Index of all Serge Kreutz articles on tongkat ali, click here.

What are the active ingredients of tongkat ali

By Serge Kreutz

Version 1.0, August 2009

I understand that in recent months, a Malaysian producer of tongkat ali extract has heavily promoted their product with claims of a scientific standardization.

As if this were of scientific relevance, they stated that their product is composed of 40% glycosaponins, 22% eurypeptides and 30% polysaccharides.

Judging from the wide circulation of their product, it seems to be easy indeed to fool people by using scientific-sounding terms.

The active components of tongkat ali (Eurycoma longifolia Jack) have of course been scientifically established.

There is an excellent, impartial, not product-oriented scientific source on the Internet:

http://www.ics.trieste.it
/MAPs/MedicinalPlants
_Plant.aspx?id=613

You can read a printscreen of the relevant section of the above-mentioned page here:

ICS UNIDO
Medicinal and
Aromatic Plants

You can debunk yourself the pseudoscience of ”40% glycosaponins, 22% eurypeptides and 30% polysaccharides”.

To start with, do the following:

On your browser, load the page:
http://www.ics.trieste.it
/MAPs/MedicinalPlants_
Plant.aspx?id=613

Using Internet Explorer, click Edit / Find and run a search for the following terms, one by one: glycosaponins, saponins, eurypeptides, peptides, polysaccharide.

Only the term ”polysaccharide” is found on the page, listing the active components of Eurycoma longifolia Jack (tongkat ali), but NOT as an active chemical