The Nitty-Gritty Underground World of Supplement Ingredients, Sports Nutrition Frankenfuels, Illegally Laced Compounds & More.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

For example, like with vitamins and B vitamins in particular are very volatile, so you have to often formulate like let's say B12, like 300% over the label claim so that it will meet two years from now its level that you're claiming on the label. I would definitely tell people to lean towards products that list the amount on the label clearly so that you can look that up and see that that is a dose that's used in studies. You know, at the end of the day, ultimate a company like that does have responsibility because they didn't do additional testing and it cost an athlete their career. Everything I've learned is from being passionate, playing outside my box, working hard, continuing to learn, and surrounding myself with great people.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain and hormone optimization. So whether you're an ironman triathlete or you just want to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield here and my guest in today's podcast, Sean Wells, has probably forgotten more about supplements than most of us will ever know. His brain contains an extremely unique blend of time spent in the in the science trenches, combined with a formal education in the fields of things like performance, nutrition and supplementation. So Sean attended UNC Chapel Hill, where he got a master's degree in nutrition and a minor in exercise science. But then he went on and became a registered dietitian, a certified sports nutritionist, and a board member of the issn, which is the International Society of Sports Nutrition, which I also happen to be a member of. So Sean is the CEO of Zone Halo Research, which is a consulting group for supplement formulations. He's also the chief scientific officer for the supplement company BioTrust. And he has a ton of extensive experience in formulating supplements for big companies, probably some companies who have supplements that you've tried in the past few years. So he really is distinguished as an expert in sports nutrition and supplementation. And today we're going to get into the nitty gritty underground world of everything from supplement ingredients to sports nutrition frankenfuels, to looking up your legally laced compounds in your supplements, to all sorts of things that you need to be aware of. And as you listen in, if you want to visit the show notes, I will put them all up for you along with handy dandy links over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com supplement science. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com supplementscience science, if you can manage to spell all that out. So, Sean, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Thanks for having me on the show. I'm excited to be here.

So I'm curious how a guy like you goes from, you know, basically exercise science and sports nutrition at a university level, to being a clinical dietitian, to all of a sudden being in the thick of the supplement industry. How'd that happen?

Well, going from chief clinical dietitian to the supplement industry, I had to work two jobs essentially. I'm sure you know what it takes to be entrepreneurial. You know, all my weekends, holidays, evenings, vacations were spent doing write ups, articles, marketing, sourcing formulas, learning, regulatory, looking at positions in the industry, networking, networking, networking. You know, it's, it's just part of what you do. Every business card I got, I followed up on and you know, like, do you know Eric Thomas, the Hip Hop Preacher?

The Hip Hop Preacher, yeah, he's, he's.

A motivational guy on YouTube. He's really good. And he talks about that when you want success as you bad, as bad as you want to breathe, then you'll be successful. And he tells these kids, he's like, you don't really want it. You just kind of want it. You don't want it more than a movie, a ball game, your cell phone, or even sleep. If you want success, quite often you have to forego sleep, he says. And I know I've had to forego a lot of sleep. I'm sure you have as well. We have to use our blue lights.

I try and avoid it, but yeah. So we were talking about before the show, just for those of you, for a little opening to Kimono prior to the show, Sean and I were talking a little bit about this blue light ear device that I had written an article about and how we're both quite interested in the use of blue light to mitigate loss of sleep or the issues that happen with circadian rhythms. But ultimately, yeah, Sean, I try and avoid sleep loss, but I agree, when you want something bad, I remember nights getting home from a whole day of personal training until like 10pm and then I'd be at the computer until 3am trying to figure out how to launch.

A website that's, you know, that's pursuing a dream. And you know, I still am. And you know, people think that Ben Greenfield or Sean Wells just happens that it's something that you stumble into or Something that someone handed you and it rarely is. So I really appreciate what you've accomplished or what other people that have some of these amazing informational blogs and products like Dave with Bulletproof or Mark Sisson and what they've accomplished. And I really admire you guys. I love getting information from you guys as well. But if you want to go back to where or why, I guess. I got my degree in nutritional biochemistry, my master's in nutritional biochemistry in the RD in the first place. Switching from a business school pedigree that's really two doctors, my mom, and creatine. So my mom was always a big believer in supplements, and I was as well. And she gave me a passion for supplements at a young age. She was selling Shackley. I don't know if you've heard of that brand or remember them, but they're European.

Yeah, vaguely.

But back in the late 70s, early 80s. And I remember, you know, she had like that tackle box back then, you know, with all the different things in it, the vitamin E, the vitamin D and, you know, the multi and. And I believed in all that stuff back then. So my mom was kind of ahead of the curve. And then when I was in college getting my business degree, I started taking creatine and seeing amazing results that had just come out. It was 1993, and then I was taking other supplements, including protein ECA and seeing these amazing results. And I just kept digging in, reading the magazines that were available. Muscle Media 2000 back then was pretty edgy and had a lot of information, reviews and things like that.

I remember Muscle Media thumbing through the pages of Muscle Media while working the front desk of the gym.

Yep, yep. Dan and Bill Phillips and Sean Phillips and all those guys. But one book that I have found, found like that just blew me away. That I really believe was. Was just way ahead of the curve was. Was Dr. Michael Colgan's book, Optimum Sports Nutrition. And he was training Olympians and pro athletes in Colorado. And he had all these, like, GH releasing stacks and, you know, these different things and research and, you know, he was getting blood work on these guys and. And, you know, some of it, you know, may have since become less relevant to science, but still he was taking a scientific approach and doing stacks with athletes and trying to push their performance levels. And I thought this was really cool. And this was before, of course, there were sports nutrition degrees and all these things that are available now, or even the issn, which is great. I'm jealous of all that's available to everyone now. But you Know, I had to forge it back then, piece things together. So actually, you know, I was really excited about all this stuff. But I was getting my business specialty degree in information systems and marketing, a dual degree. And I went to a doctor and I was only 20 years old. And I told him that I was just going to simply do, you know, quote unquote, business. And, you know, it wasn't that exciting to me. I guess I even said it kind of nonchalantly. And he drew this lifeline out for me on a piece of paper. And he showed me. He's like, you're 20 right now, and here's this lifeline all the way through 80, let's say. And he says, you have a 60 year gap year. Why not be happy? And no one told me that to that point. No one said, go pursue this thing that you're really passionate about. And since then, I've thought about it a lot, like how profoundly impactful our words can be on making or breaking people's dreams. There's. There's a great book and audio on Four Agreements, if you've. If you've ever looked at that. But it's powerful. And on the flip side, when I went to.

What's it called? Four Ingredients.

The Four Agreements.

The Four Agreements, yeah.

Toltec wisdom. Yes. It's really, really good. Very spiritual, but very insightful. So I owe this guy, really, everything I've accomplished. Just a random guy and I don't even know his name, unfortunately. I would definitely thank him. But, you know, on the flip side, when I was going back to school to get classes, to get into a master's program, I wanted to go to Chapel Hill. This guidance counselor told me, you're a business student, not a science person. You can't do 26 hours of credits, a semester of pure advanced sciences with several lab classes per week. You'll fail and fail miserably. And if I listened to him, he could have robbed me of my dream. I ended up getting a 4.0 and getting into Chapel Hill, and I thought of his words every day and they stuck with me. And it motivated me. But with other people, it could have knocked them down. So I definitely think about my words and the people I put around me and the impact of people's words on me and my impact on them. But, you know, I've since gone on to really do studies, you know, be a clinical dietitian, be a businessman, actually. It actually served me well, an educator. And I've been blessed beyond belief. And I've worked with the guys that I used to read on these message boards like Bill Llewellyn and Jose Antonio and Patrick Arnold, Rick Collins, Marv Heuer, Jacob Wilson, Hector Lopez, Tim Ziegenfuss, like all these guys that were just amazing to me. And then since I've gotten into the industry, I've met even more guys like you guys like Mike Roberts, Paul Cribb, Colin Wilbourne, Dom d', Agostino, Jeff Volek, Lauren Bannock, Ben Pakulski, pro bodybuilder. Guys@bodybuilding.com, like Peter Thornton, Ryan DeLuca, you know, it's, it's just, it's really amazing. Solid at Examine, you know, so it's, it's been a true blessing. And you know, I got, I got my RD and I got certified as a sports nutritionist and, and I became, you know, somewhat of a guru, you know, being on, on boards like bodybuilding.com and things like that. And I started my own company, Zone Halo Research, and consulted for 20 or more companies over a period of time. And then in about 2011, Dymatize came knocking at my door and made a nice offer for me to be the director of R and D and helped lead them to an acquisition with Post Cereals. And then I actually ended up getting acquired by BioTrust Nutrition, who's a non GMO natural dietary supplement company. I came on as a VP of Research and development and have since gone on to be chief Scientific officer over compliance QC&R& D. And now I do just so many cool things. I still have Zoho and Halo Research and I still have this job and it's just great getting so many perspectives, working with so many people all over the world. So it's been exciting. And like you said, I'm an editor on the JSSN and on the ISSN Advisory Board and got to write chapters and textbooks and you know, do some studies and it's, it's been fun.

Yeah, it's funny, a lot of those, those folks that you mentioned that the sports nutrition and the strength conditioning industry is such a small world. You know, I've had, I've had a lot of those folks on a podcast totally. And have, you know, read in varying magazines and journals that I subscribe to their writing and you know, I follow a lot of those same folks. I actually discovered you through the Examine Research Digest which I subscribe to and you mentioned Soul and those list of folks who influenced you along the way. And you know, I found you through that and really wasn't aware of kind of the amount of research and work that you do, particularly in the supplement industry. And one thing that was in that article that I read and I'll link to it for any of you who want to read the Exam and Research Digest. You mentioned how you travel the globe looking for the next great ingredient. So, you know, not to put you on the spot, but is that just like something sexy to say? Are you like, like actually like hopping on a plane, going to a place like, you know, India or a farm somewhere or some kind of a. Yeah, you know, some, some place where you're actually checking out these raw ingredients? Like how does that work?

Yeah, going to India or China is definitely a part of what I do. Shanghai, Bangkok. I've been to a variety of places looking at raw ingredients or, you know, making deals, working on the supply chain aspects. But definitely, definitely a part of what I do. And like you said, India and China are probably, probably the two biggest that we would draw upon.

Yeah. So when you're looking at ingredients or you're even trying to differentiate a high quality supplement manufacturer or an ingredient source from a low quality one, what are the factors that you look for when you're actually trying to decide whether something's going to go into a bottle that winds up being sold to someone who's going to swallow it?

Yeah, that's a great question. So you have to know who the people are that are associated with your company or that you're working with. And then of course, on the other side. So, you know, I've been blessed, like I said, to have great companies that I've worked with. Diamond Size and biotrust. I've had people that have a ton of experience coming from Vitacost, Bodybuilding.com eas Dymatize, Genesis Today, all these companies that are out there. And I've had great teams and so I'm only as good as my team. I have certified food scientists, I have organic chemists, I have, you know, these. Director of Director of Compliance, a director of R and D, Director of qc. You know, I got experts around me. I'm a jack of all trades and I've definitely, you know, come up through the ranks and I've learned a lot of things but I definitely draw upon the expertise of, of those around me. And I think if you're, if you're a good leader then and you should definitely recognize that, that you're not the best, that you should hire the best or work with the best and you know, have experts around you. And I consider myself an expert in this, in this area of supplements. But you know, there's even people that are more niche than I am that I draw from. But I do know the regulations with, with the fda and I do look at the co manufacturers and you know that they're not just cgmp, which a lot of them aren't.

Now really quickly, just to interrupt you when you define co manufacturer and also for people who may not be familiar with the phrase cgmp.

Sure. So co manufacturer means a manufacturer that you're working with versus well, at Diamond Ties, most of our products were actually in line, so like a vertical supply chain. So we were making our own products on site. Usually you work with co manufacturers and that's probably the more ideal way to do it because their expertise is manufacturing products and you know, your, your expertise is, is running a brand and they're two different things and it can get messy when you're trying to do both, it's very difficult and it definitely doubles your exposure to the fda. So I've found that it's really best to, to not have that vertical supply chain. It may seem like a good idea in the industry to, to collapse those down, but really, you know, again, you want experts. And so I've worked with some of the best companies out there, like in Arizona Nutrition or you know, someone like that. That's a really good co manufacturer. That is cgmp, which is good manufacturing practices. And also, you know, they have great NSF audits.

And that's the National Sport Federation.

I think it was actually originally the Sanitation Federation, but it actually has kind of moved on to not have an acronym according to them. And so now they do NSF for Sport, which is what I think you're thinking of, and different certifications for brands and for manufacturers. And so, you know, we're looking for, or I'm looking for, you know, gold standard co manufacturers and I would easily say like 8 to 9 out of 10 aren't meeting full FDA regulations. It's a tough industry. You have to really do a lot of homework on, on your brands and really test them out. Look at, look at testing and where they're coming out is. It's, it's unfortunate that everyone's cutting corners. It's, it's costly obviously to do things right, to test your raw ingredients, to test your finished goods. They can be very different as ingredients can interact with each other and you know, work out that, that whole process of, you know, sometimes I've, I've had to work with labs on creating a testing methodology or Standard for an ingredient, you know, it didn't even exist yet. So you got to create that, you got to work on that. And that's very expensive. Most companies wouldn't spend 80 grand or something to, to do that. They would just say, well, here's the input level and you know it's right.

That's what amazed me. And I did a podcast with the folks at the Thorne facilities when I toured their facilities in terms of the crazy amount of money spent simply on like the spectrometers for raw now for analysis of raw ingredients and to see if something actually was on a molecular level, what it was purported to be. What are some ways, though, that a company would not do that, that would skirt the FDA guidelines? Like what are some of the tricks of the trade, so to speak?

There's a lot, there's a lot of them. So one along the lines of what we were just talking about is dry labbing. And by the way, Thorne is a great company. I have a lot of respect for them. But dry labbing is basically, you may know it or you may not. Sometimes companies do know to use this specific lab for this reason, but they may not. I'd say the majority of the time they do and they send it out to this company and they get the results back that they want. And it's called dry labbing because they're not using a real lab. They're just basically a guy in a laptop. It may be a little bit more complex than that, but essentially they're typing something up that says, you meet this standard, sending it back to you and saying, okay, within normal limits. So we test out, everything's good, and here's our results if the FDA comes. And so amazingly, they always are within limits and they never have to reformulate, put something on hold. They never have to do that. They never have to not sell product. Yeah, exactly. So that's frustrating to see that out there. Again, it obviously saves a lot of money. They're cheaper than other labs would be and it's a lot cheaper when you're not quarantining product and saying we can't sell this entire lot of products without reworking it or, you know, doing something like that.

Yeah. So just, so just so I understand this, they're literally not testing, they're typing up results on a laptop and they're just assuming that the co manufacturer isn't actually going to test that, that ingredient or that supplement to have in it what they're saying on the computer that it has in it.

Correct.

And it's that simple.

It's that simple.

That's crazy. That's scary.

Yep. Yeah, it's very scary. It's very scary. And even worse, the smaller companies aren't even doing that. You know, you kind of get what you pay for. If you get a company like Thorne that's working with companies like Chromadex, Covance, Eurofins, really good labs and they're working with the best co manufacturers, then you're going to get something that's wholly different than, you know, if you're working with a very low end co manufacturer that is just, you know, working on price, that is getting in the cheapest raw ingredients. Here's another one. So many of the raw ingredients that you're looking at may use methods like, there's really cheaper methods like titration or UV versus something like HPLC. So for example, fukuzanthin, you know, there's a 5% and if we look by UV, it's 0.1%. If we look by, I'm sorry, if we look by HPLC, it's 0.1%. If we look by UV, it's 5%. So they'll send you this material at very cheap price, let's say 50 bucks a kilo and it's 5% according to the documentation you're getting the COAS you're getting from that ingredient supplier out of China. If you want something that's that's 5% by HPLC, well then that's, you know, 1000, $5000. It's microencapsulated because of stability. You know, it actually has really bad stability. So you know, you may get that material in, but quickly over months it may be a half, a third the level that you bought it at. So you have to do work around the supply side, you know, coming from places like China, India, or you may buy from, you know, a broker here domestically, but essentially it's still coming from China. And you have to look at the methodology that they're using, be savvy on that. And then you know, of course look to third party tests and use good labs with that regard and then also use good manufacturers here domestically that are meeting the best standards.

So, so, so a lab could use something like, you know, and I remember all these machines from really, really boring days spent as an intern in the microbiology lab at University of Idaho. But there were, you know, there are, there are certain ways that are superior for testing the true composition of something. And what you're saying is that some folks will test like they'll use titration or they'll use UV or something like that. But because something like a high performance liquid chromatography or an HPLC machine is so expensive and difficult to get your hands on, folks will test their compounds with a machine that isn't quite as sensitive and might spit out that something has way, way more active ingredients in it than it actually does.

Exactly. Like with uv, like the carotenoids, you know, all look the same under a certain spectra. So like you're not looking at, you know, an exact thing like a fucaxanthin or you know, something like that. So you know, it's done intentionally, you know, it's tested out a variety of ways and like, okay, well here's how we get the highest result. And obviously a lot of people will say, well, $50, this is a great deal. You know, we can, we can, you know, have a huge margin with this product.

So when you're talking about stability and how you can test the stability of a compound, does that mean theoretically, like if I get, let's say like curcumin for example, and that has a certain amount of efficacy or a certain percentage of what the label claims that it has in it, in doesn't necessarily mean that a month later or three months later it's still going to have that same amount in it. Yes, but in terms of like shelf life, right.

A product is supposed to meet its shelf life, which is usually two years. So when you formulate a product to that label claim, it's supposed to meet that two years after. So like for example with vitamins, and B vitamins in particular are very volatile. So you have to often formulate like let's say with B12, like 300% over the label claim so that it will meet two years from now its level that you're claiming on the label. And if someone is formulating this product and doesn't really know stability, hasn't done accelerated stability work and real time stability work on all their products and isn't looking at that and putting those side by side like the FDA would request that you do, then you don't really know what is in the product, you know, halfway in. And that's why some of these products, if they get tested, you know, come up well short of their claims. There's a lot of these ingredients are potentially very volatile and you might have to micro encapsulate them or put in massive overages or you know, take approaches like nitrogen flushing or you know, using like a dark glass or you know, something like that, that you know, it doesn't have as much oxygen exposure, et cetera. So you know, there's a lot of steps that you might have to take. Like with probiotics, for example, is just like vitamins, you know, very volatile. But there's, there's many herbs and other compounds that are like that as well.

One, one phrase that I've seen thrown around is this concept of fairy dusting. Can you, can you explain that to me?

Yeah, that is, that is very popular as a term. It definitely gets thrown around in, in the industry and luckily I think there is a trend towards moving away from it. Fairy dusting means that you basically list like the most expensive or, you know, most exciting ingredients in your blend, in this parenthetical blend, call it, you know, the mind muscle connection blend on your label. And you know, you've got several ingredients listed out there and you know, the first of which you have to order the list them in descending order of mass. So the first ingredient you might list is taurine or something that's $4 a kilo. And then you might also list acetyl L carnitine. You might also list all these other things that are much more expensive per kilo. And so if someone's looking at that, they say, oh well, it's got what I want in it. It's got this ingredient and that ingredient, I'm pretty excited. But meanwhile, something like acetyl l carnitine or you know, whatever the ingredient is, could be, you know, many times more expensive. So how do they get around, you know, making an expensive product? They fairy dust. So they, you know, most of that mass of that blend is the cheap ingredient and they put in 1mg, 2mg of acetyl L carnitine or whatever the ingredient is. So yeah, you're getting cheated. You know, you see it on the label. But you know, I would definitely tell people to lean towards products that list the amount on the label clearly so that you can look that up and you know, see that that is, you know, a dose that's used in studies, you know, in the, in the, in the form that they're listing it in. That's really important because a lot of people aren't using the right forms of the nutrient. They're not using something that's, you know, in a human study in non disease populations, you know, they're not maybe not using the right method of administration. You know, it could be in vitro in the study versus you know, in vivo, taken orally. You Know, there's, there's all kinds of ways to get around that. And then one thing we didn't even mention with testing is that there's the other dark side of, you know, sometimes there's stuff in there that you don't want in there. You know, certainly from an NSF standpoint or Informed Choice standpoint, two bodies that test for banned ingredients, you know, that's, that's important, you know, and an athlete can lose their job over it.

Yeah, I mean, that, that's often like what keeps me awake at night is just, just, you know, with some of these smaller companies that may not have NSF or Informed Choice, it's like, you know, urine testing, blood testing, et cetera. You just never know. I remember and, and not, not to throw anybody under the bus, because I know this was a long time ago, but I remember, like, it was like six or seven years ago. Some chick won an Ironman triathlon, and I think she was taking like Hammer Nutrition's electrolyte capsules and they wound up testing positive for Andro. And I know that that Hammer had their piece to say about that as well. But ultimately it just turned out that she was stripped of her title based off of the fact that she was using something that you just kind of assume is safe but can wind up being laced.

Yeah, and there's been scenarios where companies have spiked products, especially in the hardcore sports nutrition realm, that are spiking their products with ingredients that aren't listed on the label. Like, you probably saw Driven Sports Craze, for example, something like that.

Now what was that?

It was a pre workout that had an analog of pea, which is pretty close chemically to methamphetamine. So it obviously worked very well as a pre workout in place of Jack, which was popular with the maa. And you know, it ascended to the top spot in the sports nutrition world and was making a ton of money. But, you know, testing revealed that it had something that wasn't on the label. And of course, there was some athletes that were testing positive for things, so it became very controversial, as expected. But, you know, there are companies that don't know. And when you're testing down to like parts per billion, really, when you use NSF or Informed Choice, you know, even these companies, let's say the ingredient supplier in China, if they've reacted ingredient, like where they're synthesizing it or, you know, they're just blending and they didn't do a deep cleanse in that blender, you know, three blends later, you could you could get parts per billion on that ingredient. And that's probably what happened to someone like Hammer. Yeah, I doubt that they're adding andro to their electrolyte.

No, I know they're not. They're good guys over there.

But.

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like, like, like leftover croutons in your salad bowl when you ask for something gluten free at the restaurant. You have celiac disease. Right. It's like.

Right.

You know, people think it's, it's an empty salad bo when in reality there are like parts per million of gluten based croutons in your salad.

Exactly. And so, you know, at the end of the day, ultimately a company like that does have responsibility because they didn't do additional testing and it cost an athlete, you know, their career. And it's, you know, very serious what the repercussions are for athletes or even obviously, people that get drug tested at their job or, you know, that are firemen or policemen. I've been a expert witness on some cases where that's been the case and it's very sad to see people lose their jobs over some of these things. Yeah.

Have you ever heard of the company labdoor? I did a podcast with them and they like, they order supplements as a consumer would. Right. Instead of asking the supplement company for an actual sample, they just purchase it from the company's website like a consumer would. And then when they get it, they test it and they grade it like A, B, C, D. Seems like a pretty cool third party verification.

It is, it is. I actually reached out to them and I had some differences in the way they test and maybe some of their robustness of understanding of testing that I discussed with them. And they do want to make some, I guess, take another step as far as going to the next level and being more robust in their testing. But they're, they're excellent as far as the concept. I love the idea. It's similar to consumer labs.

Yeah.

But yeah, labdora, I believe, is a project with, with Mark Cuban.

Is it interesting?

Yeah. He's actually the majority investor in it. So, you know, of course he sees, he sees that importance for testing as well. Owning the Dallas Mavericks.

Yeah. So what about, you know, a company like Labdor? Really, most of what we talked about has been referring to like individual supplements. Right. Like creatine, for example. What do you do about stacks? Like when you get to the point where, you know, you're taking three different things together or you're trying to combine some kind of Supplement that has multiple ingredients. In terms of approaching it from like a formulation standpoint, how do you actually put a bunch of ingredients together with the conclusion that by combining them all together you're going to achieve X effect? Like, how does that actually work?

That is complex. I'm glad you brought that up because just putting ingredients together doesn't necessarily equal all those things being additive. So formulations really should be based on, like I was saying before, healthy human data, not animal data, not disease state data, and definitely not in vegan. I mean, in vitro might be a place to start. Then you go to animal, then you go to human, hopefully. But hopefully you're basing your ingredient research first off of healthy human data. And then you have to look at that specific form. Like I was talking about the dose or the amount, the method of administration, whether it's orally, topically, what have you. Is it a capsule, is it a tablet or is it a liquid? The frequency of the administration is actually really important and often overlooked. Like, is it three times a day at 500 milligrams? That could be a difference. You know, if you have a product that's maybe in the study is one dose at 1500 milligrams and then you give it three times a day at 500 milligrams, it might not hit the same threshold and trigger the same, you know, mechanisms that the other would. And so, you know, just for each ingredient, if you want to make claims, there needs to be several studies that you draw upon. And then for your finished product, you're supposed to have one to two studies for the FDA to make strong claims. So, you know, I've, I've put most of the products that I've worked on into, into the queue for, you know, university studies so that we can make stronger claims. Because you don't know whether your ingredients are going to interact. Just like I was saying before in testing, even you don't know that. You have to do validation work to say that, you know, on the other end there's going to be the same active, because it may interact with some of the other ingredients in there and it may, you know, hide it, it may lower it. They may, you know, negatively interact the same thing with how they, you know, work in your body. You know, some of those ingredients may be counterproductive to each other. They may overlap on the same pathway. So they're not necessari, really all additive. And certainly if you try and make claims where you're adding up numbers and extrapolating, that isn't necessarily Valid. So you need to do that work to make strong marketing claims about the efficacy of the product. And it's good that there are places that we can all go to look for ingredient research, at least with PubMed or like you said, examine.com or the ISSN or, or other places that you know, you can look up ingredients. But I would definitely look if a product is saying, you know, we can do this, this and this, say where's the study? And hopefully if it's, if it's a more complex product, the more complex it is, the more you really need that research to be done, then you know, hopefully they have that research in place and you can draw upon that.

Yeah. Do you personally ever just grab three supplements that you know are efficacious and just take them all at the same time and kind of use yourself as an n equals 1 and keep your fingers crossed that things turn out okay? I mean, whether it's like a neurotropic blend or like a pre workout stack.

Or something like that, you know, I do. I mean it's just the way we're probably both built where we're guinea pigs.

Because like sometimes there is nothing on PubMed, you know, that says whatever. If I combine, let's say like THC with alpha brain with creatine, what's gonna happen? Obviously all three I can find research on individually so I can get an idea of proper dosage, safety, sourcing, et cetera. But once that's all said and done and you actually combine them and put them into your body, you really are just guinea pigging a stack on yourself. I just was curious if I'm the only person that does that.

No, that's proof of concept, right? So that's, that's, that happens. And sometimes you can actually work with a university or private research body to do something like that where you do like a small scale study essentially and you know, something quick and dirty and see if there's, if there's proof of concept and then you can take it further. It's obviously a lot cheaper to do that. It's kind of scaling up your study. But I often do that with myself on the N equals one. And then I have like a group of friends or you know, co workers take it and then we take it from there. So yeah, that's, that's scaling up just like your saying. But I'm always the guinea pig that starts it out for sure.

Now I'm curious when it comes to actually making a supplement. Right. Like a lot of people don't actually Know what goes into making the actual finished product. How would you describe what you actually do in your day to day job and some of the considerations that have to be taken into account in terms of like blending, encapsulation, you know, putting the proper binders or fillers in, et cetera.

Yeah, there is a lot to it. And I think, you know, just like you, the way I've learned all this stuff, you know, you don't get it from a degree, there's no degree in supplements. Everything I've learned is from being passionate, playing outside my box, you know, working hard, continuing to learn and like I said before, surrounding myself with great people. And you know, being passionate is just key. And I think that's what, what drives us to continue learning. You know, I never say that's not my job or you know, only from 9 to 5am I, you know, this person, I'm that person, you know, 24 hours a day that's always digging, always researching, always wanting to learn more. And you know, it's not just in supplements, but it's even at the companies I worked at. I wanted to know more about marketing, finance, quality control, customer service, sales sourcing, you know, et cetera. So once I had those pieces then I became cross functional and then I understood, you know, and that's important at really any job. You know, you work at, you know, if you, if you want a guy to design your site for you, I'm sure you know, BenGreenfieldFitness.com, then you had to probably do a lot of benchmarking. You had to understand some of the aspects of website development and do some work on your own so that it's done right and you can help him understand what he needs to do. And, and that's, you know, that's what I do. I've become pretty good at is learning all the other pieces and luckily that business degree has served me well. So I understand, you know, cost of goods sold, which is cogs, you know, so finance can approve the formula, you know, and it's going to make X bottom line. So it hits the profit margin that the company needs to succeed. But there's definitely very specific aspects of formulas like Organoleptic, which is, which means like the flavor or the taste, which is a huge, huge part of a product, like a pre workout, you know, it can have the best ingredients. But you know, if you don't understand food science with masking agents, acids also acidulates what flavors work with what acidulates like citric acid with citrus flavors. Let's say what sweeteners work together. You can have a front end sweetener like fructose or back end sweetener like stevia. Even with, if you were to use sucralose, let's say with stevia, like you can, you can actually use a lot less sucralose by using just a little bit of stevia because it helps on that back end. And so it's really interesting, all that, all that science that goes into it, you know, looking at the product, you know, the acid driver that I was talking about, that really can affect the way a flavor pops. You know, if it's, if it's raspberry or if it's fruit punch or, you know, fruit punch needs malic acid and citric acid and, you know, these different things. So sometimes you might have a product and, you know, you're like, that doesn't taste like raspberry. And that's why, you know, they didn't use the right levels of acids or sweeteners or, you know, the right maskers to make those things come out and really have that roundness on the, on the front and back end. Solubility is a, is a huge part of all this. You know, how many times have you seen like, well, the product doesn't mix up, I have something that sits on top or, you know, stuff that drops out. You know, people give it negative reviews. So you need to do particle size studies and solubility studies before going to market. And I can think of one example of with, with whey protein, for example, that you actually look at mesh size and there's a level of 0.22 and there's a level of 0.34. And we were buying these proteins that were all instantized whey protein concentrate. And so it seems like a commodity. You buy IWPC 80, it's a commodity, right? But there's a 50% difference in this mesh size in how it's instantized, how the degree to which it's instantized, that can affect the mass of that particle. And so we would literally have tubs overflowing with 50% more volume, but the same mass, the same weight. How do you think that's going to be in a scoop? You're not getting as much protein in that scoop. Right? You're not going to be getting the same flavor or sweetener in that scoop.

So are you saying if the ingredient label says that, say one scoop equals 30 grams of protein, you could potentially be using one scoop and getting like 15 grams?

Absolutely. Wow. That's What I'm saying.

Interesting.

Although weight wise, mass wise, you are getting the correct amount, but a scoop is volume, it's not weight.

Right.

And of course it matters, like how you scoop, you know, and how packed the material is. And if you push the scoop to the side of the tub and those kind of things.

Right. It'd be like scooping a pile of sand versus a pile of gravel.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So there can be huge differences. That's actually why American recipes are really bad versus European recipes, that European recipes go by mass. American recipes go by volume.

Yeah, it's such an interesting point.

It's true. It's a goofy thing that I think that's why we have so much variance in our recipes from, you know, person to person here. Yeah. Because, you know, you don't know, like, if you buy some, I eat ketogenically and we use like a lot of almond flour, coconut flour and things like that. And, you know, there can be huge differences in the. The mesh size or, you know, the volume.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. You could, you could take a kitchen scale and use a European measurement and measure out 1 gram of, I don't know, let's say like cornstarch. And you could use an American cookbook or a Western cookbook and measure out a teaspoon and have two completely different amounts of cornstarch, one based on mass and one on volume.

Exactly. So, you know, what I would do with these proteins is you'd look at 20 scoops coming from many different tubs and weigh them all out and see where they're coming in at. And then you choose to label on your product that it's X grams per scoop. You validated that that work needs to be done. And then you need to have a spec or specification on your protein that you're buying that's going into your formula that it has, you know, X mesh size for volume so that, you know, you don't have huge variants. And, you know that's going to affect how the product tastes. You know, like I said, you're not going to get the right flavor or sweetener as well. And, you know, the person's going to get, you know, 40 servings instead of 30, and they're going to get less protein, like you said, per scoop than they think they're getting. So it's really goofy.

Now, what about, like, when something is blended? You know, for example, when I'm blending something up for my morning smoothie and I know they just use bigger blenders when making supplements, you know, I'll Hit a spot where there's like, you know, let's say I've put almond butter in and it's, and it's blended kind of like inconsistently. And I'll get a huge tablespoon of almond butter. Like most of the almond butter that was supposed to be distributed throughout the entire smoothie in like one spoonful. Does that happen with supplements too? Like could I be overdosing or getting way too much because I grabbed a scoop full of a supplement or got a capsule that gotten like the concentrated part that was in the blender?

Absolutely. So again there's a lot of work that has to be done there. And that's why I say that it's not as easy as a supplement company just buying some manufacturing equipment and just simply blending things up. That's where a co manufacturer that, that's all they do, that they understand how ingredients are hygroscopic or also called hygroscopic, you know, moisture loving, how they can clump and how you need to use certain excipients, you know, to condition those ingredients or you know, desiccants in a bottle to make them flow better, to make them blend better. And then you need to understand the RPM of the blender, the fill of that blender. Like you don't want to be just like a washer or a dryer. You don't want to be too high or too low. It won't clean or dry correctly, right? So like if you overstuff your, your dryer, which this happens all the time, you know, hey, you want to get more efficiency, right? You want to push out more blends in, in less time. Well then you know, fill it up, fill it all the way to the top. But then it's not going to blend and fold over correctly just like with your, your blender at home or your, or your dryer. And you can also get these hot and cold spots so you can have you think about like a pre workout, you know, maybe it's supposed to be 300mg of caffeine per serving but with a cold spot it could be 100 milligrams in that spot, you know, with your scoop or it could be 600 milligrams and there would be a huge difference. And that's why sometimes you know, with some of these products that may not be as trusted a brand coming from as high quality source that you can get that massive variance. And you're saying why am I getting hot and cold sweats and feel dizzy one day and Then feel nothing another. And that's what it is. These hot and cold spots and improper blending, you need to understand the RPMs, how long it's going to blend and then do the testing on the other end to validate all that.

Interesting. It's kind of scary. It definitely makes me want to do a lot of research before I put something into my body. Now you're obviously out there, like we talked about, traveling around quite a bit looking at different raw ingredients, supplement manufacturing facilities, research, et cetera. If you could put your finger on kind of like the pulse of the nutrition industry or the supplement industry and name one thing that you think is going to be kind of like the next big thing or the next new development that maybe hasn't been researched enough yet, or that we're going to see quite a bit more of here in the future in nutrition or supplementation. What would be your top pick?

Well, I think nutrigenomics is the biggest thing. I think we're going to see a lot of companies working with your genes essentially like 23andMe or those kind of things and drilling down into that and seeing where you might have genetic variation from you to the next person. And that explains why drugs work a certain way with us, or nutrients work a certain way with us, or might have interactions with each other, why certain exercises work or don't work. You know, you're a non responder or a hyper responder. We see that in studies and a lot of that is genetically related. There's really interesting example of, you know, the active form of folic acid, 5 methyltetrahydrofolate, has several enzymatic steps to go from folic acid to that active form. And many people have deficiency in those enzymatic steps at one point or many points. So, you know, maybe, you know, you don't convert folic acid all the way efficiently or, you know, less than others might and you know, that's an example. So you may need more, you may need a different form. And I think that's going to become big in the future as we may have equipment that allows us to tailor formulations to certain people. I think we'll see that, you know, in the future as definitely a huge area of development in supplements.

In your experience, is that scalable?

Right.

So could I take my 23andMe results or my DNA fit results, or my genetic genie exportation whatever data I have from a gene standpoint and approach a company and have some kind of a supplement custom designed for me? Is that just something like, let's say like the elite or the knowledgeable or, you know, folks who can afford it, can do. Or do you see people just being able to wander into their, let's say, like their. Whatever, their naturopathic medical physician or their sports nutrition, you know, advisor or whatever and just have something created for them.

Kind of like on the spot, kind of like compounding.

Yeah, yeah. Almost like. Like compounding on the spot.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, right now it's not. It's definitely not feasible, but I do think in the future, I think we're going to see more exposure to some of these genetic variations that are. That are critical. Like with our RDIs, like with the vitamins and minerals that I was talking that can create certain deficiencies. We're definitely going to be looking at the gut microbiome and everything going on there. There's so many implications for that in our health. And so I think that we'll start exposing some of these variations and it'll just head down that path. And I think what seems improbable now and impossible now will be probable in the near future. That will have supplements machines that will be able to really create bottles individually.

That'd be interesting. I guess that'd be the way to do it. Some kind of a machine that could automate the process and do so using a lot of the strategies that we talked about today. Being able to actually identify the quality and the stability of the raw ingredients and make something on the spot that matches up to you genetically. That's actually an efficacious and true compound in terms of having in it what it says it has in it.

Right. If you look at car manufacturing and the computers are so advanced that they can change the spray color and the way it coats and the number of coats and all that from car to car, it'd be the same thing with a supplement potentially in the future. Obviously it'd be expensive equipment, but I think we'll get there.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, Sean, this has been a fascinating discussion. And if you as a listener have been listening in, I've taken some notes. I put them all over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com supplement science. Everything from the books like Optimum Sports Nutrition and the four agreements that Sean talked about to the Examine Research digest, to this BioTrust company that Sean works for now, to previous podcasts that I've done on behind the scenes of how a supplement is made and. And my interview with the folks at labdoor and just kind of all the resources that you need if you want to delve into this even more. So, Sean, thanks for coming on the show and being so generous with your time, man.

Yeah, no problem. I really enjoyed it. Ben, you're a great resource for knowledge, and I'm glad to be a part of everything that you're contributing as it really is exciting how much information is out there now. Like I talked about, it's, you know, when I was coming up, there was so much less available when there wasn't the Internet and there wasn't great resources like you that were just collating, you know, massive amounts of data and really extrapolating like we were talking about just, you know, thinking about things outside the box and coming up with what's next and. And I love that you're a part of that. And it's fun to. To read, you know, your thoughts or listen to your thoughts and, you know, come up with the future for performance.

Awesome, man. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And I'm off to have a cup of coffee combined with some, maybe some creatine, some. Some krill oil, some cbd, and maybe I'll throw like some. Some theanine in there or something like that to. To celebrate our podcast.

So that's a great stack. I love it.

Stack away. I'll let you know if it's a great stack.

All right, thanks, Ben.

All right, thanks for coming on, Sean. And folks, thank you for listening in. This is Ben Greenfield and Sean Wells signing out from the Ben Greenfield Fitness show.

Visit BenGreenfield Fitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

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