Epiq Quad Test

Epiq Quad Test

Great looking product, shame about the contents of the bottle.

tl; dr ... Short and to the Point
Who is this article aimed at?
Anybody who has heard of Epiq Quad Test and wants to know more. Anyone wanting to know whether Epiq Quad Test is likely to be an effective test boosting supplement to add to their locker.
I am busy - summarize it for me

Great branding. Gorgeous packaging. Slick, attractive website. Poor set of ingredients. Risible, tiny portion.

Come on now GNC / Iovate, the ingredients are the most important thing and you could have done a whole lot better here. All the effort on the form and nothing on the substance. Ultimately the marketing department have done a sterling job, they've been let down badly by the lab, who have had a shocker.

Our Supplement Rating
  • Ingredients :
  • Price :
  • Trust :
  • Company :
  • Overall Score: 4.5/10
  • Positive

    • Good T boosting minerals like zinc and boron
    • A few good energy and libido boosters
  • Negative

    • Proprietary blend so dosages unclear
    • Relying on outdated Trib to boost T
    • Weak clinical evidence for many choices
    • Ridiculously expensive

Epiq Quad Test Review

Epiq Quad Test is an organic testosterone booster from well-known supplement company GMC. Designed to help increase testosterone production and decrease estrogen with a view to helping build muscle and enhanced athletic performance.

Don’t get it confused with plain old Epiq Test – a product by the same company aimed at increasing testosterone in the over 40s. This release is aimed squarely at the young guns.

Epiq Quad Test

The company make a big thing of the main ingredients – boron, turmeric and Ashwagandha – all being backed up by solid clinical evidence, which sounds undeniably promising, so let’s get straight in and take a look.

How Does Epiq Quad Test Work?

We’ve got a couple of problems right off the bat here; firstly most of the ingredient’s amounts are obscured within a proprietary blend, so only the total volume is declared. Secondly, that total volume is only 508mg. Shared out over 9 ingredients, this doesn’t exactly scream potency to us no matter how good the components are.

One element however does get its own billing quantity wise, so let’s look at that.

Zinc

Zinc is great for our testosterone, because it ups the creation of luteinizing hormone which is integral to governing how much testosterone we produce. It’s difficult to get adequate amounts from food so supplementation can be a great idea. At just 7.5mg per serving and 2 servings a day though, Quad Test might’ve gone to town a little more on this mineral. 40mg is the limit of safe intake, test boosters that prioritise Zinc tend to go for 30mg daily intake.


So now to that blend; we already know it suffers on quantity, but what about quality?

Rhodiola Root

This ingredient has a strong clinical background when it comes to reducing fatigue and increasing speed of recovery after exercise. Its testosterone boosting credentials are a little harder to pin down though.

One study in the early 2000s claimed men taking 2mg saw a 70% increase in their test levels, however there has been little or no follow up since. Even if this is correct, that was 2mg… which is 4 times this booster’s entire contents.

Maca Root

Does nothing to raise actual testosterone levels, but does seem to light a fire under the libido. Not ideal then, perhaps this is not a bad consolation prize.

Tribulus

A disappointingly outdated choice here; any hope that there once was for tribulus terrestris as an effective testosterone booster has well and truly been put to bed by extensive and unsuccessful clinical testing. When you’ve only got 500 odd mg to play with you can’t afford to be wasting it on discredited stuff like this.

Pedalium Murex

Again, recent research indicates this ingredient may help a flagging sex drive, but all work done in the area of testosterone has been carried out on rats, where it did bring about an increase in serum testosterone. This definitely needs more work before it can challenge more established natural hormone enhancers.

Ginkgo

This component has shown an ability to increase libido and cognitive function. So it could improve your sex and Sudoku … but what about your testosterone? Unfortunately there’s not nearly as much to go on. There have been some, largely anecdotal, reports of testosterone-like effects, but this is probably just to do with sex drive and enhanced energy.

Turmeric

Turmeric may be the first truly stand out ingredient on this list. A yellow spice powder used mainly in curry, it has shown an ability to significantly limit oestrogen in studies on women with oestrogen fuelled cancers. In lab rat trials it was also found to raise serum testosterone and in one human study 500mg a day heightened levels of the good cholesterol, HDL, an important precursor for testosterone, by 29%. The website is kind enough to inform us that there’s 195mg of this in here which is a high percentage considering. Another silver lining.

Ashwagandha

This has promise. Not only has it shown the potential to cut levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, which debilitates testosterone, but several human studies have found it has the power to boost test.

A 2013 study from India found that 25 men taking 5g of Ashwagandha for 90 days increased their testosterone by 17% and production of luteinizing hormone production shot up by 34%. We’re told in the promotional material that this addition has 125mg to its name. Welcome, but the 5g at which Ashwagandha was proven successful is 10 times this entire supplement.

Shilajit Extract

Shilajit contains a number of different minerals which have been used in alternative medicine for some time. One clinical trial on infertile men did show it caused a roughly 23% increase in testosterone levels, a nearly 10% rise in follicle stimulating hormone and no change to luteinizing hormone levels. There is nothing to suggest the same applies to fertile men and much more investigation has to be done before we can give this the thumbs up.

Boron Citrate

Boron is another great mineral from a testosterone boosting standpoint for a number of reasons. It has been seen to raise both overall testosterone levels and decrease the activity of SHGB allowing our ratio of free testosterone to climb also. We know from the website that there is a 100mg of this in there, standardised for 5% boron, putting the all-important stat at 5mg of boron. This is a good amount and another rare high spot for the supplement.

How Do I Take It?

Epiq Quad Test recommends you take 2 servings of 3 capsules a day, with water, first in the morning, then last thing at night. This isn’t ideal. 6 capsules is creeping up towards the realm of being a hassle. Also the idea that one serving (especially of this) will carry you through an activity packed day keeping your testosterone all it could be, is a stretch of credibility to put it mildly. Far better to take about 3 or 4 capsules a day spaced out over hour so your body can keep going back to the well and for the benefits.

Side Effects?

We don’t see any ingredients here which give us cause for concern.

Where Can I Get Epiq Quad Test?

At time of writing Quad Test is due for release in December 2015 on Bodybuiding.com and the GNC official website. It looks set to be priced around the mid $40 mark for 84 capsules making up 28 servings.

Conclusion

The Scores

Ingredients (3/10) – This supplement gets off to a bit of a rocky start with several choices which seem to skirt round boosting actual hormones by focusing more on libido and energy, these are then combined with a high profile dud in Tribulus. Things to start to pick up with inclusion of turmeric, boron and ashwagandha, which, combined, do make up a large swathe of the overall recipe, but with just a meagre 500mg of formula in total, expect any results to be limited.

Price (3/10) – Even though it’s not released yet, according to Bodybuilding.com, this product is set to be priced $49.99, marked down from an utterly ridiculous $74.99. The few highlights in this brand in no way justify such a high price tag and there is far better value for money out there,

Testimonials (N/A) – A case of wait and see. It’s not out of the question some may notice slight improvements but given the comparatively small amount of active ingredients rave reviews should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Trustworthiness (7/10) – There is a couple of issues with this product. The insistence on sticking with tribulus, for example; as previously mentioned it hasn’t shown any palpable, consistent ability to raise testosterone under clinical conditions, so representing it as an effective booster and expecting us to part with cash is pretty disingenuous. The other problem is the proprietary blend system. Why are they happy to disclose the volume of some ingredients (arguably their best) but not others? Seems to us this exposes proprietary blends for the convenient marketing smokescreen they are.

Company (6/10) – GNC claims to be the world’s largest retailer of natural and herbal remedies. They have released a vast array of supplements very successfully but have a habit of ending up on the wrong end of a profile scandal. This year alone they have been accused of deceptive labelling and padding out products with cheap, inactive filler ingredients. In response GNC have promised to tighten up clarity and testing procedures, but it’s still worth being mindful of a company’s track record before buying.

Overall

This supplement is right to boast (and dose) three ingredients in particular, they’re probably its strongest assets, but with the other elements shrouded in mystery and only 500mg in total to work with, it’s doubtful Epiq Quad Test is capable of living up to its own considerable hype.

Editor’s Note : When your job is studying test boosting products and ingredients you can get a bit annoyed when you review a product like this. Great product packaging, great website, great marketing – all let down by a terrible formula served in risible portions. What were you thinking Epiq?

You can serve it up in an anonymous plain black plastic tub if you want, just make sure you get good solid ingredients in the right doses. If you don’t know how to do that then just spend a few hours reading this website!

tl; dr ... Short and to the Point
Who is this article aimed at?
Anybody who has heard of Epiq Quad Test and wants to know more. Anyone wanting to know whether Epiq Quad Test is likely to be an effective test boosting supplement to add to their locker.
I am busy - summarize it for me

Great branding. Gorgeous packaging. Slick, attractive website. Poor set of ingredients. Risible, tiny portion.

Come on now GNC / Iovate, the ingredients are the most important thing and you could have done a whole lot better here. All the effort on the form and nothing on the substance. Ultimately the marketing department have done a sterling job, they've been let down badly by the lab, who have had a shocker.

Our Supplement Rating
  • Ingredients :
  • Price :
  • Trust :
  • Company :
  • Overall Score: 4.5/10

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