Free Multivitamin Q&A with Ben Greenfield (audio for first 60s is a bit funky)

See, let's make sure that we are recording. I turn my mic up, and everybody should be able to see me, which I do. Got lots of good questions that pour in via the chat. So this is going to be awesome.

Because out to my kitchen, need a drink. Walking around with my container. I just finished a workout. I didn't get tested up from the otter, so. Hey, Josh. Say hi.

What are you making? Okay, so you gotta tell people what these are. They're macaroons. Macaroons. There we go. By the way, let me pull up the chat just to make sure you guys can hear me.

There's a multivitamin. We're doing a multivitamin FAQ today. I just have to remember where my chat box is. Okay. I think it's in there. I'm going to assume that you guys can hear me because it's saying everybody can see me. Let's see. Producer settings.

Weird. For some reason, sprecast must have changed its layout in, like, the past month since I did my last sprecast, because I'm not seeing. Whoa, that went full screen. Hello. I'm not seeing my chat box here. Let's see. So I am just gonna really hope you guys can hear me. Keep my fingers crossed. Okay. By the way, today we're talking about multivitamins.

And I should probably show you guys the two that I was talking about. That's the PM and that's the AM that was the one that I did the big multivitamin article on. And I know you guys have tons of questions about those because it was, like, the multivitamin I've been researching for, like, two years now. So almost done filling up my water, and then I'll quit making you guys seasick, and we'll go settle down in the office for a chat here.

Okay? Wait, one other thing, you guys. One other thing. Hey, River, Taryn.

Say hi to everybody and show them your cool, clean room. Way to keep your room so clean, you guys. That's wonderful. I know it's not clean. I'm joking.

They're cleaning it. Okay, let's go in here and plug in and rock and roll. Okay, so multivitamins. Here we go. Hopefully no one's too seasick. Plug in my computer.

All right, we've got a lot of questions that came in. If you have a question as we go here, then.

You can leave it. I have plenty of questions that it looks like I need to ask already. So I'm going to jump into the first questions that I've been getting, and then we'll kind of go from there and we're going to just get through as much as we can when it comes to multivitamins and your questions about multivitamins. So the first question.

Is.

Why does the multivitamin that I recommend not have fish oil in it? Why do you got to get fish oil separately? Well, in my research on multivitamins, what I found was that in a vitamin mineral blend, meaning a multivitamin that has both vitamins as well as minerals like magnesium, sodium and potassium and all that stuff, you actually can't include oil in the formula because what happens is the actual nutrient part is mixed in a dry capsule and you can't mix that in an oil based environment and expect the dry components of that capsule to maintain their efficacy. So what you would actually have to put into that capsule would displace a large amount of both the oil and the nutrients. So we're talking about having to either take a ton of capsules or else take a multivitamin and a fewer number of capsules. Like the one that I'm recommending now is three in the morning and three in the evening. And then you just take a fish oil separately and there's a few different ways to skin that cat. As far as fish oil, yes, the multivitamin that I recommend, this new one from Thorn fx, that company also makes a fish oil, they make a really good blend, what's called EPA and dha. They have one that's drinkable that my kids are using now. They also have one in a soft gel that I'm taking now. And I just take that at the same time as my morning multivitamin. So that's the reason that you can't mix oils in with a dry powdered multivitamin formula and expect it to retain its efficacy. You just can't do that unless you're just swallowing a ton of capsules.

Another question that I get is this whole question of anti competitive technology.

Meaning that basically there's there's this idea that some nutrient interaction occurs and there's this nutrient competition between amino acids and between minerals and between vitamins. Now the idea here is that when we're looking at competitive absorption, I'm going to try not to get too rocket sciencey and too nerdy here. But most of the studies that are done on what's called competitive absorption of the components in a multivitamin.

They look at what's called an AUC or an area under the curve for absorption when the minerals are given together in a single meal or in a big dose. And so the idea, for example, is that if you take iron and you take calcium at the same time, the dose of calcium will actually reduce the absorption of, of the iron by a huge amount, like by 50 or 60%. And so you'll get some companies that develop this, what's called an anti competitive technology, or a technology where the nutrients and the vitamins don't interact in that competitive way. And they're saying that it gets rid of that competitive.

That competition between things like minerals and iron and minerals like calcium. So the problem is that's not really how real life works. So in real life, we eat every day. So if we're giving people a multivitamin that they're taking daily, what happens is that in real life, inside the gut, after about two or three days of using a multivitamin, complex absorption seems to kind of catch up. In other words, if you don't just look at one shot of a multivitamin, but you look at average absorption over several days in a row, it tends to be normalized. And people absorb just as much as if they were carefully separating each of these nutrients in a multivitamin into its separate components. Now, this is something that I originally didn't really understand and I was recommending to take all these different nutrients at different times throughout the day and making it really complex. But.

It'S kind of like your total amount of macronutrients by the end of the day, like carbs and proteins and fats. As long as you've eaten them all by the end of the day, you're generally going to get pretty good absorption and separating it and doing food combining and mixing carbs with proteins and proteins with fats, and not having some proteins with some forms of carbs, and not having carbs with some forms of fat. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it doesn't seem to really matter. Basically what happens is that passive absorption kind of catches up and evens the score. Now, there's a few medical conditions, like severe mineral deficiencies, where that might not be the issue. But for the average person, you can take all your nutrients at once. And as long as you're doing that on a daily basis with a good nutrient dense diet, you're going to be okay.

So that's another question.

Another question that I get is about silicone dioxide.

In multivitamins and whether or not silicon dioxide is actually healthy, because basically people say that it's sand. And silicon dioxide is often this victim of bad press. And a lot of companies will try and gain this competitive advantage by saying that silicon dioxide is sand, and silicone dioxide actually is sand. It's this flowing agent that helps to ensure an even mixture of all the powdered parts of a multivitamin formula. It helps prevent moisture from making the stuff that's inside the capsule get clumpy or caked up. And that moisture can lead to mold. It can lead to other quality issues. So you have to have something to get rid of that moisture. The purpose of silicone dioxide is to allow your multivitamin to actually not get mold and moisture stuff built up in it. Now, the thing is, when you're eating a plant, when you're eating meat, when you're eating anything from nature, it also has silicon dioxide in it, because silicon dioxide is a component of cell walls of plants. It's a component of skin, it's a component of bones. It's part of our physiological makeup in addition to being one of the components of sand. So silicone dioxide is not an issue. The only time that silicon dioxide would be something that you'd want to be careful of is is if you're inhaling large amounts of silicon dioxide dust. Like, the stuff is just floating around in the air. When you suck in a lot of it, it can irritate the mucosa of your lungs. And chronic exposure to that would be an issue. But we're not talking about that. What we're talking about is silicone dioxide in the same way that you'd find it in natural foods all over the planet, also inside of a capsule, to prevent mold from building up inside a capsule. So that's the deal with silicon dioxide. There are some things that I don't like to see in capsules, like magnesium stearate, gluten, and dairy, and things that people might have issues with from an allergenic standpoint, but silicone dioxide is not one of them. Okay, so next up, let's address the next question. So there is a question here. It looks like I can actually put people on air, too. So.

Let'S go ahead and jump into.

Corey's question. Corey says, how do we know if the vitamins we are currently taking are any good? Is there a resource available that provides unbiased reviews of different supplement companies? Well, first of all, there is a really good resource. It's a book from Examine, which is a really good resource on whether or not supplements are efficacious. Like, certain components are efficacious. And I'm trying to find my chat box where I could just basically put this. Okay, here we go, I'm going to paste this into the chat box and you should be able to see it. But it's basically a book that goes into all the research behind all of the different supplements that are out there, specifically with regards to ingredients. So I just posted that. Well, let's see if it shows it. Now that I posted it, you guys should be able to see this. But let me.

Make sure that it showed up. Okay, I'm just looking for where it showed up. Okay, so I just posted it and it's at the bottom of the list. If you scroll down what I just posted the Examine Resource, I'm going to post it again and title it Examine Book on Supplements and Ingredients, and then I'll put it in there. That's a really good 800 page symposium on all the research behind various supplement ingredients. So that's really good as far as a resource that you can go to to check and see whether or not supplements are efficacious. So the Thorne one that I recommend, like I mentioned in the podcast that I did on multivitamins, that one is not only in the process of getting NSF certified, but it's also certified by this extremely rigorous organization over in Australia. So the NSF certification is one really good certification to look for, especially if you're competing in sports and taking a multivitamin. And the NSF certification is, it stands for NSF Sport. So you can go to the NSF website and see what they actually have recognized or what companies have been recognized by the NSF by being safe for sport. There's also Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration or tga. That's the one that this supplement from Thorn FX that I recommend now is certified by, and that is as rigorous as a pharmaceutical certification. So that's another really, really good one. You can also look for a multivitamin to be certified by what's called Informed Choice. And again, you can Google the Informed Choice website, you can Google the Therapeutic Goods Administration website, you can Google the NSF for Sport website. I'm trying to run this free cast and look at questions and I'm not able to type all these websites in at the same time, but those are some of the big ones that you would want to look at to see whether or not your multivitamin.

Is good. It's actually not just creating expensive pee or could be labeled with banned ingredients or ingredients that are going to have hormone precursors, steroids, stuff like that in them. I also recommend that you look for a multivitamin that's gluten free that doesn't have artificial colors, artificial sweeteners, artificial flavors, magnesium stearate. Like I mentioned, other ingredients that you want to look out for are palmitic acid, stearic acid, multivitamins that have wheat, corn, gluten, yeast, egg, or dairy products added to them. Those are all things that you want to be careful of. So if you're looking at a multivitamin and it has any of those ingredients in it and or it's not certified by nsf, not certified by tga, not certified by Informed Choice, I personally wouldn't be taking it. That's why it's taken me so long to really ever recommend a good multivitamin is because it's very tough to come across multis that actually have these type of ingredients in them.

Or that don't have these type of dangerous ingredients in them. I'm kind of working my way up from the bottom here.

So I'm looking at questions at the bottom and going to the top. So there's a question here from.

I think I just put it. Okay, here we go from C. Mallison, who says, since starting to Thorn AMPM multivitamins, I've noticed that my pea is orangish colored is the only thing in my supplement regimen that have changed. Any idea what in the multi would be causing this and why? Yes, that's basically a byproduct of the metabolism of B vitamins. It doesn't mean you're not using or absorbing the B vitamins. It doesn't mean that you're creating expensive pee. All it means is that you are taking more B vitamins than what you probably took in the past. So that's the idea behind a change in urine color, that you started taking multivitamins and quit drinking water. So maybe you just dehydrated, I don't know. You started taking multivitamins and you started exercising a bunch. Right? You got dehydrated. I'm just kidding. Okay, so another question. Are Storms vitamins from a whole food source? So the answer to that is no. The Thorn vitamins are not from a whole food source. Now here's the idea behind this. Some supplement manufacturers will market their products as whole food nutrients because some of their nutrients come directly from food products or in many cases, interestingly, from yeast that's been fed individual vitamins and minerals. But these products are not only more allergenic, but they usually contain very low amounts of nutrients. And they can have some pure nutrients added, but you tend to see lower amounts of nutrients in these whole food sources. So it's better to use really high quality pure nutrients, pure botanicals that don't need to be mixed with whole food sources. You get reduced allergenic potential of the multivitamin when you do that. And then if you're looking for whole foods, I mean, drink a kale shake, eat some really nutrient dense vegetables, include meat preferably in your diet, grass fed beef, wild caught fish, that type of thing. But as far as whole foods, get your whole foods from food, get your pure nutrients, pure botanicals, pure vitamins from a multivitamin. And there's no need to have whole foods combined with the multivitamins. Especially if you're taking a multivitamin with a meal, which you should be doing anyways. It really is not going to matter whether or not it's a whole food based multivitamin. But that's a really good question. Okay.

Another question is here from Mark. I'm going to put Mark's question up and Mark says hi, I currently take acetyl l carnitine and alpha lipoic acid and ubiquinol PQQ combos for mitochondrial energy benefits. Is this overkill? So those are all some pretty potent antioxidants.

Now those antioxidants are going to be.

Let'S put it this way, if you were to put all those into a multivitamin, you'd have a pretty expensive multivitamin and you may even have a multivitamin that gets a little bit overkill in terms of the amount of antioxidants that you have added to it. Because here's the deal, remember if you're loading with very, very high dose antioxidants every single day, then what happens is you can actually blunt your hormetic response to exercise, which you actually don't want to completely shut down. It's why, for example, I only do high dose vitamin C when I'm doing a ton of travel, or when I'm really beat up, or when my immune system is taking a hit. I only do high dose antioxidants when I'm swimming in heavily chlorinated pools, when I'm exercising in polluted areas, or when I'm going out and doing a really killer, killer workout, in which case I will give my body those extra antioxidants to help it out. But I would recommend, especially if you're doing a multi every day, which you should be doing to support that natural active lifestyle and, and to get what you're not getting from our modern food, you take the antioxidants on Days where you're really, really beating yourself up. Now the cool thing is that the antioxidants that you just described, like the pqq, the mitochondrial support, that ubiquinol, the acetyl l carnine, the alpha lipoic acid, all of those are really, really good antioxidants. Like those are resource proven antioxidants that are going to help you if you are beating up your body really hard. I just noticed the sunshine is kind of really coming in my window here. There we go. If you're beating up your body really, really hard, but on an average day, you shouldn't necessarily be dumping those really potent compounds into your body because you want your body to be able to naturally produce endogenous antioxidants and you don't want to shut down antioxidants every single day. So you can overdo it with antioxidants, you can overdo it with vitamin C. Like for example, I think we have another question here about vitamin C.

Let me see. I thought I saw one on here. Let's check.

Yeah. Okay. Vic had a question about vitamin C. Vic says the AMPM complex has a significant amount of vitamin C. What about research showing decreased adaptation to exercise and less fat loss in people who take vitamin C? Again, this is my point. Those people were not exercising very hard. They're doing like a 60 minute aerobic bike ride a few times a week and a few very short high intensity intervals here and there. In my opinion.

That amount of exercise does not necessarily put you in a situation where you need a bunch of extra vitamin C. Now what we're talking about are doses of vitamin C that are way in excess and approaching that 800-900-1000 milligram plus mark. Now don't get me wrong, there are days where I will take 5,000 plus milligrams of vitamin C. Like for example, I flew back from New York the other day. I did a hard, really hard like 2 hour workout, flew back, crossed multiple time zones, landed was super short on sleep. I knew my immune system needed help. I knew I needed that extra antioxidant. I knew I was loaded with free radicals. So I took high dose vitamin C. But I wouldn't do that every single day. And if you look at something like the Thorn multivitamin, you've got your AM complex that has 250 milligrams of vitamin C. Your PM complex has 150 vitamin C. That means you're only getting 400 milligrams of vitamin C. So not only are you getting less than the big amounts that they use in a lot of these high dose vitamin C studies. But again, if you, if you're looking at really active individuals like ironman, triathletes, marathoners, cyclists, et cetera, they're exercising way more than the people in these studies were exercising anyways. So I'm not concerned at all about 400 milligrams a day of vitamin C. And in many cases, if I've really beat up my body, I'll take more than that. The people who shouldn't be taking a lot of or the people who are using vitamin C incorrectly are the people doing high dose vitamin C who aren't even beating up their bodies very much. You know, the people wandering the aisles of Whole Foods, doing a yoga session a few times a week and taking every supplement on the face of the planet. Like that's where you got to be careful. So hopefully that kind of helps put that into context for you. Okay, another question here. It says, it says, they say Jay says Jay. Sorry for calling you an it. Okay. It seems that if you are consuming clean food and not consuming anything harmful for your gut like antibiotics, that you don't need to worry about probiotics.

Would you recommend probiotics as a daily supplement or an objective oriented supplement?

I don't take probiotics very much. I eat a wide variety of fermented foods. I play outside a lot. I've got a dog which is dirty. I play in the dirt when I'm doing spartan races and stuff that's dirty. My kids play outside, they get dirty. They eat the burgers, they kiss our dog. We eat fermented bacteria related foods like kimchi and sauerkraut and kefir and kombucha. The only time I use probiotics is when I am traveling or when I haven't been exposed to dirt and germs and bacteria in other situations. So absolutely, I don't think that probiotics are a necessary addition to a multivitamin unless you've got somebody who's just living in this pristine urban environment, not exposed to animals, not exposed to kids, not exposed to dirt, not eating fermented foods. And I would say for that person, they would still have a bigger advantage by just getting out and exposing themselves to more bacteria, more germs, more dirt, that type of thing than they would from continuing to live in a bubble, so to speak, and take probiotics. So there are some situations though, where if you take antibiotics and you wipe out the good bacteria in your gut or say you've got a baby or a young child with immune and allergenic issues because they weren't breastfed and they were born via C section so they didn't pass down through the vaginal canal and get all that good bacteria when they were being born. There are situations like that where even if that kid is eating fermented foods, maybe a good therapeutic grade probiotic for a little while will help. Maybe in the case of someone who's been on antibiotics who is introducing a bunch of fermented foods for that person, still introducing for a little while a good probiotic would help. But a probiotic is definitely not a daily and definitely not an addition that I think is necessary for a multivitamin.

Next question is from Greg, who says you indicated that you store your vitamins in the fridge during your podcast. Is that the best what temperature range will keep them from decreasing in effectiveness? Greg Anything that has herbs in it I keep in a cold, dark place or a cool dark place or I keep in the fridge. Now a lot of times we travel in the summer and I'll turn off the ac. The house will warm up when I'm gone and I don't trust myself to remember to go into my pantry and take any vitamins or supplements that have herbs in them and put them in the refrigerator so they don't get all hot. So I just keep stuff in the refrigerator. Once you eat it. I mean, you can keep fish oil in the freezer and it'll still get absorbed once you eat it. Your body temperature is getting heated up pretty quickly between your body temp, your stomach acid, your gut temp, you don't need to worry about that at all. And for example, the foreign multivitamin has like curcumin phytosome and green tea phytosome and some other herbs in it. And for something like that, I keep it in the fridge just because it does have those herbs. And I feel better about having goes in a cool place again that's not exposed to light, not exposed to heat. So you're fine as far as that goes. If you're really concerned. I mean, you could take your three capsules for the morning, for example, you could set them out on the counter and you could take them an hour later if you want to let them get to room temp or whatever. But it's not that big of a deal. It's a good question though. All right, another question here.

What are your thoughts on cordyceps and is it good to stack with something like Thorn fx Elevate well, that's a great question. So, first of all, Thorn FX makes this product called Elevate. And these are like drivable adaptogens. So adaptogens are. They're like the type of things that folks who guide people up Mount an Everest use, like the Sherpas use them like rhodiola. That's used in Tibetan medicine to increase adrenal activation of lung tissue and the circulatory system. It's used as basically a tonic for increased energy. This is kind of cool. The Vikings use rhodiola for allowing for better energy, better mental endurance, reduced stress. There's some other things that are in the Thorn Elevate product, like the green tea extracts. It's got some mushrooms in there. I don't think it's any secret that I sometimes take this adaptogenic herb called tea and chi, and that's got rhodiola and ashwagandha on in it. I'm a big fan of adaptogens. Now, you asked about this one called Cordyceps. If you're going to compete at altitude or if you're competing in endurance exercise, Cordyceps is a cool adaptogen.

If you were using something like the Thorn FX Elevate product, for example, or you were using something like Tianchi Chinese adaptogenic herbs, you wouldn't necessarily have to throw in a bunch of extra cordyceps. You're going to cover most of your bases with some of these other adaptogens. I don't think it's necessary. You could use yourself as an N equals one and kind of see if you get better workouts by throwing cordyceps on top of all this other stuff. But I'm all about simplicity. And that's the reason that I kind of started to recommend this multi in the first place. This Thorin FX multi is because I want to replace a lot of these other supplements that I'm currently taking. And so I don't think that you're going to get a bunch of extra benefit by throwing cordyceps into the mix. The way that I would use the Thorn FX Elevate, if you were going to use that is take the AM multivitamin, take the PM and then throw in the Elevate before you're going to do a killer workout or before a race or maybe if you're going to altitude and that type of thing, even that I wouldn't use it as a daily. I would use it before, like your killer workouts. But that's a great question. Okay.

Can you talk to multivitamin supplements for children, says Jason. Are there significant benefits to growth and development? So I'm a big fan.

Especially for kids of a really nutrient dense diet and then at least some really good form of EPA dha. So our kids do a lot of walnuts. Our kids do a fish oil. Currently, our kids take a liquid multivitamin that is not made by Thorn fx because Thorn FX currently, even though they're working on it, doesn't have a children's multivitamin. And the adult version of their multivitamin. Some of the things in that, like curcumin, green tea extract, some of the herbs, those haven't necessarily been tested in babies or really young kids. So in a situation like that, I say better to play it on the safe side and better to go with something like, I can tell you, our kids take like the Peter Gilliam's Natural Calm Liquid multivitamin. And now I'm phasing them off of that, just giving them the liquid EPA DHA from Thorn, which is just liquid fish oil, and then giving them a really nutrient dense diet. And then once Thorn introduces its kids multivitamin, I'll start giving them that. And that should be pretty soon. But right now I wouldn't take the adult multivitamin and give it to kids because of the herbal component. I would be careful with that. I would give your kids some fish oil. If you want to add in a multivitamin to kind of fill in the gap until Thorn comes out with its multivitamin, you could use the Peter Gillum Kids Calm Multi is what it's called. It's a liquid multivitamin. Kids love the taste. And that one's really good. It is good for growth, it is good for development, especially brain development. Your children are eating the same type of, in many cases, mineral and nutrient void vegetables and fruits that you're eating.

Sorry, I'm distracted for a second. Someone's weed eating outside my window. But a lot of the things that I talked about in my multivitamin article about exposure to toxins, exposure to pollutants, exposure to heavy metals, nutrient void fruits, vegetables, animals that have been fed grains in many cases, or animals with meat that's not very nutrient dense, all these issues add up to account for the fact that, yeah, I think everybody needs to fill in the holes here and there, unless they're living on some pristine mountaintop in the Himalayas. And that includes kids. So, yeah, I'm a fan, but I wouldn't use, for example, the Thorne AM PM with kids and like I would use it with adolescents, teens, high schoolers, like, all that's fine. But like, for kids and toddlers and babies, I would just be careful, especially with the herbal component. Again, just because, you know, even if it is okay, I'd say if there's a lack of studies that have proven to be okay. These are kids. I play on the safe side.

All right, the next question is how to reach the adequate high charge athlete daily magnesium intake from Jasmel. So, Jasmel, it is true that many athletes are deficient in magnesium, which is important for over 300 different enzymatic reactions. And.

The thing is that if you're deficient in magnesium, you've got higher risk for heart issues, you've got subpar muscle contractions, you've got a host of different things. It affects the thyroid. I would say that there are a few considerations here. First of all, a company like Wellness fx, for example, if you were to go to Wellness FX and you were to do their performance panel or their baseline panel and get what's called an RBC magnesium test or a red blood cell magnesium test, you're going to get a good look at whether or not you actually are magnesium deficient and whether you need to take extra magnesium.

That's consideration number one is I would recommend you test first. Consideration number two is that the form of minerals that are in the scorn multivitamin, are chelated, and that means they are highly absorbable. So what this means is that if you're somebody who's taken like 400, 500, 600 milligrams of magnesium in the evening from something like natural calm, you'll probably find that once you start using the Thorn multivitamin, you can get away with taking less. You can still get that relaxation component. There's some really good adaptogens and things like Laura and sleep precursors in the Thorn PM complex, that would probably eliminate some of that need for you to take that magnesium. What I've been doing is I take the Thorn am. I take the Thorn pm. I quit using magnesium as a supplement, but I still use magnesium oil on specific muscles. After I worked out, like, I just finished a workout and I put topical transdermal magnesium on the muscles that I work. So I'm getting some absorbable magnesium at the localized muscle level, and that's a really good way to go. So I'm getting that plus the Thorn and I cover my needs. I quit taking magnesium. I tested my RBC magnesium and it actually went slightly up After I started taking the Thorn Multivitamins So say you're fine as far as that goes, but test if you want to double check and make sure. Okay, let's see. I'm going to look for somebody who hasn't had a question answered that. Okay, so Ben Morris says, can you talk about your experience of powder versus pill multivitamins? It seems that pills usually have fillers. Yes, pills usually have fillers, but the big one that you want to be careful with are tablets. So the reason that you want to be careful of tablets is because.

Tablets are pressed together really hard. They can get very hard to digest because they have all these binders that keep them together. And with a tablet, you got to add lubricants, coatings, excipients, a lot of nasty ingredients to keep a tablet together. So first of all, if you have to choose between a capsule and a tablet, choose a tablet. Now, the problem with powders is that they can be hard to take specifically because you got to mix them in water or something. If it's a multivitamin powder, it's going to taste like complete crap. That's why you put them into a capsule and why you swallow them, because they're just not palatable. A lot of these dense nutrients, botanicals, et cetera, and then powders. A lot of times, if you're opening that powder and it's getting water or any moisture or anything like that in it, when you open up a powder, it's going to clump, it's going to cause issues. So in most cases, you want to avoid tablets. If you use a powder as a multivitamin, just be really careful with it and also know it's not going to be very palatable unless they add a bunch of sugar and stuff to it. And then also be careful of tablets and use a capsule instead of a tablet if you can. Okay, another question here from Jay. Jay says.

The AM supplements, and he's referring to the Thorn FX AM multivitamin says it's supposed to be taken with food to avoid a stomachache. And that is true. You'll get nauseous if you take multivitamins in the absence of food. So I do recommend you take them with food now. He says, I typically just have bulletproof coffee in the morning. Would that be enough? Or would I need to consume something with more substance, like a fat green shake with protein? Jay, I have taken the Thorn multivitamin of bulletproof coffee, and I've taken it with a couple different variations of bulletproof coffee. I've taken it with just the normal coffee that you add a little MCT oil to. And I haven't liked the way that my stomach felt after that. I did get a little nauseous. I've also taken it with the bulletproof coffee that has MCT oil, that has butter, that has collagen and that has some coconut milk added to it. And I was fine. So it kind of depends on our definition of bulletproof coffee. If it's a really dense, calorically laden meal that has all the medium chain triglycerides and the butter and the coconut milk and some of the collagen and this other stuff in it, you're probably going to be fine. If it's just like coffee plus MCT oil, if you react to anything like I did, you're not going to like the way you feel. So I would say have your multivitamin with a real meal and if you get up and you're doing a fasted workout, just get up, do your workout fast and everything and then take the multivitamin with your next meal. The nutrients and the vitamins, the botanicals that you get from that morning multi will be what you use for the next day's workout. And you're not missing out on the benefits of a multivitamin by skipping the multivitamin because you're working out in a fasted state in the morning. Just work out in your fasted state and then afterwards eat a meal and take your multivitamin along with it. And if you're doing bulletproof coffee, I would say like the bulletproof coffee that's a little bit more calorically dense would be the one to go with. Okay, so another question from Steve. Steve says, as a 60 year old lifelong endurance athlete, will this vitamin cover all my needs?

So the thing that I would include, Steve, would be fish oil.

And if you're a hard charging athlete, and especially if you're an aging athlete, there are some things that have been shown to help out aging athletes. For example, a digestive enzyme with hydrochloric acid. Taking that with protein rich meals because you produce less hydrochloric acid as you age can help you absorb and utilize protein as you age. FornetX has an enzyme HCl complex and you can take that along with your most protein dense meal of the day and that could help you out a little bit. A fish oil along with the multivitamin for the reasons I mentioned earlier about how you need to take a fish oil separately, yes, that would help too. Those would be the biggies. As far as anything else that's extra. Like colostrum and probiotics, for example. I have those. I don't use them every day. I use them. For example, I'll load with Colostrum for two weeks prior to a hot race so that I decrease gut permeability. Because when you exercise in the heat, your gut becomes more permeable and you can load with Colostrum. But if you put Colostrum into a daily multivitamin, that wouldn't necessarily be a good thing because Colostrum is pro growth. So just like a testosterone supplement, for example, you need to cycle on and off it. Because if you're dumping a pro growth compound into your body 365 days a year, seven days a week, what happens is you could potentially increase.

Your risk for cancer because you're dumping a bunch of cellular growth enhancing compounds in your body. So stuff like colostrum, stuff like testosterone enhancing herbs, things like that, I don't recommend that those be in a daily multiply, but there are things that you could have on hand to use when the situation arises. Same thing with probiotics. Same thing with something like glucosamine, chondroitin and joint compounds. You use something like that after you've done a really hard race, or if you sprained your ankle or you'd gotten a stress fracture or something like that. That's where you take something like that. But again, just from like a pure expense standpoint and complexity standpoint, something like that probably is going to hurt you to take every day. But it's like, why spend the money and why go out of your way to take it every day if it's not necessarily something that you need every day? So a fish oil and a haulfire are going to cover all your bases and then you use the other stuff when the need arises. So hopefully that helps out a little bit. I mean, like, I'm interviewing an anti aging guy on my podcast this Thursday and I'll release it next week. And I happen to know for a fact the dude takes like 30 different supplements and he thinks he's going to live to be like 150 years old. Maybe he's onto something. But I'm about simplicity. Like, it's the same reason that in the next house that I move into, there's going to be no Bluetooth, there's going to be no WI fi, there's going to be one tiny tv. It's a small house that's basically built out of reclaimed wood from an old barn. It's super simple because I think that there's some happiness to simplicity. And that's just, that's the way I live my life. I say the simpler we can keep things, the better. If we're covering our bases with something like the multi and a fish oil. And then occasionally when we need to fill in the gaps with other stuff, we do that. Boom. I think that's a beautiful, simple scenario. So that's my thoughts on that. Okay, a question here from.

Jay about krill oil. How does the Thorn FX Omega 3 supplement compare to krill oil? So fish oil versus krill oil, here's the deal. Krill oil is slightly more absorbable than fish oil. It's got a little bit more EPA and DHA in it. It gets converted into usable compounds in your body a little bit easier. However, we're talking about a multitude of slightly easier and we're talking about a cost factor that is five to ten times more expensive. I say take a little bit extra fish oil and save your money from having to spend a bunch of money on krill oil. Like that's the way that I approach this if you just want to throw money around. But krill oil, remember, the increase in expense is not equivalent to the increase in absorptability. My fellow Quick and Dirty Tips podcaster, the nutrition diva. If you go to quickanddirtytips.com and you do a search for krill oil versus fish oil, she had a really, really good podcast on this. And ultimately what it comes down to is krill oil is just more expensive. But that doesn't mean you're getting that much more absorption. So again, like, I'm taking my wife out to dinner tonight on a date and I like that because I'm a frugal guy and I'm careful where I spend my money, I'm able to sometimes take my wife out and wine and dine her and have a good time because I let's put it this way, you watch your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves. My dad taught me that. And so I I always analyze cost benefit when it comes to stuff. So that's my take on that. And that's another reason I try and live my life pretty simple. I drive old beat up cars and I ride my bike everywhere. It's just the way I live my life. I'm super happy with that. So that's what I do. Okay, question from Ben. How about the Kelton's Nutrients Multivitamin vs. The Thorn Multivitamin? So this is a question that I've gotten a lot first of all, earlier I talked about the anti competition technology. That's something that the Caltons talk about in their nutrients products. So first of all, Mira and Jason Calton are freaking awesome. I had dinner with them the other night. They're really cool people. I'm well aware that their multivitamin competes with the Thorn FX multivitamin and I'm well aware that one of their, well, they've got two kind of standout components that position them separately than the Pronifex multivitamin. The first one is their anti competition technology. And I think I already addressed that in a pretty straightforward manner and that is that if you're taking a multivitamin every day, ultimately what it comes down to is that anti competition technology doesn't really matter and competitive absorption is only something that is really something you need to take into account if it's like a one time a day, one shot scenario type of thing like taking your iron with your calcium. But ultimately it's not something that I think is necessary if you're taking a multivitamin every day and eating a nutrient dense diet.

Now the other thing that the nutrients multivitamin has, for example, they've got higher amounts of calcium and higher amounts of magnesium and they're able to do this for two reasons. They're using a powder. So it's a powder, not a capsule. They're also using.

This is just the way it is. They're using cheap forms of the minerals, using cheap forms using a calcium citrate and a calcium carbonate. These forms are not as absorbable as the chelates in the Thorn FX formula, which is a more absorbable mineral. So the Calton formula has more calcium and magnesium in it, but unfortunately it's less well absorbed than the Thorn FX brand. They've got more, what's called choline it. So they've got 425 milligrams of choline, which is a nice brain nutrient, versus 150 milligrams of choline in the Thorn complex. Now I don't know how much of an advantage that really is because if you count what's called the phosphatidylcholine that's supplied by the phytosomes, the curcumin phytosomes and the green tea phytosomes and the Thorn FX multi, it probably comes out to pretty much a wash when it comes to the choline in the nutrients versus the choline in the 4 NFX. The nutrient formula has higher amounts of carotenes like lutein and zeaxanthin and astaxanthin. And that is actually better than the Thornifex multivitamin in my opinion. And that's one of the reasons that I am on the Thorone FX board of advisors is there are little things here and there that I would like to see even added to make this thing even better. And I love astaxanthin and would like to see that added in as like an anti aging component. They've got a bunch of antioxidants in there and I already talked about antioxidants, how I'm careful to separate those from a multivitamin because I don't want to blunt the hormetic response to exercise. I don't think that high dose antioxidants every day are a good thing. And there are many studies that back that up. That high dose antioxidants, high dose vitamin C taken every single day is something that may actually hold you back in terms of getting your exercise gains.

I'm not convinced that that's going to be great.

When you look at these ingredients, they look really good added to a formula. But when you look at how much of those ingredients are in the nutrients formula, it's not that many anyway. For example, 10mg of coenzyme Q10 in a dry powder form, that's kind of a pretty marginal nutritional value.

Again like 10 micrograms of vanadium. You have to get way higher levels of vanadium in order for that to have any type of therapeutic value. The silicone, they're labeling that as a nutrient, but really it's just. I talked about silicone earlier. It's more of kind of like a filler, a safe filler, but it's a filler.

And the L carnitine in their multi is not that high. Kind of similar to the CoQ10. You have to have higher amounts for it to really give you much effect. I say find yourself a really good high dose antioxidant. I like life shots, I like thie, I like stuff like that. And put that into your body in cases where you're really on days where you're beating yourself up a ton. So that's where I would be careful. The other issue with the nutrients multivitamin is it has no copper. And the multivitamin from Thorne has copper to balance out copper and zinc. And that's really important to minimize the risk of a copper deficiency that can occur when you have copper.

When you have zinc in a supplement without copper, it can cause A copper deficiency, basically. So that's another kind of little issue that I have with that particular multivitamin. Again.

They'Re great folks, the Kelpins, but I would say that I would rank the Thorn effects higher for some of the reasons that I just mentioned. In addition to having higher amounts of 5 methyltetrahydrofolate, which is a really important component of folic acid, a really important absorbable form of folic acid, higher amounts of bioavailable vitamin B12, higher amounts of a really absorbable form of curcumin, and then also this relora complex, which helps to balance your stress hormones and helps to relax you at night. So hopefully that really helps you compare the two.

Okay, I've got time for a couple more questions here. So let's look at this question from Jay, who says, which Wellness FX testing package would you recommend for us to start measuring our levels of vitamins, minerals and omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acid ratio to determine if we need more or less of a particular nutrient? Jay, pretty quick answer to that one. It would be the Wellness FX Premium package. The Wellness FX Premium package would be the one that you'd want for that. It's going to measure all those. It's expensive, but you only need to do it like once a year. That's about how often I do that one. Okay, a few other questions here. Can you overdose in vitamin C? Says Jazmel. Yes, Desmond, you can overdose in vitamin C. That's why I recommend having vitamin C in the presence of adequate amounts of vitamin A as well as adequate amounts of very absorbable forms of vitamin K. So if you look at a multivitamin and it doesn't have vitamin A in it in a bioavailable form, and it doesn't have adequate amounts of a full spectrum of vitamin K2 in it, then vitamin D is definitely something you can overdose on. There's a U shaped curve in terms of the benefits of blood levels of vitamin D and it falls at about 40 to 80. So once you get above 80 for your blood levels of vitamin D in terms of nanograms per deciliter, it's not necessarily better. And I'm a fan of somewhere in the range of about 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams or so of vitamin D on a daily basis, if you look at something like the Thorn FX, they've got 2,000 international units of vitamin D in the morning, they've got 500 in the evening, they've got it balanced out with beta carotene and Palmitate forms of vitamin A, vitamin K1, and vitamin K2. And so that would be just fine. But, yes, you can overdose on vitamin D. I definitely wouldn't be exceeding anything like, close to the 5,000, 10,000 international units that a lot of folks are doing these days, especially in the absence of vitamin A and vitamin K.

All right, let's go ahead and go with one more question. Let's see what we have here. Here's a good 1. Tharn FX AMPM vs Living Fuel Super Greens. Okay, Living Fuel Super Greens. First of all, that's the freaking awesome meal replacement. It's like greens, chlorella, spirulina, broccoli, digestive antioxidants, probiotics, like, everything. I do not step onto an airplane or travel without the stuff, period. Okay? But it's a meal replacement. It's calories, to me, that falls into a completely different spectrum than a multivitamin. So when you look at a lot of these greens powders, greens formulas, highly alkalinic meal replacement powders, stuff like that, they're really good. I like to do, like, kale shakes and spinach and broccoli and stuff like that, like in their real vegetable form when I'm at home, but when I travel, not only do I travel with, for example, the Thorn AM and Thorn PM complex now, but I travel with a Ziploc bag full of the Living Fuel Super Greens. And I put extra stuff in there. Like, I dump a bunch of raw almonds in there and some coconut flakes. I put whatever, a dark chocolate or dark cacao nibs in there. I put some added cinnamon. I put some added sea salt in there. I shake it all up. And then when I'm going through the airport, I'll walk up to Starbucks and ask them for a glass of water, and I'll dump that Super Greens into that water, and that's my meal. And sometimes I'll have that three times a day when I'm traveling. But it's way different than a multivitamin, right? If I were taking a multivitamin three times a day, I'd be starved by the end of the day.

So that's kind of the difference between those two. So I'm hoping I answered a lot of your questions, you guys. Now, if you have more questions, here's the deal. First of all, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com multi and at BenGreenFilFitness.com multi you can go read up on this for an FX multivitamin if you want to look at some of their other stuff. You can go to BenGreenhillFitness.com ThorneFX okay, the Thorn FX stuff, it's got limited distribution. You can only get it through people like physicians, nutritionists, personal trainers. And that's why if you're going to get it, you gotta go through me as a channel in order to get it. It's not just like out there floating around on Amazon. And there's a reason for that. It's so they can actually maintain the quality, maintain the distribution, ensure there's not a bunch of knockoffs of it out there, that type of thing. But if you want to get it, you can go to either of those websites that I just mentioned. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Molfi BenGreenfieldFitness.com ThornFX and you can get it. Okay, well, I'm taking my wife out on a date tonight and all this talk about food and nutrients and stuff made me really hungry. So I hope that helped you guys out. Thank you for watching. And if you need this to help your friends out, I'll have it available and uploaded as a recorded file up to my YouTube channel later on. So you can check it out there or send folks over there. And I hope that was helpful. Have a great night.