Boosted with Spectra, Shilajit, CoQ10, and More!

PrimaVie (Shilajit Extract) – 100 mg

PrimaVie is a premium shilajit extract that’s backed by clinical studies.

Shilajit extract itself is a complicated ingredient to characterize, as it naturally contains lots of different bioactives that factor into its overall effect. One of the things that makes PrimaVie special is its standardization for some of the most important known bioactives in shilajit. For example, PrimaVie contains 50% fulvic acid,^[12] which we’ll discuss extensively below. Besides this, there are over 40 different minerals present in the ingredient.^[12]

Research on PrimaVie indicates that it can have a significant impact on men’s hormonal health. For example, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study from 2015 found that when middle-aged men took 250 milligrams of PrimaVie twice daily, they saw significant increases in free and total testosterone – about a 20% increase in both.^[13]

Middle-aged men who took 500 mg of PrimaVie daily experienced a roughly 20% increase in free and total testosterone.^[13]

Also compelling was the 30% increase in dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). DHEA is a steroid hormone, like testosterone and estrogen,^[14] that has been described by some researchers as a “fountain of youth” molecule.^[14-17] High levels of DHEA produce major hallmarks of youthfulness, like supple skin^[18] and resilience to stress.^[19] And unfortunately, DHEA production in the body can decline by as much as 80% starting around age 30.^[20-22]

DHEA helps maintain youthful physiology by regulating the production and action of cortisol, your body’s primary glucocorticoid stress hormone. By inhibiting the enzyme 11β-HSD1 (which produces cortisol) while upregulating the enzyme 11β-HSD2 (which breaks down cortisol) DHEA can decrease overall cortisol activity.^[23-26]

AstroFlav Embrace is out as a women’s hormonal support supplement to act as the counterpart to AstroFlav’s Elevated men’s supplement

It also seems that DHEA’s effects mimic those of dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which is perhaps the most androgenic form of testosterone and responsible for most of your androgen system’s masculinizing effects, like muscle anabolism.^[27]

What about the dose?

Granted, these studies used a much larger dose of PrimaVie – 500 milligrams daily, compared to 100 milligrams in a single serving of AstroFlav’s multivitamin. However, this is fairly typical of multivitamins because providing the clinical dose of every ingredient in a single serving would mean using an impractically large number of capsules, higher cost, and potentially interfering with the rest of the user’s stack.

We’ve seen much lower doses of non-PrimaVie shilajit yield important benefits though. One 2010 study, for example, found that just 200 milligrams daily of shilajit improved total sperm count by a whopping 61.4%, sperm motility by 12.4–17.4%, and normal (healthy) sperm count by 18.9%.^[28]

This study also observed a 23.5% increase in testosterone from shilajit supplementation, which shows that you don’t necessarily need the big 500 milligram dose used in the PrimaVie studies in order to reap hormonal benefits of shilajit supplementation.^[28]

Since PrimaVie is a high-quality standardized shilajit extract, we can’t think of a reason why this result wouldn’t apply to PrimaVie.

Other benefits of fulvic acid – cognitive support

AstroFlav A-Pump is a nitric oxide capsule supplement with the most unique ingredient profile we’ve seen. An ultimate complementary pre-workout stacker!

The 100 milligram PrimaVie dose gives us something else of great importance, too. As we said above, PrimaVia is about 50% fulvic acid by weight,^[12] meaning a 100-milligram dose of PrimaVie gives you 50 milligrams of fulvic acid.^[12]

One study in humans found that a 200 milligram daily dose of shilajit improved subjects’ scores on the global deterioration scale (GDS), an important inventory for quantifying the severity of neurodegenerative conditions, by about 20% compared to a placebo group.^[29] They also did about 20% better on inventories of neuropsychological symptoms (NPI) and caregiver distress.^[29]

The authors of that study specifically identify fulvic acid as the bioactive constituent in shilajit most likely to promote the tau protein disaggregation that can lead to improvements in AD symptoms.^[29] Since generic shilajit consists of only 15-20% fulvic acid by weight,^[30,31] this means the study achieved these effects with, at most, a 40-milligram dose of fulvic acid from shilajit.

That 40 milligram daily dose is actually less fulvic acid than the 50 milligram present in a 100 milligram dose of PrimaVie!

Cardiovascular benefits

But PrimaVie is here for its cardiovascular health, so we would do well to ask what shilajit can do for us there.

One 2013 study in rats found that shilajit has a significant parasympathomimetic effect, meaning it activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which has an overall relaxing effect. In this study, rats who got supplemental shilajit experienced significant reductions in blood pressure and heart rate.^[32]

Another study, from 2014, found that shilajit administration significantly reduced the extent of rats’ cardiac damage in an experimental model of myocardial infarction (heart attack).^[33]