(2.5/5)
Pros
- L-Carnitine reduces fatigue & improves focus
- L-Tyrosine improves cognition
- Beta-Alanine can enhance muscular endurance
Cons
- Beta-Alanine also causes itchy & tingly skin (paresthesia)
- Contains Caffeine in proprietary blend (likely to suffer jitters)
- Rauwolfia Vomitoria Extract reported to cause numerous side effects
- Not good value for money
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– Top 3 Pre-Workouts Page –
About The Product
Dark Metal Manson is a pre-workout supplement made by Insane Labz. We’ve reviewed their other pre-workout named Psychotic, after a request came through from one of our readers.
This product comes in 35 serving containers, with the usual 1 scoop serving. In terms of flavor, Dark Metal Manson comes in 2 flavors – Blue Raspberry and Mixed Berry.
First Opinion
We have some mixed opinions about Insane Labz’ Dark Metal Manson; it contains some useful ingredients, especially L-Carnitine, but it also contains some potentially harmful ingredients such as Rauwolfia Vomitoria.
Anyway, we’ll expand on this more in the next section. But first, we’ll tell you more about the company behind it.
Who are Insane Labz?
Insane Labz have really established themselves as a respectable supplements brand in 2017. Their products such as Psychotic have become very popular, and they pride themselves on creating the ‘strongest’ products available.
However, this usually means that they include numerous stimulants in proprietary blends.
The only other information we found was that they’re based in the USA. Other than that, their ‘about us’ section only offered a picture of a ‘scary’ hockey mask.
Anyway, you’re here to learn more about their pre-workout, Dark Metal Manson. So that’s exactly what we’ll give you below…
Dark Metal Manson Ingredients Explained
Dark Metal Manson contains 9 ingredients overall, which isn’t too many for 1 product. However, the big issue we have with this, is that every ingredient is part of a proprietary blend (we’ll expand on this below).
Proprietary blends are mixtures of numerous ingredients that’re only shown to you as 1 quantity. As you can see from the ‘MANSON Blend’ on its ingredient list, the overall amount is 5g – but you’re not shown the dosages of each ingredient inside such as Caffeine Anhydrous.
This increases your risk of side effects, and also makes it uncertain whether this pre-workout will work. For this reason, we try to avoid any supplement that contains proprietary blends.
Now that you know why we try to avoid proprietary blends, we’ll take you through each ingredient inside Dark Metal Manson. By the end of this review, you’ll know whether this pre-workout is worth trying out or not.
Here’s Everything You Need To Know:
Beta-Alanine
Beta-Alanine is quite controversial, as it’s shown to cause itchy & tingly skin (which is officially known as paresthesia).
However, many companies still add it into their pre-workouts, as it’s also shown to enhance your muscular endurance. Personally, we prefer to avoid this side effect, as we find it very distracting and uncomfortable in the gym.
But we can understand why many don’t mind suffering from paresthesia for this. Ultimately, it’s down to personal preference.
L-Tyrosine
L-Tyrosine is an interesting ‘brain booster’ nutrient that’s proven to enhance your cognition.
While an increase in focus can improve your gym session, a sensible dosage of Caffeine will deliver this benefit. For this reason, we don’t believe an ingredient solely focused on improving your cognition is needed in Dark Metal Manson.
However, there’s no denying that L-Tyrosine is a useful nutrient; we simply believe it’s better suited to a nootropic supplement.
Taurine
There’s a chance you’ve heard of L-Taurine before, as it’s seen in energy drinks. However, many people mistakenly believe that it can raise your energy levels for this reason.
Studies have found that L-Taurine doesn’t boost your energy levels, but it’s not useless; Taurine has shown to help reduce cramping, making it a great ‘bonus’ ingredient in a pre-workout supplement.
Caffeine Anhydrous
Caffeine Anhydrous is the best stimulant you can find in any supplement. Everyone knows that it can boost your energy levels, but it can also cause jittery feelings (something you’ll be familiar with if you’ve every consumed too much coffee).
For this reason, we believe it’s important to know the exact dosage of Caffeine you consume.
The bad news is that Insane Labz have included Caffeine Anhydrous in their ‘Manson Blend’ proprietary blend. This means that you’re not given the exact dosage of Caffeine Anhydrous per serving – increasing your risk of side effects.
Ultimately, we wouldn’t advise you to consume an unknown quantity of Caffeine. And it’s a great example of why we don’t like proprietary blends too.
Di-Caffeine Malate
In case you’re wondering what this is, it’s basically Caffeine mixed with Malic Acid; Malic Acid can increase your strength and endurance, due to it increasing your ATP levels (similarly to to creatine).
However, Di-Caffeine Malate is also part of a proprietary blend, so this increases your risk of jittery side effects further.
L-Carnitine
We consider L-Carnitine to be a key addition to any pre-workout supplement.
Why? Because it’s proven to reduce muscular fatigue and damage, while improving your mind-muscle-connection in the gym.
As these are great benefits to help your reach your fitness goals faster, we’re always happy to see L-Carnitine in a pre-workout.
However, we can’t say for sure whether it’s been optimally dosed, as it’s part of a proprietary blend. Ultimately, this means that you don’t know whether L-Carnitine will actually work here.
In case you’re interested, the optimal dosage for L-Carnitine has shown to be 500mg per serving.
Juniper Berry
AMPiberry is the patented form of juniper berry inside Dark Metal Manson. But while it’s a great addition to a gin & tonic, it’s not shown to do much, in terms of improving your gym session.
It contains some anti-oxidants, which can strengthen your immune system. But we don’t think it’s necessary in Dark Metal Manson here.
We would have preferred Insane Labz to have included Creatine Monohydrate instead (which has proven to improve your strength & endurance in numerous studies).
Fulvic Acid
Not much is known about Fulvic Acid, but it’s believed to benefit your general health.
It’s also claimed to be able to boost your testosterone levels, but there hasn’t been enough evidence to back-up this claim. Anyway, if you’re interested in raising your T levels, then we recommend looking at testosterone booster supplements instead.
Rauwolfia Vomitoria
Rauwolfia is one of the ingredients that we advise you to stay away from.
Basically, this ingredient has been reported to cause numerous side effects; this is because it contains high amounts of Yohimbine, which has been banned by numerous countries, including the UK & USA.
Simply put, Rauwolfia Vomitoria Extract gets through a legal loophole, and allows companies to indirectly add Yohimbine. But remember that things get banned for a reason.
It’s not worth suffering from side effects to reach your fitness goals. Especially when there are safe and effective nutrients available instead.
Not only that, Rauwolfia Vomitoria Extract’s main benefit is promoting fat loss; if you’re main aim is to lose body fat, then you’ll benefit more from a fat burner supplement.
See Your Best Options In Our
– Top 3 Pre-Workouts Page –
Side Effects
The main concern with Dark Metal Manson is that it contains 2 sources of Caffeine in proprietary blends, as well as Rauwolfia Vomitoria.
In quick summary, the potential over-dose of Caffeine can cause jitters and energy crashes. While we’ll have to list the side effects that Ravwolfia Vomitoria Extract can cause below.
Here’s the potential side effects from taking Dark Metal Mason:
- Itchy & tingly skin (Beta-Alanine)
- Jitters (potential over-dose of Caffeine)
- Energy crashes (potential over-dose of Caffeine)
- Nausea (Rauwolfia)
- Anxiety (Rauwolfia)
- Night-Terror (Rauwolfia)
- Decreased libido (Rauwolfia)
Dark Metal Manson Review Conclusion
Dark Metal Mason seems like a mixed bag; it contains some great nutrients such as L-Carnitine. However, it also contains potentially harmful ingredients such as Rauwolfia Vomitoria Extract.
Not only that, the worst thing about Dark Metal Manson, is that every ingredient is part of a proprietary blend; this means you don’t know the exact dosage of each ingredient inside.
Ultimately, to know how safe and effective a supplement really is, it’s important to know the exact dosages of nutrients inside. For this reason, we advise that you avoid products containing proprietary blends to stay safe.
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