MemoHoney Ingredients: the six names on the artwork

Arginine is the molecule nitric oxide synthase actually consumes, which makes it the obvious first choice for anything sold on blood flow. It is also the one with the worst arithmetic behind it. A swallowed dose meets arginase in the gut wall and again in the liver, and a large share of it never reaches the bloodstream as arginine at all. Stable-isotope work in humans followed dietary arginine into both routes, nitric oxide and urea, and it is the reason the field eventually moved on to citrulline.

A 2019 review of the two amino acids put oral arginine's blood-pressure effect at about 5.4 over 2.7 mmHg and noted that citrulline is roughly twice as potent at raising plasma arginine, because it skips that first pass (Khalaf 2019). On the performance side, a randomised trial found acute arginine changed neither muscle endurance nor blood pressure during resistance training (Greer 2011).

Why it is here: as the endpoint of the pathway the other three amino acids feed. What a reader cannot do is weigh it, because this artwork gives no figure to weigh.

Arginine bound to alpha-ketoglutarate, two parts to one. It is a pre-workout ingredient with a specific pedigree: the pharmacokinetic trial gave healthy men 4 g at a time and then ran a placebo-controlled arm at 4 g three times a day, 12 g daily, in resistance-trained men aged 30 to 50.

Two later trials are less flattering and both are worth knowing. Seven days at 12 g a day did not lift blood flow, plasma arginine or nitric oxide metabolites the way the hypothesis predicted (Willoughby 2011), and a single 3 g dose before one session did nothing measurable to muscular performance (Wax 2012).

So the honest summary of this ingredient is that its best evidence is pharmacokinetic rather than clinical, and that the amount behind it is twelve grams a day.

Citrulline is the interesting one. It is absorbed intact, escapes the first-pass losses that catch arginine, and is converted to arginine in the kidney. A human availability study gave volunteers 0.18 g per kilogram a day — roughly 12 g for a 70 kg adult — and watched plasma arginine double, with less than one per cent of the citrulline load lost in urine.

It is also the only ingredient in this formula with a trial that looked at the brain. A 2025 trial gave taekwondo athletes 8.8 g a day for five days and measured cerebrovascular function during sprint interval training. Read that sentence twice before deciding what it means for a capsule taken at breakfast: the population, the amount and the context are all different.

On blood pressure the evidence is better and more relevant. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis found that citrulline supplementation and watermelon intake lowered blood pressure in middle-aged and older adults, and that citrulline taken with arginine beat either one alone — which is, in fairness to this formula, exactly the pairing on the artwork.

The same citrulline bound to malic acid, and the form the sports literature reaches for. A three-day trial gave team-sport athletes 8 g a day and found the drop-off in repeated sprint performance was smaller than on placebo. A head-to-head pilot compared 8 g with 12 g taken an hour before barbell rows and leg presses.

The most transferable of the three is the smallest. A pilot in women aged 60 to 75 paired 3 g a day with six weeks of exercise three times a week and reported better lower-limb function. Three grams is the lowest amount in this whole page, and it still arrived alongside a training programme rather than on its own.

Having two citrulline forms on one label is a formulation choice rather than a pharmacological one: both deliver citrulline, and the malate brings malic acid with it.

The one ingredient here whose useful amount would comfortably fit in a capsule, and the one with a proper ceiling. A 2017 systematic review and meta-analysis of dose-dependent effects put the United States tolerable upper intake level at 35 mg a day and the European figure at 10 mg, and noted that major adverse effects from nicotinic acid appear below 1,000 mg a day.

The memory connection is real but indirect. Severe niacin deficiency causes pellagra, whose classical third symptom is dementia. Working from the other end, the Chicago Health and Aging Project followed 3,718 residents aged 65 and over and found higher dietary niacin intake associated with lower incidence of Alzheimer's disease and slower cognitive decline. That is an observational cohort about food, not a trial of a capsule, and the authors wrote it as a maybe.

One practical note. Niacin comes in two chemical forms that behave differently, and a survey of over-the-counter products found the free nicotinic acid content varied widely between them (Meyers 2003). The artwork here names neither the form nor the amount.

Beta-alanine is the rate-limiting half of carnosine, and carnosine is found in brain tissue as well as muscle. That is the whole of the rationale, and it produced one genuinely interesting result: a randomised trial in men and women aged 60 to 80 gave 2.4 g a day and reported improved fractional anisotropy scores — a diffusion MRI measure of white-matter organisation — in the hippocampus and amygdala.

Coming at carnosine directly, the NEAT trial gave 2 g of carnosine a day for up to twelve weeks and found better cognitive outcomes in its younger participants. Neither study is large, and neither is about this capsule.

The bulk of beta-alanine's evidence is athletic. A meta-analysis of 40 studies in 1,461 participants found a significant but small overall effect on exercise capacity, 0.18, with exercise duration as the strongest moderator. Typical amounts there run 3.2 to 6.4 g a day.