Comment · Tue, January 27, 2026 · ND Owner
Curious on y'alls thoughts on this. I spoke to a ayurveda person (ayurveda is where Ashwagandha and Bacopa come from) and he was like for thousands of years we put the herbs into food and ate it long-term and not made extracts out of it. Should we have skepticism over extracts with this logic maybe?
What they were answering
Direct reply to the original post in this thread.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
First off, saying they didn't use extracts in Ayurveda is just wrong. They even have a word for using milk to extract the plants: Ksheerapaka (or Kshirpaka). That's literally a dual extract using water and the fats from the milk to extract both the water and fat soluble compounds. Who was this Ayurveda person you spoke to, and why do they not understand one of the fundamental principals of the practice? This is part of the reason we list that there might be milk allergens in KSM-66. They use the traditional extraction process to make it, which can leave some milk allergens behind.
Second, why would we appeal to authority from a traditional practice made hundreds/thousands of years ago over more recent science? Scientific understanding advances over time. I think using traditional practices as inspiration to inform a starting place is good. However, then you need to connect modern science to it it to really advance things. Indian Ayurvedic practitioners hundreds of years ago didn't have UPLCs, mass specs, or ICP-MS machines. They didn't have the tools we have now to characterize things. Even so, they did use extraction, so it is a moot point in this scenario.