Many Protandim distributors point to a study published in American Heart Association's Circulation as proof that the American Heart Association (AHA) says that Protandim works.
If you don't read the study and just see the words "Protandim", "American Heart Association", and "Circulation journal" it would be easy to come to that conclusion. However, if you read the study, you are likely to come up with a lot more questions than answers. I've put them in a FAQ form:
Q: Did they study Protandim?
A: No, the study was Right Heart Failure and Chronic Pulmonary Artery Pressure Elevation. The background and the conclusion of the study do not mention Protandim in any way.
Q: The study was done on humans, right?
A: Not it was done on rats, kind of. The quote that got my attention was "A mechanical animal model..."
Q: Was Protandim used in the study
A: Not entirely. If you read the study, an "alcohol-based extract of Protandim" was used. LifeVantage does not sell an alcohol-based extract of Protandim.
Q: The rats ate the Protandim just like a human would, right?
A: No, they had it injected in them (see intraperitoneally). LifeVantage does not seem to sell an injectable form of Protandim. I can find nothing on LifeVantage's website this being a typical delivery method of the product.
Q: The amount of Protandim that was used was similar to what a human would consume, right?
A: Nope. Friend of ProtandimScams, Vogel, explains it best here:
"The rats in the study weighed 200 grams. Protandim was first extracted in ethanol and then 25 mg of the ethanol extract was injected into the abdomen. In medicine, dosing calculations for humans are based on a presumed average body weight of 70 kg. The normal 'dose' of Protandim for humans is one 675 mg capsule (so the dose is 675 mg per 70 kg body weight or roughly 9.64 mg/kg). The rats in the Protandim study received 25 mg per 200 g bodyweight -- this corresponds to a dose of 125 mg/kg.
In other words, the dose that the rats received in this study was roughly 13 times higher than what humans would take. Compounding the dosage problem is the fact that (a) an ethanol extract was used, which would be more potent than taking it in non-extracted form, and (b) it was directly injected into the abdomen which would greatly increase bioavailability as compared to oral ingestion and would result in an even greater dosage inequity. Thus, this study was poorly conceived and is utterly irrelevant to humans. In order to ingest a comparable dose to what the rats in this study received, a person would have to consume about a full bottle (30 capsules at $50) of Protandim per day."
Recap: The study's purpose was unrelated to Protandim. It didn't involve Protandim's intended audience. The form of Protandim wasn't delivered how the intended audience is supposed to use it. The amount of Protandim was many, many times the suggested amount for its intended audience.
The only conclusion one can make is that this study has zero relevance to its intended audience - humans. It is much more important to focus on the clinical trials of Protandim, which are very disappointing.
Originally posted 2012-03-10 18:44:53.