From the jump, I’m someone who values uniqueness and innovation from supplement companies. There’s a whole myriad of companies that offer products that are superfluous (transdermal products where oral bioavailability is good) or unoriginal (everyone and their sister putting out an Ursolic Acid product). For the latter, it’s irritating, but I get it, if there’s an efficacious product and a venn diagram of consumers the hope is that while there are some who are aware of multiple companies shilling their own version, there is the non overlapping portion who are unaware or brand loyal. With Oleanolic acid, incinderine has a promising inclusion of it in their formula. Unfortunately, it’s kitchen a sink approach, including stimulants that may deter some people and mask the comparative efficacy of the compound. I think they were spot on for using phospholipids to increase bioavailability however. What I appreciate about SNS is that you’ll include promising compounds in formulas as well as offer it individually, allowing people more control of what they take. With Maslinic acid, Ideally, I’m thinking a transdermal may provide better bioavailability over a phospholipid carrier. Being of the same class of compounds as Ursolic Acid, Maslinic acid offers similar recompositional effects as well as skeletal muscle hypertrophy. This makes it interesting as a possible compound to stack with ursolic acid. Furthermore, the sufficient variance in structure may provide for more beneficial effects in some individuals over others (e.g. better responders). I’ve attached several publications below.
Maslinic acid (MA) is a pentacyclic triterpene abundant in olive peels. MA reportedly increases skeletal muscle mass and strength in older adults; however, the underlying mechanism is unknown. This study aimed to investigate the effects of MA on denervated ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Maslinic acid (MA) is a pentacyclic triterpene acid, which exists in many plants, including olive, and is highly safe for human beings. In recent years, it has been reported that MA has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anti-tumor, hypoglycemic, neuroprotective ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
ABSTRACT. Maslinic acid, a naturally occurring pentacyclic triterpene in more than 30 plants (including olives), reportedly increases human muscle mass and
academic.oup.com
Nutritional supplements are sometimes important for athletes to improve their sports performance and maintain their condition. Maslinic acid (MA) is a type of compound with a pentacyclic triterpene structure extracted from olives, and has a strong anti-inflammatory effect and improves metabolic...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
A considerable amount of progress has been made recently in our understanding of the distinct set of genes and signaling pathways that mediate skeleta…
www.sciencedirect.com
Thank you for the links and also for the kind words.
The reply I'm writing here, some of it you probably already know but I'm going to be maybe overly detailed so that some people that may not know and are following along or read this later can understand. I always like to clarify that because I never want anyone I'm replying to to think that I think they don't know certain things; I'm just respectful of wanting people that may not know these things to be able to follow along with the conversation.
I'm always open to suggestions and discussing new ideas - I just have to quantify those ideas at times as to if they will actually work in the real world, if they will be as good or better or different than other things that we offer, and on if they will sell.
You used the term superfluous, which by definition means excessive or more than is needed - and that's a good way of looking at how we have to gauge new products - is if they are redundant (more than necessary) or excessive (just one more sku but not as good as other sku's we may already have). I hope that makes sense.
Between the brands, we have over 100 sku's and I don't think that anyone would ever accuse us of being unoriginal - we have formulas that are unlike anything else available on the market and we have been the launch point brand for multiple new branded ingredients, some from major companies - like for example, our recently launched Growth Factor XT was the launch point product for a new NNB Nutrition branded ingredient.
We do offer some sku's that you may consider unoriginal, but there's a good reason for that - we are fully cGMP and use only cGMP contract manufacturers and meet or exceed all FDA guidelines for quality testing including heavy metals and microbial testing, and we offer a variety of single ingredient commodity items at great prices that people can trust the quality of. So, while they may not all be original, its a way to provide top quality products at great prices to customers.
In regards to Ursolic Acid, Ursa-Gel under Xtreme Performance Gels is an excellent product and gets great feedback and utilizes the Avant Labs carrier, which many consider the gold standard of topical carriers.
In regard to phospholipid complexes in general, they work well with some ingredients but there are a lot of ingredients that claim to be phytosomal or phospholipid complexes that are really more like proprietary blends - in the sense that if the ingredient is not truly encased, then it may not increase the efficacy the way that brands claim that they will. I've worked on the raw material side of this industry since 2004 and I've seen that so many times - things that are claimed to be complexes or complexed that really aren't, even if well-intentioned.
For us to use any type of phospholipid complex, we have very strict requirements that the raw materials be manufactured by companies with the proper technology and equipment to do properly do it and that they have performed advanced testing to ensure that its still complexed and stable months or years down the road so that its still what its supposed to be in consumer hands. For example, I've been working with a large branded ingredient company on a phytosomal product for the last 8 months or so and they have spent many thousands of dollars in testing trying to perfect it - and this is a company with some of the best technology and equipment in the business. It's finally finalized, and we will use it in something in Q1 of next year, but just going into detail about it bc its not nearly as simple as some people believe or present it to be.
I think that both of the ingredients that you're referring to could possibly be good ingredients in a topical formula for a variety of different things. I personally kind of think of them as more secondary ingredients, not a knock on them at all; I think the key may would just to be include them as ingredients in an overall formula with a more well known ingredient or something else that is effective as well. I know they would likely stack well with Ursa-Gel, but I wouldn't want to change anything about Ursa-Gel because people like it so much, so I'd be interested as to other ideas to possibly use these in a formula with. Which I'd be glad to discuss with you in this thread or if you'd like to discuss privately, pm me and I'll send you my contact info.