KSM66: Any benefits going above 600mg?
- Thread starter Madevilz
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ValiantThor08
Board Sponsor
You could always go a few weeks at 600mg, and then raise it for a few weeks. Doubtful that you will experience anything beyond 600mg. Now, I personally like sensoril better than KSM, it provides the body what seems like a more relaxed feeling; good pre bed, but is a little more expensive.
KingErgogenic
Member
Ashwagandha caused me EMOTIONAL numbness, anhedonia and diminished orgasm.
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N2ofusion
Active member
I had a very bad experience on high dose Sensoril. Totally out of my mind and foggy and overall terrible feeling. I also had tried Swanson ashwaganda, 2 caps caused a lot of issues, awake when I wanted to sleep yet groggy and tired during the day.
However, after a long break, I’ve learned to love Ash. around 200mg. Nutrex nooghanda seems to be my favorite, with KSM-66 second.
ValiantThor08
Board Sponsor
I had done months of KSM at 600mg, and then months at 1g sensoril, and do not recall all of those negative effects. My wife and I are on 600mg ksm now, so I will be mindful to notice anything that you experienced. However, it may be that most people do not experience what you experienced.
Madevilz
Member
I wish we could buy Nooghanda standalone. Its not popular enough, but I really enjoyed the two tubs of Alpha Pump I have used.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
Sorry to hear that, but it’s just an n=1 anecdote, and there’s a ton of research on ashwagandha, as well as literally thousands of years of traditional use, that show these are quite uncommon side effects.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
Most people irrefutably do NOT experience these adverse effects. This is confirmed by the ton of people who love it on this forum, tons of studies, and literally thousands of years of traditional use. If most people experienced these effects, it wouldn’t have stuck around as an Ayurvedic cornerstone for so long.
SMS
Member
in the past these herbs were taken only when there was an issue to deal with..
ayurvedic medicine => natural and effective with lots of benefits from same plants prepared in different ways.
But this does not mean you should use it daily, believing there won´t be any side effect, Which actually is an issue rising up in society today for everything. (plant extracts, stims, drugs..etc)
- if its good, use more quantity and for much longer period of time.
- if its bad because of ones abuse, start bashing it untill it is banned.
people are just going to the extremes..
ayurvedic medicine => natural and effective with lots of benefits from same plants prepared in different ways.
But this does not mean you should use it daily, believing there won´t be any side effect, Which actually is an issue rising up in society today for everything. (plant extracts, stims, drugs..etc)
- if its good, use more quantity and for much longer period of time.
- if its bad because of ones abuse, start bashing it untill it is banned.
people are just going to the extremes..
muscleupcrohn
Legend
You do know that there are actually quite a few studies on healthy/normal people showing a myriad of benefits and a very solid safety profile, right? There is nothing at all "extreme" about 600mg/day KSM-66, or likely even double that (the active compound is withanolides, and I've seen studies showing safety and efficacy with 100mg/day withanolides, which would be 2000mg of KSM-66). And ashwagandha was NOT only used to treat "issues" or illnesses in Ayurveda. It was often given to middle aged and elderly people to increase longevity, for example. It is an adaptogen, by definition it is very useful any time you are subject to stress, physical or otherwise. It's very name, besides alluding to it smelling like horse, also refers to it giving users the strength of a horse. That's hardly just treating an "issue to deal with." For example:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3252722/
Aleksandar37
Well-known member
opium is also a cornerstone ingredient in Ayurvedic "medicine". Thousands of years of side effects and people are still using heroin. If you're going to push a religion pretending to be science, then post science. Maybe not a review from the African Journal of Traditional, Complementary, and Alternative Medicine lol. KSM-66 works, but not because of this thousands of years of traditional use stuff.
Madevilz
Member
Do you see any difference between 500mg of Sensoril and 675mg of KSM66?
Madevilz
Member
I haven't used Sensoril in years, ever since KSM got popular. But like you, that latest study at 500mg sparked some interest.
I might give it a go again, maybe stack KSM during the day and Sensoril at night?
GQdaLEGEND
Legend
Yeah i think it would work .. I was thinking of testing out solo KSM-66 maybe in march starting at 1 cap a week and then increase
throwing in sensoril (starting at 250mg) and experimenting i think it would do well
one focusing on cortisol/test and other mainly for stess/cognitive ..although both have been studied to do so
throwing in sensoril (starting at 250mg) and experimenting i think it would do well
one focusing on cortisol/test and other mainly for stess/cognitive ..although both have been studied to do so
TommyTuffGuy
Well-known member
You'll be verrrry sweepy that's for sure.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
Dude, you should know that I’ve posted probably dozens of studies on KSM-66 and other Ashwagandha extracts. My point was that it’s incorrect to claim that, as the person I responded to posted, Ayurveda and Ashwagandha were only intended to treat illnesses or problems. That’s simply not true...
Edit: so I responded to two people it seems. My point still stands that KSM doesn’t cause the adverse effects this one guy described in the majority of people. Plenty of studies confirm this, as well as a bunch of users here, since apparently he thinks his anecdote matters.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
I mean, when people are coming in and claiming that you’ll probably get adverse effects from it, and/or it should only be used, or has only been used, to treat issues/problems/etc., I think explaining why that isn’t likely or accurate is relevant.
Aleksandar37
Well-known member
I agree with you. The science stands on its own though without the thousands of years use mystical, knowledge from the gods stuff. I separate KSM-66 from Ayurveda because one works and the other tends to have products full of all-natural ingredients like mercury, arsenic, and lead.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
Ayurveda has also produced things that have been validated by modern research like Bacopa, Boswellia, Curcumin, and Shilajit, among others.
Aleksandar37
Well-known member
Stop making it sound like they sat in a lab performing chemistry. The people of that area ate things growing around them and noticed effects and those are simply the plants that happened to be growing where they lived. To give credit to ayurveda for their "discovery" is misleading and you're leaving out the many times ayurveda marketing has been used to commit fraud and poison people. If you trust the science, then trust the science.
Modern research may have found some benefits to these, but it rarely supports the ayurveda claims.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
So you’re telling me that multiple thousands of years of using Bacopa for improving/maintaining/restoring cognition and memory is purely luck, nothing more? I 100% agree that some stuff from Ayurveda and/or TCM is bunk, or even dangerous, but the reason why modern research is being done on Ashwagandha and Bacopa is BECAUSE of how well-regarded they have been in Ayurveda. I’m not suggesting that we blindly trust Ayurveda, or that we ignore science, only that if they’ve been using Bacopa for memory for thousands of years, they DID discover it. Modern science CONFIRMED that it works, and made supplementation easy and safe with tested standardized extracts, but modern science disnt DISCOVER it. Maybe Ayurveda lucked into it, sure, but they did discover it...
Aleksandar37
Well-known member
Show me the human data. Otherwise, this is the same stay-at-home mom facebook "science" that sells essential oils for "improving/maintaining/restoring cognition and memory."
muscleupcrohn
Legend
What are you on about? Go read the studies on KSM-66... the authors of the studies who set the dose based it on the extraction ratio and the dose traditionally used in Ayurveda. Same with Bacognize and Bacopa. Ayurveda can be VERY hit or miss, but there are a handful of things they got pretty right, and are being validated my modern research. Now, did they “know” something or is a broken clock just right twice a day? Perhaps it is just the latter, but Ayurveda still lucked into a few good discoveries then. Doesn’t mean we blindly take everything they say, only that maybe we look into testing other stuff they did with modern science and see what works and what doesn’t. They still discovered it...
Aleksandar37
Well-known member
I don't know how else to ask the question. You keep saying there is all this "modern research" to back up ayurveda, so I'm asking to see which studies you're talking about.
PhoenixGamer
Member
Ashwagandha is fantastic for multiple health reasons. There is a sweet spot for me which is one capsule daily before lunch, specifically the Gaia brand. It effects the serotonin receptors, 5HT1A and 5HT2A so one must be aware of this. It can also lower cortisol, which is why I feel bad if I take more than 1 capsule per day. Herbs are very individual as far as dosing and there isn't a one size fits all.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
Are ashwagandha, bacopa, boswellia, curcumin, arjuna, and Shilajit not from Ayurveda? There are many modern studies backing up the “traditional uses” of all of the above Ayurvedic herbs. There’s also tons of modern research showing that some things from Ayurveda DON’T work, or don’t do certain things too, but that doesn’t mean that they got NOTHING right. Ayurveda can have 100 herbs; hypothetically, if 90 of them can do nothing, 4 of them can kill you, and 6 of them are the six listed above that are being validated by modern research, their 6/100 record and 4 deadly recommendations doesn’t mean that they didn’t “discover” the 6 that do work. Not, it would mean that we shouldn’t blindly trust what they say, and that we should do research to confirm safety and efficacy before trying any Ayurvedic things, but it doesn’t take away that they did indeed discover the 6 things that work. Maybe they just got lucky 6/100 times, who knows, but if they were the first to use it, the first to widely document its preparation, use, and effects, how the hell did they not discover it man? Especially when even the studies on modern standardized extracts base their doses off these traditional doses.
You’re so anti-anything-that-can-even-be-construed-as-religious that you can’t even admit that maybe Ayurveda blindly stumbled onto a few hits over several thousand years? I’m not claiming it’s divinely inspired or even right most of the time. Only that they are credited with DISCOVERING these herbs, and the modern researchers say as much in the damn studies...
muscleupcrohn
Legend
Here’s the whole Examine dot com page on Boswellia. They even mention Ayurveda in the two-sentence summary at the top of the damn page:
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Here’s a paper on curcumin, published in Cellular and Mollecular Life Sciences, and supported in part by grants from the NIH and the American Institute for Cancer Research:
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I don’t think I need to post up studies on KSM-66 or Sensoril Ashwagandha, right? Or Bacognize or KeenMind/Synapsa Bacopa? Or PrimaVie shilajit? I think we’re all quite familiar with these three ingredients from various product write-ups on this forum alone, no?
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Here’s a paper on curcumin, published in Cellular and Mollecular Life Sciences, and supported in part by grants from the NIH and the American Institute for Cancer Research:
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I don’t think I need to post up studies on KSM-66 or Sensoril Ashwagandha, right? Or Bacognize or KeenMind/Synapsa Bacopa? Or PrimaVie shilajit? I think we’re all quite familiar with these three ingredients from various product write-ups on this forum alone, no?
muscleupcrohn
Legend
That “King Ergogenic” guy? He does go around posting his n=1 bad experience with Ashwagandha everywhere ashwagandha is mentioned. His medium he links too, IG I think, I know I’ve seen him post on various FB groups about it. Etc.
Jiigzz
Legend
I'd be careful to say it causes anything, as it's one person's experience (that he backs up with other anecdotes). When there is no accounting for confounders, then using words like "causes" or "proven to" is quite dangerous
Aleksandar37
Well-known member
Why are you accusing me of being against religion because I asked for science? You're pushing the Ayurveda thing as if it has any bearing at all on the science of this. Ayurveda makes crazy cancer and other disease cure claims on stuff that might give healthy people a small edge. But because I ask for data, I'm anti-religion? Less talky, more with these studies that you claim to be drowning in.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
Have you seen half the stuff this guy posts? Sensationalism is his middle name.
Title from Dec 2019:
“BPC-157: The Healing Peptide That No One Knows About.”
He also posts a ton on FB about how icing your balls will outperform most nootropics.
And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him completely misinterpret studies/graphs/etc. in articles, and, when questioned about it, I never got an answer from him about it.
Aleksandar37
Well-known member
You didn't read your google find first, did ya? "Although it is clear that curcumin has a wide variety of beneficial activities, not all studies are consistent with this rosy picture. Indeed, several studies have suggested that in selected settings, curcumin may not only be ineffective, but may have adverse activities. For example, in chemical studies, curcumin induced DNA fragmentation and base damage in the presence of copper and isozymes of cytochrome p450 (CYP) that are present in lung, lymph, liver, and skin"
^that took me less than a minute and who cares where the grants came from?
muscleupcrohn
Legend
Again, none of this means curcumin is useless or ineffective. Surely you’re not going to try to tell me that there aren’t promising studies on curcumin for a variety of things, from IBD to arthritis, in humans? My point was to show that curcumin IS largely considered a product/discovery of Ayurveda. It’s not a panacea; nothing is. And nothing is without potential for adverse effects, but you’re out of your damn mind if you think curcumin as a whole is inherently or entirely useless and/or harmful.
And way to completely avoid talking about Boswellia, Ashwagandha, Bacopa, and Shilajit too.
My “Google find?” And pray tell, where are you getting your sources from that are so much better? Ask around these forums my friend; I’d wager I’ve forgotten more about herbal supplements than you’ll ever know. But go ahead, make it sound like “Googling” is a bad thing.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
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Aleksandar37
Well-known member
Again, none of this means curcumin is useless or ineffective. Surely you’re not going to try to tell me that there aren’t promising studies on curcumin for a variety of things, from IBD to arthritis, in humans? My point was to show that curcumin IS largely considered a product/discovery of Ayurveda. It’s not a panacea; nothing is. And nothing is without potential for adverse effects, but you’re out of your damn mind if you think curcumin as a whole is inherently or entirely useless and/or harmful.
And way to completely avoid talking about Boswellia, Ashwagandha, Bacopa, and Shilajit too.
My “Google find?” And pray tell, where are you getting your sources from that are so much better? Ask around these forums my friend; I’d wager I’ve forgotten more about herbal supplements than you’ll ever know. But go ahead, make it sound like “Googling” is a bad thing.
You bait and switch and your knowledge is based off the work of others since you post reviews and blog summaries. I've said all those ingredients work. I've said they're used in ayurveda. What I've also said, and seemed to be the thing that annoyed you, is that their part of being ayurveda (or the cornerstone as you put it) doesn't add anything to their credibility and in fact does the opposite.
Google all you want, but use primary studies and clinical trials. You're posting what other people are summarizing for you.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
Holy hell man. Go read some of my other posts; I’ve posted write-ups on various ingredients, classes of ingredients, and/or MoAs with tons of primary studies. I have some posts that have a dozen plus primary studies each.
I’m not claiming that Ayurveda makes these ingredients more legitimate. I’m just saying that, even if Ayurveda is partially, or even mostly, nonsense, they are the first ones to document using some of these ingredients, at relevant doses for uses that are being confirmed at times by modern research. That means that, in these instances, it is only logical to say that these ingredients WERE DISCOVERED BY AYURVEDA, or INTRODUCED IN AYURVEDA.
The way I see it, Ayurveda and TCM are a great place to get IDEAS from to conduct preliminary rodent/animal studies on. Then if those studies demonstrate safety and efficacy, we move to human studies. And sometimes we get gems, using Ayurvedic herbs at traditional doses for traditional uses, like Ashwagandha and Bacopa. But sometimes we get something that is useless, or even dangerous, so I agree; do the modern research before blindly taking any traditional herbs.
But on the off-chance they did blindly discover how much Bacopa you need to improve memory, give them some credit for getting 1/100 things right. That doesn’t mean we don’t verify and reject the other 99, but we can give them cried for the 1 they got right, which you don’t seem to want to do...
Aleksandar37
Well-known member
Ok, you keep repeating this idea. Do you have links to studies that used a modern trial dosage based on "traditional doses"? Or even title and author and I'll grab the papers.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
No problem my friend. Ask and you shall receive!
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Funny how that’s the “gold-standard” dose of KSM-66 used in probably dozens of studies. Purely coincidental, I’m sure. Now, of course tons of research went into arriving at that dose, from in vitro studies to rodent studies before human studies, but it kind of sort of shows that, maybe, sometimes, on occasion, a handful of times in a few thousand years, some Indians got some things pretty right?
muscleupcrohn
Legend
No problem my friend. Ask and you shall receive!
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Funny how that’s the “gold-standard” dose of KSM-66 used in probably dozens of studies. Purely coincidental, I’m sure. Now, of course tons of research went into arriving at that dose, from in vitro studies to rodent studies before human studies, but it kind of sort of shows that, maybe, sometimes, on occasion, a handful of times in a few thousand years, some Indians got some things pretty right?
bigdadybry
Member
I'd like to see the science (or religion) that states opium and heroin are equivalent.
Aleksandar37
Well-known member
yeah, no. They state this "Based on the withanolide concentration of 5%, we assessed the extract ratio of KSM-66 to be 1 : 10. The traditional dosage of ashwagandha raw root powder is 3000 mg twice a day, as reported in the literature, across a variety of applications. Reducing the traditional dosage commensurately, we arrived at the dosage of 300 mg twice per day" yet they don't provide a single reference.
Again, you've said repeatedly that modern studies have gotten the dosage from traditional doses used for traditional uses. You've given examples and said thousands of years. So where is a study that shows that? Historical doses and using that for a modern study with at least some explanation or reference where they got the number from.
Again, you've said repeatedly that modern studies have gotten the dosage from traditional doses used for traditional uses. You've given examples and said thousands of years. So where is a study that shows that? Historical doses and using that for a modern study with at least some explanation or reference where they got the number from.
Aleksandar37
Well-known member
Invalid Link RemovedI'd like to see the science (or religion) that states opium and heroin are equivalent.
Didn't say they were equivalent, but there's the synthesis.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
How about the "THE AYURVEDIC PHARMACOPOEIA OF INDIA?" From the "GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF HEALTH AND FAMILY WELFARE DEPARTMENT OF AYUSH"
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So now you want references showing that Ayurveda has been using ashwagandha for thousands of years? Because I can show you that. I can't show you proof that they've been using 3-6g of powdered ashwagandha as the standard dose for that long, but that is the standard Ayurvedic dose, and has been for well before the modern studies and extracts arrived at that extract-equivalent dose.
Aleksandar37
Well-known member
If you don't have the answer, just say so. Instead it's accusing me of being anti-religious and screaming to read the transcripts! You said modern clinical doses were based on traditional doses and that it's been used for thousands of years. I'm asking if you have a source for that as I was genuinely interested. And yes, I expect references when talking about science.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
As for bacopa:
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Or from a study on Bacognize:
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Or from a study on Bacognize:
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muscleupcrohn
Legend
What? I said that the "traditional dose" is 3-6g. The "traditional dose" IS the "Ayurvedic dose." There are also tons of studies/papers that reference that it's been used historically for thousands of years. If you're asking me for proof that they used 3-6g thousands of years ago, then no, I can't prove that, of course.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
But the modern studies on ashwagandha date back a few decades at the most, and extracts like KSM-66 even less. The Pharmacopoeia I referenced was published by India in the 1980s, and pulled from much, much older Ayurvedic texts. That was the traditional dose at the time, and is a good idea of where the studies arrived at the "traditional dose" from. As to what period/date between thousands of years ago to the 1980s it arrived at that point, I do not know, only that, at the time these modern studies were conducted, and at least a bit before them, the traditional/Ayurvedic dose of an herb that has been used in their system of "medicine" for thousands of years was pretty spot-on with what the modern extract-equivalent dose shown to be effective is.
muscleupcrohn
Legend
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KSM-66's website claims a >4,000 year history of Ayurvedic practitioners using ashwagandha root, and the makers of KSM talk in great detail in various articles/white-papers on how they combine ancient Ayurvedic techniques and knowledge with modern science and extraction/testing to make KSM-66.
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