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
hootenanny03 · 6 points
You are obviously have a great deal of knowledge on this topic and I am not accusing you or your organization of foul play. You are selling Ashwagandha extract which is true and not misleading. I am not under an NDA. What I know is that Sensoril / Natreon are claiming to have a product that is standardized to a certain levels of chemical markers and after testing their material and reviewing their method with their name on the SOP it is clear that someone in their organization is acting in criminal bad faith. I've been doing this for almost 2 decades and I do not use the word criminal lightly.
When we run HP TLC we run plant materials verified by DNA. So you are correct, extracts do not contain DNA themselves but their starting materials do.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Natrium Health & Nootropics Depot
If you read the posts I linked above, it's not that simple. The USP monograph for withanolides only looks at 8. There are hundreds of withanolides, though. There are 40 in ashwagandha alone. Yes, if you go by the USP monograph, neither KSM-66 nor Sensoril has what the patent holders claim. Does that mean they are perpetrating a criminal fraud, or does that mean they are looking at different compounds than the old USP method, and they don't want to disclose things for intellectual property reasons? They clearly have an effect in lots of people, and we have done blinded testing with people who chose them as their favorites. So they are not just inactive filler. However, I do agree that if they are going to make a claim, they need to show the data to back that claim up. They have not done so as of yet. Read into that what you will.
I do love your passion, though! This industry is shady as fuck, and I am glad you called out the dry labbing. We have caught multiple dry labs now. It's a big problem. Amazon is the worst for it. We test the top 10 products on categories all the time, and they almost all fail. We try to tell Amazon about it, but they ignore us. We actually got warned that if we made too much noise WE would be punished for it, not the other brands. So keep on keeping on! Test all that shit, and call everyone out! I've done it for years, but I had to pull back some because of blowback. It would be nice to have someone else calling the shady shit out, too!