Sigma - New supplement containing Tongkat Ali made in collaboration with A.Huberman.

I want to start by saying kudos for not immediately attacking me. That's usually what happens in these cases, and it's nice to have that not be the case this time. You wrote a lot of things, but I want to focus on the most important ones: lab testing and quality control. I fear trying to address all your points might detract from the main message of mine.

So to start, 200:1 tongkat ali doesn't exist. Those are fake ratios made up by the manufacturers meant to trick people. The 200:1 extracts out there are actually around 4:1 or 5:1. You can straight up ask the manufacturers about this. They label them as 100:1 and 200:1 because that's what vendors want to see. That's what sells. It makes people think they are buying something much more potent than it really is. Calling any tongkat ali 200:1 is just fraudulent. Moreover, it is an unverifiable marker for quality. Any Chinese supplier can say their tongkat is 200:1. How would you confirm that in the lab? You can't. You cannot test for ratios using analytical methods. The only way to test for quality is using assay of marker compounds. Eurycomanone is the main marker compound in tongkat. So much so that the Malaysian government has minimum standards for the amount of eurycomanone that needs to be in a tongkat ali extract (0.8% to 1.5% at a minimum). The Malaysian standard is called MS 2409:2011. So using eurycomanone as the marker compound is the most appropriate and scientifically valid way to assess tongkat quality. Most of the 100:1 and 200:1 products on the market that we have tested have had ZERO eurycomanone. LJ100 has changed standardizations multiple times. Their current version comes in around 0.5% eurycomanone. They make claims about 40% glycosaponins and 22% eurypeptides. However, that has not been verified using validated methods in the lab. When we inquired about it, the answers we got were super suspicious. Unless I can be given legit lab data to prove numbers, I call BS these days. Even some products claiming to be standardized to eurycomanone fail our lab testing. World A.B.S claims 2.4% eurycomanone, but we only found 0.9%. So even the people claiming to standardize are lying. The highest rated tongkat you mention in your comment? That's Double Wood. They also failed our testing. I could go on and on and on. This is not a problem with one or two vendors in this industry. This entire industry is fraudulent. That's my problem.

So I am just going to get right into it. Who tested your tongkat ali? What methodologies and methods did they use? Was it tested for species and plant part ID using something like HP-TLC? Did you assay for eurycomanone? What about heavy metals? Can you share this lab data? Proper lab testing and quality control is what sets apart legit products from the rest. Unfortunately, that's not the norm. Almost nobody in this industry is doing things properly. Even big brands that I personally used to trust myself have failed testing in our lab now. It's gotten to the point where I don't trust anything that I have not personally verified in my own lab. It's a sad state of affairs for a nootropics and supplements enthusiast like me. When I started out in nootropics and supplements over 12 years ago now, I had to buy from shitty vendors. I didn't know any better at the time. However, it was still the early days, so the state of things being so bad was kind of accepted. However, here we are over a decade later, and I am STILL trying to fight for even the base level of quality control in this industry. There is no excuse these days. It's just a huge shame that things have not changed, and proper lab testing and quality control is still not common.

Now on to the Fadogia. I mentioned the lack of human clinical studies, and the evidence of renal, liver, and testicular toxicity. I think that alone should have precluded the use of this untested plant. It's why I refuse to sell it. It's just not worth the risk. You can mention warnings all you want, but even selling it is irresponsible in my opinion. However, even beyond that issue is the greater problem. It's not even real. Fadogia agrestis literally didn't exist in the market till Huberman went on Rogan. I know, because we are about as connected to the supply chain in this industry as you can possibly be. We probably do more sourcing and testing than almost anyone in the industry. We seriously have thousands of samples of all sorts of shit from countries all over the world. The only product that even claimed to have Fadogia in it (before that Rogan interview) was Barlowe's Herbal Elixirs, and they don't test shit. The supply chain for it literally did not exist yet. It's a super hard plant to grow, and it only grows well in certain areas of Africa. As you can imagine, Africa is not a really reliable fleshed out supply chain. However, when Huberman went on Rogan, almost instantly we had Chinese suppliers offering it to us. So it literally didn't exist one day, then everyone and their mother in China was offering it the next. This happens all the time with China. They are watching everything to see what the next hyped thing is going to be so that they can jump on it. They didn't just create a cultivation program for an obscure plant from Africa in a matter of days, then create a whole extraction and lab testing scheme for it. That's just silly. It's not real! Botanical reference materials don't even exist for it, so you need to get some of the raw plant and send it into a botanist for verification. That's what we do when we bring our extracts from plants that don't have BRMs yet. We get some of the raw plant material before it goes to extraction, and then we work with the botanists at Alkemist to scientifically validate that it is the correct plant species and plant part. Then once we have botanical verification, we use that material to make an HP-TLC fingerprint of it. Then we take the extract made from it, and also create a botanical fingerprint of the extract. We also try to use other plants that might be contaminants or adulterants, so we can spot those bands if we see them in a QC sample. For example: American ginseng in Panax ginseng. That's a common adulterant, and having one of your HP-TLC lanes be an American ginseng BRM can help you to determine if your supplier cut your more expensive Panax ginseng with American. This is the proper way to create botanical ID methods for quality control purposes. Without that, you cannot ensure you are even selling the correct plant to people. Then once you have created the ID methods, you have to create assay methods for the actives. These are not quick or easy things to accomplish. Sometimes it takes us two years or more before we can get a new novel extract out, due to all the lab work. It doesn't happen in days, weeks, or even months. It takes PhD scientists in our lab a long time to do right. For Fadogia, these things don't exist yet. There are no botanical reference materials for the plant. There are no compendial methods to test it. There are no reference standards us to use for assay. There is absolutely no way to be able to sell a properly tested Fadogia agrestris at the current time. So I would ask you if you had lab results for it, but I already know the answer to that question.

There are other things I would like to address from what you said, but I really just want to focus on the main points. I don't want to confuse and distract anyone. My main points are that 200:1 tongkat ali doesn't exist, and most places are not properly lab testing it at all. Fadogia agrestris isn't proven in humans nor safe, and it lacks any ability to properly lab test it at this time. The supply chain is completely fraudulent, and what is being sold on the market from China right now is not even real Fadogia. Just like all the kanna coming out of China is fake right now, too. Scientific integrity matters. The safety and validation of things people are putting into their bodies is of the utmost priority. There is nothing more crucial than ensuring what you claim on the label is what is actually in the product. I think we as business owners in this industry have a legal and moral obligation to do everything humanly possible to ensure what we are selling is exactly as we claim it to be. To do anything less is to put our customers' safety at risk. This is not just a tongkat or fadogia issue, either. It's all botanical extracts in this industry.

Now from your initial tone it seems you are at least reasonable enough to have a back and forth. If you truly care about the state of this industry, and want to make a good product, I would invite you to our facility in Arizona. I can walk you through our lab and show you what it takes to properly test products. I can show you our whole operation, and we can talk about everything wrong with this industry. I have been spending the better part of a decade trying to improve the lab testing and quality control standards of the supplement industry. I have been trying to advocate for consumers, and provide open and honest feedback as to how things actually work, and what needs to change. I want nothing more than to make this industry better. There is nobody in the industry doing the things we are in the lab. However, you won't believe it till you see it in person. If you truly do care about making the best products, let me show you what that actually takes. I would be more than willing to. I would rather make friends than enemies, and seeing what it takes to do things right in the lab will really shed a lot of light on things for you. Trust me, the things I will tell you will surprise you. This industry is so much worse off than you can ever imagine. Perhaps you could help me spread this message. You seem to have a big following, and this message needs to get out to people. This industry needs to change.