Myth busting Marketing: Equine Calmers
I made a post for a website recently about equine calmers, and one stuck out to me, as their marketing was quite misleading!
The calmer is NAF Magic Star and here is the claim from the website:
"This award-winning, scientifically trialled formula helps improve focus and learning, delivering consistent, reliable results. Backed by peer-reviewed studies, Five Star Magic helps enhance cognitive performance – without having sedating effects."
I contacted NAF to provide me with the studies it claims to have, as there wasn't any information on the product page about it. This should already be a red flag for consumers as if there was proven, published results, they would be plastering it all over the product page/website.
I received an email with a PDF containing an abstract from a conference. When looking for scientific evidence, a conference proceeding is a good step forward, as it means the test was conducted through a university etc. But it is not published, and therefore not peer-reviewed.
Here is the email I received back from NAF:
"Exclusively trialled and proven, NAF Five Star Magic is a five star formula that contains a unique combination of herbs and bio-available magnesium known to help maintain calm, support concentration and learning."
"This unique synergistic blend has been independently trialled, with peer-reviewed, published results showing a reduction in inappropriate responses, and an improvement in the horse's cognitive profile, crucially, with no sedation."
The Trial
After receiving the conference proceeding abstract, I had a read over the details of the experiment. The title is "Effect of three magnesium based feed supplements on inferred measures of dopamine activity and cognition: a pilot study". If you see pilot study or preliminary study it is usually just a test case to see if it worth conducting a full trial. As the number of horses used was very small (4), it is essentially a test run.
The three supplements tested were all calmers, containing identical magnesium concentrations with the addition of either St John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum [Hp]), Chia Seeds (Salvia hispanica [Sh]) or a proprietary blend of herbs from the Saxiflagares (S) family, along with a placebo. There was no indication of how much of magnesium or the other ingredients was used, nor does it say it on the ingredients on the product label. So it's difficult to understand what the ingredients levels are.
The parameters for testing if the calmer "works" are Spontaneous Blink Rate (SBR) and Behavioural Initiation Rate (BIR), which have been used in previous studies to indicate increases and decreases of dopamine.
After collecting data, statistical analysis was conducted to see if any of the supplements had an effect on the SBR or BIR. There was only one significant result, which was a reduction in SBR for horses on the magnesium and Chia seeds formulation, compared to the magnesium and St John's wort formulation. There was another result "reaching significance" which means if there was more horses in the study, it could be statistically significant.
This shows us that even compared to the placebo, aka no treatment, none of the formulations have an effect on the Spontaneous Blink Rate or Behavioural Initiation Rate.
The researchers report in the study that :
"The findings of this initial investigation suggest that when utilised in tandem with magnesium, administration of [Chia seeds] might reduce dopamine transmission"
To say Magic's calmer work, by providing this as evidence is a weak argument. Saying the product is peer-reviewed is untrue, as it has not been publish (and therefore not peer-reviewed). In addition to this, the website boasts:
"For over 40 years, the team of veterinary and nutritional scientists have been involved in ongoing post-graduate study and trials. This has resulted in over 20 published papers that have been peer reviewed by independent experts prior to publication"
On the page they mention there are 30 lists of references. Out of this 30, 7 have been published. The remainder are conference proceedings, seminar presentations and workshop talks. Again, not published, peer-reviewed work.
Key Take Aways
- Don't always assume if something says "scientifically trialed" or "scientifically proven" means there is published work.
- Ask for full papers, work, or evidence that trials have been conducted and read the results.
- Ask for ingredient levels if you can't see it on the label, by law it should be on it.
- With the evidence available I wouldn't say Magic 5 star "works " as a calmer.
- As a whole, there is little to no evidence to say Magnesium has an effect on horse behaviour.
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