A phenomenal new study has been published using PLT Health’s RipFACTOR Muscle-Building Supplement, Showing 10-15% gains in strength, reps performed, and total testosterone… and an insane 30-40% increase in free testosterone![1] This article breaks it down:
PLT Health’s RipFACTOR Muscle-Building Supplement has new data showing 10-15% gains in strength, reps performed, and total testosterone… and an insane 30-40% increase in free testosterone![1]
Aside from dietary supplement mainstays like zinc, magnesium, and vitamin C, there’s an important and growing category of botanical extracts with powerful bioactive effects.
Arguably, the industry leader in the botanicals category is New Jersey-based PLT Health Solutions. This company is known for its research-heavy ingredient development approach, which has set a new industry standard for scientific rigor.
We recently discussed PLT Health’s beverage-stable ingredients, as they’re one company putting major resources into making their botanical extracts soluble and stable in water – well over a dozen of them at this point. For instance, PLT recently launched Zynamite-S, a drink-stable form of the nootropic ingredient Zynamite.
In the above articles, you’ll notice the thorough amount of research behind these ingredients, much of it published and peer-reviewed. And today, we have another study to discuss, and it’s a big one:
RipFACTOR – A Dual-Purpose Heavy-Hitting Muscle Builder
Like Zynamite, RipFACTOR falls into two classifications:
- It’s one of PLT’s beverage-stable ingredients, and
- It works on both the mental and physical levels.
RipFACTOR is a combination of botanical extracts from Mangifera indica, commonly known as the mango fruit, and Sphaeranthus indicus, a flowering plant that’s colloquially referred to as East Indian globe thistle. These have both been well-known thanks to Ayurvedic medicine,[2,3] but now PLT Health’s taking them to a whole new level.
Flashback: RipFACTOR’s 2023 Study
Before getting into the new study, let’s recap the big 2023 study.[4] In a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, 40 weight-trained men were recruited, testing 650 milligrams of RipFACTOR against placebo for eight weeks. They weight trained four times per week using a traditional “bro split” under supervision.[4]
In just two weeks, the RipFACTOR group had significantly increased 1-rep max strength gains in bench press, leg press, and handgrip compared to placebo.[4]
Strength continued to improve through the 8 weeks — by the end they had 2.4 times greater strength gains than placebo — and the RipFACTOR group had significantly greater free testosterone, DHT, and reduced cortisol.
So no doubt, this ingredient is impressive. What else can it do? The new study explores that:
New RipFACTOR Study – RipFACTOR as a Muscle-Building Adaptogen that Boosts Free and Total Testosterone
Published in May of 2024, we have an exciting new study highlighting RipFACTOR’s ability to further support athletic performance.[1]
In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 120 participants were assigned to one of four groups for eight weeks (56 days):
- Active 1 (A1) – 425mg RipFACTOR
- Active 2 (A2) – 850mg RipFACTOR
- Placebo 1 (P1) – placebo
- Placebo 2 (P2) – placebo, but with twice the training sets
All four groups completed an identical resistance training (RET) program, the only exception being that P2 did twice the number of sets per session as the other three groups. The supplements were taken daily in the morning.
Again, note that there were 120 participants (99 completed the study) — this is large for a dietary supplement study!
Researchers tracked strength on the selected lifts, as well as certain biomarkers – including the all-important testosterone – over the course of the 8-week study period:
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Results: RipFACTOR Significantly Increases Strength (1RM Bench, 1RM Leg Extension, and Total Muscle Strength)
The RipFACTOR-supplemented groups, A1 and A2, saw significantly greater improvements on 1-RM bench press, 1-RM leg extension, and total muscle strength – without any significant differences in body weight.[1]
The RipFACTOR-supplemented groups saw 10-15% greater improvements in strength than the placebo groups – and without a significant difference in body weight![1] This is quite remarkable and, in our opinion, strongly implies that RipFACTOR is supporting performance and neuromuscular adaptation at the cellular-metabolic level, as opposed to just promoting lean mass gains.
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RipFACTOR Boosts Endurance (Number of Reps)
RipFACTOR improved not only muscular strength, but also muscular endurance.[1]
Besides testing max strength, the study also measured subjects’ maximum repetitions on the same lifts. They found that, again, RipFACTOR increased the max reps by about 10-15% across the board. Interestingly, there wasn’t much of a dose-response effect here,[1] suggesting that you can get the endurance-boosting effects of RipFACTOR even a dose that fits one capsule.
Note that placebo groups did well here too (especially the 2x rep P2 group), but RipFACTOR still beat them both out.
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RipFACTOR Improves Free Testosterone and Total Testosterone
RipFACTOR improved androgen status — both free and total testosterone. Total testosterone gained roughly the same extent that it improved strength gains…but the free testosterone gains were enormou
– 30 and 40% in the 425mg and 850mg groups, respectively![1]Support for our statements above can be found in the above table, showing RipFACTOR increased free and total testosterone, with total testosterone boosted by about 10-15%, roughly the same amount that it increased strength.[1]
40% free testosterone gains in high-dosed RipFACTOR, 30% in lower dose
But when it came to free testosterone, the effects were particularly pronounced. As you can see, the A2 (high-dose RipFACTOR) group experienced an almost 40% increase in free testosterone! Even the low-dose group got roughly 30% more, which is still a massive effect size, especially when you consider that free T is a particularly important biomarker.
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Reduced cortisol from RipFACTOR
RipFACTOR® is an award-winning clinically-studied, concentrated herbal formula to accelerate muscle growth. The development of this formula involved screening over 2,000 botanicals for their ability to promote optimal strength, endurance, and muscle gains.
Another interesting thing to note about the hormonal results is that, while the placebo group saw a slight increase in cortisol, which is what we’d expect from a heavy training load, the RipFACTOR group actually decreased their cortisol during the study period.
Summing these results up, we think you should understand RipFACTOR as an adaptogen – a substance that helps the body adapt to stress, supports overall health, and maintains homeostasis. Adaptogens are defined by their ability to exert a normalizing effect on bodily processes, promoting balance and resilience in response to physical, chemical, or biological stressors.
That RipFACTOR kept cortisol from rising even during a heavy training cycle is strong support for the argument that this supplement is an adaptogen, and a great one for strength and hormones at that.
A smaller dose for the budget-conscious
Primeval Labs Primavar was updated in 2023 to provide 325mg RipFACTOR per capsule
It’s also important to realize that there’s some great legitimacy from a smaller dose of RipFACTOR. The previous muscle-building study had a 650 milligram dose[4] – a bit much to fit into a standard-sized capsule.
But now, thanks to this new study, we’ve seen clinical efficacy at 425 milligrams![1] Although brands (and customers) who want to go all-in on the free testosterone gains should target the large 850 milligram dose, this 425 milligram option provides something that can fit in just one capsule!
Proposed Mechanisms for RipFACTOR
Here are the mechanisms of action that the study authors propose to explain RipFACTOR’s T-boosting, strength-boosting, and endurance-boosting effects:[1]
- Mitochondrial support: Mangiferin supports mitochondrial function.
- Enhanced muscle oxidative capacity: Mangiferin assists with improving the oxidative capacity of muscles.
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The RipFACTOR Benefits, as shown from PLT Health from the earlier 2023 study.[4]
Overall skeletal muscle competence: Mangiferin benefits the overall competence of skeletal muscles.
- Promotion of NO activation in vascular endothelial cells: Mangiferin may promote the activation of nitric oxide (NO) within vascular endothelial cells.
- Influence on mitochondria and skeletal muscle by NO
- Stimulation of muscle protein synthesis and muscle growth: NO precursors may stimulate muscle protein synthesis and muscle growth, especially when combined with exercise.
- Antioxidant properties: the extracts in RipFACTOR have known antioxidant properties that help scavenge oxidants generated in actively contracting muscle.
- Scavenging of oxidants to prevent damage: Antioxidants may help scavenge reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated in muscle, preventing damage to mitochondrial DNA, mitoptosis, mitophagy, tissue dysfunction, and skeletal muscle proteolysis.
- Potential negative impact of antioxidant supplementation: Some evidence suggests that antioxidant supplementation may negatively impact resistance exercise training (RET)-induced muscle strength and that post-exercise ROS can facilitate skeletal muscle adaptation.
Zynamite is PLT Health’s Next-Gen Brain and Body Support Ingredient, harnessing the power of ≥60% mangiferin from mango leaf extract
All of these mechanisms make sense given what we’ve previously seen on mangiferin in our Zynamite article. It’s always interesting when antioxidant compounds improve athletic performance over time.
Just the right amount of antioxidant activity?
As the authors of the study themselves note, excessive antioxidant activity can also compromise adaptations to exercise, since some oxidative stress is necessary for the signaling processes involved in skeletal muscle growth and repair.[1] So why does RipFACTOR improve adaptation to exercise? We suspect that it acts on specific pathways with built-in feedback mechanisms – further research would be needed to confirm this.
How’s this happening? Understanding the constituents are helpful for those who are concerned:
The nootropic factor of RipFACTOR’s components
The Mangifera side of RipFACTOR is standardized for a xanthone called mangiferin, which has caffeine-like stimulant and nootropic effects.[5] It’s been shown to facilitate long-term potentiation, which is your brains process making short-term memories permanent.[6] We cover mangiferin heavily in our Zynamite article.
RIPFACTOR Constituents – Image courtesy PLT Health
Sphaeranthus, on the other hand, is rich in quercetin, an antioxidant that synergizes with mangiferin to improve crucial dimensions of physical performance like VO2 max, peak power, and oxygen uptake.[7,8] For instance, a 2020 study showed that combining mangiferin and quercetin (as Zynamite-PX) attenuated post-workout muscle damage and soreness, and accelerated subjects’ rate of recovery.[9]
Sphaeranthus also contains 7-hydroxyfrullanolide, which is called out in the 2023 strength study.[1]
So the constituents in RipFACTOR provide an ability to improve both mental and physical performance, making it suitable for a wide range of applications – but particularly for nootropic-focused pre-workout formulas, muscle building supplements, and testosterone boosters.
And now have some spectacular research for all three.
Conclusion: An Incredible Study
PLT Health Solutions: Growth Through Innovation
The bottom line is that with RipFACTOR, PLT Health appears to have yet another tiger by the tail. This study was no joke — we love that they even took the lengths to throw more volume at half of the placebo group, still beating it out in so many metrics that matter!
This is a company that’s doing a lot of credit to the supplement industry as a whole – we rarely see a single outfit with so much awesome research behind their ingredients.
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