Type what your label says and see it against the dose the published trials actually used. Two sources per ingredient, both quoted — and a proprietary blend gets the arithmetic it deserves.
Bacopa monnieri · 100 mg
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| Ingredient | Studied dose | Studied for |
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A dose being inside a studied range does not mean the ingredient works, and nothing here treats or prevents any condition. This is not medical advice — talk to your doctor or pharmacist before starting a supplement, especially alongside prescription medication.
A beautiful label can hold a tenth of the dose the studies used. Type what your bottle says for an ingredient and this page puts it next to the amount published trials actually used — with both sources quoted, every time. A proprietary blend gets the only honest answer there is: arithmetic on its total.
How to use it
Pick an ingredient, type the milligrams from the supplement facts panel, and read the bar: under the studied range, inside it, or past the top of it. Add several ingredients to see a whole stack at once, with the caffeine added up against the FDA’s 400 mg a day. If your label gives one number for a “proprietary blend”, switch to the blend tab, type that total and tick what is listed in it.
What a proprietary blend can and cannot hide
A blend total is not nothing — it is a ceiling. If a 500 mg blend contains bacopa, citicoline and lion’s mane, and those three need 200 mg, 500 mg and 1,800 mg respectively to reach the lowest dose their trials used, then 500 mg cannot hold even one full studied dose of the largest, and at most one of the three can be at a studied amount. That is arithmetic, not an accusation, and it holds whatever order the ingredients are printed in.
The reverse is worth saying too: a blend large enough to hold every studied dose does not prove it does. It only means the label has not ruled it out.
What the trials used
- Caffeine — 150–160 mg single doses in the healthy-adult attention studies; the FDA’s ceiling for healthy adults is 400 mg a day, “about two to three 12-fluid-ounce cups of coffee”.
- L-theanine — 200–250 mg, nearly always with caffeine. The pair is what was tested.
- Bacopa monnieri — 300–450 mg a day at 55% bacosides in the trials one review lists; 200–400 mg at 20% bacosides in another. The standardisation matters as much as the milligrams, and most labels print neither clearly.
- Ashwagandha — 600 mg a day of a named root extract in the 2024 cognition trial; 750–1,250 mg of extract in a 2022 review. The sources differ by about double.
- Lion’s mane — 3 g a day for 16 weeks in the 2009 trial, 1.8 g a day for 28 days in a 2023 one. Both studies were small.
- Citicoline — 500 mg a day for 12 weeks in healthy older adults; clinical studies go higher, and 500 mg a day is the usual food-supplement maximum.
- Creatine — has its own page here, from the ISSN position stand: the creatine dose calculator.
What is deliberately missing
Ginkgo biloba, rhodiola, alpha-GPC, huperzine A, L-tyrosine, phosphatidylserine and panax ginseng are not in the checker yet. Each has a dose in one of the sources read so far, and one source is not enough to put a number on a health page. They go in the moment a second published dose is found, which is a job on this site’s roadmap rather than a gap to paper over.
Common mistakes
- Comparing milligrams across standardisations. 300 mg of a 55% bacosides extract is not 300 mg of a 20% one.
- Reading “inside the studied range” as “this works”. It means the amount matches what was tested — nothing more. Plenty of trials at the right dose still found nothing.
- Adding up caffeine from one source only. Pre-workout, coffee, tea and a “focus” capsule can all be in the same day.
- Trusting a blend because the total is big. A 1,500 mg blend of eight ingredients is still thin for most of them.
Frequently asked questions
What is a clinically effective dose?
It is shorthand for “the amount used in the published trials”. It is not an official category, no regulator defines it, and this page therefore shows the actual studied ranges and names the studies instead of using the phrase as a badge.
Is my supplement underdosed?
If the label’s milligrams sit well below the lowest amount the trials used, then for that ingredient, yes — that is exactly what this checker measures. Whether the product does anything is a separate question that a dose cannot answer.
Why does a proprietary blend hide the amounts?
Because it is allowed to: the rules require the blend’s total and the ingredients in descending order, not each amount. The blend tab works out what the total makes possible.
How much caffeine is too much?
The FDA names 400 mg a day for healthy adults as the amount “not generally associated with negative effects”, and estimates toxic effects from rapid consumption of about 1,200 mg. It also says sensitivity varies widely between people.
Do these ingredients work?
This page does not answer that, on purpose. It compares an amount with the amounts that were studied. For what actually happened when one person took them for four weeks each, the reviews on this site are the honest version.
Why do your two sources disagree?
Because published sources often do, and hiding that would be the dishonest option. Where they differ — ashwagandha by about double, bacopa by its standardisation — both numbers are shown with the source’s name on each.
Read next
- My top three nootropic supplements — bought, taken for four weeks each, and scored on dose as well as feel.
- Prevagen vs Neuriva Plus — a comparison settled with doses and prices.
- The best nootropic for brain fog.
- Do nootropics help with memory?
This is not medical advice, and nothing here diagnoses, treats or prevents anything. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist before starting a supplement — especially if you take blood thinners, antidepressants or blood-pressure medication.