34 replies to this topic

[Yearningforyears]

I´ve checked out the site www.bazaarofindia.com Very nice site and they´ve been in business for a long time. According to them they let their herbs be tested thoroughly for heavy metals (cadmium, lead, mercury, arsenik) and bacteria.
From what I´ve read the FDA just randomly investigated ayurvedic products that were not registered supplements in any way.
It´s like picking up a bottle of water from Chernobyl and pull the alarm:" never buy russian mineral water because it´s radioactive!"
If you need something for say bipolar anxiety, then you should go to your doctor for some zyprexa, which will give you benefits like brain damage and diabetes.
Gotta love the FDA.

I will probably stay clear of dirt cheap bacopa products from now on and buy my herbs from bazaar of india instead =)

[Germs111]

I was going to order the Planetary Herbals Bacopa before I read some posts in this thread. I'm really troubled by the possibility of many of these allegedly helpful nootropics being contaminated.

[kikai93]

Calcium-disodium EDTA chelation is approved by the FDA for treating lead poisoning and heavy metal toxicity. Other chelating agents used by the medical community are DMSA and ALA.

[Germs111]

With the heavy metals having done their damage already, I doubt that chelation would do more than prevent any further damage. Unless you undergo the chelation concurrently with the bacopa intake. Still, who knows if that would be effective.

I e-mailed AOR about heavy metal toxicity regarding their bacopa product and they didn't e-mail me back.

[Ichoose2live]

I wonder what brands can be trusted.

Planetaryherbals seems good according to their website:
"Herbs are first checked in the traditional organoleptic manner (assessment of taste, smell, appearance, and relative quality) and are then subject to a variety of analytic tests. These include qualitative and quantitative analysis using ultraviolet and infrared spectrophotometry, thin layer chromatography (TLC), and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) as well as Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) screening for heavy metals and full microbiological testing to ensure all herbs are free of pathogenic bacteria. All tablets meet the disintegration criteria of the United States Pharmacopoeia."

Re this and the subsequent post on Planetary Herbals: While they crow about their purity, and seem to be a highly-regarded brand in customer reviews at iHerb, they unfortunately have been flagged at least twice for lead contamination in two product composition/safety reviews at Consumerlab.com (as determined by the acceptable limit of 0.5mcg/serving in California, the only state that sets such limit). (ConsumerLab is a mostly-subscription site that independently tests randomly-selected supplements for quality.) For example, in the Jan 2006 review of Horny Goat Weed, the Planetary Herbls product was found to contain 2.98 mcg of lead per daily serving. And in the March 2004 Echinacea report they again failed to earn approval because ConsumerLab found lead in excess of 2.5 mcg per day. Planetary hasn't been tetsed in any CL reviews since then, so it's possible they've cleaned up their act. And maybe the CA limits are lower than necessary for healthy people. But I'd recommend caution. The most trustworthy brand that seems to make Bacopa is Swanson. However, the fact that Swanson rarely fails a CL test has to be taken with a grain of salt, because they usually participate in CL's "voluntary certification" program, in which they pay to get tested (instead of waiting to be randomly picked), and then their product is listed in the test results only if it passed. But overall, I trust Swanson -- certainly more than Planetary or Paradise Herbs. I see that Vitamin Shoppe has proprietary Bacopa, and they are usually pretty trustworthy as well. BTW, I took Bacopa several years back when it was only readily available in Australia, and it did nothing for me; you probably shouldn't bother with *any* brand. BTW, unlike CL, the United States Pharmacopoeia doesn't make ANY brand test failures public, even to subscribers. They don't even detail their methods for each supplement, as CL does.

I guess it's ok.
''Health Canada’s limits for heavy metals in Natural
Health Products (for an average person weighing
70kg) are: 9.8 mcg/day for arsenic, 6.3 mcg/day for
cadmium, 20.3 mcg/day for lead and 20.3 mcg/day
for mercury. These are similar to the limits set by
USP (United States Pharmacopeia), which you may
see mentioned in news stories. USP limits are: 15
mcg/day for arsenic, 5 mcg/day for cadmium, 10
mcg/day for lead and 15 mcg/day for mercury.''

http://www.aor.ca/as...ng_Advances.pdf