Astragalus Advanced™ is in my opinion the best Astragalus product in the world. So I take it almost every day. Astragalus was one of the first herbs I ever learned about and had the chance to take. It is a true king among tonic herbs and is considered one of the primary Qi tonics in the world. It was the first pure extract of a single tonic herb that I ever made for commercial sale. One of my great herbal mentors, Peigen Xiao, gave me my first great boost with regards to Astragalus. Professor Xiao was at the time the Commissioner of Drug Approval for China, and a senior editor of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. I met him on a flight from San Francisco to Beijing in 1993. He was very famous among herbalists, and thus I already knew him by reputation and by his writings. He was then the director of the Institute of Medicinal Plant Development, a huge herbal botanical garden and research center near Beijing, a branch of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. He told me where the best Astragalus in China grows, based both on Di Tao tradition and on scientific studies conducted all around China and reported to his institute. Yanlin and I went to that growing area and bought two tons of freshly harvested premium Astragalus roots. We have made our Astragalus products with that same Astragalus for nearly 25 years now.
Two years later, Yanlin and I met the inventor of Astragaloside IV, the main active constituent of Astragalus root. We subsidized the Astragalus research at the China Pharmaceutical University Astragaloside lab for the next couple of years. Astragaloside IV has since been recognized as one of the premier immune modulators in all of herbalism and also is being studied because of its role in protecting (and maybe restoring) telomeres, the end-caps of our chromosomes. Protecting telomeres is believed to be a life-lengthening action.
Astragalus Advanced™ has the most Astragaloside IV of any product I know, per capsule and per dose. It contains 5% Astragaloside IV – a whopping 75 mg per dose (2 capsules). Typical Astragalus products in the United States contain 0.1 – 1% Astragaloside IV. Astragalus Advanced™ contains ALL the astragalosides and other constituents of premium Astragalus root. This is an extremely important herbal extract that I feel is of supreme importance to me.