Top TrendingEight Lines on a Label, One Capsule Almost an Inch Long, and a Note About Bedtime: A Reading of Thorne's Memoractiv, Line by Line, From the Back Porch.
Memoractiv is a capsule from Thorne, a supplement maker in South Carolina: acetyl-L-carnitine, ashwagandha, bacopa, caffeine, a ginkgo complex, lutein, pterostilbene and zeaxanthin, two capsules once or twice a day, away from bedtime. I took the bottle out to the porch with my reading glasses and read every line beside the trial it came from, then read the reviews, the warnings and the return page. What follows is that reading.
This is a paid advertisement. Sponsored by Thorne Research, Inc.
Ray Coleman is the pen name of this desk. The customers quoted on this page are real; their reviews are public on the seller's site and were read on the seller's own product page on September 9, 2026. I haven't met them and know nothing about them beyond what they wrote. The small photos beside their reviews are illustrations, not the reviewers. Everything about the capsule, from the eight lines on the label to the restocking fee, comes from the seller's own pages, read the same day.
I read on the porch, and I read slowly.
Labels too. Especially labels.
A label is the one place a company has to tell you the truth in milligrams, and most people never turn the bottle around.
This one has eight lines, and I'm going to read you all eight, in the order the seller prints them, with the trial each one came from open on my lap.
Then the note that says "away from bedtime," which turns out to be the most useful sentence on the bottle.
But first, the thing you'll notice before any of that.
The capsule is almost an inch long.
The seller says so: 0.917 inches, 23.3 millimeters. A little longer than a quarter is wide.
Two of them, once or twice a day, with water.
Eight ingredients in a capsule almost an inch long, taken away from bedtime because one of the eight is caffeine. That's the bottle in one sentence, and the rest of this page is the eight lines.
Here's what it is.
Sixty capsules in a white bottle from Thorne, a company in Summerville, South Carolina, that sells mostly through practitioners and its own website.
The label calls it a formula for focus, concentration and reaction time, with the little asterisk every supplement in America carries.
Two capsules make a serving. Thirty servings to the bottle, fifteen if you take the higher dose.
I did what I always do.
I read the label before the listing.
I read the trials behind each of the eight lines, at the doses they actually used, and I'll tell you where I found none.
I read the 79 reviews and kept four, and I'll tell you why.
And I read the return page, which has a number on it you'll want to know before you order.
What I found is a carefully made capsule with two lines that match real trials in people your age, three that don't reach them, two I couldn't find trials for at all, and one that's half a cup of coffee.
One more thing before the first line, because most of you got here from one of our own advertisements.
Those ads talk about a boxed cereal, three foods, three drinks, and three words or phrases a man is supposed to be able to say or spell.
None of that is in the capsule, and I won't pretend it is. It's on this page, in its place: the cereal, the drinks and the word test are the tenth reading, and the honest version of every headline we run is in the guide linked at the foot.
The first reading · The bottleSixty Capsules, Eight Lines, and a Number in Inches
This is what's on the porch table.
A plain white bottle with a plain label, the way Thorne does everything.
The panel, which the seller prints in full on its page, reads like this, per two capsules:
Acetyl-L-carnitine, 250 milligrams.
Ashwagandha extract, 300 milligrams.
Bacopa extract, 100 milligrams.
Caffeine, 50 milligrams.
Ginkgo Phytosome, 240 milligrams.
Lutein, 10 milligrams.
Trans-pterostilbene, 66 milligrams.
Zeaxanthin, 2 milligrams.
Then two other ingredients: calcium laurate and the cellulose capsule.
The directions are one line, and I'll quote them exactly, because the last three words matter.
"Take 2 capsules one to two times daily away from bedtime."
And the warnings, which are longer than most, and to the seller's credit.
Not for anyone with a sensitivity to any ingredient.
Not in pregnancy or nursing, or if you're trying to conceive.
"Consult your health-care practitioner if taking a blood thinner. Because of the blood-thinning effects of Ginkgo, Memoractiv should be used with caution or avoided in an individual on anticoagulant therapy," and, the label adds, before a procedure.
"Product contains caffeine: 50 mg per serving."
Hold onto the blood-thinner line. It's the seller's own sentence, and it's the one I'd want a man my age to read before the price.
The second reading · Lines six and eightLutein and Zeaxanthin: the Two Pigments of the Eye, at the Dose the One-Year Trials Used
I'll start out of order, with the two lines that fit a man who reads, because they're the two that match a real trial.
Lutein and zeaxanthin are the yellow pigments in kale, spinach, egg yolk and corn.
Your body can't make them. They collect at the back of the eye, in the spot you read with, where they absorb blue light, and they turn up in brain tissue too.
Supplements pull them out of marigold flowers, and this one does.
Ten milligrams of lutein and two of zeaxanthin make twelve, and twelve is the number two trials used.
Sixty-two older adults, average age 74, took 12 milligrams a day or a placebo for a year.
The ones on the pigments had more of it in their retinas at the end, and did better on tests of complex attention and mental flexibility.
Executive function only trended. Fifty-one people finished. [1]
Forty-four older adults, average age 72, took the same 12 milligrams for a year, inside a brain scanner.
On a word-pair learning task, the pigments appeared to buffer the decline the placebo group showed, a large effect in a small group, and the scans lit differently while they learned. [2]
And one more, a two-year trial of 60 healthy adults over 65, gave them 22 milligrams of these carotenoids together with a gram of fish oil and vitamin E.
The active group made fewer errors on working-memory tasks, a small effect that grew as the tasks got harder. [3]
That one can't be pulled apart into its three parts, so I hold it loosely.
Twelve milligrams a day of lutein and zeaxanthin, for a year, in people in their seventies. That is what two capsules of this bottle hold. It's the best-matched line on the label, and it's the one nobody buys the bottle for.
If the man reading this squints at his phone at night and reads on the porch in the morning, these two lines are the ones written for him. The other six are a different story.
The third reading · Line twoAshwagandha at 300 Milligrams, and Who the Trials Were About
The second line, and the biggest number on the label.
Ashwagandha is a low shrub from India whose root has been used in Ayurveda for a very long time.
This bottle uses a branded root extract, KSM-66, at 300 milligrams per two capsules.
There's a trial at exactly that dose, and I'd want you to read who was in it.
One hundred twenty-five healthy adults aged 20 to 55, all of whom reported feeling under pressure, took 300 milligrams a day of a slow-release ashwagandha extract or a placebo for 90 days.
The ashwagandha group scored better on memory and focus tests at the end. [4]
Adults in their thirties, under pressure. Not a man of 68 on a porch.
There's a younger trial still.
Fifty-nine adults averaging 23 years old took 225 milligrams of a different form, once and then for 30 days.
Some measures of word recall, reaction time and picture recognition improved. Some didn't. [5]
Three hundred milligrams a day matches a real trial. The people in it were half your age and had signed up because they felt pushed. I can't carry that result across forty years, and neither can the label.
So the honest reading of line two is: the right dose, tested in the wrong people for this page.
The fourth reading · Line threeBacopa at 100 Milligrams, One Third of the Trials
The third line, and the plant with the best record in people over 55, at a dose this bottle doesn't reach.
Bacopa is a creeping water plant with small white flowers, used in Ayurveda for learning.
The bottle has 100 milligrams of an extract standardized to 20 percent bacosides, the compounds the trials measure.
The trials in people your age all used three times that.
Fifty-four healthy adults over 65 took 300 milligrams a day for twelve weeks and did better on a word-list learning test than placebo. [6]
Ninety-eight healthy adults over 55 took 300 milligrams a day for twelve weeks and did better on delayed recall. [7]
A meta-analysis of nine trials, 518 people, all at least twelve weeks, found faster attention and better memory performance on some tests, with stomach complaints as the main side effect. [8]
Three hundred milligrams a day, for twelve weeks, in men over 55. This bottle holds 100 per two capsules, 200 if you take four. It's the closest thing on the label to a memory ingredient with a track record, at a third of the dose.
If the maker had put 300 milligrams of bacopa in the capsule, I'd be writing a different page. They put in 100, and the capsule is already almost an inch long.
The fifth reading · Line fourCaffeine at 50 Milligrams, and the Note About Bedtime
The fourth line, and the one you'll feel first.
Fifty milligrams of caffeine per two capsules, bound to something called pterostilbene in a crystal the maker says releases it slowly.
Fifty milligrams is about half a cup of brewed coffee. Four capsules is a cup.
Caffeine is the best-understood thing on this label, and the story is short.
The European food-safety authority concluded in 2015 that single doses up to 200 milligrams and daily intakes up to 400 are not a safety concern for healthy adults, and that caffeine in moderate doses increases alertness and reduces sleepiness. [9]
That's the whole claim. It wakes you up.
It's also why the directions say "away from bedtime," and why I'd add a rule of my own: count it with your coffee.
If you drink three cups and take four capsules, you're at four cups.
Half a cup of coffee's worth of caffeine per serving, printed on the label to the seller's credit. It's the line on this label that will do the most, and the one that has nothing to do with memory.
The sixth reading · Line fiveGinkgo Phytosome at 240 Milligrams, and the Number the Label Doesn't Print
The fifth line, and the one I had to read three times.
"Ginkgo Phytosome, 240 milligrams."
A phytosome is ginkgo leaf extract bound to a fat from sunflower, a form the maker says the body absorbs better.
What the label doesn't print is how much ginkgo extract the 240 milligrams contains, and how much is the fat it's bound to.
So I can't put this line beside its trial, because I don't know the dose.
What I can tell you is what ginkgo did on its own, at doses we know.
Three thousand and sixty-nine adults aged 72 to 96 took 120 milligrams of standardized extract twice a day, or a placebo, for a median of six years.
They declined at the same rate, in memory and in everything else measured. [10]
The National Institutes of Health says there's no conclusive evidence ginkgo helps with any health condition. [11]
There's a smaller, kinder study.
Ninety-three healthy adults aged 55 to 79 took 120 milligrams a day for twelve weeks.
On one kind of memory test, learning paired words, the ginkgo group did moderately better.
On the rest, nothing. [12]
Two hundred forty milligrams a day of standardized ginkgo, for six years, moved nothing. This bottle holds 240 milligrams of a ginkgo-and-fat complex, and doesn't say how much of it is ginkgo.
And the caution, in the seller's own words, one more time: "Because of the blood-thinning effects of Ginkgo, Memoractiv should be used with caution or avoided in an individual on anticoagulant therapy," and before a procedure.
If you take something that thins the blood, or you have a procedure coming, that's a question for your doctor before the first capsule. The label says so, and I'm saying so.
The seventh reading · Lines one and sevenAcetyl-L-Carnitine and Pterostilbene: Two Lines I Couldn't Find a Trial For
The first and seventh lines, and the shortest section on this page, because I have the least to say.
Acetyl-L-carnitine is a form of an amino acid the body makes and uses to move fat into cells for energy.
Two hundred fifty milligrams here.
I searched for a randomized trial of it on memory or attention in healthy adults, and I couldn't find one I could read. The studies I found were in people with a named condition, which is not this page's terrain.
Pterostilbene is a cousin of resveratrol, found in tiny amounts in blueberries.
Sixty-six milligrams here, bonded to the caffeine.
I searched for a trial of it on memory in healthy adults and found none; the human trials I saw were about muscle, liver and metabolic markers.
Two lines, 316 milligrams between them, and no trial in healthy people that I could put beside them. That's not a verdict against them. It's a blank where a number should be.
I'd rather tell you I found nothing than pretend I found something. Two of the eight lines get a blank.
The eighth reading · The reviewsSeventy-Nine Reviews, Four Kept
The seller's page shows 79 reviews with an average of 4.6 stars: 63 five-star, seven four, three three, two two, four one.
Each review on the page carries the seller's own "Verified Buyer" mark. I read the ones the page shows.
I threw out one about a box that never arrived, because that's about the mail.
I kept the four that talk about the capsule itself, including one that says almost nothing, because it's the shortest honest sentence on the page.
The seller's page doesn't show each reviewer's star count in the text I could read, so I don't print stars I didn't see.
These are real customers, quoted word for word from the seller's product page; the small photos beside them are illustrations, not the reviewers.
I have been trying various supplements to enhance my cognitive function and memory. This one seems to be helping. I take it in the morning and it helps me get started and thinking clearly throughout the day.
I have been using them for almost 4 weeks, I believe they help me focus on my tasks.
Great way to get focused on those busy days. I was having issues with feeling overwhelmed and trying to stay on track with daily tasks because of the emergencies that would come flying out of nowhere.
Love it and it really helps and works.
Read those the way I did.
John says "seems to be helping" and "I take it in the morning." That's the caffeine line and the morning talking, and he's careful about it.
Iman says "I believe." Four weeks in, that's the right verb.
Jared describes busy days with things flying at him, and a capsule that helps him get started. Half a cup of coffee will do that, and so will a routine.
Jorge gives it nine words. I trust short reviews.
Nobody I kept claims their memory came back. They describe getting started and staying on task, which is what 50 milligrams of caffeine and a morning ritual deliver, with or without the other seven lines.
The ninth reading · The likelier explanationWhat Two Capsules at Eight in the Morning Actually Do
Suppose you buy it, take two with your coffee tomorrow, and feel sharper by nine.
I'd believe you. And I'd give you three reasons before I gave the label one.
You took 50 milligrams of caffeine on top of your coffee.
You swallowed something almost an inch long with a full glass of water, which is more water than most men drink before nine.
You did one deliberate thing before the day started, and you're watching for it to work.
None of that is on the panel. All of it comes with the bottle.
What actually helps, and costs nothing, is duller than eight lines.
- Water when you wake, and again at ten. Most mid-morning fog is a dry mouth in disguise.
- No caffeine after two, the capsule included. "Away from bedtime" is the seller's line, and it's right.
- Reading glasses that are actually your current strength. Half of what feels like a fading memory is squinting.
- Ten minutes on the porch with the phone inside.
- A pencil in the book. Underlining is the oldest memory aid there is, and it never runs out.
Now look at that list and be honest.
You've heard every item since your first physical, and you still don't do them.
Boring loses to a white bottle every time.
If a capsule gets you to drink a glass of water at eight and keep the caffeine before two, it did its work before any herb did. And the herbs, at these amounts, aren't going to do much.
The tenth reading · The bowl and the cupThe Cereal, the Three Drinks, the Three Foods and the Word Test From Our Own Advertisements
Our advertisements have been saying, in one version or another, that a boxed cereal, three foods and three drinks have something to do with memory, and that there are three words or phrases a man ought to be able to say.
You're owed the honest version, on one porch, so here it is.
Start with the bowl.
A frosted, honey-coated or chocolate cereal is mostly refined starch and added sugar, and a serving can carry more sugar than a cookie.
No cereal "ages the brain faster than time." Nobody has measured any such thing, and that phrase was written to be clicked.
What the studies do say is duller, and worth more.
In the Framingham Heart Study, adults who drank more sugary beverages scored lower on tests of memory, and daily fruit juice went the same way. [13]
In a Brazilian study of 10,775 adults followed for eight years, the ones who ate the most ultra-processed food, and the sweet cereal shelf is part of that, lost ground on tests of thinking about a quarter faster than the ones who ate the least. [14]
Both are associations across a population, not a sentence on your bowl. And a quarter faster than slow is still slow.
The three drinks.
The "evening drink" in our advertisement is alcohol, and it's the one with the strongest case behind it: in 550 British civil servants followed for thirty years, the more a person drank, the faster their scores fell on a word-fluency test, and light drinkers had no edge over those who didn't drink at all. [15]
The second is sugar in a glass: soda, sweetened tea, the tall flavored coffee from the counter, which is a soft drink with coffee in it. The Framingham finding above is about sugary drinks, and those are sugary drinks. [13]
The third, in one of our headlines, was coffee. That was our worst headline.
Plain black coffee and plain tea aren't the drinks any of those studies were about. Keep your coffee. Keep it before two, and count the capsule with it.
The three foods.
Processed meat, fried food, and the white-flour shelf: pastries, packaged cakes, white bread.
Our advertisement says "just stop eating these three." The research says something slower.
In 960 older adults followed for nearly five years, the ones whose meals looked most like the MIND pattern, vegetables, berries, nuts, whole grains, beans, fish and olive oil, held their thinking scores better, and the gap between the top and bottom thirds worked out to about seven and a half years of age. [16]
That's a pattern over years, not a list of three, and it can't be sold in a headline. Which is exactly why our headline doesn't say it.
The leafy greens on that list are where lutein comes from, by the way. A bowl of spinach carries more of it than a capsule, and costs less.
Less sugar in the bowl and the glass. Less alcohol in the evening. Keep the coffee. Eat more like the Mediterranean shelf and less like the vending machine. Every one of those is free, and none of them is in the capsule.
The three words, or the three phrases.
There's no such list. What our advertisement borrowed from is the short, scored mental-status test clinicians have given at the bedside since the 1970s: the date and the place, a few words to hold in mind and give back a minute later, a sum, naming, repeating one sentence, copying a drawing.
It's given in person and read against your age and your schooling by someone trained to do it, and a low score is a reason for a proper look, not a verdict.
Stumbling on a word when you're tired or being timed means nothing on its own. Nothing begins at a word.
If the worry behind the click is real, that's fifteen minutes with your doctor, and it costs you nothing from me.
And the advertisement about the things some men take every day.
That one sits closest to real research, and it's the one an advertisement has no business acting on.
Some kinds of daily medicine, including a few sold over the counter for allergies and for the night, are on the lists pharmacists check for people over 65.
Don't stop or change any of it because of an advertisement, ours included. Put everything you take in one bag, this bottle included, take it to the pharmacist, and ask one question: is anything here a poor choice at my age? The guide at the foot of this page has that section written out, with the studies. And this bottle has a blood-thinner line of its own that belongs in that bag.
So if you clicked on the cereal, here's where the cereal went: onto the porch table next to the paperback, where the real answer was always a plainer bowl, the coffee before two, and greens on the plate.
The eleventh reading · What it isn'tSix Things Two Capsules Won't Do
- It won't give you the trial dose of bacopa. The trials in men over 55 used 300 milligrams a day; two capsules hold 100.
- It won't tell you how much ginkgo is in it. The label prints 240 milligrams of a ginkgo-and-fat complex and no figure for the ginkgo itself.
- It won't be caffeine-free. Fifty milligrams per two capsules, printed on the label, taken "away from bedtime."
- It won't act on any condition a doctor has named. It's a dietary supplement, and its own label carries the sentence that says so.
- It won't be for anyone on a blood thinner, or with a procedure coming, without a doctor's say-so. The seller's own warning says caution or avoid.
- It won't come back for a full refund. The seller accepts returns within 60 days, and every approved return carries a 25 percent restocking fee.
If that list annoys you, I'd rather you were annoyed now than when the box arrives from South Carolina.
The twelfth reading · The routineIf You Do Buy It: One Bottle, Thirty Days, One Glass of Water, One Pencil
If you're going to spend the money, spend it as a test with a date on it, and test the thing that can actually work.
- Buy one bottle. Thirty servings at two capsules a day is the test, and it fits inside the 60-day return window with room to decide.
- Two capsules in the morning with a full glass of water, not four. The higher dose doubles the caffeine, and you want to know what the lower one does first.
- Nothing with caffeine after two, the same as before. "Away from bedtime" means the afternoon too.
- Write one line a day in the margin of whatever you're reading. Not "sharper" or "foggier." What you read at ten, and whether you remembered it at four.
- Keep the coffee where it is for the first two weeks, so you know what the capsule does. Cut the afternoon cup in the third and fourth, so you know what the water and the earlier bedtime do.
- On day thirty, read the thirty margins. If the second half reads better than the first, decide which change did it. The pencil will tell you more than the bottle will.
Look at that list the way I do.
Four of the six things are free.
The bottle is the one you'll pay for, and the water and the pencil are the ones that will do the work.
The thirteenth reading · Who it's forWho It Suits, and Who It Doesn't
This is worth a look if:
- You read a lot, on paper and on a screen, and the two lines for the eye are the ones you'd pick anyway.
- You want a label that prints every milligram, a company with a street address and a phone that answers weekdays, and warnings that say more than most. You have all three now.
- You can hold two ideas at once: eight real ingredients, two of them at trial doses, the rest below or blank.
- You'll run it as a thirty-day test with a pencil, not as a hope.
- You don't mind half a cup of coffee's caffeine in a capsule, and you'll keep it before two.
Give it a miss if:
- You want the trial dose of bacopa or a known dose of ginkgo. Buy those on their own, from a label that prints them.
- You take anything that thins the blood, or you have a procedure coming. The seller's own label says caution or avoid. Ask first.
- You're sensitive to caffeine, or you're already at your limit of coffee.
- You want something that acts on a condition a doctor has named. This is a dietary supplement.
- You're pregnant, nursing or trying to conceive. The label rules you out.
- You want a full refund if it doesn't suit you. The policy is 60 days with a 25 percent restocking fee.
The fourteenth reading · Where it's soldFrom Summerville, South Carolina, With a 60-Day Return Window and a Restocking Fee You Should Know About
The bottle is sold by Thorne on its own website, and that's the only place this page links to.
The company is easy to find.
Thorne Research, Inc., with its address on an industrial boulevard in Summerville, South Carolina, a phone number that answers on weekdays from eight to eight Eastern, and an email on the contact page.
It's been making supplements for practitioners for decades and prints its full panel on every product page, which is more than most.
The current price is shown on its page, not here.
The day I read it, a bottle of sixty capsules cost what a good pair of reading glasses costs, and the subscription discount was there for those who want it.
Buy one bottle. Thirty days is a test. A subscription to something you haven't tried is a bet.
Now the two things that matter more than the price.
First, shipping.
Thorne ships within the United States from its own facility; the rates and any free-shipping line are shown at checkout, and I won't guess at them here.
Second, the return policy. Read this twice.
If you're not satisfied, you may request a return within 60 days of the date of purchase.
Every approved return carries a 25 percent restocking fee, and the seller's customer service line handles it.
It's a real return window, longer than most, with a fee attached that most pages don't mention. I'd rather say so than have you find out.
Everything in two capsules
| Ingredient | Amount per serving |
|---|---|
| Acetyl-L-carnitine (chloride) | 250 mg |
| Ashwagandha extract (Withania somnifera root, KSM-66®) | 300 mg |
| Bacopa extract (Bacopa monnieri, 20 % bacosides) | 100 mg |
| Caffeine (from the PurEnergy™ pterostilbene-caffeine co-crystal) | 50 mg |
| Ginkgo Phytosome (Virtiva®: ginkgo leaf extract bound to sunflower phospholipids) | 240 mg |
| Lutein and zeaxanthin (Lutemax® 2020, from marigold) | 10 mg + 2 mg |
| Trans-pterostilbene | 66 mg |
| Other ingredients: calcium laurate, hypromellose (cellulose) capsule | — |
Full details on each ingredient are in the guide linked at the bottom of this page.
The ingredient and advertising guide linked at the foot of this page goes through every one of the eight lines.
What each ingredient is. What the research does and doesn't show, at what dose. What to be careful about, ginkgo and caffeine first. And which of our own headlines it does and doesn't support.
Print it and take it to the pharmacist if you take anything daily. It's written for that.
See the current price on the seller's site
Two capsules almost an inch long, with ashwagandha, ginkgo, bacopa, the two pigments of the eye and as much caffeine as half a cup of coffee, taken away from bedtime.
CHECK AVAILABILITYSold and shipped from South Carolina by Thorne Research, Inc. · Shipping rates shown at checkout · Returns within 60 days of purchase, with a 25 percent restocking fee on every approved return
QuestionsWhat Readers Ask Me Before Their First Bottle
Questions readers ask
Is this medicine?
No. It's a dietary supplement, eight ingredients in a cellulose capsule, made by a company in South Carolina. The label carries the standard sentence every American supplement carries, the one that says the FDA hasn't evaluated its claims, and the little asterisk points to it.
How much caffeine is in it?
Fifty milligrams per two capsules, printed on the label. That's about half a cup of brewed coffee. Four capsules is a cup. The directions say to take it away from bedtime, and I'd add: count it with your coffee.
Why are the capsules so big?
Because eight ingredients add up. The seller prints the length, 0.917 inches, which is why I keep saying almost an inch. Take them with a full glass of water.
Can I take it with a blood thinner?
Ask your doctor first, and I'm quoting the seller's own label: because of the blood-thinning effects of ginkgo, it "should be used with caution or avoided in an individual on anticoagulant therapy," and before a procedure.
How much ginkgo is in it?
The label doesn't say. It prints 240 milligrams of Ginkgo Phytosome, a complex of ginkgo extract and sunflower fat, and no figure for the ginkgo alone.
Will it help my memory?
I can't tell you that, and you should be wary of any page that does. Two lines match trials in people your age, the two pigments of the eye. Bacopa is at a third of its trial dose, ginkgo's dose isn't printed, ashwagandha was tested in people half your age, and two lines have no trial I could find. What the customers I kept describe is getting started in the morning, which is what caffeine does.
Can I take it alongside what I already take?
Ask your doctor or pharmacist and take the ingredient guide with you. Ginkgo and blood thinners, caffeine and anything for the heart, ashwagandha and anything for the thyroid are the usual questions. Two minutes at the pharmacy counter answers all of that.
Which reviews did you leave out, and why?
One of the five the page showed me, about a box that never arrived. The four I kept are quoted word for word, including the nine-word one. The seller's page carries a "Verified Buyer" mark on each, and I don't print stars I didn't see.
Does it ship to me?
Within the United States, from the seller's facility in South Carolina. Rates are shown at checkout.
What if it arrives and I don't like it?
Request a return within 60 days of purchase. Approved returns carry a 25 percent restocking fee. The seller's service line is on its contact page.
Your advertisement was about a cereal, or three foods, or three drinks. Where is that on this page?
In the tenth reading, in full, with the studies. The short version: less sugar in the bowl and the glass, less alcohol in the evening, keep your plain coffee before two, and eat more like the Mediterranean shelf, greens included. None of it is in the capsule, and the ingredient and advertising guide at the foot goes through every headline we run and says which ones overstate.
Your advertisement said something about three phrases, or spelling three words. Is there a test I can take?
Not on a screen. The words and phrases come from the short mental-status test clinicians give in person, and it's read against your age and schooling by someone trained to do it. Nothing begins at a word. If the worry behind the click is real, ask your doctor for the proper test. It's fifteen minutes.
The short versionEverything Above, in Sixty Seconds
- A white bottle of 60 capsules from Thorne Research, Inc., of South Carolina: acetyl-L-carnitine, ashwagandha, bacopa, caffeine, a ginkgo complex, lutein, pterostilbene and zeaxanthin.
- Two capsules, almost an inch long each, once or twice a day, away from bedtime. Thirty servings at the lower dose.
- Lutein and zeaxanthin at 12 milligrams: the dose two one-year trials in people over 70 used. [1] [2] Bacopa at 100 milligrams: a third of the trials in people over 55. [6] [7] Ashwagandha at 300 milligrams: the trial was in adults 20 to 55. [4] Ginkgo: the dose isn't printed, and the six-year trial found nothing. [10] Caffeine: half a cup of coffee. [9] Two lines with no trial I could find.
- The label has a line about blood thinners and a line about caffeine. Read both.
- Seventy-nine reviews, average 4.6; the four I kept say "seems to be helping," "I believe," and "gets me started."
- Ships within the US; returns within 60 days with a 25 percent restocking fee.
- The cereal, three drinks, three foods and the word test from our own advertisements, in the tenth reading: less sugar, less alcohol, keep the coffee before two, more greens, and no test on a screen. None of it is in the capsule.
- The honest use: two capsules with a full glass of water at eight, nothing with caffeine after two, a pencil in the book, and thirty days to decide.
The last readingWhat Two Capsules Are Actually Worth
Here's the whole thing in one breath.
Eight real ingredients in a capsule almost an inch long, from a company that prints every milligram and tells you about the ones that need telling.
Two lines at the dose the trials used, in people your age: the pigments of the eye.
One line at a third of its trial, one at a dose the label doesn't print, one tested in people half your age, two with no trial at all, and one that's half a cup of coffee.
And 79 customers, the best of whom say "seems to be helping" and mean exactly that.
If you're a man who reads on the porch in the morning and on a screen at night, and you want the two eye pigments with six other things along for the ride, that's worth a thirty-day test.
Not because of what the other six do. Because of what you'll do around them.
Buy one bottle, not a subscription, put a pencil in the book, and write one line a day for thirty days. The pencil is a better judge than I am.
Check the current price and availability
Two capsules almost an inch long, with ashwagandha, ginkgo, bacopa, the two pigments of the eye and as much caffeine as half a cup of coffee, taken away from bedtime.
CHECK AVAILABILITYSold and shipped from South Carolina by Thorne Research, Inc. · Shipping rates shown at checkout · Returns within 60 days of purchase, with a 25 percent restocking fee on every approved return
P.S. If you take one thing from this page, take the two numbers. Twelve milligrams of lutein and zeaxanthin, the dose of the one-year trials, in two capsules. Fifty milligrams of caffeine in the same two capsules, taken away from bedtime. Everything else about this bottle sits between those two lines.
P.P.S. If the afternoon fog has been with you for a year, and it's there in the morning too, talk to your doctor before you buy anything. A capsule with your coffee is a small habit. It was never going to answer a question a doctor answers in fifteen minutes.
P.P.P.S. And if you take anything that thins the blood, read the seller's warning again before you read the price. It's the one line on the label that isn't about what the capsule might do for you. It's about what it might do to you.