Geniux

Become smarter? Check. Boost brain power? Check. Focus with laser vision? Check. Who wouldn’t want all these things? And it all comes in one “Limitless” pill called Geniux, says an email we received at TINA.org.

But Geniux makes a variety of advertised claims that send up red flags:

• Clearer thinking
• Increase short term memory
• Drastically increase long term memory
• Improve energy levels
• Increased concentration
• Clearer mental vision
• Viagra for the brain

And of course, becoming smarter. Geniux claims that there is science backing the “efficacy of product ingredients” but it doesn’t list the ingredients on its site. Bee pollen could be a possible ingredient because the majority of the studies listed center on bee pollen. One even discusses the effect of bee pollen extracts in poisoning rats.

But let’s get back to Geniux’s advertising. When you click on the aforementioned email, it brings you to a news site that looks a lot like a magazine called Discover. Each of the links on the fake Discover page bring you to a landing site where you can purchase Geniux. But when we checked into the claims on the fake Discover page,  we found a variety of misrepresentations:

• A Twitter relationship with the Limitless movie that featured Bradley Cooper. However the Limitless Twitter account has no record of this Geniux tweet, and the Twitter feed also seems like a platform for selling other supplements.
• A claim that Geniux has over 2000 clinical trials at the Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit. We checked, and a spokesperson for NCTU said: “This is not the case.”
• The same photo depicting a Forbes cover and story supposedly written by Robert Langreth about Geniux was also used to sell a different brain supplement called Brain Storm Elite. Forbes explained that the story about Brain Storm Elite is a fake.
  
• “James Rickman,” who supposedly authored the Discover article on Geniux, claims to be a resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute. A spokesperson for AEI, however, said: “No one by the name of James Rickman has ever been an employee or intern at AEI.”

The Geniux site does list many positive reviews, but a disclaimer at the bottom states that “Endorsements may be remunerated,’’ which means that the people that said all the nice things about the company were probably compensated to do so. On Amazon, where Geniux is also sold, consumers posted many negative reviews.

Make sure to do your research before purchasing a supplement, as they do not receive the same oversight by the FDA as drugs. To find out more about a U.S. Senate investigation into the brain supplement industry, click here.