How would you like to drink a cup of coffee that burns fat, increases energy, boosts memory, curbs carb cravings, elevates mood, and is full of antioxidants and nootropics?
That would be some beverage!
Elevacity claims that its Smart Coffee can do all of those things. But can it really? And can their other products detox us and help improve our wellbeing?
I’m no stranger to jacked coffee supplements that promise great things. I’ve reviewed Slimroast twice, and when a reader asked me to review Elevate Smart Coffee, I wasn’t shocked that another coffee supplement had made it on to the market.
What is Elevate?
Elevate, an MLM company (you don’t say), has several products, but I’ll review the coffee, the Pure toxin remover, and Xanthomax. The vitamin patches are bullshit, because you can’t deliver vitamins via patch; the hot chocolate has pretty much the exact same ingredients as the coffee (plus chocolate and minus coffee); and who cares about the skincare products.
Elevate claims that its ‘Smart Coffee’ and Xanthomax is the ‘DOSE’ – D.O.S.E stands for dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, neurotransmitters and hormones that can create feelings of happiness.
What’s in Elevate’s Smart Coffee?
Smart Coffee contains plant-based ingredients, many of which I’ve reviewed several times before.
These include :
Green coffee bean extract – stimulant; studies involving weight are inconsistent and small.
Chromium – mineral that is usually in supplements for ‘fat burning’ but research says otherwise. It can have benefits if you’re chromium-deficient, but that deficiency is extremely rare.
L-theanine – an amino acid that may have a relaxing effect, but research studies were small and only 24 hours long
PEA – a neuroamine that’s found in our bodies. Many alternative and biohacker sites quote old, small studies of questionable methodology to ‘prove’ that PEA improves mood and is ‘just as good as antidepressants’…which is an outrageous and dangerous claim. Remember that taking a supplement of something versus having it made by your own body are two completely different things. Studies on PEA have been done in monkeys, dogs, and rodents, and it has been shown to break down very rapidly in the body. Even if it does have some effectiveness in terms of mood, its short half-life makes it rather useless.
Kigelia africana – antioxidant? I’m not sure what this even is.
A-GPC – increases cognition…in rodents, as well as in very high doses in elderly with Alzheimer’s disease. Studies are terrible, plus: are you a rat or an elderly person with Alzheimer’s? I hope not on both counts.
Juglans reglia – also known as English Walnut, in which the active ingredient is something called 2 amino 5 methylheptane. This is a natural compound that’s identical to octodrine, or DMHA. Octodrine, a stimulant that has been determined to be potentially unsafe.
The FDA just put out a warning statement about this ingredient that you can read here.
As predicted, the ‘active ingredients’ in Elevate Smart Coffee are bundled in a proprietary blend, so we don’t know how much of each ingredient we’re actually getting. This could be a problem: you may not be getting enough. You may be getting too much. You may be getting the exact right amount, but who knows what that even is?
See my point?
What does Elevacity Do?
Remember, Elevacity claims that their coffee burns fat, increases energy, boosts memory, curbs carb cravings, elevates mood, and is full of antioxidants and nootropics. But what I’m seeing are the same old claims with the same old ingredients and no new research on any of them.
I see a bunch of stimulants, in-vitro (aka in a lab dish) and animal studies, and absolutely nothing that has proven sustained mood elevating, fat burning, IQ-raising, or craving-busting properties. These ingredients aren’t necessarily synergistic, either. Ramming a bunch of ingredients into a supplement and claiming that they ‘work together’ is a common claim these companies make, but rarely does that hold water.
With caffeine, green coffee bean, and Juglans, there’s a heck of a lot of stimulants in SMART Coffee. Maybe the product should have been called HYPER COFFEE, since increased energy is about the only thing you can count on when you drink it.
It’s funny how companies cite research for certain ingredients and products they want to sell to people, but if you bother to go into that research and really look at it, you’ll find that more often than not, it’s faulty AF. Do you really want to give your money to a company that bases its claims on studies done in rats and monkeys? Or in petri dishes? Or for 24 hours in 16 people? Or in elderly people with dementia? Are you one of those people? Likely not, so it’s absurd to believe that the outcomes would apply to you. The Elevacity website itself doesn’t contain a research page or links to research to support any of the company’s claims; I had to look this stuff up myself.
The product may not be dangerous for the average person, but when you spend money on something, I’m assuming you want it to be effective, am I right?
Xanthomax is sold as a mood elevator based on xanthohumol, a flavonoid antioxidant found in hops flowers (and beer, FYI). Xanthoumol has very few humans studies behind it. A single 2017 study in the journal Hormones found that dry hops decreased depression and anxiety in university students. That being said, the placebo in this study also decreased depression and anxiety, although to a lesser extent. That’s it for related xanthohumol research, which doesn’t leave me very impressed or hopeful. When it comes to Xanthoax, you shouldn’t be either of those things, either.
What’s In Elevacity’s PURE Toxin Remover?
You all know how I feel about detoxes, so I wanted to review Elevacity’s PURE toxin remover.
As is common with detoxes, the company uses a healthy dose of fear to sell these $55 drops, saying “Many people unknowingly have an excessive amount of heavy metals stored in their body, contributing to health challenges.”
Which ‘health challenges’ are those? If you have heavy metal poisoning, trust me…you’ll know. In that case, you’ll need a hospital, not a 60ml container of drops.
Most research on zeolite, the active ingredient in PURE, has been done on rats, mice, dogs, and chickens. One 2015 human study published in the Journal of International Society for Sports Nutrition showed that zeolite improved gut integrity, which is good. The bad thing though, is that the study was small, and the zeolite that the subjects received wasn’t pure; it was mixed with other ingredients such as dolomite and maca. Diet assessments were only taken once in the 12-week study. All of these things count towards faulty methodology.
Even if you want to take the above study seriously, the amount of zeolite blend that subjects received in the above study was seven times the dose you’ll get in a dose of the ‘magnetic ionic mineral blend’ in PURE.
Perhaps most concerning, PURE’s instructions imply that it can purify ‘contaminated water’, which is ridiculous and potentially lethal. Never add PURE to non potable water to make it drinkable. Cholera, typhoid, e coli, giardia, and dysentery are just a few of the lovely illnesses you can get from contaminated water, and PURE won’t even touch those.
So Is Elevacity Worth It?
Badly done research doesn’t prove anything. Research done on chickens and dogs doesn’t necessarily extrapolate to humans.
Anecdotes can be powerful, but to sell a product based on them is disingenuous.
As of this moment, no product can do all of the things that Elevacity claims its coffee can. If any of these products worked consistently, and had a dramatic impact on our health, or even the health of many people, we would be used by reputable healthcare professionals to treat disease.