I'm not sure why you would question the safety of a product that we make and have sold for years.
There are companies on here that claim to sell ingredients that don't even exist at the percentages that they claim them to and no one questions it, there are companies that sell drugs and call them supplements and hardly anyone questions it, and you want to imply that we are the ones selling something unsafe?
If you had a question about the different extracts of Tongkat Ali, I would have been glad to answer it - but you just implied that we sold something at a dose that is unsafe and mislabeled something in the same post.
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I've explained this in more detail about herbs a lot of times and about Tongkat Ali a few times, but the search function on here hates me so here's an overview:
- There are different ways that herbs can be standardized, including Tongkat Ali.
- There can be non-specified extract, ratio extracts, and extracts for a specific constituent - and the dosage can vary based on the type of extract.
The type of extract used in a particular formula can vary based on several key factors including other ingredients used, the desired selling price (bc ingredient cost factors into this), and customer base and the desired dosage that a particular customer base may want to see.
Optimize-T & Tongkat Ali XT & Alpha Gel:
These products all use the same extract - the specialized Bionutricia extract, which is a specialized extract that contains a minimum of 2% Eurycomanone and as high as 3% Eurycomanone and each batch of raw materials is tested by the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM) to ensure the levels of several key active ingredients, primarily the Eurycomanone of the extract.
At these strengths, standardized Tongkat Ali can be used as a natural testosterone booster and libido enhancer with high dosages also being used as a PDE5 inhibitor to support improved erection quality.
In addition to its high Eurycomanone percentage, Bionutricia® Tongkat Ali extract also contains 30 – 38% Glycosaponins, 28 – 32% Polysaccharides, and 18 – 24% Protein – a truly fully disclosed extract.
Also, Bionutricia® Tongkat Ali extract is extracted using ultrasonic hot water extraction to obtain the water-soluble active ingredients (Eurycomanone, polysaccharides, protein, Glycosaponins) and doesn’t use any harsh solvents or chemicals that some brands use in order to try to achieve higher extract ratios while cutting costs.
M-Test:
When we first introduced M-Test, there was a lot of extreme price fluctuations with Eurycoma/Tongkat products. We had tried out several and we found one that we really liked and worked great in the product. We didn't specify the % extract on the labels for two reasons - we didn't want to make it easier for anyone to copy it and also because the extreme price volatility on it at the time. It's important to put in context that at the time, pretty much no one specified active Eurycomanone content and very very few even specified what ratio extract they used. The thing that people were looking for back then was to see a 500 mg. dose so what we did is that we used what we felt was the absolute best Tongkat Ali extract that we could provide 500 mg. of in the product and have the product sell at a reasonable price.
Fast forward to today's market - M-Test is a great selling product with great feedback and so many people love it that we don't want to make any changes to it. In the general consumer market, if people like something and use it regularly, they are normally very skeptical of any types of changes - which is why we aren't more specific now with the type of extract we use bc if we change the wording to be more specific, we're scared that people will think we changed something about the product.
Test Fix:
I'll explain this and also give some insight into how decision making works sometimes with selecting certain types of ingredients for particular products.
As many people know, Tongkat Ali and Fadogia both became extremely popular when they were mentioned on a particular podcast. This led to a lot of companies that people had never heard of popping up and selling absolute garbage quality Tongkat Ali products and trying to make a quick buck - which absolutely sucks for consumers.
We wanted to do a top quality product with both of these ingredients in there for people that wanted to try them. Of course there was M-Test, but some people in that customer base wanted a simpler product that was primarily based around those two ingredients.
We did consider using the extract that's in Optimize-T in Test Fix, but there were a couple of reasons that we didn't. The main reason is that a lot of the people that were wanting to try Tongkat Ali because of the popularity of it either didn't know anything about it at all and didn't know anything about different types of extracts or they were looking for a 200:1 extract and looking to use 500 mg. once to twice per day. Hence using a 200:1 extract at 500 mg. once to twice per day in Test Fix.
In formulating the product to meet the above criteria, the extract in Optimize-T wasn't a good candidate because at 1,000 mg. per day, this extract would be way too strong. So what we did was that we used a 200:1 extract like some were looking for and we used what we feel is the absolute best one that we could that would still allow for the dosing that people were looking for.