Twinlab Review

Written by Cathy Rozyczko — Edited by Jason Brett on February 9, 2021

You may have heard of Twinlab. They’re a power player in the nutritional supplement space and have been for five decades. Twinlab offers everything you can think of when it comes to supplements: probiotics, vitamins, sports nutrition, and more. Now, they’ve stepped up to bat with three CBD supplements in highly original formulations. Twinlab is a solid operation, and if they can post contaminants results, they’ll earn the Safety Badge.

Twinlab is an R&D-heavy supplement company with 50 years of experience. They acknowledge that the lack of regulation in the marketplace can be problematic, leading consumers to ineffective or even dangerous products. Twinlab, therefore, prides themselves on offering evidence-based supplements for fitness, health issues, and overall wellness.

And they want their customers to know about said evidence, which is why they host a highly informative podcast on their CBD site. The host is Gene Bruno, Senior Director of Product Innovation and professor of nutraceutical sciences. Bruno is supposedly responsible for Twinlab’s CBD product formulations, and we’ve got some good things to say about these.

Twinlab wins the Innovation Badge for their ingenious CBD formulations, some of which contain ingredients we’ve never seen before in the CBD space. Check them out in Twinlab’s four CBD+ supplements, each offered at $70:

• Daily – With 20mg of CBD in each capsule, these Daily CBD capsules contain the basics for maintaining overall wellness. In this case, that means cannabinoids, beta-caryophyllene (not from cannabis, but steamed clove extract and black pepper seed extract), and Phytocab™ support blend. The support blend features oregano, basil, thyme, and nettle. Herbal wellness to the max!
• Stress – The Stress CBD capsules contain 15mg CBD each with the same ingredients as the Daily formula, plus an added stress support blend with GABA.
• Sleep – These aren’t your run-of-the-mill cannabidiol sleep capsules. In fact, there’s no melatonin at all! Instead, Twinlab incorporates ashwagandha and lactium to promote sleep health. Lactium are bioactive peptides from cow’s milk shown to relieve stress and promote sleep. A highly innovative choice, but vegans, you’ll obviously need to sit this one out.
• Relief – Finally, the last CBD capsule formula is geared at inflammatory issues. These awesome capsules feature powerful probiotics as well as frankincense extract. We’ve seen frankincense essential oil many times in CBD topicals, but this is the first time we’ve ever seen this healing plant in any ingestible CBD product. Very cool.

Twinlab posts independent cannabinoid profiles for each CBD SKU — a great start — but we’ll need to see comprehensive contaminants results on their batch CBD oil to award the Safety Badge.

Also, the available cannabinoid profiles have us a bit confused. Twinlab is very specific about the fact that they use full-spectrum cannabidiol, stating, “While many other products use only one of hundreds of cannabinoids, on top of other nutraceuticals, we use a wide range of phytocannabinoids (Phytocannabinoid Rich Whole Food Blend).”

Their CoAs tell a different story.

While each CBD supplement contains a robust terpene profile, Twinlab’s tests show that their capsules contain either just CBD or CBD and CBDV. That’s certainly not a ‘wide range of phytocannabinoids’ as the company claims. What gives?

Bottom Line – Twinlabs makes some highly innovative CBD capsules with heavily researched formulations, but we’re skeptical that these products are indeed as full spectrum as the brand claims.