How To Know If Your Supplement Is Safe, Legal And Contains What It Says It Contains.

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Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield and I want to welcome you to this special edition of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. This is week two in which my usual podcast sidekick, Brock is still off gallivanting somewhere around Europe, probably eating spaghetti in Italy or maybe hanging out in a bar in Spain. I have no clue. But anyways, I once again have a special guest with me here today to talk to you about nutrition supplements. Because that's something that I get lots of questions about on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. It seems like not an episode goes by in which we don't talk about some kind of a pill or capsule or powder or oil or something, but it can be kind of this mysterious magical realm where, you know, it's hard to know how this stuff is made, where it's made, what the process is by which a supplement goes from like raw ingredients into its capsule form and finds its way into your refrigerator. And then there's a lot of other important questions that we gotta think about too, like how we know if the supplements that we're using are safe or legal and, and how the supplement industry is actually regulated and what you should be looking for to know if your supplement actually contains what it says it contains. Because there are a lot of problems out there in the supplement industry. And I don't know about you, but when I open my refrigerator I have supplements in it. And just like the kale and tomatoes and the milk, like I want to know where it comes from and whether or not it's going to do me good or whether it's going to hurt me. So my podcast guest today has been immersed in this industry, so to speak, for almost a dozen years. His name is Tom Nicola and I'm going to put a picture of him in the show notes for this episode over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com but he's there in the show notes wearing his shirt that says butter, not bread, which I absolutely love. And Tom actually has an interesting story. He was cured from leukemia when he was five and then spent years doing follow up testing at the Mayo Clinic where during that time he thought about becoming a doctor. But eventually, after getting a pre med Biology degree, began working in fitness instead, and he worked for the company Lifetime Fitness. You may have been, if you're listening in into a Lifetime Fitness gym before seeing a Lifetime Fitness gym. They're very big, fancy gyms. And Tom worked for about 12 years there as a personal trainer and held various management roles and eventually held the position of senior director of Nutrition and Weight Management for Lifetime Fitness. And while he was there, he was responsible for all their nutrition and metabolism and weight management programs and products. And beyond his standardized education, Tom has really read hundreds of books on fitness and nutrition. I've sat down and talked with him a few times and he is a wealth of knowledge. He has a personal library of about 900 published research papers and articles. So kind of like me, he's a little bit of a nerd when it comes to this stuff. What Tom does now is he uses all of his insights and experience to advise and build up one of the world's leading fitness supplement brands called Thorn fx, which produces supplements specifically along the lines of things for fitness professionals and people who are exercise enthusiasts. So today, Tom's going to walk us through everything we need to know, like I said, about whether supplements are safe, whether they're legal, whether they could potentially be unsafe, basically all of the little things that you need to know about. We're also going to delve into some of Tom's favorite supplements stacks and some of the other recovery and performance things we like to geek out on on this podcast. So, Tom, thanks for coming on the call, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Ben. I'm excited.

So I want to, I want to start with my burning question, which is when I'm, when I'm holding my bottle of capsules, multivitamins in this case. And we did a podcast a few weeks ago about this, this new Thorn FX multivitamin, for example. Like, how is a multivitamin actually made? Like, how does it go from all these raw ingredients that we turn around and look at, at the label, like vitamin C and vitamin B and you know, curcumin and all this stuff? Like, how does all of that wind up in the capsule? Like, how do you actually make a multivitamin?

Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think the first place to start is oftentimes identifying who is gonna be the user of that product. And, and in most cases, how much money are they willing to pay? You know, you've got lower end multivitamin mineral products in retail stores that sell for five to eight bucks for a month supply. And the intent with that product is to sell to somebody who's just willing to pay five to eight bucks. And so you basically try to find raw materials and formulations that can have somewhat of a label claim but still be at a relatively low price point. So when somebody who's very naive to nutritional products and maybe just beginning to start paying attention to what their nutrition and exercise looks like, when they go out to search for something and they hear that multivitamins are important, they just see multivitamins. Five bucks, that's a pretty good deal. I'm going to buy that product. So the place that it starts is oftentimes, how much are people willing to pay? Or the other path that you can take in developing a product is to say, what do I want this multivitamin to do? And what other kinds of constraints do we have in place? And so while most products are made with a price point in mind, that could be $5 to $8 to $30 or more from a retail standpoint, you can also say, we want a product that's going to have the most efficacious forms of nutrients. We want to make sure that they're at levels that are meaningful. And then the last piece of it is trying to figure out how do you have a really great product and deliver it in a way where people will take it on a daily basis. So you mentioned the multi ampm complex. And when Mario Rojas, one of the naturopathic doctors on our team, when he and I sat down to look at that product, we said that the one constraint that we have in place is we have to be able to fit everything into three morning capsules and three evening capsules. Because once you go to four or five or something like that, it just becomes kind of silly.

And that, that's kind of what I'm getting after is like you talk about you sitting down with a doctor and talking about, like, what you want in a capsule, but I mean, what happens from there? Like, like, are you talking to a bunch of people who formulate these raw ingredients, then they get somehow put into a capsule? Like, how is, how's a multivitamin actually made? How does it go from being an idea to actually, you know, getting produced and put into a bottle? Like, how's that work?

Yep. So once, once that's determined, you know, again, price point versus saying we're going to have the best ingredients, then, you know, a company like Thorn Research, which is really the parent company to Thorn FX or a number of other manufacturers out there, they all have ingredient suppliers that they work With. And like anything else, there's some that are awesome and there's some that are questionable and everything in between. So from there, we'll identify an ingredient. For example, folic acid or folate. We use 5 methyltetrahydrofolate in our products. So that's one out of a multiple of different ingredients that go into it. But we have to be very specific about which nutrient we want and who's the best supplier for that product. Really, for just about any nutrient that's out there, there's going to be good and bad and everything in between. There's also different forms of nutrients. So, you know, from a mineral standpoint, we use a lot of Albion minerals that are mineral chelates because they're so beneficial, as opposed to many mineral salts that are available on the market. So once that's something.

Just a quick question. So you said, like, Albion Minerals. So is. Is Albion the name of, like, a company that makes minerals? So you order from them and then they come to the factory and those get put into the multivitamin and it's just kind of getting rinsed, washed and repeated with different folks who are sending in raw ingredients?

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, the average person can't call up Albion and say, hey, I want some magnesium bisglycinate, and they'll ship it out. I mean, Albion is shipping to manufacturers large volumes of raw materials, and then those raw materials are sent to the manufacturing facility. So I'll just use again, our company as an example, Thorne. And those products come into the warehouse. And before they actually get into the manufacturing facility, each lot of each product that's shipped gets tested for various contaminants and for its purity and that kind of thing, to make sure that what it says on the box of raw materials is what's actually inside it. The testing there isn't required at quite the level that Thorn does it, but Thorn does test each lot of each material that comes into the facility, no matter how good the reputation is. So then from there, once all of the materials for that multivitamin have been tested and shown to be pure and so on, then basically each of those materials is. Is put into this giant mix, if you will, and blended for a period of time to try to make sure that all of the magnesium and the folate and the vitamin C and vitamin E and all of that is blended into a pretty consistent material.

Is that literally like a blender? Like a giant blender?

It's like a giant blender, yeah. They're pretty cool.

An Enormous Vitamix for multivitamins.

Yes, that's exactly right.

So it's all blended together after it's been tested. So basically you order this stuff from the raw ingredient manufacturer, it gets to the factory, it is first tested, and later on, I do want to ask you about different testing protocols and how we know which test to actually look for. But it's tested and then it's all blended.

Right.

Okay. And then what happens?

So then once you have the consistent mix, it's basically, you know, you take this giant, like you said, the giant Vitamix, or the giant vat of material, and it goes through various machines or machinery and gets placed into the capsule. So there's encapsulating machines that actually take just a little bit of that powder and put it into your capsule, put kind of push the two ends together, and from there you've got a bunch of individual capsules that then get flown in to the bottles. The bottles get sealed, the bottles go into a box, and it's pretty much ready to go. So the process sounds like it's pretty fast, but as you can imagine, with the number of capsules that even are included in one box of a multi ampm complex or something like that, that there's a lot of capsules going on and it's a pretty intricate process.

Yeah, that's another question I want to ask you. Because when I blend up my kale shake in the morning and I take a bite, some of my bites are going to contain my cacao nibs and my coconut flakes and my kale and my avocado in different ratios than other bites that I might take. And when you're looking at a bunch of capsules coming out of a blender and getting put into a bottle, how do you actually know that a capsule contains, say, the amount of minerals that the label says it contains, or the amount of vitamin B or vitamin C or anything else, how do you actually ensure that you're not just grabbing too much of one ingredient and not enough of another from that blender container before the encapsulation process occurs?

Yeah, that's where something called good manufacturing processes come into play, is when a formula is designed. What will happen then is in the process of making that powder and trying to make sure that it's consistent from one scoop to the next once it's all blended. There's certainly a science to it to try to identify how long does that mix have to be mixing in order to have a pretty consistent blend of all of those materials. So that from one capsule to the next and one bottle to the next, you're getting a pretty consistent amount. Now, just like you said in your own blender, even if you left your Vitamix on for the next two years, it wouldn't be perfect, but it's reasonably close from one capsule to the next and so on. Now, what will also happen is you have some loss over the production time and some of the powder and stuff tends to. It can end up on the floor and just gets wasted or what have you. But that's part of that good manufacturing process, when the product is first put into practice is the length of time that it's blended will be identified. And then from there it's basically tested to say if we grab a little bit here and we grab a little bit of there, are we getting consistent amounts of the nutrients like we expect?

So you take that final capsule and then you actually test that final capsule as well?

Yeah, the final product is tested as well.

So when we're looking at a label, whether we're grabbing the $5 bottle out of the bargain bin at Super Supplements, or whether we're ordering a $50 bottle online or, or whatever, are there certain things that we should be looking for on the label? Like you mentioned this certified Good Manufacturing practices, and I've talked about that before on my podcast, how we should look for the CGMP on any supplements that we're taking. But especially for people who are concerned about the potential for, like, stuff being laced with steroids or hormones or, you know, it being safe to take for, say, like, sports and for athletes, or being safe for someone who's competing in a sanctioned race and doesn't want to be worried about World Anti Doping association issues, stuff like that. What kind of things, in addition to this CGMP label, should we be looking.

For on supplements in the United States? Probably the most common extra identifier that people will see is nsf. And there's an NSF for sport, which I'll talk about in a second. But NSF is like a third party certification that comes in and says, you're following your GMPs, you have good standards in place, your paperwork is the way that we expect it to be, and so on.

Is that just a bunch of dudes in lab coats that arrive at the first factory, or how's it in the capsules or how does that work?

Yeah, I mean, that's a good summary, is they'll show up and they'll just basically say, we're here to audit your facility and make sure that you're following the regulations the way that you're supposed to. So, you know, the reality is there's a lot of supplement companies out there and they're not going to be there from one week to the next, but they'll stop in. The FDA stops in about every two years and does an unannounced audit. Actually, I had a planned trip out to Sandpoint, Idaho to our manufacturing facility this past summer. And on Monday I was supposed to go fly out Tuesday morning and Monday morning I got a call saying, hey Tom, we gotta cancel our plans. The FDA just showed up at our doors at 9 o', clock, which wasn't a big deal in terms of, of, of them actually finding anything, anything that was being done wrong. It just took everybody's time during that week. So you know that, that, and that's how it should be is there shouldn't be a week's head, a week, a week's heads up to say, hey, we're going to be coming out, so make sure that you clean your act up.

Probably a bad analogy, but it's kind of like when, when the, when the cycling regulators show up on Lance Armstrong's doorstep, right? They don't call him a week beforehand to let them know.

Yeah, exactly. Now so like I was mentioning, you know, the FDA comes in every couple years. NSF is a common certification. Thorne actually went with one called the Therapeutic Goods Administration of Australia, tga. And the reason for that is Thorne Research, our parent company, has always done whatever it can to, you know, sort of push the limits in terms of product quality and make sure that it stands out from any of our competitors in terms of how we produce and the certifications that we have and that kind of thing. So TGA certification is again a third party certification. There's three different levels of that certification that Thorne has gone through which basically says that if we so chose to, we'd be able to make pharmaceutical products for Australia and many of the other companies that recognize TGA as the superior sort of category. So Thorne will go through NSF just because it's pretty common here in the United States that people are asking about it. And that leads into NSF for sport. But the TGA three levels of TGA certification is what Thorne has done, which is really the only company in North America that's gone through all of that.

So you look for NSF or you look for tga, like those would be two of the biggies.

Yep, TGA is definitely better. There's some other companies that have gone through like the first level of TGA certification, which is. That's definitely something to recognize, but like I said, there's three levels of it, too, which at the third level, you know, we're pretty solid across the country, across the world, if we wanted to.

But you're going to do NSF for sport either way?

Yes. Yeah. So that. So we didn't do the nsf because we did. We've done TGA for many years now, but people are looking for some kind of certification to show that the products are free of banned substances. And there's two companies that do that, two main companies, Informed Choice and NSF for Sport. So we're actually going through the Informed Choice certification at the moment because we have to do NSF first and then we can do NSF for sport. So the company is going to be going through nsf, and then later in the year, or maybe next year, we'll do NSF for Sport as well.

Okay, got it. Before you use the word pharmaceuticals and about. You talked about how TGA is out of Australia is as strict as what they hold pharmaceutical brands to when it comes to quality of a supplement. And that kind of leads me to my next question because, like, I've been aware of this, this Thorn company for a long time, just because various naturopathic docs that I've seen and physicians that I've spoken to on this podcast and elsewhere have kind of used Thorne with a lot of their patients. This, this Thorn brand of supplements for everything from, like, you know, herbal blends to vitamin blends to oils, et cetera. And it seems that Thorn fx, this new company, is a little bit different than this Thorne brand that a lot of doctors are using. Can you kind of explain the whole evolution of Thorne FX and how it's different than something like Thorne?

Sure, yeah. So Thorne research has been around since 1984 and has always, like you were saying, kind of catered to the healthcare practitioner community, naturopaths, chiropractors, medical doctors that use nutritional supplements and so on, and certainly has a little bit more of a clinical look to it and that kind of thing, which it should. But as you mentioned, I came from Lifetime Fitness and I really feel like fitness professionals have such an important role in health and fitness and not just sports performance, but really helping to combat obesity and a lot of the diseases associated with it. So rather than trying to add fitness professionals into the group of people using Thorne research, we wanted to kind of create a line with the same manufacturing and the same quality assurance and that kind of thing. But a little bit of a different look, a little bit of a different design, a little bit more in the way of connecting through social media and those kinds of things. So we launched Thorn FX in January, a brand that's mainly focused on being a brand for fitness professionals to offer to their clients. And as you know, most the majority of fitness professionals clients aren't necessarily athletes. They're people that just want to look better, feel better, perform better in daily life and that kind of thing. So that's really what this line was designed for, is something that fitness professionals would be able to offer and at the end of the day, they wouldn't have to worry about questionable ingredients and questionable additives and those kinds of things being in the products.

And this stuff is all made at the same place that the Thorn stuff is made that the physicians are using?

Yes, exactly.

Okay, so in terms of the actual way that people get this stuff, why did you make it so you can't get it on like, you know, Amazon, for example?

That's a good question. I mean, again, coming from a fitness professional background, I really felt like there was a need for a brand to be there as a kind of a supporting solution for products and services for fitness professionals that we offered something beyond exercise. So obviously we've got the nutritional products and we've got lab testing and those kinds of things. When you get into Amazon, you start getting into pricing issues and people not following the rules. And we really want to make sure we have a lot of integrity in the way that the products are priced and who's carrying them. And frankly, they are marketing.

Somebody could take a supplement like Thorn FX and fulfill it on Amazon, but it could have an expiration date that's like two or three months late. All those are kind of things that happen when you have a third party fulfillment.

Yeah, you just don't know what the quality of the products are going to be when you're buying through Amazon. And there's some very good retailers. I'm not going to say it's always a bad experience, but we wanted to try to hold on to that aspect of the buying process and the customer service experience and that kind of thing on our side. And I will say, you know, the one other piece of it is that the Thorn FX products are more expensive. I mean, the multi that you Talked about is 59.99 for a month supply. And being able to understand why it's of value takes a conversation. So we wanted to make sure that high quality fitness professionals were the ones talking to people about that product because they're going to be able to relay the value of why it would be worth it to spend that versus the eight bucks for the cheap tablet based product in the store. Right, right.

And I did a podcast about that a while ago and I'll link to it for those of you listening in. Like, I did a pretty comprehensive podcast about this multivitamin that thornifex makes and why it's the only multivitamin that I recommend. And I won't subject you to having to just hear the same thing that I just podcasted about a few weeks ago repeated here, but it's interesting to kind of hear the background about how it's made and how this Thorne FX kind of came to be. What I want to ask you though, Tom, is there's like a bunch of other stuff that you guys have at ThorneFX, and I'm curious about the reasoning behind the line, so to speak, of supplements that you've chosen and what the actual line is. If you can kind of walk me through what it is that you've created at Thorn fx.

Sure. One of the important things when we first started conceptualizing this to me was having kind of a systematic thought process and how to use the products and when you should be using them and so on. We kind of break that down into a four part philosophy that's number one is to monitor and manage health. And actually that piece of it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the supplements, but lab testing becomes an important part of it in that we want to make sure that people aren't just blindly using tons of nutritional products, starting an exercise program and diet changes, and not really knowing whether they're healthy on the inside or not? That's important for a fitness professional so that they know what challenges they may be facing with a client.

So if you go to Thorn fx, you have lab tests that you sell there, correct? Like blood testing and the type of things that. Well, you guys go through Wellness FX for your testing, right?

Yes. Yep. We have six specific lab packages that aren't available on Wellness fx, but we actually acquired Wellness FX last fall and so we created some custom packages available through Thorn fx. That's right.

So I've got a question for you because this is something I'm curious about. When people buy a lab test through WellnessFX, kind of wrapped into the cost of that lab test is like a consult with a physician or with a nutritionist or something like that. Is it the same thing with thornifex where when you purchase a Lab test. Are you also paying for a consult or is that something separate? Like do you have the option of getting a lab test and just bringing the numbers to your own doc or to your trainer, to your nutritionist?

Yeah, it can be either way. I mean, for those people that, for example, I know you have a lot of followers online that may not have access to you, but they might end up ordering one of the lab packages like a Wellness Complete and they have the ability then to do a consultation with you if it so works out, or one of the other practitioners that are part of the Wellness FX group. Or they may be working with a dietitian or other individual that can interpret the labs. And even a fitness professional can do some education about what some of the markers mean. Although a registered dietitian like yourself can do a lot more than an average trainer is going to be able to.

Yeah, yeah, well, I'm not a registered dietitian. I'm a nutritionist.

Nutritionist, sorry.

Yeah, Big, big difference. So you've got your Wellness Complete, your sex hormone balance, your thyroid function test, your nutrient deficient test, a cardiovascular risk test and a blood sugar management test. And that's really cool. And I'll be sure and link to those tests for folks in the show notes. But I'm curious about the supplements too. And a lot of, a lot of people, let's just face a lot of people are going to want to go out and just start taking supplements without paying hundreds of dollars for a lab test. And for the people that are doing that type of thing, you've got everything from amino acids to iron bisglycinate to a probiotic complex. Why did you choose the things that you chose? Walk me through the basic line, the featured line through Thornifex, and why you chose what you chose for this.

So after that first point of monitor and manage health, the next three real quick are to optimize recovery, improve body composition and then enhance performance. And so the way that we look at it is if somebody's not making sure that they can recover from daily life and they're adding exercise to their routine, the best pre workout drink and the best or the best energy drink or whatever is going to offer very little because they're not going to be able to recover from that exercise anyway. So from our perspective, we kind of start out with the priority of optimizing recovery. And what that means is getting most of the essential micro and macronutrients that are necessary to recover from exercise, to recover from daily stress and so on. So that's where multi ANPM complex plays in. That's where the super, super EPA complex, we've got a liquid version and a soft gel version. Very high quality fish oils that have a long story of their own that we could spend the next 10 minutes talking about why we chose the raw materials for those specific products and so on. Protein powders, we've got whey isolate and then a vegan rice pea protein as another option. So like those first three are from our perspective, kind of just foundational products. And then probiotics and vitamin D and HDL enzyme complex as a product to support the digestion and absorption of proteins and fats for those who have a compromised stomach acid production and so on. So that's that group of products we feel is the most important. And even for the person who's trying to lose body fat or improve lean body mass, oftentimes if they get the recovery category straight and they're eating well and exercising appropriately, they're going to see changes in body composition and improved performance. But for those that have that foundation in place and they want to kind of take it to the next level, our next category is body composition. And that's where we have our patented amino complex. It's an essential amino acid formula. Thorne's got the exclusive on that in North America. So nobody else offers that formulation. It's got a ton of research.

What do you mean by that?

We license that formulation from a company in Europe or actually from the inventor in Europe, I should say. So that specific blend of essential amino acids is only available through us and it's in the Thorne research line and it's in Thorn fx. But there's no other supplement company in North America that can have that.

Why is it any different than like any other amino acids?

A big one is there's a lot of branch chain amino acid products on the market and there's certainly a lot of evidence for their value in increasing protein synthesis and helping with muscle and alabolism and so on. But the specific blend of amino acids and amino complex has been studied for really the past 20 years. And the research shows that it supports fat metabolism. It supports normal blood sugar levels, of course, because of, especially because of the branching amino acids supports increased protein synthesis. Synthesis. But research has also shown that it helps to combat increases in protein breakdown which you see during exercise. So that's kind of the other side of the coin of muscle anabolism. Some studies have been shown that it in research has improved mood, which you logically I guess would expect because amino acids are important for neurotransmitter production. But again, it's not the branch chains that are necessarily providing that benefit. It's some of the other amino acids in there. And then it's enhanced exercise capacity and reduced fatigue in some research as well.

Okay, so basically this is an amino acid powder, and you would just like, you would take a scoop of it prior to a time that you would either be doing a hard workout or prior to a time that you would normally be experiencing food cravings. Things along those lines.

Yeah, the research that's been done on it, especially in aging pot for. So for aging population or like for my parents, I tell them just take. Take one serving between breakfast and lunch and another serving between lunch and dinner. So ideally on an empty stomach for exercise, it can be taken for sure prior and then depending on the extent of the duration of the workout, maybe during and then maybe after. But yeah, it's a flavored powder, two different flavors.

What do you use to flavor it?

Well, they're berry and lemon flavored, and then it's sweetened with stevia.

Okay.

So no artificial flavors, which is really common in amino acids that you see a lot of sucralose and ace K, because amino acids, many of them taste just horrendous. And so you got to cover it up with something very bitter.

Like, I use those master amino pattern capsules during my races sometimes. And although I'm actually gonna be starting to mix this powder into my bottles instead, But I chew on those and swallow the capsules and they just like, they do. Like, I kind of go into beast mode during my races anyway, so I don't care that much. But they, they don't taste good. I'll put it.

You're hardcore.

Yeah, I noticed like, like, so you mix stevia in these. I noticed that you guys do a lot of other little things. Like I noticed, for example, your vitamin D, you use medium chain triglyceride oil to mix your vitamin D in. And on the multi ampm complex, for example, you don't have some of the stuff like magnesium stearate, for example, as a filler. Can you talk a little bit about just like fillers and binders and additives in supplements and how it is that you go about not using some of the things that a lot of the other manufacturers are using, and if so, like, how much more expensive that is or how much more difficult it is. Like, why, why doesn't everybody do this same type of thing that you're doing?

Sure, yeah. Something like magnesium stearate. You'll see that in a lot of capsules and tablets. And the purpose of it is to help the powder flow through equipment faster so that you can make the equipment actually churn out capsules at a faster rate. And obviously, from a manufacturing standpoint, the faster you can get a batch of products done, the sooner you can get on to the next one. And so anytime there's efficiencies like that, it saves money. Now, from Thorne's perspective, ever since 1984, Thorne has not used magnesium stearate because of some evidence that it may hamper absorption of some nutrients. Now, it isn't necessarily going to be harmful to ingest it, and it is generally regarded as safe. But if it at all reduces the absorption of the vitamins and minerals in a product, then you're just not getting what you're paid, what you're paying for. So Thorne's process of making those products is going to be a little bit slower, but we can do it without having to use magnesium stearate. You know, you also see in, like, protein powders, you'll see carrageenan a lot of times, and carrageenan is used to give it a little bit of a different mouth feel, so it feels thicker and like it's got more keratin.

Carrageenan.

Carrageenan. Yep, yep.

So.

Thorne has always had this opinion that if we have to add something that in any way could compromise the efficacy of the product or could potentially be a disruption to someone's health, we're going to stay away from that. So no artificial flavors, colors or sweeteners. No carrageenan, no magnesium stearate. And, you know, there's a longer list of stuff on our no list, actually. If you just go to thornfx.com, it's right on the homepage. Many of the stuff that we won't use, no soy protein, of course, and so on.

Okay, so you've got like, wheat, corn, gluten, yeast, egg and dairy not included. Artificial colors, artificial sweeteners, lactose, magnesium stearate, palmitic acid, stearic acid. All that stuff isn't included. What do you think is the worst? Like what, what do you think is in supplements these days that you think could actually be hurting people? Even if we're not talking about creating expensive pee or keeping things from getting absorbed, what would you say? Like, if you turned around and you looked at the label of a supplement and you saw something on a supplement, what would make you say there's no way in Hell, I'm gonna put that in my body.

I think the three that I'll stay the furthest away from and recommend other people do is going to be, I guess it's four artificial flavors, colors and sweeteners, and then carrageenan. Those four, even more than magnesium stearate, to me, are very questionable. We're seeing so much more of the importance of gut health and the importance of digestion for optimal health and so on. The thing with carrageenan is that it's becoming a lot more questionable whether that is a safe nutrient because of the potential for it to cause gut disruption. I just tell people, stay away from it whenever you can. And then again, the artificial sweeteners are probably the other real major tell of whether a company is looking at trying to sell a bunch of products or sell a bunch of products and make sure that they're of utmost quality. And so if I see any kind of sucralose or ACE K, you don't see too much aspartame.

Nowadays, when you say ACE K, you mean acesulfamine potassium.

You got it. I didn't want to say that on the podcast because I know I.

Okay, so there are some other things. We talked about your amino acids powder, and obviously there's about a dozen different products that you guys have that are specific to recovery to body composition or specifically reducing body fat and then also performance. But I notice when I go through your raw ingredients list, kind of a few things that pop up again and again. One is curcumin. Can you explain to me why you guys appear to be obsessed with curcumin?

Yeah, we have that in multi ampm complex and then we have it as a standalone product. And the curcumin that we use is Curcumin phytosome, which is again, we license that from a company in Europe called Indeena. It's I N D E N A. If anybody knows.

What does that mean when you say you license.

Basically means that they are the only company that makes curcumin phytosome. So in some cases we have exclusives for some of their phytosome products. The curcumin phytosome, also known as Meriva. We did have an exclusive. There are other companies that carry it nowadays. But in the case of a license, sometimes it just means that, you know, that's the only form of that product that we're going to use. In other cases it means we're the only company that gets our hands on it, which again, like with the amino complex, we've got the exclusive on that, so no one else can get it.

Okay, got it. How is this different than say like dumping turmeric in your smoothie?

Yeah. So what Indina did is they basically figured out how to wrap certain botanicals, wrap them into or combine them with phosphatidylcholine. And that lipid that is provided by the phosphatidylcholine aids in the absorption of that botanical. So there's actually green tea phytosome and curcumin phytosome. In the multi that we were talking about in terms of curcumin, it's been shown that it can be absorbed up to 29 times better than standard curcumin extract. So when somebody says, oh wow, look at all this cool stuff that curcumin does, and then they're going and buying a standard curcumin extract, very little of that actually gets absorbed into the.

How much turmeric would you have to eat? Like how much of the turmeric herb would you have to eat to get as much curcumin as you get in, like your multivitamin?

That's a good question. I'd have to do a little homework to find that one out. But maybe I can get the answer and put it into the comments or your show notes if you want. One thing that I will say from a dietary standpoint though is if people are following a low fat diet and then dumping a bunch of turmeric on their foods, very little of that will get absorbed. You actually want to be eating the turmeric with fat in order to enhance absorption, which is really what in a way what the curcumin phytosome is. Fat plus.

Got it. So you basically they've got a way in this lab. Where'd you say it's at? In Italy.

In Italy? Yep.

In Italy, to be able to mix up curcumin with a fat based delivery system called a phytosome. So when you consume that and it's blended up in your giant Vitamix with all these other multivitamin ingredients, like you're getting an absorbable form.

Yep. It's actually one part curcumin and then two parts phosphatidylcholine. And phosphatidylcholine has some very interesting health benefits of its own that we don't need to get into.

But that's cool stuff. It's actually, it works well as a smart drug too. There's a lot of people, they'll use stuff like aniracetam and piracetam and stuff and mix it with phosphatidylcholine or alpha GPC to enhance cognitive performance. So it's interesting for that you've also got this stuff called Relora, and it looks like you're saying that it can help to decrease cortisol or increase testosterone or act as almost like an adaptogen. Can you kind of explain how that works?

Yeah. Relora is another unique formulation from Next Pharmaceuticals. So that's where we get it from. And we don't have the exclusive on this one. You will find that from some other sources. But what we did do is add some extra B vitamins and some other nutrients that support the stress response. But the research on Relora has shown that it can help with food cravings and kind of the mind that just won't shut down at night, kind of thinking about the next day's work and everything that's going on. And if that's keeping somebody from sleeping, that's going to have detrimental effects. So from a rest and recovery standpoint, we really see Relora as valuable. We see it as valuable for combating the cravings. But then to your point, as it relates to exercise, there's been some interesting research showing that with higher volume training, what typically happens is you'll see a reduction in testosterone and an increase in cortisol. And Relora has been shown in some research to help normalize or blunt that response.

Interesting. Now, it says on your page that it's a proprietary blend of plant extracts from magnolia and philodendron.

Yep.

Can you explain to me how this actually works? Like, do they grow the plants in the lab and then extract stuff from them and then put that into the giant blender? Or are people, like, going out into the field and harvesting this stuff and bringing back the dry ingredients? How does that work when you're getting a blend of plant extracts?

Yeah. So what Next Pharmaceuticals would do is get those two materials at the specific extract amounts that they have in their formula. So that's kind of their. Their secret is that the reason that it's proprietary is they don't want somebody to kind of rip it off because they. They've done the research to show that that that blend in those ratios of those two plants provides some pretty significant health benefits. So they're. They're basically getting, you know, and it could be from two of their suppliers, some philodendron and some magnolia from over here. And then they're bringing it into their company, putting it together, and then we as thorn will order that raw material from Next Pharmaceuticals. So Next is just making that ingredient from a couple of components and then we put it in newer products.

Okay, got it. So when they are using a word like proprietary, that's not a word, that's just like thrown around for marketing purposes. They're literally trying to keep that a secret so people don't knock it off.

Yeah, that's a really good question. There's two ways of positioning proprietary blend on products. One is so that manufacturers don't have to really tell you what's in the product. The other is to create some exclusivity or to not let someone rip it off. So from a Next pharmaceutical standpoint, I can totally understand why they would want to have a proprietary blend listed there and not say the exact amounts when it comes to an energy drink. And you see proprietary blend and there's some caffeine and some taurine and a bunch of other stuff, and there's 600 milligrams per serving. What happens in that case is it could be 599 milligrams of caffeine and 1 milligram of all the other stuff that makes it look cool. And it's just a mega dose of caffeine. So there's, there's a couple different ways you'll see proprietary thrown around, but in this case it's pretty legit.

Interesting. So when you look at a bunch of supplements, there's kind of this term that we throw around in fitness and nutrition, and it's this concept of a stack. Like when you take a bottle of this and a bottle of that and you stack it together, then you get like this synergistic effect where, you know, when you blend, for example, let's say like, you know, caffeine and amino acids and maybe some adaptogens, maybe it's a good pre workout blend, that type of thing. Or for recovery, you know, post workout, maybe, you know, amino acids and anti inflammatories and antioxidants. So for you having been in this industry for a dozen years and having access to all these different products at ThorneFX, if you had to choose like your three favorite stacks of things that people would put together to get the best effect, what would those three favorite stacks be? And what would be the effect that people would get if they were to put them all together? Let's put on our fun nerdy nutritionist druggie hats.

Well, to be honest, the first one probably isn't very, very sexy. And that's just what I always talk about as kind of a foundation. Foundation package or foundation protocol is what I typically will tell somebody. And that's Malti's omegas, so the super EPA complex and then a protein powder. And the reason that I always start.

With that even if a multivitamin, a fish oil and a protein powder.

Yeah, the reason I always start there is so often people will be looking for the latest and greatest supplement, but they're neglecting their ability to recover and they're neglecting their core nutrient needs. And so I always tell, you know, the most eager teenager or college kid up to the, you know, the highest performing athlete or somebody just getting started, let's make sure you get your, your foundation covered because if you don't, you know, no matter how good these other supplements are, they're going to have a limited amount of effect. If you're not getting enough protein in your diet, you're not getting any essential vitamins and minerals and so on.

So if you were like a high school athlete on a budget or you were somebody who wanted to just like simplify and minimize, those would be the three that you'd go with?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. And that's, that's what I have our, our kids use into.

What kind of whey protein do you guys use, by the way?

It's a whey isolate.

So what's the using it, Using a whey isolate.

The main thing is that just that there's, there's a pretty significant number of people that have trouble with lactose and they can typically handle whey isolate, whereas oftentimes they can't handle a whey concentrate. From a strictly nutrition standpoint, there's probably not a significant difference between the two. And we're actually going to be introducing a grass fed whey concentrate later in the year. So that people can just make the choice whether they want to go the isolate route or they want to go the concentrate. The concentrates tend to taste a little bit better as well because there is a little bit more fat and a little bit more carbohydrate in them. But we went with it mainly to make sure a larger number of people could use it. And frankly, in the sports performance or sports nutrition industry or for bodybuilders and that kind of thing, oftentimes they have a preference towards weight isolate.

Okay, got it. So baseline pursing, you're going for general health, longevity or the minimal simple approach. You use a multi use, official use a protein powder. What would be your second stack.

So the next one is once they start cranking up training volume, there's some changes that you often will see as people are doing more chronic higher volume or higher intensity exercise. And I know knowing you, you're not someone that really touts the idea of high volume, especially high volume endurance training. But even smart higher intensity training has some effects on the body. And the main things that we want to make sure has more of an.

Effect on the body in some cases. I've tried both and I wake up in many cases more beat up from a 30 minute HIIT session versus a 90 minute aerobic session.

Yep, absolutely. So the main things that we, that we address in kind of our higher volume training protocol is probiotics. So making sure we're enhancing gut health which again, with increased volume or intensity the gut can be compromised. Oftentimes the Relora complex, for the reasons that we talked about earlier, its effects on.

That's an adaptogenic herb.

Yep, yep. And then amino complex to make sure that enough essential amino acids are getting into the system. And you know, from a diet standpoint, there's only so much food that people can eat before they just get tired of it. But for exercising individuals, or especially those that are trying to lose weight and may be on somewhat of a calorically restricted diet, protein and amino acids are super critical to maintaining lean body mass. So that's why amino complex is just, just a really easy way to get in additional amino acids.

You talked about a probiotic and I'm curious just because you've talked about some of the unique aspects of some of the Thorn FX components. Is your probiotic unique? Is there anything about it that makes it different than any others? Have you done anything to your probiotic that people should know about?

Yeah, the probiotic complex is three different strains. They're actually human derived strains. What's that mean? Meaning they're the same form of probiotic typically found in humans. Whereas some of the other probiotics are derived from animals or ground, that kind of thing. These are three clinically studied important in human probiotics. Okay, so, you know, there's a couple of different thoughts around the use of probiotics. One is to use some, some more targeted strains of probiotics like we do. And the other is sort of the shotgun approach of let's just go get a bunch of different strains that we don't really know anything about, but make the label look really good and fully loaded and hope that there's some benefit as time goes on. So we kind of went the more conservative route of let's make sure that the probiotics that we are having people ingest have some proven scientific support. And then the other thing that we did with it is put it into an acid resistant capsule. Because what you don't want to have happen is all the probiotics hit your stomach acids and then the majority of them are dead before they actually make it into the intestines. You want them to break down those capsules to break down in the intestines?

Well, what about when you eat fermented foods? Like those are just, you know, like if I ate a bite of kimchi, isn't my stomach acid hitting that?

How does that not kill you? Yeah, you'll lose a pretty fair amount of those probiotics. Not all of them, of course.

Interesting.

But you'll lose some of them. So that's why we go that route.

I didn't know that. Okay, so your second favorite stack would be this Relora adaptogenic herb to help with testosterone and cortisol, a probiotic for gut health and then aminos. So this would be for somebody who's maybe like a little bit harder charging.

Yep, exactly. Cool.

What about number three?

The third one is the kind of our peak performance protocol. And that one again, amino complex comes into this as well. But then the other two are going to be elevate and catalyte. And elevate is pre workout or could even be used during a workout depending on how long the duration is shot, stamina shot. So there's not any added caffeine. You get a tiny amount from the green tea that's in it. But there's four botanicals in elevate. And what's interesting about these botanicals or these herbs is that again we use a patented extraction process from one of our partners to make sure that this isn't just ground and filtered green tea leaves. It's actually specific extracts from green tea, from rhodiola, from Reishi. And I should have had it in front of me because I'm going to forget one of them off the top of my head.

But that Dan Shen stuff. Dan Shen, because I ordered your guys digestive enzymes. Because I did a gut test actually and my naturopathic physician informed me that due to my high levels of physical activity, I needed to get a little pancreatic support in. So I ordered your digestive enzymes and it came with two bottles of this stuff. And actually I drank one yesterday pre workout and it's actually pretty interesting. I did Notice it gave a little bit of a boost. But I was actually curious about that extraction process. Is that why that felt different than some of these other energy drinks and adaptogens I've tried?

Yeah. What we get from that extraction process is consistency from one bottle and one batch to the next, which you really can't if you're just using, you know, green tea as a tea kind of a thing. The other important component of this is that these four botanicals were really designed to enhance stamina, not necessarily to boost energy levels. So what I often tell people is if you're going to use this, don't expect that the first half of your training session you're going to be wired and excited and throwing weights around and screaming at people. What you'll notice is the second half of your training session, you don't start bonking and getting lightheaded and losing mental focus and that kind of thing. So what most people will notice, whether they're doing metabolic conditioning workouts or endurance sessions, really any type of high or moderate intensity exercises, they don't start to fade off the last half of their workout.

Interesting. So you'd mix like the amino, you could mix the amino acids in with this botanical blend. For example, like if I were going to go out and do a killer, even like a fasted workout or something like that, and I wanted a little bit of extra nutrient support.

Yep, yep, you could do that.

What's the third part of this one?

The third one then is catalyte, which is our electrolyte drink. And again with the elect, it's an electrolyte powder. I shouldn't say drink because it's, you have to mix it yourself. But it's a lemon flavored electrolyte powder and what we did on that one is balanced out the sodium and potassium and the magnesium and calcium and the ratios that you typically see lost through sweat. So there's a, there was a reason why we have those in the amounts and ratios that we have them. One thing I wanted to stay away from was the idea of adding any extra sugar. And I know for you and for a lot of your followers, they're probably doing longer duration activities on a restricted carbohydrate diet. I don't want to throw in a bunch of sugar like a lot of the other electrolyte and energy drink or during workout drinks have. So it is sweetened with stevia. We've got some D ribose in there and then added some zinc as well. So it's really good tasting, super unique blend. Of electrolytes and it actually goes really well with the amino complex that you were just mentioning. So for those that are using the amino acids and the electrolytes during a training session, it can all be mixed in the same bottle.

Why is D ribose in there?

D Ribose is just a nice extra cellular energy source.

It's like a ATP precursor.

Yeah. And it doesn't add. I mean it's not being metabolized the way that regular sugar does. And so there's some good benefit for enhancing cellular energy.

Yeah. Interesting. What do you think about like Tim Noakes ideas that we don't need as many electrolytes as we've been led to believe during exercise and it's only during extremely long like multi day periods of hot exercise where the body truly reaches into full sodium depletion.

I mean, I haven't read Tim's stuff on this specifically. I will say that it's very individualized. I mean for me, I follow a pretty low carbohydrate diet myself and there are times when I start to get my lats cramping and they start acting up during training sessions. And it has a pretty significant, significant effect when I'm using catalyte versus not using catalyte. Because obviously when you're restricting carbohydrates, you're more likely to run through water or have the potential for depleting sodium stores a lot easier and that kind of thing. So having said that, I think it's a pretty individualized circumstance. And because we're not always talking with people that are following a real clean and consistent diet, there's a lot more variables. I do think that the electrolytes become probably more critical for the average person eating a higher salt, more standard American based diet. But I think it's trial and error. I mean in the case of electrolytes, I think you just have to experiment with them and see what happens.

Yeah, that's what I've been doing. What I've found is when I go super duper low carb, like into ketosis during endurance exercise, they help a little bit. I think probably it's because of the glycogen dump that can occur once you switch to low carb and the mineral loss that occurs as you dump some of your storage carbohydrate. You know, it's the same reason that you get a guy like Dr. Peter Attia, you know, eating a couple of, you know, chicken bouillon cubes every day. I think in some folks they can use those electrolytes I think that in other people who are maybe like eating closer to a 50 to 60% fat, 20 to 30% carb based diet, maybe including lots of extra minerals and sea salts and stuff like that, I'm still on the fence about whether or not they actually need to take in any electrolytes at all during exercise, but that's an interesting stack. So you could theoretically take amino acids, you could take this elevate stuff, you could take catalyte, you could mix it all together into a water bottle and just take that out with you on a session and see how you feel.

Yep, yep, you could. I'd actually recommend the elevate if it's, if it's just going to be used once I do it about 15 minutes before a training session begins and then mix the other two. But some people will mix all three of them together as well, especially on a longer ride or longer duration event.

Right, interesting. Okay, cool. Do you guys have plans to add anything else in to your Thornifex protocol? And part of the reason for this is I think I emailed you a few weeks ago too. Like, I came across this really interesting. I believe it was a meta analysis of multiple research studies that have been done on this stuff called hmb, for example, which has kind of been like this underground supplement in the, in the bodybuilding industry for a while. But it's basically hydroxymethylbutyrate and it's got this extremely anabolic effect in terms of performance. I come across stuff like this every now and again and I always wonder whether somebody's going to take it and put it in a supplement. And I've always got these ideas rolling around in my heads about, you know, could we mix MCT Oil and Superstarch and maybe some amino acids and make some kind of an endurance powerhouse blend. I mean, do you guys, are you open to just like adding new stuff as folks like me and the people who listen into my podcast kind of are coming up with ideas or thinking of things that could be added.

Yeah, we definitely have a pretty extensive list on our new product pipeline that we're always adding products to it and modifying it. And then obviously with you on our advisory team now, we'll do a review of that as a group each year and kind of plan out what the new stuff is to come in the upcoming year in the near future. The ones I already mentioned. In grass fed whey concentrate, super high quality grass fed, we found this supplier where basically all of the whey is coming from the same group of farmers in a country outside the United States. I'm not going to give away too much on that one until we actually launch it. But it's got the highest levels of immunoglobulins and lactoferrin and serum albumin that we've seen in a whey protein powder. So that one's pretty cool. We hope to have that this fall. Another one is going to be a magnesium lysinate glycinate powder. So magnesium is just awesome for supporting or dealing with restless leg. It's for calming the mind. There's just tons of benefits and a lot of people are deficient in magnesium. Unfortunately, it also has kind of a laxative effect to it. And so we are using going to be using this lysinate glycinate because you can take higher amounts and not have the laxative effect. Capsaicin complex is a product that will support fat metabolism. And then finally getting into the one that you were just kind of talking about related to hmb, we have a product in the works called anabolic complex 345. For those that have done the research on HMB, you know that 3 grams is the pretty typical dose that's been shown to have the benefits that Ben was just mentioning with reducing protein catabolism and supporting overall anabolism of lean body mass. The four or five, we're going to have to let your listeners either try and figure it out or just have to wait for the product to come out before we say what else is in there. But for those that are a little savvy with the research on sports performance products, they'll probably figure out what the 45 is gonna be on a daily dose as well. So anabolic complex 3, 4, 5, and that should be a first quarter of next year.

Okay, cool. Well, I mean, I'm super stoked about working with you guys and being able to kind of voice, you know, be the voice for some of my followers and podcast listeners, you know, being on your advisory board now. And I especially want to talk with you guys a lot more about some of your endurance formulas and things we can put into flasks to support things like marathons and Ironman and things of that nature. But for folks who are listening in right now, like, if you just want to go over and surf through this stuff, you know, like Tom mentioned earlier in the podcast, you can pretty much only get Thorn FX supplements through a fitness professional or someone who Thorn FX has, you know, quote unquote, kind of allowed to sell their supplements. So you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Thorn FX if you want to go through me to get any of their stuff. And of course, if you go through me, you have the added bonus of me being able to pretty much give you any advice you want about how to use this stuff. And you can do that by going to the comments for this particular episode and just leave your comments, like if you have questions about any stuff we talked about, if you have concerns about any of the stuff we talked about, anything you want to delve into, I'm happy to delve into with you in the comments section. So I'll make an easy, easy to remember URL for you. For this particular episode, we're going to call this1BenGreenfieldFitness.com butter and the reason I'm calling this one BenGreenfieldFitness.com butter is because I've got a big photo on the show notes of Tom wearing his Butter not bread T shirt. So if you go to BenGreenFitness.com butter you're going to be able to access the show notes and all the rest resources and everything else for the stuff that Tom and I have been talking about and also to ask any questions that you have about the supplements industry, the supplements we talked about, and pretty much anything else that you want to know about, everything from multivitamins to amino acids to adaptogens and on down the line. So wow, we've been going for over an hour, so that was a pretty geeked out supplement podcast.

That was fun.

Tom, thanks for your time, man. Thanks for coming on the call.

Yeah, absolutely. Anytime, Ben. I really appreciate it.

All right, folks, well, this is Ben Greenfield and Tom Nicola from BenGreenfieldFitness.com Butter signing out. Have an amazing week.

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