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By Serge Kreutz (2004)
The percentage of active components in tongkat ali root is very low.
States the renowned US Massachussets Institute of Technology in its description of a research program for the "quantitative measurement of the chemical or bioactive constituents of Eurycoma longifolia (Tongkat Ali)":
"The yield of the bioactive constituents is extremely low at less than 0.005%. Hence, they are not easily available for further studies and for commercial preparations. The plant also requires a longer time to produce the secondary bioactive metabolites and their biological activities may be derived from more than one of the constituents."
The above means that the bioactive part of 1 kg of tongkat ali root is [just] only 50 milligram (the twentieth part of 1 gram).
Please also take note the second part of the above MIT statement: "The plant also requires a longer time to produce the secondary bioactive metabolites and their biological activities may be derived from more than one of the constituents."
This clearly means that only old plants have an effect.
In Indonesia (where tongkat ali is known as pasak bumi),young plants are not used for medicinal purposes. Only roots of an age of at least 10 years are considered effective. And since Indonesia is the only country where tongkat ali is still found in the wild, it also is the only country from where one can obtain aged tongkat ali root. There are simply no plantations where tongkat ali has been grown for at least [ten] 10 years, no-where in the world. In Malaysia, the tongkat ali shrub has now been declared a protected plant, as over-collection in the wild has nearly wiped out from the forests of that country.
The usual recommendation in Indonesia is that 20 to 50 gram of root are cooked for about half an hour to extract the active ingredient. One drinks the resulting tea and discards the cooked root.
If you can get hold of tongkat ali root, this is certainly the most effective tongkat ali you can use.
Tongkat ali (or eurycoma longifolia by its Latin scientific name) is a small tree that grows in the jungles of Southeast Asia). As I've been told, the root of a 10 to 20 year old tree or shrub weighs 3 to 7 kg. If 50 gram is the effective dose, than the root of a hole tree only yields about 60 to 140 dosages.
The roots of the tongkat ali tree grow 1 to 2 meters straight into the ground. They have very few branches. It takes 2 men several hours to dig out a single root.
In order to understand the economics of tongkat ali, all of the above is important.
Here you have a plant of a certain shortage, which is hard to harvest, and which gives only a small percentage of active ingredients, which haven't been standardized. And you have a plant which has a great reputation, backed by scientific studies.
And what you get is this: herbal supplement traders on the Internet and with brick-and-mortar stores who sell tongkat ali with large profit margins. How come?
Yes, what they sell in capsules or as pouches is just plain tongkat ali powder. Plain tongkat ali powder is very light, as it is mainly cellulose. You can fit 300 mg the most into a standard supplement capsule.
If you are a dummy to do so, you can buy a bottle of 30 or 60 capsules of tongkat ali powder for some 20 to 40 dollars. But do some simple arithmetic. 30 times 300 mg of tongkat ali powder in capsules are just 9 gram. So, for an effective single dosage, you will need about five-and-one-half bottles, or 165 capsules of 300 mg tongkat ali powder. If you purchase the capsules cheaply, a single effective dosage of tongkat ali will cost you upwards of 100 US dollars.
Check the website of the US Food and Drug Administration, www.fda.gov.
In their search field, enter: "eurycoma"
This will take you to the page:
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/95s0316/95s-0316-rpt0123-01-vol85.pdf
You can see that an application has been registered for tongkat ali powder only, and not for extract.
Tongkat ali is not a supplement for which a standard method of standardization would have been established. And under such possession, many modifications of tongkat ali ingredients can be sold as extract.
The point is: you can't buy tongkat ali or tongkat ali extract by looking at bottles and comparing prices. You can only buy it on the basis of personal experience with specific brands, or on the basis of trust. As you are shopping for active ingredients that have not been obviously determined, a product that is 20 times more expensive per gram may in fact be the cheaper one.
If you want to inspect whether a product perhaps is just root powder or extract indeed, weigh it. A specific amount of extract is much heavier than the same amount of root powder. Root powder is mainly cellulose, and cellulose is light in weight (and color).
Extract is much heavier.
Tongkat ali extract is also greatly aquaphile. If you touch it with your plain fingers, it will immediately form a sticky smear with traces of sweat from your skin, just as a cheap brand of instant coffee would.
Unluckily, as the sale of health supplements is so small regulated and since, consumers obviously tend to buy the cheapest products, traders cheat. They do on the Internet and in the brick-and-mortar world. They assure you a good deal, when actually, they sell you a low quality product.
Consumers look at labels only to see what is in the bottle, not how much of it. They do not look at the mg amounts, because they are not aware what therapeutic amounts are.
This is not specific to tongkat ali.
Just an example, arginine: therapeutic dosages are in the range of 5 to 10 gram, on an empty stomach, and even such amounts are not felt. If you are sold capsules that contain 100 mg of arginine, you're cheated. 100 mg of argenine is nothing. A spoonful of many kinds of food contains more argenine, and is just as effective or ineffective as a capsule with 100 mg of argenine in it.
Or take multivitamins with minerals. They pack 50 kinds of nutrients into a single capsule, to overwhelm the possible buyer. But it is not the list of names that you swallow. You consume small amounts of ingredients, including, for example, 10 mg of calcium, and 10 mg of potassium. What a joke. Half a glass of milk has much more calcium and potassium than those inferior capsules.
As what you buy in capsules all too often are diminutive amounts of an herbal that, in proper dosage, does have its medicinal value, you must not be amazed if you feel nothing, or a placebo effect at most.
A correct dosage of tongkat ali has an effect that can be felt. A correct dosage is about 50 gram of root powder or chipped root, cooked as a tea, or an extract, which is the equal of this.
500 mg root powder is not a proper dosage. Not even 10 times 500 mg. And 10 capsules with 300 mg of a 1:2 extract is also not an enough dosage. You will not feel anything from either.
So, what do I feel from a correct dosage of tongkat ali? An entire hotheadedness enhanced bowel movements (only the first few times). I also feel awaked and stimulated, but the tongkat ali doesn't interfere with sleep. If the tongkat ali capsules you purchased make you sleepless, than they have been stretched, most probably with yohimbe.
Nevertheless, the above are just side effects, not the effects I'm after. Tongkat ali obviously improves libido, which is why I take it. Why I need it.
Tongkat ali improves libido, but not similarly as dopaminergics do. Tongkat ali feels more natural compared to dopaminergics, and when I have ingested tongkat ali for some time, I just wonder whether I'm not just perfectly healthy, sex-wise.
Then I stop the tongkat ali for a several days, and I know that I'm not. My sex drive will just be gone.
When I am back on tongkat ali, I have it again: this teeth-clenching desire to tight-grip a female body, and to take her rough. Tongkat ali is like a libido mill in the back of my head. And when I have intercourse on tongkat ali, I'm like a grinder. I move through intercourse like a gearwheel, not fast, but steady, and with a crushing certainty that the gearwheel will not stop before I have had my orgasm.
Yes, tongkat ali makes sex more exiting. It makes me a very manly man. And a perfect lover. (sac)
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Copyright Serge Kreutz