Comment · Thu, October 21, 2021 · ND Owner
Reddit AMA | In-House Lab Edition
Original post in this thread
NootropicsDepotGuru · 77 points
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We are very excited to announce that Nootropics Depot will be conducting its first-ever Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), which is a semi-live Q&A session, about our In-House Analytical Laboratory and we would love for you to join us! See below for full details and get your question(s) ready. We hope to see you there!
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STARTS: October 20th | 9am AZ MST
ENDS: October 22nd | 9am AZ M…
What they were answering
sebovarli · 1 points
Alkemist is ISO certified and I noticed they were doing oriveda's reishi analysis for ganoderic acids. So how is is it possible ISO certified labs disagree with each other ?
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
We work with Alkemist all the time, and we asked them for years to test triterpenes in reishi, but they said they couldn't yet. However, it appears as though they just started offering it to Oriveda. I looked at the chromatogram, and the baseline is pretty dirty. That test certainly is not on their ISO scope. My lab director just reached out to Alkemist about it, and they said they are using the USP method. Well that's a QUALITATIVE method from 2015, not a QUANTITATIVE method. Those methods use mannose, glucuronic acid, dextrose, galactose, and L-fructose as the standard solution. Those methods don't use actual reference standards for proper quantification. That's not proper chemistry. I will link you the methods.
Those are fine methods for identifying ganoderic acids in reishi, but not assaying them. If you look at the lab results from Alkemist for the Oriveda stuff, they literally say they are not validated on them.
https://oriveda.com/insert/C-2021/2021-REISHI.pdf#page=1
This method has not been validated for this sample matrix by Alkemist Labs.
This is my entire point. I will not put standardizations on our products unless the science is validated. Incorrect numbers are worse than no numbers at all. As to why Alkemist is doing these methods and releasing the results without validation, not sure. It's not something I am willing to use for our products. I need validation of the accuracy of the methods first.
I do find it funny that the Oriveda results show it failed for ganoderic acids, though. LOL. They claimed 5% and got 1.8%. The Alkemist results literally say "Fail" on them. They then changed their spec on the product to 1.8% to match the Alkemist results... Anyone can pass tests if they change the spec afterward to match the results. Oriveda used to claim 9% triterpenes. Then they modified it to 6%. Then they sent this sample to Alkemist claiming 5%, which failed. Now they claim 1.8%. See what I am saying? When you put numbers on your product that are not validated, this is what happens. This is why we don't put claims on our products till we are sure the science is settled. I'd feel like a total jackass if I claimed 9% for years, then had to lower it to 6%, then had to lower it all the way to 1.8% when a lab finally gave me results. When I realized the limitations of the available methods at the time, we decided to only claim they were present in our extracts. The last thing I want to do is claim a concentration in one of our products, then later have to eat my own words and say it was actually less.
Oriveda also claimed hericenones and erinacines for years; still do. However, they finally removed the results from the lab "proving" those results. The lab they used is not a legitimate lab. We sent them lion's mane samples with no erinacines or hericenones, and told them they contained 1%, 2%, 5%, etc. What results did they give? 1.1%, 2.3%, 5.6%... They make you pay them first, though. It's pay to play. You pay them, then they give you results showing the numbers you want to see. We even tested it further, and sent them yeast extract labeled as lion's mane, and told them we thought it contained 2% erinacines. Sure enough, they came back and said it was lion's mane with over 2% erinacines! It was not even a mushroom. We sent them samples of lion's mane spiked with other terpenes, just to see if maybe they were just using shitty chemistry and assuming any terpene was an erinacine. However, their fake results didn't correlate to our spike levels at all, so we knew the numbers were just fabricated.
So you can see why I prefer to not make claims unless I can be sure they are correct and validated. We'll talk with Alkemist more tomorrow about the methods and its limitations. If they can convince me they have modified the methods to use validated reference standards, I would not have an issue using them to test some of our QC samples of reishi. In fact, I will just likely send them some samples to see what numbers they get. However, I will not put standardizations on our products till I am sure the numbers are accurate and valid.