Vegan caps, no filler, traditional Ayurvedic brain supplements, but may or may not fit your needs
This is a supplement which has a number of traditional Ayurvedic herbs that help cognition. The most well known and researched of these is Bhrami/Bacopa. Ashwagandha helps anxiety and tumeric helps general inflammation. It also has Licorice and some other less common herbs.<br /><br />I am a bit torn about this review as I do like that the company responded to me when I asked about their heavy metal testing, especially for the bacopa in this blend. For these types of herbs heavy metal contamination is an issue. They got back to me quickly and gave me a COA on the bacopa, which I appreciated, but it wasn't like COAs I was used to, and very basic with no testing for heavy metals. So I appreciated that they got back to me and that they knew what I was talking about and had something but it was odd that the COA didn't show that. We also can't know how much bacopa is in here so even if it did show that amount it may be meaningless which is a pet peeve of mine for supplement manufacturers and "proprietary blends".<br /><br />I don't want to be hypercritical of this supplement because I kind of think for a certain person it might be great if you know what you're getting into. I tend to trust Ayurvedic medicine in general over Chinese herbal medicine but they both suffer from some of the same issues - that they can be contaminated with heavy metals, and that you are consuming this huge bunch of herbs and getting all these different constituents in different amounts. There is a lot of research done into this and you can see some cases on both sides - whole food plant extracts that are used medicinally often don't just have one constituent that's helpful if it's being used traditionally and have value as is, but if you want to target a certain system (at the loss of some of these full spectrum plant benefits we may not understand fully yet) you may stick to one herb that's a standardized extract and see how you fare there. In the end that's what I decided to do and I bought a bacopa extract. But there is value to trying mixes like this.<br /><br />I don't think it would harm anything to try this for a while and see how it works, that's what I did and I didn't really have any ill effects. But after I heard back from the company, and the fact that it has licorice in it (which can cause issues if taken long term, and Chinese herbal mixtures have this problem as well), made me not want to take it every day and go for the standardized bacopa extract instead.<br /><br />I think this is a great way to try a traditional Ayurvedic supplement if you have any focus or cognitive issues, but then as a stepping off point to see what your needs are long term. I'm not sure if this supplement is OK to be taken long term. I do appreciate that the pills are certified organic, gluten free, vegan, with no fillers, and bringing traditional medicine to people is important. I think that COA or not it's hard to find a decent quality version of some of these herbs so it's as good of a place to start as any with Ayurvedic medicine and may well be better quality than something that a Ayurvedic doctor may give you.
Rating: 3 stars