Is tongkat ali the same as ginseng?
Is tongkat ali the same as ginseng?
Tongkat ali is sometimes called Malaysian ginseng, but it’s not actually a part of the ginseng family. The respective effects of tongkat ali and ginseng, while purportedly similar in traditional medicine’s anecdotal reporting, are very different within the scientific literature.
Why you should trust us
At Innerbody Research, we do everything we can to get reliable information about supplements, prescription treatments, and other products and services that you might want to incorporate into your regimen. Our efforts include poring over seemingly countless pages of scientific literature, talking to experts in related fields, and even trying products for ourselves.
In the case of tongkat ali, we reviewed more than 50 scholarly articles pertaining to the substance itself and the ailments it may be able to help treat. We scoured the marketplace to identify which products offered the best extracts for the best prices, and then we ordered and tried them for ourselves. Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this guide was thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy and will continue to be monitored for updates by our editorial team.
Over the past two decades, Innerbody Research has helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions about staying healthy and living healthier lifestyles.
Can tongkat ali treat ED?
Can tongkat ali treat ED?
Tongkat ali can’t “cure” ED, per se, but it can help treat underlying causes of ED, like anxiety or low testosterone.30 5 And eliminating an underlying cause of ED is about as close to a cure as you can get.
Summary of recommendations
Best Single-Ingredient
With an unparalleled 10% concentration of eurycomanone, this supplement option can deliver a potent dose in smaller capsules.
Nootropics Depot is available directly from the company’s website or from its storefront on Amazon. First-time buyers are better off buying direct from Nootropics Depot because you’ll only get the same low price from Amazon if you’re prepared to subscribe.
A majority of men seek tongkat ali to improve testosterone levels, sexual performance, and stress management. If that’s you, then this is your most powerful option.
This supplement contains relevant doses of several botanical extracts including tongkat ali, KSM-66 ashwagandha, fenugreek, and maca. It also has vitamins and minerals that many studies connect to healthy testosterone levels (including zinc and vitamin D).
Akarali pricing and returns
Akarali doesn’t sell single bottles of Physta. A 60-dose two-pack of bottles is the smallest possible order. There are some bundles that can save you a little money, though.
Here’s how the pricing works out for the company’s most recommendable products:
Shipping from Akarali costs $8, and the company doesn't accept returns unless a product arrives damaged or defective. That’s not as generous as some of the other return policies in the space, like Innerbody’s 30-day money-back guarantee.
Nootropics Depot pricing and returns
Nootropics Depot doesn’t offer subscriptions on either of its tongkat ali supplements, but you can buy a higher-count bottle to save money per dose. Here’s how it works out for each concentration:
Since we’ve come to put a fair amount of stock in eurycomanone concentration, we’d recommend the 10% formulation to anyone with the capital to invest in it. The fact that you get free shipping at the 120-capsule level is rather important here, as Nootropics Depot has the highest shipping costs in our guide. Its lowest rate is $10.20, which is high enough to take the 60-count 10% option from $39.99 to $50.19, for a per-dose price increase from $0.67 up to $0.84.
Unfortunately for anyone who’s unsure tongkat ali will work for them, Nootropics Depot doesn’t offer any kind of money-back guarantee, and it doesn’t accept returns on opened products. That’s in pretty stark contrast to Innerbody and Bulk Supplements, both of which let you try a product for 30 days. We’ve seen some evidence that longjack can have an effect in as little as four weeks, so that 30-day mark may be enough to know whether it works for you.16
Best patented extract
Photo by Innerbody Research
Even in our first round of research review, we noticed the frequency with which Physta was specified as the type of tongkat ali used in numerous studies. This is something that undeniably sets it apart from other tongkat ali supplements, and it should put Physta at the top of the list for anyone who needs to see a brand name in the scientific research before reaching for a given supplement. We’ve been impressed by the research that Physta has been subjected to over the years (26 studies over two decades), though we aren’t wholly convinced that its standardization process puts it head and shoulders above similar products.
That standardization provides a 1.5% eurycomanone concentration, 0.5% less concentrated than Nootropics Depot’s 2% option and 8.5% less than the 10% option. Much of the research into tongkat ali assumes that eurycomanone is the primary driver of its beneficial effects, but Akarali goes a little further in its standardization efforts. It creates a consistent delivery of both eurycomanone and the plant’s other constituent parts, which, according to its website, are glycosaponins (48%), proteins (22%), and polysaccharides (30%).
For those of you with calculators at home, you might notice that 48, 22, 30, and 1.5 add up to 101.5%, so there’s clearly some wiggle room in this formula. We got clarification from Akarali on the issue, and here are the actual numbers:
Akarali deploys its Physta in a few ways. Its capsules are the most straightforward option. They each contain 200mg of Physta, a pretty standard dose compared to what we’ve seen in the research. There’s also a version marketed toward women that contains only 50mg per capsule, but we’ve seen no evidence that women would need a smaller dose than men.
In fact, many of the studies we’ve read that explicitly used Physta administered the same 100-300mg dose to men and women alike. And of the studies that used a 50mg dose, the one that was most successful combined its tongkat ali with 200mg of Labisia pumila, a similar herbal remedy with purported antioxidant properties,18 so we don’t recommend the 50mg women’s dose at this time.19
You can also get the plain tongkat ali powder, an instant coffee infused with tongkat ali, or a fizzy tongkat ali energy drink. The powder’s dose is pretty flexible, but the other two products deliver 70mg and 50mg per dose, respectively.
Photo by Innerbody Research
Longjack coffee is very popular in Southeast Asia, so we ordered some of it for ourselves to try out. Now, in the U.S., instant coffee isn’t well-regarded, at least not since the Starbucks revolution of the 1990s and the Keurig revolution of the late 2000s. But our testers have still had their fair share of instant coffee through the years (including some from Starbucks), and we wanted to see how Akarali’s stacked up. We were pleasantly surprised.
Akarali’s tongkat ali-infused coffee is immediately sweet on the tongue despite not containing any natural or artificial sweeteners or flavorings. That sweetness very quickly gives way to an intensely strong, bitter coffee flavor, but one that’s not unwelcome after the initial sweetness and that more closely resembles the bitterness of Campari or a similar liqueur. The whole thing is pretty well-balanced.
Where Does Tongkat Ali Come From?
Tongkat Ali products tend to come from either Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, or China. The Southeast Asian climate is favourable for the growing Tongkat Ali plants.
However, the vast majority of Tongkat Ali UK supplements available come from either Malaysia or Indonesia, who are currently the biggest exporters.
Both Malaysian And Indonesian Tongkat Ali have there own pros and cons, which we will now cover in the next section.
Innerbody pricing and returns
Innerbody provides a combination of bulk and subscription savings on its supplement, which works out like this:
Shipping is free on all Innerbody orders. The company doesn’t yet ship outside the U.S.
There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee on all purchases, which means you can try the product for up to a month and still get all of your money back if you aren’t satisfied. While many studies say tongkat ali takes up to 12 weeks to yield results, we’ve seen some studies state it bears fruit in as little as 28 days, so the 30-day guarantee is just long enough.
What are tongkat ali’s benefits?
Tongkat ali has a fairly long list of potential benefits when you consider its uses in traditional medicine. That list gets a lot shorter when you confine your examination to the available scientific research. Still, there are apparent and noteworthy benefits of tongkat ali delivered at commercially available doses that are worth exploring. These can include:1
Most of these effects have been examined in both human and animal studies, and some researchers have even narrowed down the specific mechanisms of action behind them.
As we discussed earlier, tongkat ali comprises numerous bioactive compounds that may be responsible for its benefits, but one of its quassinoids — eurycomanone — seems to get the most attention in the research we’ve reviewed.2 That’s not to say that the plant’s steroids, glycosaponins, and other constituent parts aren’t important, only that eurycomanone is the compound for which tongkat ali manufacturers will standardize their extracts, so we take its abundance in a given supplement very seriously.
Let’s take a closer look at tongkat ali’s potential benefits to see what the research says:
One of the most common reasons men seek out tongkat ali is to increase their testosterone levels. It’s also a big part of the supplement’s marketing from various brands, and the science backs it up. A study in men with late-onset hypogonadism found significant improvements in Aging Males’ Symptom (AMS) scores after one month of taking 200mg of tongkat ali per day.5 Another study went so far as to suggest tongkat ali as a substitute for testosterone replacement therapy (TRT).6 And a third study saw increases in total testosterone, free testosterone, and muscular force among male participants aged 57-72 years.7
A systematic review from 2022 concluded that “although more research is required before its use in clinical practice, [tongkat ali] may represent a safe and promising therapeutic option, particularly in hypogonadal men.”8
Research in rats points to a reduction in aromatase activity in the presence of eurycomanone, which ultimately inhibits the conversion of testosterone to estrogen. High concentrations of eurycomanone have also exhibited phosphodiesterase (PDE)-inhibiting effects not unlike those caused by Viagra and Cialis (albeit to a much lesser extent).2
Tied to tongkat ali’s apparent testosterone-boosting potential is its role in male fertility. Numerous studies have looked at longjack’s ability to increase sperm counts in both rats and humans, often with positive effects. One 12-week study using 300mg of Physta saw significant improvements in Seminal Fluid Analysis, with increases in both semen volume and sperm motility.9 A similar study in rats used a human equivalent dose of about 115mg on subjects that either were or were not treated with estradiol to harm sperm production.10 Tongkat ali inhibited the effects of the high estradiol dose and dramatically increased sperm count and motility in rats that weren’t exposed to a high estradiol dose.
Just as testosterone and spermatogenesis may be interrelated effects of tongkat ali, there also appears to be an increase in sexual desire and erectile performance among study participants. Some of this could directly be attributed to increases in testosterone for men who experience libido or erectile issues related to hypogonadism. But other mechanisms of action may be at play, as well.
As we said, at least one study has observed PDE-inhibiting effects from tongkat ali in mice. PDE5 is the specific PDE enzyme group that drugs like Viagra and Cialis target to allow men with erectile dysfunction (ED) to achieve an erection.2 Another study we’ve mentioned, the one that saw increases in seminal volume and sperm motility, also saw improvements in self-reported libido and erectile performance measures.9
Less research exists into tongkat ali’s anxiolytic effects, but there are noteworthy studies in both animals and humans. Human participants in one study reported reductions in tension, anger, and confusion, which all correlated with reductions in salivary cortisol.30 However, there were some competing interests for two of that study’s four authors, which may have introduced bias.
An older study in rats from 1999 equated the effects of tongkat ali to those provided by the prescription anti-anxiety medication diazepam.31
These studies don’t begin to approach the quantity or quality of those looking into a similar botanical — ashwagandha, which we’ll explore below — but they do show promise.
Cytotoxicity typically refers to a substance's ability to kill cells, with researchers looking specifically for compounds that can target cancer cells. Numerous in vitro studies have shown cytotoxic effects from tongkat ali on cells associated with ovarian, liver, skin, and breast cancers, among others.1 But this research is in its infancy, and we don’t recommend tongkat ali as a cancer preventive or treatment.
Researchers have also looked into tongkat ali’s influence on inflammation and rheumatism, ulcers, and osteoporosis, as well as its potential as an antimicrobial agent.1 At this time, these efforts aren’t robust enough to recommend tongkat ali along these lines, but it may prove beneficial here in future research.
Who might want to look elsewhere?
The 1-3 months it could take to see results from a potent tongkat ali supplement would likely be too long of a wait for certain individuals. Men with clinically significant hypogonadism who are experiencing immediate symptoms would do better to seek prescription interventions like TRT (after appropriate testing, of course).11
The same thing can be said for those experiencing more significant mental health issues, as tongkat ali may be able to help treat certain kinds of mild stress and irritation, but not more significant issues with anxiety and depression that may require more direct professional interventions.
Research into certain potential tongkat ali benefits is also far too immature to suggest it as a daily supplement for those purposes. For example, individuals predisposed to certain cancers from things like genetics or environment shouldn’t look to tongkat ali as a preventive or a cure. A recent overview of tongkat ali’s potential in common cancers reinforces this perspective.12
