GDavis
06-26-2010, 12:43 PM
What do people think? USP labs has been very clever in the marketing department.
http://www.usplabsdirect.com/images/pinkmagic_box_homepage.jpg
I pulled the below of their web forum.
Are Pink Magic's Ingredients Legitimate?
Recently, this question has been posed, and in particular, posed of Massularia acuminata's ability to increase serum testosterone in a biologically significant way. It is this question that I would like to address now.
It has recently come to my attention that a poster on the Bodybuilding.com - The Future Of Bodybuilding! Huge Bodybuilding Site. forums presented a recent blog post regarding Massularia acuminata, and this thread created quite a stir. I am now taking it upon myself to personally provide a more satisfying, objective response to those interested in Pink Magic, and this ingredient in particular.
In this post, and this thread more generally, we are going to avoid character disputes, as they do nothing to change the contentions of the article at hand. That being said, I suppose the most fair and acute manner of doing this is to simply address the primary points of the article that I disagree with. Those being twofold:
Quote:
But check out the dose required…the lowest dose examined in the study was 250mgs/kg! On a kg/kg (simple comparative bodyweight) basis you’ll need about 25 grams of the stuff per day for a 100kg (220lb) bodybuilder, going off the absolute lowest dose. The highest dose would require 100g/day based on a 220lb (100kg)human bodyweight. However, this is based on human weight versus rodent weight. Now, if we convert the rodent dose to the human dose equivalent using the accepted body surface area formula bsa We find that we need just over 4 grams per day. And that’s at the lowest dose examined – we’d double that dose for the 500mgs/kg (over 8 grams per day) and double it again for the 1,000mgs/kg dose (over 16 grams per day).
Quote:
So how much of a boost in serum testosterone did the herb provide? Well, we don’t know, because the study doesn’t tell us. Wait…what? Yeah, you read that correctly, the study doesn’t actually look at serum testosterone levels. So what about free testosterone levels? Well, the study doesn’t look at that either.
I think it fair to summate these contentions as follows:
a) Because the study features such exorbitant amounts of Massularia acuminata, any androgenic potential is lost in human cross-over.
b) Because the study does not feature the results of serum or free testosterone, it cannot be considered a reliable source of information.
To begin, I would like to first and foremost examine the portion of the abstract itself which speaks about the doses:
Quote:
Male rats weighing between 220 and 260 were completely randomized into four groups: A, B, C and D. Group A, the control received orally 1 ml of distilled water (the vehicle) while groups B, C and D were orally administered with 1ml each corresponding to 250, 500 and 1000 mg/kg body weight of the plant extract, respectively for 21 days.
I have deliberately bolded a portion of the text, in order to draw attention to the phrase, "corresponding to." In my interpretation, this reveals that, in fact, the rats were administered only 1 ml of fluid constituted by a distilled extract of the plant which corresponds to - or in other words, is equal to - the respective amounts of powdered plant listed. Or in still other words, the rats were not ingesting grams of powder at all in this study, but were instead using a concentrated extract of the most common variety. In my opinion, which indeed may be solitary, this fact becomes exponentially more important when we examine the materials and methods portion of the full text:
Quote:
2.5. Animal grouping and extract administration
A total of 60 male rats were used and were completely randomized into four groups: A, B, C and D of 15 animals each after being allowed to acclimatize for 2weeks. The distilled water and the extracts were orally administered as follows:
Group A: Control (1 ml of distilled water).
Group B: 1ml of the extract corresponding to 250 mg/kg body
weight.
Group C: 1ml of the extract corresponding to 500mg/kg body
weight.
Group D: 1ml of the extract corresponding to 1000 mg/kg body weight.
As we can see, while the corresponding dose is multiplied, the actual amount of fluid ingested remains at 1 ml. This is because, as I said previously, the article is discussing an aqueous plant extract, and not a simple powdered preparation - and these types of aqueous and methanolic extracts are precisely the type of extracts that are referred to by various companies, USPlabs included, when the phrase "standardized extract" is used. In this case, the researchers prepared a 1 ml aqueous solution which is standardized to correspond to doses of 250, 500 and 1000 mg/kg of raw plant, respectively. Alternatively, they could have distilled a more concentrated extract to correspond to an even more vast mg/kg/day dosages, making the total grams ingested as a raw figure more or less secondary in this regard.
All this considered, I feel the following statement:
Quote:
And that’s at the lowest dose examined – we’d double that dose for the 500mgs/kg (over 8 grams per day) and double it again for the 1,000mgs/kg dose (over 16 grams per day).
is somewhat less potent, considering that, indeed, even at the highest dosages, the rats were not ingesting any powder at all, but an aqueous extract which could have been concentrated to correspond to even higher amounts of raw plant. Similarly, we could express any commonly used herbal ingredient in the terms the article uses. For example, rather than saying 750mg Mucuna pruriens standardized to 50% L-DOPA, one could state, "An ethanolic, powdered extract of Mucuna pruriens corresponding to 500mg/kg body weight for a 200lb male." What I am trying to allude to is simply this: the amount of raw powder listed in a study is generally irrelevant, as extracts are constituted by active constituents.
At this point, in further explanation of USPlabs’ position, I would like to expand on this concept of extracts – and to do so, I would in turn like to peer further into the full study for a more robust explanation of the researchers' extraction technique:
Quote:
2.4. Preparation of aqueous extract of Massularia acuminata stem
The plant stem was cut with a sterile knife into pieces and then oven-dried at 40 ◦C until a constant weight was obtained. The pieces were then pulverized with an electric blender (Blender/Miller III, model MS-223, China). The powdered material was stocked in a plastic container from which 200 go each was separately extracted in 500ml of distilled water for 48 he at room temperature with constant shaking. The extract was then filtered with filter paper (Whatman No. 1) and the resulting filtrate was concentrated on a steam bath to give between 5.48 and 5.60 g of the brownish black slurry (residue) which is equivalent to a % yield of 2.74±0.05 g. The residue was reconstituted in distilled water to give the required dose of 250 mg/kg body weight while higher doses of 500 and 1000 mg/kg body weight were also used. The reconstituted aqueous extract was administered orally to all animals in the various groups using metal oropharyngeal cannula.
As we can see from this basic description, the extract was little more than pulverized plant distilled in water and concentrated at corresponding doses. I feel this is important for two reasons. The first, it displays that, as I said previously, the rodents were indeed not ingesting 1000mg/kg of powder a day, but instead a simple 1 ml fluid corresponding to that dose.
The second, that the researchers did not attempt to identify nor extract for any particular constituents viz., HPLC, GC/MS or any other such technology, which means the results achieved in the study were the result of a crude, whole plant extract.
If we assume that the amount of pharmacologically active compound(s) in the parent plants constitute(s) a meager amount of the whole plant, by weight proportion, it would mean that the rats were receiving as much as 25mg/kg of principally active compound in each 1 ml dosage, and as little as 2.5mg/kg at minimum. Obviously, had the researchers identified a compound or compounds of interest and extracted it or them at a standardization of 20-50%, the dose would become substantially lessened, and a very practical one to reconstitute back into the parent plant material.
So, taking all this into consideration, and as we have done with several other of our herbs, USPlabs identified and extracted particular components of Massularia which we feel to be principally active within the plant itself. And while, unfortunately, I am obviously not at liberty to reveal the structures of these compounds, nor the amounts in which they are contained in the whole plant, I will simply say that identifying and extracting these components is a significant contributor to both the delayed time of release since Jacob first commented on them, as well as the "high" cost of the product. Given that we have also received a patent for extracting principally-active components from Cissus quadrangularis, we feel confident that our facilities have indeed identified the correct compounds, have extracted them in adequate amounts, and have given us a product that is both a) a practical dose and b) able to reproduce or exceed the results of the study.
http://www.usplabsdirect.com/images/pinkmagic_box_homepage.jpg
I pulled the below of their web forum.
Are Pink Magic's Ingredients Legitimate?
Recently, this question has been posed, and in particular, posed of Massularia acuminata's ability to increase serum testosterone in a biologically significant way. It is this question that I would like to address now.
It has recently come to my attention that a poster on the Bodybuilding.com - The Future Of Bodybuilding! Huge Bodybuilding Site. forums presented a recent blog post regarding Massularia acuminata, and this thread created quite a stir. I am now taking it upon myself to personally provide a more satisfying, objective response to those interested in Pink Magic, and this ingredient in particular.
In this post, and this thread more generally, we are going to avoid character disputes, as they do nothing to change the contentions of the article at hand. That being said, I suppose the most fair and acute manner of doing this is to simply address the primary points of the article that I disagree with. Those being twofold:
Quote:
But check out the dose required…the lowest dose examined in the study was 250mgs/kg! On a kg/kg (simple comparative bodyweight) basis you’ll need about 25 grams of the stuff per day for a 100kg (220lb) bodybuilder, going off the absolute lowest dose. The highest dose would require 100g/day based on a 220lb (100kg)human bodyweight. However, this is based on human weight versus rodent weight. Now, if we convert the rodent dose to the human dose equivalent using the accepted body surface area formula bsa We find that we need just over 4 grams per day. And that’s at the lowest dose examined – we’d double that dose for the 500mgs/kg (over 8 grams per day) and double it again for the 1,000mgs/kg dose (over 16 grams per day).
Quote:
So how much of a boost in serum testosterone did the herb provide? Well, we don’t know, because the study doesn’t tell us. Wait…what? Yeah, you read that correctly, the study doesn’t actually look at serum testosterone levels. So what about free testosterone levels? Well, the study doesn’t look at that either.
I think it fair to summate these contentions as follows:
a) Because the study features such exorbitant amounts of Massularia acuminata, any androgenic potential is lost in human cross-over.
b) Because the study does not feature the results of serum or free testosterone, it cannot be considered a reliable source of information.
To begin, I would like to first and foremost examine the portion of the abstract itself which speaks about the doses:
Quote:
Male rats weighing between 220 and 260 were completely randomized into four groups: A, B, C and D. Group A, the control received orally 1 ml of distilled water (the vehicle) while groups B, C and D were orally administered with 1ml each corresponding to 250, 500 and 1000 mg/kg body weight of the plant extract, respectively for 21 days.
I have deliberately bolded a portion of the text, in order to draw attention to the phrase, "corresponding to." In my interpretation, this reveals that, in fact, the rats were administered only 1 ml of fluid constituted by a distilled extract of the plant which corresponds to - or in other words, is equal to - the respective amounts of powdered plant listed. Or in still other words, the rats were not ingesting grams of powder at all in this study, but were instead using a concentrated extract of the most common variety. In my opinion, which indeed may be solitary, this fact becomes exponentially more important when we examine the materials and methods portion of the full text:
Quote:
2.5. Animal grouping and extract administration
A total of 60 male rats were used and were completely randomized into four groups: A, B, C and D of 15 animals each after being allowed to acclimatize for 2weeks. The distilled water and the extracts were orally administered as follows:
Group A: Control (1 ml of distilled water).
Group B: 1ml of the extract corresponding to 250 mg/kg body
weight.
Group C: 1ml of the extract corresponding to 500mg/kg body
weight.
Group D: 1ml of the extract corresponding to 1000 mg/kg body weight.
As we can see, while the corresponding dose is multiplied, the actual amount of fluid ingested remains at 1 ml. This is because, as I said previously, the article is discussing an aqueous plant extract, and not a simple powdered preparation - and these types of aqueous and methanolic extracts are precisely the type of extracts that are referred to by various companies, USPlabs included, when the phrase "standardized extract" is used. In this case, the researchers prepared a 1 ml aqueous solution which is standardized to correspond to doses of 250, 500 and 1000 mg/kg of raw plant, respectively. Alternatively, they could have distilled a more concentrated extract to correspond to an even more vast mg/kg/day dosages, making the total grams ingested as a raw figure more or less secondary in this regard.
All this considered, I feel the following statement:
Quote:
And that’s at the lowest dose examined – we’d double that dose for the 500mgs/kg (over 8 grams per day) and double it again for the 1,000mgs/kg dose (over 16 grams per day).
is somewhat less potent, considering that, indeed, even at the highest dosages, the rats were not ingesting any powder at all, but an aqueous extract which could have been concentrated to correspond to even higher amounts of raw plant. Similarly, we could express any commonly used herbal ingredient in the terms the article uses. For example, rather than saying 750mg Mucuna pruriens standardized to 50% L-DOPA, one could state, "An ethanolic, powdered extract of Mucuna pruriens corresponding to 500mg/kg body weight for a 200lb male." What I am trying to allude to is simply this: the amount of raw powder listed in a study is generally irrelevant, as extracts are constituted by active constituents.
At this point, in further explanation of USPlabs’ position, I would like to expand on this concept of extracts – and to do so, I would in turn like to peer further into the full study for a more robust explanation of the researchers' extraction technique:
Quote:
2.4. Preparation of aqueous extract of Massularia acuminata stem
The plant stem was cut with a sterile knife into pieces and then oven-dried at 40 ◦C until a constant weight was obtained. The pieces were then pulverized with an electric blender (Blender/Miller III, model MS-223, China). The powdered material was stocked in a plastic container from which 200 go each was separately extracted in 500ml of distilled water for 48 he at room temperature with constant shaking. The extract was then filtered with filter paper (Whatman No. 1) and the resulting filtrate was concentrated on a steam bath to give between 5.48 and 5.60 g of the brownish black slurry (residue) which is equivalent to a % yield of 2.74±0.05 g. The residue was reconstituted in distilled water to give the required dose of 250 mg/kg body weight while higher doses of 500 and 1000 mg/kg body weight were also used. The reconstituted aqueous extract was administered orally to all animals in the various groups using metal oropharyngeal cannula.
As we can see from this basic description, the extract was little more than pulverized plant distilled in water and concentrated at corresponding doses. I feel this is important for two reasons. The first, it displays that, as I said previously, the rodents were indeed not ingesting 1000mg/kg of powder a day, but instead a simple 1 ml fluid corresponding to that dose.
The second, that the researchers did not attempt to identify nor extract for any particular constituents viz., HPLC, GC/MS or any other such technology, which means the results achieved in the study were the result of a crude, whole plant extract.
If we assume that the amount of pharmacologically active compound(s) in the parent plants constitute(s) a meager amount of the whole plant, by weight proportion, it would mean that the rats were receiving as much as 25mg/kg of principally active compound in each 1 ml dosage, and as little as 2.5mg/kg at minimum. Obviously, had the researchers identified a compound or compounds of interest and extracted it or them at a standardization of 20-50%, the dose would become substantially lessened, and a very practical one to reconstitute back into the parent plant material.
So, taking all this into consideration, and as we have done with several other of our herbs, USPlabs identified and extracted particular components of Massularia which we feel to be principally active within the plant itself. And while, unfortunately, I am obviously not at liberty to reveal the structures of these compounds, nor the amounts in which they are contained in the whole plant, I will simply say that identifying and extracting these components is a significant contributor to both the delayed time of release since Jacob first commented on them, as well as the "high" cost of the product. Given that we have also received a patent for extracting principally-active components from Cissus quadrangularis, we feel confident that our facilities have indeed identified the correct compounds, have extracted them in adequate amounts, and have given us a product that is both a) a practical dose and b) able to reproduce or exceed the results of the study.