Quote:
Originally Posted by steven
Straying a little bit from pocari, what's the deal with all these "elixers" and things I see in Japan. I know Ribotan D has been around for a while, so that seems like it could be safe, but some of these other ones make some crazy claims and go for quite a bit of dough. I'm always wondering about the long term effects of those things. I've noticed a lot of them seem to be targeting women these days too... some of them claim to increase certain hormones that would increase bust size. That all sounds awfully suspicious to me.
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They`re pretty much always infusions of 漢方薬 (Chinese herbal medication? I don`t really know what it would be called in English...) combined with vitamin supplements and caffeine or something similar.
I would actually say they`re actually surprisingly safe, all in all. Some of the herbal claims are true, some are traditional (like snapping turtle as an aphrodisiac), but in the end they generally fall back on vitamins. The "hormone" ones are really just herbal drinks using herbs with naturally occurring components that either (supposedly) boost hormone production or are similar to those in the human body.
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ETA; You probably haven`t heard much about Citric Amino as I believe it only comes in powdered form, which kind of blocks it from the combini scene and makes it something that isn`t a casual drink. It`s the type of thing sold in sports goods stores, not with the normal drinks.