar. It's in MMDDYY format. That will tell you when it was made. Most things are extremely stable. We have some things we have been testing for 5 years and have found no degradation.
We do now have a couple big stability chambers, and will be doing long-term stability testing. However, that is a VERY time and labor intensive process. You basically have to put like 10 units of something in the stability chamber, then let it run at high temperatures and humidity. You pull a unit out at various time frames and test it in the lab. Then you plot the results in software, and predict how stable it is at normal temps and humidity based off some conversion factors. That's just for one product. We have hundreds of products. To do long-term stability testing on every one of our products is just not feasible in the short term. We could randomly put 2-3 years from production date like everyone else does, but we don't want to violate FDA guidelines, so we leave them off till we have enough scientific data to support putting a date on there.