Comment · Wed, March 11, 2026 · ND Owner
how legitimate is a 22 percent Eurycomanones in a tongkat ali supplement?
Original post in this thread
kusomisoyaranaika · 12 points
I have been a loyal Nootropics Depot customer (especially their Tongkat Ali) for close to a decade and I know how most suppliers of tongkat ali supplements have negligible eurycomanone content. Refer to: https://nootropicsdepot.com/articles/what-you-need-to-know-about-tongkat-ali-extracts/
Therefore, when a supplement company from my side of the world (Southeast Asia where Tongkat Ali is produced) is claiming to have a standardised 22 percent eurycomanone product at 20 USD per bottle, I am a little skeptical. I am just wondering whether do you think the logistics/price point checks out? Is this a legitimate brand? Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
What they were answering
kusomisoyaranaika · 8 points
I just called the company and spoke to the head chemist for over an hour. After telling her about all the information that I gathered from everyone here, and telling her that I would be sending a bottle to Omnient Labs, she said that the website was in error and it is supposed to be 22 percent eurypeptides instead of eurycomanone.
I also told her that her magnesium glycinate doesnt logically add up. You cant be selling 1000mg of magnesium glycinate and have 200mg free magnesium without pumping up the magnesium content in other ways. She said that they will be selling an unbuffered version from Albion in the upcoming months soon.
Having said that, she said that her company is trying very hard to get testing for magnesium glycinate but she says that (and here, for people with industry information please jump in!) many supplement testing labs simply do not have the capability to verify the glycinate ligand or the chelated structure. They test the magnesium mineral only. Because labs mainly confirm magnesium levels, a manufacturer could theoretically:
• use magnesium oxide or another cheap salt
• add some glycine
• label it magnesium glycinate
and a simple magnesium assay would still pass. As such, its very hard for her to find a proper lab which can accurately test for magnesium glycinate.
Anyways I referred her to Omnientlabs and she said shell be sending you guys an emai…
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
Eurypeptides are fake. They don't exist. Those numbers literally come from a single study that used the Lowry's total protein assay, which then they just take that total protein number and call it eurypeptides. For one, that's stupid because Lowry's method is massively susceptible to matrix interferences from plant secondary metabolites, particularly polyphenols, flavonoids, tannins, and phenolic acids, which react with the assay's reagents to produce false-positive results. So not only are they not even measuring specific peptides, they are not even measuring protein, because it it just a colorimetric assay that sees a bunch of plant compounds as protein.
Here are some more details on the issue:
Lowry's assay relies on the reduction of copper and Folin-Ciocalteu reagent. Botanical extracts often contain natural reducing agents, such as ascorbic acid or certain sugars, which trigger the color change and artificially inflate absorbance readings. Then the polyphenols, flavonoids, tannins, and phenolic acids can directly reduce the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent as well. The Lowry method's color development depends heavily on the presence of specific aromatic amino acids like tyrosine and tryptophan as well, so the amino acid profile of the proteins in the plants massively affects the total number. Also, botanical extracts are often naturally pigmented (from chlorophyll or anthocyanins). This inherent color can interfere with the spectrophotometric measurement directly, as it may overlap with the blue-green color (650–750 nm) produced by the assay. Plants also contain various non-peptide nitrogen compounds, such as alkaloids or free amino acids, that may react with the reagents and be incorrectly counted as part of the total peptide quantity. Tongkat is high in canthin-6-one and β-carboline alkaloids, which both will throw the assay off. It's a meaningless measurement with no basis in any scientific evidence whatsoever. The data is clear: the quassinoids like eurycomanone are the primary bioactives in Tongkat Ali. Everything else is just marketing bullshit meant to trick consumers.