Comment · Fri, December 30, 2022 · Natrium Health & Nootropics Depot
KSM-66 and Sensoril Ashwagandha brands are extremely dishonest.
Original post in this thread
hootenanny03 · 200 points
I work at a supplement testing laboratory where my specialty is HPLC. Every single product that has come through the door with Ashwagandha on the label from these 2 brands is insanely low in withanolide content. Orders of magnitude low. I just got Sensorils HPLC method and I'm seeing how they quantify their product and they are lying liars, like how NBC Dateline with Chris Hansen did with that dry labbing lab in 2012. They aren't quantifying anything, literally making up numbers. Yeah that's right, I'm accusing Sensoril of lying about what is in their product and I have proof, not just in their garbage method but in the dozens of clients samples I've tested that contain literal fairy dust amounts of actives. These products contain no plant DNA either so there's no way you can positively identify that Ashwagandha is in a product.
What's more, I know that there is at least one independent laboratory that is advertising their ability to test Ashwagandha and I have proof that they are literally making up numbers, I sent them a sample with a fake spec and they hit the fake spec right on the money. I have been a chemist for 18 years now and I am extremely reserved about accusing other…
What they were answering
Megatron_McLargeHuge · 38 points
NootropicsDepot sells both and supposedly has the most reliable lab testing of any consumer vendor. Have you looked at their versions?
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Natrium Health & Nootropics Depot
We removed the withanolide claims years ago from those two products, because we found this out in our lab testing. Both Natreon and Ixoreal were not happy with us about it, but we called them out multiple times at Supply Side West about the data being shit. I even sat down with Alkemist there, and showed them our data. They showed me data from them that essentially matched ours. I was very forceful and upfront with both companies, and told them they needed to get their scientific teams to explain to me the discrepancy. They claim that their patented process is complexing the withanolides with other things in the ashwagandha, and that is why the old USP monograph doesn't see them. I made a big post about it in 2019.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NootropicsDepot/comments/dmlck9/consumerlabs_ashwagandha_testing_results/
After my team and I went through all the data, we decided it was best if we just remove the withanolide claims from KAM-66 and Sensoril. They are patented products that we have no control over the formulation of, and people clearly like them. Rather than just dropping products that people like, we decided to just sell them without withanolide claims. Then we worked on our own 12% withanolide ashwagandha, and worked with the people behind Shoden to improve the withanolide assay methods. I also wrote a big post about that project.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NootropicsDepot/comments/i1w47y/shoden_ashwagandha/
We do have the most comprehensive and accurate withanolide testing in the world. There is no question about that. However, for some of the stuff we are under an NDA over, so we can't publicly disclose some of the details. We are also under TMLAs for both KSM-66 and Sensoril, so we are limited in what we can say about those two products. You can read between the lines, though.