The Herb Ruta Chalepensis & Testosterone
by Anthony Roberts
Admittedly, Ruta Chalapensis is not one of the herbs that I stumbled onto while researching testosterone boosters. The first time I’d ever heard about the stuff is when William Llewellyn wrote about it in his annual blog post, introducing it as an ingredient for his new test booster. I had honestly never even come close to finding any of this research, and I can’t remember anyone mentioning that they’d heard about it previously. So William certainly scores one for originality.
And since William is a noted author on the subject of anabolic steroids, any testosterone booster that he releases is sure to turn some heads. I’m sure Test force will do very well on the supplement market.
Just so we’re all on the same page here, let’s take a look at William Llewellyn’s write up on the Ruta Chalepensis:
The first thing that jumps out at me is that the final line seems a bit deceptive. In fact, William shopped this idea around to numerous supplement companies prior to releasing it, and was rejected by them. Remember, we’re reading his personal website, and if he truly was offering this ingredient to “select partners” he obviously wouldn’t be advertising it openly on his blog; this reeks of a first-come-first-served kind of offer (think Craigslist), not a select partnership.
Still, none of this means Ruta Chalepensis is a bad idea, I’m just not sure how many companies want to license it. He’s trademarked his own standardized extraction of it (RC Pensis™), and if his version is well received by the market, people get good results from it, and maybe he gets a few studies done, then he’ll own the gold-standard trademark for this ingredient, hands down – and this is likely where he’ll earn the majority of $$ from the idea. In general, in the supplement world, if you have a huge idea but only a midsized company, you’re going to earn the majority of your loot from licensing it out. Ruta Chalepensis may be the next big thing in the industry, but not if Molecular Nutrition is the only company carrying it.
William has claimed that the herb is an insulin mimetic and a nitric oxide (NO) stimulator, as well as a testosterone stimulator…but I haven’t looked into the herb for the first two properties. It may be the best herb in the world for that kind of thing…I’ve got no idea. For my purposes here, I’m taking a look at its testosterone stimulating properties, and that’s it. In fact, at this point I should stress that I’m not evaluating Test Factor, William’s new product, but rather looking at one property of one ingredient (alone), and attempting to answer the question (*based on the published medical data): “Does this herb boost testosterone?”
The answer is yes, the herb boosts testosterone, based on all available data. Right now, the most relevant information on the testosterone boosting properties of Ruta Chalepensis is a rodent study out of Saudi Arabia.
Rodents, each weighing between 150 grams and 200 grams, were separated into three groups, each receiving a different dose of Ruta Chalepensis (one group was also a control group). The first group received a dose of .5g, the second group received a dose of 1.0g, and the final group received a dose of 2.0g (10% of their bodyweight for the heaviest rodents). All groups received a considerable testosterone elevation:
f we assume the heaviest bodyweight (200g) for the rodents, this equates to 2.5g/kg at the lowest dose, 5g/kg at the next dose, and 10g/kg (10,000mgs/kg) at the highest dose. Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) was considerably elevated at all doses, while Luteinizing Hormone (LH) showed only a slight elevation at the highest dose. The human dose equivalent for something like this is going to be hundreds of grams per day (Test Factor contains 500 milligrams – or half a gram – and unfortunately, although the label states that it is an extract, it gives us no other information on the potency). Put more simply, there’s no way a human being can ingest enough of this herb on a daily basis to mimic the effects we see in the rodent data. And, if this stuff were somehow concentrated to a 100:1 ratio, it would likely be far too expensive to use, although it would then have a shot at fitting into a capsule.
As a stand alone herb, without being concentrated and extracted, it’s doubtful that anyone is going to be able to consume enough to get an ergogenic testosterone boost, and Massularia Acuminata, which requires a lower dose, has been widely discredited for similar concerns – although admittedly, at that dose, it does not raise testosterone as much as we could expect from Ruta Chalepensis. Unlike Massularia, which requires nearly-impossible doses to achieve a minimal testosterone boost, Ruta Chalepensis appears to require completely-impossible doses to achieve a very good testosterone boost.
And, once again, since there’s no published human data, we don’t know 100% on this stuff…maybe, for some reason it works at a far lower dose in humans, or works at only 2 grams, or doesn’t work at all. Right now, there’s only one retailer…
As I said, the herb certainly appears to work, and work rather well (according to the rodent data) but it would seem that the required dose is ungodly high. Although I’m simply reviewing the ingredient Ruta Chalepensis, and trying to avoid a review of Test Factor per se, it’s nearly impossible to do so and ignore the fact that the only current version is RC Pensis™, and is found in Test Factor. And it’s more than a little dishonest for me to say William and I haven’t had our run-ins in the past, although I will note that I don’t currently sell any nutritional products, and don’t have any competing interests on the market
In general, the herb Ruta Chalepensis isn’t a total loser in terms of testosterone boosting, it just requires a very hefty (unrealistic) dose…but if RC Pensis™ is a super-potent, super-concentrated, super-extract, maybe even a preferential extract of the most active herbal fractions, then it may be very good at boosting testosterone.
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