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Guest
Let’s face the facts...no one will test a product because it sucks or is ineffective. Our competition tested (or pretended to) in hopes of finding an illicit substance because the product works as designed. It destroys fat and it does it quickly.
The weight/fat-loss stories continue to pour in and it climbed up the bodybuilding.com best seller list at record time (number 4 and number 1 weightloss product) and it is the talk of the industry from distribution to retail.
We faced false allegations with Jack3d. We are facing them with Pink Magic. I'm sure we will continue to face false accusations. At the end of the day, it's simply a witch hunt I doubt anyone can truly believe at this point.
Getting back to the "test" in question...
Who says the active constituent is the flavonoid portion of Bauhinia purpurea?
The compound of interest certainly isn't a flavonoid, so it's no surprise that they would find very little of it. That was the wrong choice for a reference standard which is the lab's fault, not ours.
What was the reference standard for the Cirsium oligophyllum?
Nothing is even stated. Or was this a magic spectrophotometer? Yet again, using the incorrect compound(s) for reference standards will tend to cause these results...you know, if that is not the principle or active compound in the product then of course you're not going to find it in substantial quantities.
For those that gleaned their analytical chemistry skills from watching CSI, an explanation is probably in order.
Unlike Hollywood would have you believe, learning the identity and quantity of a compound or compounds isn't a matter of sticking a piece of whatever you find into a hole and then, voila, you get a list of everything and anything that was in whatever you put in.
Now, using HPLC alone for such purposes is questionable enough (GC-MS or LC-MS would be much more ideal for qualitative purposes) but that is digressing.
How does this stuff work? Well, here is an example. Let's say you want to know how much caffeine is in your morning cup of coffee. In this case, you at least know what you're looking for so this makes matters a little easier.
But, before you do any actual testing, you must develop a method (though in the case of caffeine in coffee, this has already been taken care of/been beaten to death and can be located on file in the software program for the machine) and you must also validate that method.
You must confirm the column you're using, the solvents (mobile phase and sample) and their amounts (ratio), flow rate, method of detection (e.g., uv-vis), etc., and also confirm that whatever you've done prior to injection (cleanup) of the sample, hasn't affected the levels of the compound and is giving an accurate picture of things. In the case of getting caffeine from coffee, it's generally just a matter of running it through filter paper once or twice, but with other more complex media, it can require solid phase extraction (SPE) which is quite another thing all together as that requires the correct selection of a particular column/cartridge that suits your needs and having a method already established which will yield good results.
You must also of course have a pure and well characterized reference standard, which in the case of caffeine, isn't hard to come by.
But, when you're talking about novel compounds, this can be much more difficult as it can require one to create their own reference standard which can be difficult and time consuming.
All of these things noted above are so that you can quite simply, be sure that A) you truly are detecting the compound you're seeking and not including something else (e.g., degradation products, closely related compounds, etc.) and B) that you're correctly identifying the amount of that compound present in the sample.
There really are a large number of areas for error with this and other chromatographic equipment. Doing naive things like overloading a given compound can create the feared shark fins and if one isn't careful, issues of contamination can arise and you'll start seeing a compound in every sample you assay thereafter. At the end of the day, if your sample which has a known amount of let's say 100 mg, and you're only detecting 25 mg, then you method isn't very good and you have to go back to the drawing board.
But, going back to the two plants, Bauhinia purpurea and Cirsium oligophyllum, if you're going to "look" for them via HPLC, you need to define a standard compound present in them and then after, obtain a reference standard for it.
Well, if you’re looking for the wrong compound in Bauhinia purpurea, then of course it won’t be there in significant quantities!
The same goes for C. oligophyllum.
Which, interestingly enough, the lab provides no compound which was used as a reference standard. This is just very odd unless they have magic on their side.
What makes this even more interesting in the case of Cirsium oligophyllum is that the plant hasn’t been well characterized in terms of specific compounds present in it (at least not publically in the literature) so that also makes this result quite interesting.
Not only were they able to determine a principle constituent that isn’t reported in the literature, but they’ve also developed a reference standard for it and validated their method all in a rather short period of time? Surely, we must know the name of a such a powerhouse organization that can accomplish such feats in a small amount of time.
Accuracy is also questioned in this lab tested for quantification. Generally the chance of variability increases as the % concentration decreases. This is why its difficult for competitors to test a product after it has been manufactured; when the percent of the compound drops below 5%, it becomes very difficult for the lab to be able to determine an accurate result.
In the pharmaceutical industry, when the percent of ingredient is that low, generally scale up test are performed – meaning they will blend it with just one other ingredient to make a 50% blend, test that, validate it, then scale it up higher and validate that test and so forth.
This is the correct measure that is supposed to be taken when validating a blend for active ingredients.
Unfortunately because this is an attempt to reverse engineer a product.. these test are not that accurate, and even the lab itself would not stand behind these results if they were presented in court.
The person posting it won't tell anyone who the supposed lab is that did the testing. Why?
If it's a fact that this testing did occur and they have the samples, what's the problem?
I don't know of any lab that won't stand behind their work and saying anything about libel (in the US anyhow) is nonsense as well, as this would be a purely factual and an objective report.
Papers are published all the time in the literature on such things, even in the lay media like Consumer Reports.
If your methods have been validated and you can replicate your work, I don’t know of anyone who wouldn’t stand behind their results.
Could it be that this is a fake lab report done by anyone with access to a computer and printer (we know how hard those are to come by)?
Or, is this a real lab assay report but the “lab” that reported these values isn’t very confident in their methods?
Or perhaps it is because the lab itself isn’t going to say what this anonymous poster is implying, i.e., the product is under-dosed with these plants when in fact, they’re not saying any such thing, merely that they aren’t able to detect the compounds in the capsules, which are being used as a reference standard.
The weight/fat-loss stories continue to pour in and it climbed up the bodybuilding.com best seller list at record time (number 4 and number 1 weightloss product) and it is the talk of the industry from distribution to retail.
We faced false allegations with Jack3d. We are facing them with Pink Magic. I'm sure we will continue to face false accusations. At the end of the day, it's simply a witch hunt I doubt anyone can truly believe at this point.
Getting back to the "test" in question...
Who says the active constituent is the flavonoid portion of Bauhinia purpurea?
The compound of interest certainly isn't a flavonoid, so it's no surprise that they would find very little of it. That was the wrong choice for a reference standard which is the lab's fault, not ours.
What was the reference standard for the Cirsium oligophyllum?
Nothing is even stated. Or was this a magic spectrophotometer? Yet again, using the incorrect compound(s) for reference standards will tend to cause these results...you know, if that is not the principle or active compound in the product then of course you're not going to find it in substantial quantities.
For those that gleaned their analytical chemistry skills from watching CSI, an explanation is probably in order.
Unlike Hollywood would have you believe, learning the identity and quantity of a compound or compounds isn't a matter of sticking a piece of whatever you find into a hole and then, voila, you get a list of everything and anything that was in whatever you put in.
Now, using HPLC alone for such purposes is questionable enough (GC-MS or LC-MS would be much more ideal for qualitative purposes) but that is digressing.
How does this stuff work? Well, here is an example. Let's say you want to know how much caffeine is in your morning cup of coffee. In this case, you at least know what you're looking for so this makes matters a little easier.
But, before you do any actual testing, you must develop a method (though in the case of caffeine in coffee, this has already been taken care of/been beaten to death and can be located on file in the software program for the machine) and you must also validate that method.
You must confirm the column you're using, the solvents (mobile phase and sample) and their amounts (ratio), flow rate, method of detection (e.g., uv-vis), etc., and also confirm that whatever you've done prior to injection (cleanup) of the sample, hasn't affected the levels of the compound and is giving an accurate picture of things. In the case of getting caffeine from coffee, it's generally just a matter of running it through filter paper once or twice, but with other more complex media, it can require solid phase extraction (SPE) which is quite another thing all together as that requires the correct selection of a particular column/cartridge that suits your needs and having a method already established which will yield good results.
You must also of course have a pure and well characterized reference standard, which in the case of caffeine, isn't hard to come by.
But, when you're talking about novel compounds, this can be much more difficult as it can require one to create their own reference standard which can be difficult and time consuming.
All of these things noted above are so that you can quite simply, be sure that A) you truly are detecting the compound you're seeking and not including something else (e.g., degradation products, closely related compounds, etc.) and B) that you're correctly identifying the amount of that compound present in the sample.
There really are a large number of areas for error with this and other chromatographic equipment. Doing naive things like overloading a given compound can create the feared shark fins and if one isn't careful, issues of contamination can arise and you'll start seeing a compound in every sample you assay thereafter. At the end of the day, if your sample which has a known amount of let's say 100 mg, and you're only detecting 25 mg, then you method isn't very good and you have to go back to the drawing board.
But, going back to the two plants, Bauhinia purpurea and Cirsium oligophyllum, if you're going to "look" for them via HPLC, you need to define a standard compound present in them and then after, obtain a reference standard for it.
Well, if you’re looking for the wrong compound in Bauhinia purpurea, then of course it won’t be there in significant quantities!
The same goes for C. oligophyllum.
Which, interestingly enough, the lab provides no compound which was used as a reference standard. This is just very odd unless they have magic on their side.
What makes this even more interesting in the case of Cirsium oligophyllum is that the plant hasn’t been well characterized in terms of specific compounds present in it (at least not publically in the literature) so that also makes this result quite interesting.
Not only were they able to determine a principle constituent that isn’t reported in the literature, but they’ve also developed a reference standard for it and validated their method all in a rather short period of time? Surely, we must know the name of a such a powerhouse organization that can accomplish such feats in a small amount of time.
Accuracy is also questioned in this lab tested for quantification. Generally the chance of variability increases as the % concentration decreases. This is why its difficult for competitors to test a product after it has been manufactured; when the percent of the compound drops below 5%, it becomes very difficult for the lab to be able to determine an accurate result.
In the pharmaceutical industry, when the percent of ingredient is that low, generally scale up test are performed – meaning they will blend it with just one other ingredient to make a 50% blend, test that, validate it, then scale it up higher and validate that test and so forth.
This is the correct measure that is supposed to be taken when validating a blend for active ingredients.
Unfortunately because this is an attempt to reverse engineer a product.. these test are not that accurate, and even the lab itself would not stand behind these results if they were presented in court.
The person posting it won't tell anyone who the supposed lab is that did the testing. Why?
If it's a fact that this testing did occur and they have the samples, what's the problem?
I don't know of any lab that won't stand behind their work and saying anything about libel (in the US anyhow) is nonsense as well, as this would be a purely factual and an objective report.
Papers are published all the time in the literature on such things, even in the lay media like Consumer Reports.
If your methods have been validated and you can replicate your work, I don’t know of anyone who wouldn’t stand behind their results.
Could it be that this is a fake lab report done by anyone with access to a computer and printer (we know how hard those are to come by)?
Or, is this a real lab assay report but the “lab” that reported these values isn’t very confident in their methods?
Or perhaps it is because the lab itself isn’t going to say what this anonymous poster is implying, i.e., the product is under-dosed with these plants when in fact, they’re not saying any such thing, merely that they aren’t able to detect the compounds in the capsules, which are being used as a reference standard.