Nutricog’s broad cognitive-function benefits apply to both younger and older adults: Natural Products Expo West report

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PLT Health Solutions (Morristown, NJ) discussed the broad range of adult consumers who can benefit from the company’s new Nutricog cognitive health ingredient. The company debuted Nutricog at March’s Natural Products Expo West trade show in Anaheim, CA.

As Nutritional Outlook previously reported, Nutricog is a blend of two Ayurvedic herbs, haritaki (Terminalia chebula) and boswellia (Boswellia serrata). The company shared results from a clinical trial, which it says will be submitted for publication, performed on 100 male and female subjects aged 40-65 years. The study results yielded two striking takeaways about the ingredient: first, that its benefits are very wide-ranging, meaning they can apply to a broad range of consumer age groups, and 2) the results were very strong because they were verified by not one but two tests.

First, Nutricog showed significant benefits for immediate recall, delayed recall, overall learning, learning rate, focus, and recognition index. Notably, when multitasking, subjects experienced an increase in cognitive speed at the same time they experienced improvements in accuracy. These broad-based benefits make Nutricog a timely ingredient for the brain health market which, increasingly, is attracting younger customers in addition to older ones.

“If you look 10 years ago or so, most of the [cognitive health] studies and the subjects were in a declining state or pre-declining state of aging. You were looking at an older demographic,” said Steve Fink, PLT’s vice president of marketing, at Expo West. “This is not the case anymore. This is mainstream, so this is an ingredient that could be bolted onto a sports performance product, a once-a-day men’s or women’s formula, or an immune-health product.”

He continued: “We see a very wide range of application-use cases and need states because this is something that’s for performance. It’s mental performance, so that could be everything from being able to remember the playbook for a sports event, preparing yourself to give a speech, or just remembering all the cousins you have whom you haven’t seen for a while before you go to a family wedding.” It’s an especially useful ingredient for busy, active working professionals looking for extra mental support, added Dawna Salter-Farfan, PhD, RD, PLT’s senior clinical research manager.

Salter-Farfan pointed out another significant takeaway from the Nutricog study, which was that its effects were demonstrated in two tests: the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) and the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB).

Salter-Farfan, whose background is in neuroscience, said, “What was really exciting when this data came in was that there’s two different batteries that were used to study the subjects…It’s common in this research to maybe test in one battery—to test for multiple outcomes, and you might get one or two of those outcomes. What’s so unique about this study is that we saw multiple outcomes from two different testing batteries. We did both the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), which tests more of an auditory memory process. Then we followed it up with the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB), which is a visual test.”

She continued: “So we’re hitting both kinds of memory, and when we saw multiple outcomes come out positive, and they backed each other up, that was really exciting to see and gives it a believability factor.”

With the addition of Nutricog, PLT Health now boasts a rich catalog of brain-health ingredients. “PLT has been deeply entrenched and committed to the cognitive side of the industry for more than a decade,” Fink said. “We’re one of the pioneers in bringing rigorous science to support different need cases across a wide range of cognitive sets, from stress to memory, and we have been constantly innovating and growing our assortment." Its cognitive-health branded ingredients include Synapsa, Rhodiolife, Zembrin, zumXR, Zynamite, and now Nutricog.

He continued: “We spent a lot of time really curating a complementary assortment of solutions. This is obviously one that really fits in the cognitive function space. But we also have mental energy solutions that stem from physical and mental energy. We have non-stim mental energy. We have support for body and mental stress.”

Those solutions could also be combined for enhanced cognitive products. Of Nutricog, Fink said, “It’s another bolt-on solution that really fills out the portfolio and complements different need states.”