Paul Eftang and Matt Harrier of Nootropics Depot dive deep into tongkat ali, lion's mane, Ecklonia cava, cistanche, Cognance, and the supplement industry's testing fraud problem on Episode #206 of the PricePlow Podcast.
If you thought Part 1 with Paul Eftang and Matt Harrier was wild -- an FDA raid with guns drawn, two years of legal battles, and a crusade against supplement fraud -- Part 2 is where it gets genuinely useful. Episode #206 of the PricePlow Podcast picks up right where we left off, this time diving deep into the actual ingredients and products that Nootropics Depot has developed, sourced, and standardized over more than a decade of pharmaceutical-grade R&D.
Recorded at Nootropics Depot's headquarters in Tempe, Arizona, Paul and Matt walk us through tongkat ali's redemption arc from "gas station boner pill" to clinically meaningful testosterone support, explain why almost every mushroom supplement on the market is mislabeled, detail a 6-year journey to bring a real Ecklonia cava to market, and reveal how a bacopa extract binds to the same receptor as psilocybin.
Along the way, they cover cistanche, lion's mane, Tribugen, a prebiotic fiber system, a novel protein concept, and an industry-wide testing fraud landscape that makes their product philosophy make total sense.
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https://blog.priceplow.com/podcast/nootropics-depot-products-206
Video: Paul Eftang and Matt Harrier of Nootropics Depot Break Down the Products
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:37:25 — 112.5MB)
Detailed Show Notes: Paul Eftang and Matt Harrier of Nootropics Depot on Ingredients, Innovation, and Industry Fraud
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0:00 - Introductions
The crew is back at Nootropics Depot HQ in Tempe, AZ. Mike sets up the episode as the product-focused sequel to the FDA raid story from Episode #203, where Paul and Matt walked through the founding story, the Reddit origins, and the harrowing 2021 raid. This time, the focus is on what Nootropics Depot actually makes, what Paul looks for in an ingredient, and why standardization to bioactives is the only lens worth using.
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0:15 - Tongkat Ali: From "Gas Station Boner Pill" to Top Seller
Paul opens with an honest confession: he once assumed that tongkat ali was junk. The stuff sold at gas stations probably had sildenafil adulterated in, which explains why anyone reported effects. Pure tongkat ali with no eurycomanone standardization wouldn't do much. That changed at SupplySide West when an Indian supplier flagged Paul down and told him his extract was different -- standardized and potent. Paul weighed out a dose at the hotel, took it, and felt it within two hours.
That experience launched a year of tongkat research. The market at the time was dominated by LJ-100 and ratio claims like "100:1" or "200:1," which Paul calls outright lies. Chinese suppliers confirmed they just told Americans what they wanted to hear. Nootropics Depot's response was to standardize to eurycomanone, the most studied bioactive quassinoid in tongkat, and to keep testing from there. It's now their number-one seller.
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7:30 - The TRT Problem: Are Doctors Telling Men They're Broken?
Paul doesn't mince words on the testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) push happening in medicine right now. He argues that doctors telling healthy men in their 30s and 40s that their bodies are "broken" and need lifelong replacement therapy is a dangerous precedent. TRT works by taking your body's own rate-limiting enzymes out of the picture. Once suppressed, the body stops producing testosterone on its own, creating permanent dependence.
His framing: "You got a sunburn. Your body isn't broken. You went out in the sun." Falling testosterone is downstream of bad sleep, chronic stress, environmental toxins, and dietary factors. The solution isn't permanent replacement, it's addressing root causes and supporting the body's own production. Matt agrees that something in the environment is clearly reducing testosterone in men broadly, and that natural support keeping endogenous production active is a smarter first step than shutting it down entirely.
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10:30 - EurycoMax: The Optimized Tongkat Ali Stack
After years of selling the standalone eurycomanone extract and gathering feedback from tens of thousands of customers on Reddit, Paul and his team developed EurycoMax as a comprehensive tongkat ali stack. The formula pairs eurycomanone with mucuna (L-dopa), Epimedium (horned goat weed), pregnenolone, and boron and iodine to address not just testosterone support but also dopamine and estrogen balance. Tongkat ali can raise prolactin and lower cortisol and estrogen; EurycoMax tries to manage those downstream effects.
Paul Eftang and Matt Harrier of Nootropics Depot reveal the full story of their 2021 FDA raid, regulatory battles, and why pharmaceutical-grade testing standards made them a target in Part 1 of our two-part series on Episode #203 of the PricePlow Podcast.
Ben notes they actually took EurycoMax before recording, though not for testosterone, but for the focus and wellbeing effects. Paul and Matt ran through six formulation iterations to get the balance right, and Paul notes that guys in their late 30s, 40s, and 50s who weren't on anything prior to taking it often report feeling dramatically better within days.
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12:00 - Lance Dreher: A 70-Year-Old Mr. Universe Case Study
Paul's scientific advisory board includes Lance Dreher, a two-time Mr. Universe who famously beat Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1980s. Dreher had been on TRT pellets (renewed every 6 months) and was a firm believer that natural supplements couldn't move the needle. Paul eventually convinced him to try Nootropics Depot tongkat ali and cistanche.
At the 6-month mark (the exact point when Dreher would have gone back for new pellets) his blood work showed total testosterone at 2,000 and free testosterone at 150. His doctor asked what he was taking. He waited a few more months to let the pellets fully clear, and settled out around 1,050 total and 110 free... as a 70-year-old man! Dreher is now a vocal advocate for trying the natural route before committing to lifelong TRT.
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14:30 - Cell Culture Research at Nootropics Depot
The R&D at Nootropics Depot goes well beyond extraction work. Paul describes a fully operational cell culture lab they built out starting in 2024, beginning with CACO2 intestinal cells for cytotoxicity and reactive oxygen species analysis. They recently acquired a Sartorius IncuCyte SX5, a top-end machine that does video-based monitoring of live cell cultures. The next phase involves culturing brain cells to directly study how ingredients like erinacines affect neuronal growth and activity.
We spent a day inside Nootropics Depot's R&D labs in Tempe. Millions in analytical equipment, cell culture research, and testing methods that expose how most supplements contain far less active ingredients than advertised. This is what real quality control looks like.
The lab also supports organoid research through a collaboration with an external research organization -- growing miniature 3D organ models for more complex study. Paul's vision is to use this infrastructure to validate what each bioactive compound in a given ingredient actually does at the cellular level, rather than relying on published academic literature that often uses different extraction methods or doesn't reflect commercial product quality.
You can see the lab in our Nootropics Depo lab tour video.
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17:45 - Lion's Mane: The Mycelium vs. Fruiting Body Debate
Nootropics Depot has been working on lion's mane for about 10 years, starting around 2015. Paul's entry point was through Jeff Chilton from Namex and his son Skye Chilton, who founded Real Mushrooms on the principle that mycelium grown on grain and then ground up is not a mushroom. The FDA agrees: the agency explicitly states you cannot legally call the mycelial stage of a fungus a mushroom. A mushroom is specifically the fruiting body.
Paul's position is more nuanced than a strict fruiting-body-only stance: mycelium can be interesting, but it has to be grown and processed correctly. Most US products are mycelium on grain with no separation of the grain substrate, meaning you're largely consuming oats, not mushroom. In China, where mushroom cultivation goes back thousands of years, they grow on wood logs, which is the correct substrate. Host Defense, which Paul says is "absolute garbage," is a prominent example of what the industry is doing wrong.
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23:45 - Building Reference Standards from Scratch
Lion's Mane isn't just another mushroom supplement. Clinical studies show it supports memory, focus, and mood through NGF stimulation. But most products lack active compounds. Nootropics Depot Erinamax breakthrough changes everything with verified erinacine A content.
The key bioactives in lion's mane are erinacines (found in the mycelium) and hericenones/hericenes (found in the fruiting body). When Paul wanted to create a standardized product, he discovered that no compendial testing methods or reference standards existed commercially. Academic researchers had identified these compounds using advanced mass spec instruments, but no commercial facility had isolated them in meaningful quantities.
Paul built a reference standard manufacturing facility inside Nootropics Depot's lab, acquiring a Büchi flash chromatography prep HPLC system. They isolated erinacines from liquid culture lion's mane mycelium, becoming the first company to create commercially available erinacine A reference standards in the United States. After they released Erinamax, companies like ChromaDex and Phytolab began selling erinacine A reference standards they extracted directly from Nootropics Depot's product. This is how foundational the work was.
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26:30 - Erinamax: The World's First Erinacine A Product
Erinamax is a liquid culture lion's mane mycelium grown in large bioreactors -- not on grain, but on a liquid substrate. This method allows the mycelium to be cleanly separated from the substrate, producing pure mycelium that can then be freeze-dried and standardized to 0.5% erinacine A. This process cannot be done with traditional mycelium-on-grain cultivation, where there's no way to remove the grain.
After eight years of research and development, Nootropics Depot created Erinamax -- the world's first lion's mane mycelium supplement actually standardized to erinacine A. Lab tests revealed most competitors contained ZERO erinacines.
Matt adds that erinacines weren't the end goal but rather the starting point. They've been developing hericenone and hericene reference standards from the fruiting body as well, though those compounds have fatty acid side chains that require a supercritical CO2 extraction system to separate properly. The machine they showed the PricePlow team during the facility tour was exactly that instrument, and it's needed before they can release a standardized fruiting body lion's mane product.
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28:30 - Nerve Growth Factor and Real Consumer Stories
Erinacine A's main mechanism is stimulating nerve growth factor (NGF), which supports nerve protection, recovery, and growth. Paul shares two vivid examples of customers who experienced meaningful nerve recovery after taking Erinamax paired with their Tiger Milk mushroom extract.
The one that resonates most personally: Paul's mother was a violinist who sliced the tip of her finger while pregnant with him, leading to permanent nerve damage. She hadn't been able to play violin since. Three weeks into taking Erinamax and Tiger Milk, she called Paul at 10 PM in tears -- feeling was returning to the finger. "The last time I had feeling in this finger," she told him, "you were in my belly." Paul is careful to note this isn't an immediate effect -- NGF stimulation and nerve regeneration take time -- which creates a consumer education challenge, but the long-term data from real customers is remarkable.
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30:45 - Tiger Milk Mushroom and Traditional Wisdom
Tiger Milk mushroom is sourced from Malaysia, where the lore says it only grows where a mother tiger nursed her cubs. Paul acknowledges the story is almost certainly mythological (they probably just found it in forests where tigers lived) but the ingredient itself is real and interesting. Nootropics Depot is still characterizing its unique bioactives, which is why Tiger Milk isn't standardized yet.
Brown seaweed Ecklonia cava outperforms land-based plants with its powerful phlorotannins! Research shows benefits for metabolism, cognition, liver health, and even hair growth.
Paul's broader philosophy here is worth capturing: traditional cultures don't spend money repeatedly on something that produces no effect over long time periods. If the Chinese have used reishi for thousands of years, that's meaningful signal. Western science's job is to figure out why it works, not to dismiss it. The pharmaceutical industry actually does this regularly -- they pull molecules from nature and then synthesize patentable analogs. Nootropics Depot tries to skip the synthetic step and optimize the natural source instead.
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36:30 - Ecklonia Cava: A 6-Year Quest
The story behind Ecklonia cava at Nootropics Depot spans six years: Paul refused to sell it until he could prove it was real. When community members on the Nootropics Depot subreddit started linking to research on this brown algae from Korea, Paul got interested. But unlike land plants, there were no botanical reference materials, no DNA testing standards, and no way to even confirm whether something was actually Ecklonia cava, let alone a high-quality one.
They built their own reference materials by sourcing authenticated Ecklonia cava fronds and stipes directly, doing DNA analysis at two independent labs to confirm the species, and then running everything available on the US market through their HPTLC system. The result: nothing on the US market was Ecklonia cava. All of it was a different brown seaweed (likely Laminaria japonica or a similar species). No dieckol. Just generic seaweed marketed as something more valuable.
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44:00 - Dieckol: The UV Protection Discovery
Third-party chromatography testing of 7 Ecklonia cava products reveals only Nootropics Depot Ecklonia Cava contains measurable dieckol. Every competitor tested non-detect for this critical bioactive compound.
What makes real Ecklonia cava uniquely valuable isn't just that it's the correct species. It's dieckol content -- a phlorotannin that functions essentially as the algae's melanin. The key insight is that dieckol-rich Ecklonia cava only grows in one specific location: volcanic rock off Jeju Island, Korea, where tidal changes expose the algae to direct UV radiation by 5 meters a day. The algae creates dieckol to protect itself from that UV exposure, exactly like human skin tanning in response to sun.
Paul discovered this accidentally during beta testing. He spent three hours outside in extreme Phoenix UV (index of 14) while taking their dieckol-standardized product and didn't burn. He repeated the experiment and got the same result. The mechanism makes sense: you're consuming the algae's UV-protection compound. Other Ecklonia cava with no dieckol (even from the correct species) won't produce this effect. The algae has to grow in those specific stress conditions on Jeju Island to produce it. Read more on Nootropics Depot's Ecklonia cava.
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47:00 - Why Most Ecklonia Cava on the Market Is Fake
To confirm that no existing product had dieckol, Nootropics Depot tested every Ecklonia cava product they could find on the US market using their HPTLC chromatography setup. None of them matched the reference material. They then sent products out for DNA testing and confirmed the results. The material being sold as Ecklonia cava was consistently something else: brown seaweed, but not the right species.
Nootropics Depot spent 6 YEARS developing their Ecklonia Cava supplement, discovering most market products aren't genuine! Their authentic marine extract offers metabolic, cognitive and sleep benefits backed by real science. The only verified Ecklonia Cava you can trust.
Matt adds that attempts to work directly with Korean suppliers were initially stonewalled -- labs and suppliers in Korea wouldn't even take their calls. They eventually set up an office and facility in Korea to source directly and test everything they could get their hands on. The product Paul beta-tested during the summer story was the payoff from six years of that work. This is the same testing methodology Nootropics Depot has applied across tongkat ali, tribulus, saffron, and turkesterone.
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52:00 - Consumer Expectations vs. Long-Term Ingredient Reality
One of the harder business realities Paul and Matt discuss is the tension between what actually works and what consumers think they should feel. Ingredients like lion's mane erinacines, Ecklonia cava, and Erinamax build effects over weeks -- NGF expression, nerve regeneration, gut microbiome improvements, and hormonal rebalancing don't happen in a day. But the mainstream consumer wants to feel something the first time they take it.
Matt puts it directly: some consumers have told them they don't care if a product is real as long as it's cheaper. That's the challenge. Paul adds that caffeine is in everything because it delivers an immediate, undeniable effect. Nootropics Depot leans into ingredients like Cognance (which has an acute effect through its 5-HT2A binding mechanism) to provide some immediate experiential value while the longer-term compounds build. Mike frames it as "Trojan horsing the good stuff" to a mainstream audience -- pair something that works fast with something that works deep.
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55:00 - Cistanche: The Most Underrated Ingredient
Cistanche tubulosa, the "desert ginseng" that saved Genghis Khan's army, naturally supports testosterone through enhanced enzyme production. Modern research validates 2,000+ years of use for hormonal health, cognitive function & vitality.
Both Paul and Matt independently name cistanche as their personal favorite product in the entire Nootropics Depot lineup. It's a holoparasitic desert plant from China (no chlorophyll, no photosynthesis) that attaches to host plants to draw nutrients. Cistamax combines three cistanche extracts standardized to 50% echinacoside and 15% verbascoside, paired with PrimaVie shilajit, pregnenolone, and DHEA.
Paul's description of the subjective experience is telling: "I don't go into taking cistanche thinking I'm going to get one benefit. I go in thinking I know I'm going to feel better. I'm going to be in a better mood, wake up easier, feel better during the day. It's just all around systemic improvement." Recent research on the "testobiome" (the idea that parts of the gut microbiome produce circulating testosterone) may explain why cistanche's effects are so broad. It may be supporting the gut in ways that then improve testosterone, mood, sleep, and overall function downstream. Learn more in our full cistanche guide and the Cistamax product article.
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59:15 - Cognance: Bacopa Reinvented with Ebelin Lactone
Cognance started when Paul and product specialist Emil were reading research papers on bacopa. The conventional wisdom is to standardize bacopa to bacosides. But Paul and Emil found research showing that bacosides aren't the actual bioactives -- they're upstream precursors that the gut microbiome converts in a two-step process into the compound that actually does the work in the body.
Cistamax from Nootropics Depot combines three cistanche extracts with PrimaVie shilajit, pregnenolone, and DHEA for comprehensive testosterone support. Get 85mg echinacoside per serving plus hormone precursors in one convenient formula. More bioactives, better value than buying separately.
That compound is ebelin lactone, and it binds to the 5-HT2A receptor -- the same receptor that psilocybin mushrooms activate. The result is a microdose-like effect without any psychedelic compounds involved. The problem is that ebelin lactone production depends entirely on individual gut microbiome composition. Some people convert plenty, others convert almost none. Nootropics Depot's solution was to pre-digest the bacopa using a patented dual-stage acid hydrolysis process that bypasses the gut conversion step and delivers standardized amounts of ebelin lactone directly.
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1:01:30 - Solving Bacopa Anhedonia
The patented pre-digestion process solved another major problem with bacopa: the anhedonia that many users reported years ago. Paul explains that bacopa's two-step conversion first produces jujubagenin and pseudojujubagenin: middle-stage metabolites that have a calming, motivation-suppressing effect. That's what caused the "flat," demotivated feeling bacopa got famous for around 2015. The second acid hydrolysis step converts those into ebelin lactone, which produces an uplifting, floaty cognitive effect instead.
By completing both steps externally during the manufacturing process, Cognance delivers the finished, active metabolite while bypassing the intermediate stage that caused the anhedonia complaints. Ebelin lactone is considered a natural metabolite of a GRAS-listed supplement, which puts it within dietary supplement territory under Paul's reading of the DSHEA -- though he adds with a laugh that the FDA might disagree and is welcome to send a letter rather than raid them again.
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1:03:00 - The Sabroxy-Cognance-Saffron Stack
Nootropics Depot's High-Potency Saffron Extract delivers double the bioactive compounds of typical products -- 7.5% crocins and 1% safranals. Clinical research shows 30mg daily supports mood, cognitive function, and eye health.
Paul's daily nootropic stack combines three Nootropics Depot products: Cognance (ebelin lactone from bacopa), Sabroxy (an Oroxylin-A extract standardized to inhibit dopamine reuptake at levels comparable to Ritalin in some studies), and their high-potency saffron extract (standardized to 7.5% crocins and 1% safranals). Ben notes that heading back to a cold, gray Northeast winter, this particular stack sounds compelling.
The combination makes pharmacological sense: Cognance activates the 5-HT2A receptor with an uplifting, floaty effect; Sabroxy adds dopaminergic support to sharpen motivation and drive; and saffron adds mood and visual support. Matt notes that combining a dopaminergic with Cognance meaningfully amplifies both. Paul says he eventually wants to formulate a comprehensive mood and memory product that formalizes this stack, but for now the individual products stack cleanly because they were designed with co-administration in mind.
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1:05:00 - Infinifiber and the Akkermansia Ecosystem
Infinifiber is Nootropics Depot's upcoming prebiotic fiber product, born out of Paul's deep dive into the gut microbiome. He became interested after developing Berberine (a natural GLP-1 supplement that works by increasing Akkermansia, the probiotic strain that produces GLP-1 in the gut) and building their Infinigreens product, which includes a dose of resistant potato starch called Solnol for the same reason.
The concept: 95% of Americans are deficient in fiber, but not all fiber is the same. Fibers are fermentable or non-fermentable, soluble or insoluble, and different fibers feed different probiotic strains. Infinifiber is designed to pair with Infinigreens and eventually with Nootropics Depot's forthcoming protein product as a complete meal replacement stack. The Akkermansia angle matters beyond GLP-1: Paul notes that the microbiome may be producing meaningful amounts of circulating testosterone directly, which ties the fiber story back to everything they've been saying about cistanche, mood, and hormonal health.
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1:10:15 - The Protein Frontier and Future Ingredients
If raw tongkat ali root costs $250 per 100kg, how can a "100:1 extract" retail for $20? The math doesn't work. Nootropics Depot's new white paper exposes why ratio claims mean nothing without testing for actual eurycomanone content.
Paul previews a protein product he can't fully detail yet, but the direction is clear: he's inspired by what arrives in breast milk, specifically lactoferrin, human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), and alpha-lactoglobulin (humans make alpha; cows make beta-lactoglobulin, which triggers immune responses in humans). Speaking on Solar Foods Solein, Ben mentions a company in the Netherlands making human-identical lactoferrin from yeast using precision fermentation, which Paul says would be interesting to collaborate on.
He also mentions a protein made from a microbe discovered in Finland that can survive extreme cold and feed on nitrogen from air -- a concept similar to Solar Foods' "protein from air" fermentation technology. Paul describes it as neither plant-based nor animal-based, but something genuinely new. He's interested in specific peptide structures and amino acid compositions rather than just hitting macros, because he believes different protein sources have meaningfully different biological effects. Novel mushroom species in development are also mentioned, including one with potential myostatin-inhibiting properties.
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1:16:15 - AI as an R&D Tool
Paul, Matt, and the broader Nootropics Depot team use multiple AI tools, primarily Perplexity Deep Research and Gemini for scientific research acceleration. Paul's description of how he uses them is notably specific: he doesn't ask open-ended questions. He gives the AI a detailed scientific context, specific data, and then asks targeted questions. He'll feed it HPTLC chromatograms, UPLC settings, and mass spec data from the lab and have a conversation with it as if it were a lab tech.
Traditional Tribulus products are either too harsh or too weak. Nootropics Depot Tribugen fixes both problems with a five-ingredient stack that delivers smooth motivation and energy without the edgy stimulation. This is what Tribulus should have been all along.
The team triangulates answers across different AI models (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity Deep Research, and occasionally Claude) to cross-check outputs. Matt emphasizes that AI is a speed tool, not a replacement for judgment: it hallucinates, mis-cites, and will produce confident garbage if you give it bad inputs. Paul notes Grok has declined in utility after recent constraints, and has opinions about why. The discussion turns briefly to AI as a potential propaganda tool and whether AI-developed sentience moments might be staged events rather than genuine emergences.
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1:21:15 - Tribulus, Protodiosein, and the DHT Angle
Tribugen is Nootropics Depot's answer to a category that had the same problem as tongkat: no one was standardizing to the right bioactives. Paul says tribulus is primarily standardized to protodiosein for its DHT-increasing effects, with diosein as a secondary peak. The two are structurally similar but functionally distinct.
The interesting angle is that DHT is more anabolic than testosterone for physical performance, and Tribugen gives you a way to specifically increase it. That creates a natural pairing with Ecklonia cava: take Tribugen to raise DHT for athletic performance and strength, then use Ecklonia cava's dieckol content to protect scalp hair follicles from DHT-driven follicle miniaturization. Paul didn't anticipate this dual use when developing either product, but it emerged organically once both were in his customers' hands.
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1:22:45 - The Turkesterone Exposé
Nootropics Depot Beta-Ecdysterone delivers genuine muscle-building effects through plant science. Human study showed 2kg+ muscle gain in 10 weeks via estrogen receptor beta activation -- no hormonal disruption like synthetic alternatives. 50% standardized, lab-verified quality.
The turkesterone story started internally during Nootropics Depot's development of beta-ecdysterone. Paul couldn't source any raw material with meaningful turkesterone content -- everything suppliers sent him tested negative! That told him the entire market was probably in the same position. The root cause was an HPLC method problem: beta-ecdysterone and turkesterone peaks aren't properly separated with standard methods, so everything was being incorrectly identified as turkesterone.
When Paul posted about this on Reddit, community members asked him to test prominent brands: HTLT (Huge Supplements), Gorilla Mind, Raw Nutrition, and others. Every single one failed. According to Nootropics Depot, one had measurable turkesterone... just beta-ecdysterone mislabeled by inadequate testing methods. Paul says he didn't know who Derek from More Plates More Dates was before this blew up. He found the magnitude of the public reaction surprising: "I release failing results every week. I didn't understand why everyone got their panties in a bunch."
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1:29:00 - Amazon Fraud and Industry-Wide Testing Failures
Amazon is one of the core enablers of supplement fraud, and Paul is direct about it. He describes a Vietnamese operation found selling hundreds of thousands of units of supplements with five big keyword ingredients in the name and nothing real inside. When Amazon removes the listing, they spin up four more. He also cites a brand called OrgaBay selling what's described as a "liposomal phytosome" (which isn't even a coherent ingredient category) and Double Wood's turkesterone product that was at one point the #1 selling turkesterone on Amazon with zero actual turkesterone detected.
When Nootropics Depot provided testing data to Amazon showing products were adulterated or mislabeled, Amazon threatened to remove their selling privileges for "rocking the boat." Paul's conclusion is that the economics favor fraud: products with no active ingredients are cheap to make, easy to margin, and there's no accountability mechanism. He also discusses "lab shopping" -- brands sending the same sample to multiple third-party labs until one passes it, then exclusively using that lab. It's a systematic problem that he says even legitimate labs like Alchemist Labs experience, losing business for doing their jobs correctly.
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1:31:30 - Third-Party Lab Shopping and Dry Labs
Paul describes one of the most striking examples of lab fraud: a brand called AuraVeda claimed their lion's mane was standardized to 4% erinacines and 4% hericenones, with a COA from a California lab. Nootropics Depot bought the product, tested it, found nothing. They decided to probe the lab directly.
They sent the lab three samples labeled as lion's mane spiked at 1%, 2%, and 5% erinacine A, then prepaid for COAs. The lab sent back results showing 1.1%, 2.3%, and 5.5% -- passing COAs. But Nootropics Depot hadn't sent lion's mane. They sent yeast. Just plain yeast, labeled as lion's mane, and received passing certificates of analysis with erinacine measurements for a sample that contained zero lion's mane and zero erinacines. The lab wasn't running a bad method. They weren't running any method at all.
Where to Follow and Learn More
Connect with Paul Eftang, Matt Harrier, and Nootropics Depot
- Matt Harrier on LinkedIn
- Nootropics Depot on LinkedIn
- Nootropics Depot on Instagram: @nootropicsdepot
- nootropicsdepot.com
- Nootropics Depot on PricePlow -- sign up for news and product alerts
PricePlow Resources
- Nootropics Depot Against the World, Part 1: The FDA Raid | Episode #203
- Inside Nootropics Depot's Pharmaceutical-Grade Labs
- The Bioactive Imperative: Why Ratio Claims Are Meaningless
- How Nootropics Depot's R&D Lab Ensures Every Supplement Actually Works
- Chromatography Doesn't Lie: The Ecklonia Cava Quality Crisis
Ingredients and Products Discussed
- Nootropics Depot Tongkat Ali | Tongkat Ali Deep Dive
- Nootropics Depot Erinamax (Erinacine A Lion's Mane) | Lion's Mane Guide
- Nootropics Depot Ecklonia Cava | Ecklonia Cava Research
- Nootropics Depot Cistamax | Cistanche Guide
- Nootropics Depot High-Potency Saffron
- Nootropics Depot Tribugen
- Nootropics Depot Beta-Ecdysterone
- Nootropics Depot Black Ginger Extract
Paul and Matt left us with a more thorough education in supplement ingredient development than most people get in years of casual research. If Part 1 showed you why the system is broken, Part 2 shows you what doing it right actually looks like: ten years of reference standard creation, cell culture labs, failed market tests, six-year quests for a real ingredient, and a refusal to sell anything until it can be proven to be what it claims.
A huge thanks to Paul Eftang and Matt Harrier for hosting us at their facility in Tempe and spending two full episodes sharing that knowledge. Head to nootropicsdepot.com to see the lineup and read their testing data for yourself.
And thank you to Perfect Shaker for sponsoring the PricePlow Podcast! Check out their outstanding shaker cups at PerfectShaker.com, bringing quality gear to match quality supplements.
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