ThymoQuin and the Gut-Stress Axis

Live from SupplySide Global 2026, Nutritional Outlook’s Nicholas Jacobus speaks with Elzaphan Hotam, director at TriNutra, about new clinical and preprint data on ThymoQuin, the company’s standardized black seed oil ingredient. In the conversation, Hotam discusses human study results showing cortisol reductions of 20-40% alongside improvements in sleep, mood, and immune response, new in vitro research on ThymoQuin’s ability to selectively shift gut bacteria populations, and the structure/function claims that brands can use today.

Transcript:

Nicholas Jacobus: ThymoQuin is dosed at 500 mg daily and standardized to at least 3% thymoquinone. What do the human studies show on cortisol, sleep, and mood?

Elzaphan Hotam: All right. So first of all, all of our clinical studies were done on 500 milligrams, and that is a recommended dose that we give to brands and comment. In terms of the studies we have done, all in all, about 10 preclinical and clinical studies, and the ones that are relevant for cortisol seems to suggest we are reducing or attenuating levels of cortisol anywhere between 20 to 40% in four weeks, dependent of how stressed you are. On top of that, all the other benefits that come usually when you have adaptogenic properties, sleep, mood, immune response, are all positively have been shown to positively be being affected by the 500 milligram dose we recommend.

Jacobus: A new preprint details data from an in vitro laboratory study examining ThymoQuin’s effect on gut bacteria across 3 independent batches. What does the data tell us and how do you bridge it to real-world gut conditions?

Hotam: Yeah, so this is very exciting. ThymoQuin has been researched for seven years, and black seed oil has been around for millennia, and what we discovered is in the past recent few months is fairly novel, and that is the ability to selectively target specific bacterial populations. We suppress the growth of bad bacteria, we encourage the growth of good bacteria at the same time, and overall within a 500 milligram dose that we recommend. So what ThymoQuin does, and this is what's so exciting, is both the cortisol and the stress and the gut health at the same time. We are not familiar with any other ingredient that does both the same way we do.

Jacobus: For a brand thinking about stress or gut-health products, what claims does the data support today, and what should they wait for?

Hotam: Right. So we have about half a dozen well confirmed and documented structure function claims that where brands are already using. You can file available online cortisol support, gut health support, stress support, immune support are all well established and documented structure function claim we can use in that context we're talking. There are others as well that comes on top of that, like blood flow and blood pressure. That's a different conversation we can have.