When it comes to Prevagen there is little doubt that they overstepped the bounds when marketing their product. The question is really, is there any truth that their product works in a less dramatic way?
Vitamin D contained in Prevegan should boost cognative function, but, that's not exactly groundbreaking and it's the main functional ingredient in the prevagen pill.
Prevagen does include one more ingredient, Apoaequorin, this has been the root of some controversy in and of itself. The ingredient is supposed to have benefits for brain health, but looks unlikely to be able to reach the brain when ingested orally. And whilst there was a trial done on the ingredient (funded by Prevagen), the claims they made around the efficacy of their memory supplement weren't actually even backed up by this study.
It actually looks likely that this ingredient even has the opposite effect to those intended.
The reality is that we don't recommend prevagen when there are similarly priced supplements that contain ingredients that are proven to work for boosting memory and focus without the controversy that surrounds Prevagen supplements.
Customers Prevagen Reviews
As you'd probably expect the customer review of Prevagen aren't exactly positive. With most people saying it had little effect and those that did report it having any positive results were probably vitamin d deficient. The reality is that most Americans would benefit from supplementing vitamin d especially in winter with almost half of the population being deficient. [4] As a result some people will have actually seen statistically significant improvement in their overall brain health. As vitamin D at least is proven to improve brain function. [5] The key difference is a bottle of vitamin d pills will set you back a couple of dollars not 30-40.
Prevagen Lawsuit
The FTC has taken issues with their advertising [1], and the suit is still ongoing [2] and their self funded study wasn't even a fraction as effective as they claimed if you actually look at the full results. [3]
Lastly there's the fact that the FDA had previously raised concerns in 2012, of Prevagen overreaching it's advertising into Alzheimers these seem to have been addressed by 2018 when the FDA released a statement that they were happy Prevagen had addressed the issues in their warning letter.
Prevagen Ingredients
We've already talked about vitamin D3, which does have some benefits, so what about Apoaequorin. The controversial ingredient. Let's start with the side effects of apoaequorin, because it's not off to a great start, when taken at levels of 10mg/day or above (the dosage in Prevagen) it can cause:
Nausea.
Dizziness.
Headaches.
There are also some reports of other issues.
In terms of what it actually does, very little, in theory it was thought that it could reduce calcium build up in the brain, but the reality is that there isn't any reliable evidence to suggest that it does this and it seems that it doesn't pass from oral ingestion effectively even if it could work [6].
Taking prevagen will do no more than a vitamin d pill, which could have some positive impacts and would improve memory, give clearer thinking a sharper mind etc. But, once again, just take a vitamin pill.
References
1 - https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/quincy_bioscience_holding_co_ftc_amended_reply_7-17-18.pdf
2 - https://www.reuters.com/article/quincybioscience-ftc-memorypills-idUSL1N1EZ13E
3 - https://www.pharmacytoday.org/article/S1042-0991(15)30157-2/fulltext
4 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21310306/
5 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6132681/
6 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK552157/
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