Tocotrienols: Vitamin E and Fatty Liver, High Cholesterol and Type 2 Diabetes

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today I'll be speaking with Dr. Barry Tan, president of American River Nutrition, a natural health research and development company. Dr. Tan earned his PhD in chemistry slash biochemistry from the University of Otago, New Zealand, and spent several years as a professor at UMass. His His research expertise includes lipid-soluble nutrients, carotenoids, E vitamins, CoQ10, and omega-3s that impact chronic conditions. Dr. Tan developed the first-ever tocopherol-free tocotrienol product extracted from annatto on the market, the Delta Gold supplement, as well as the GG Gold supplement. Dr. Tan is the author of The Truth About Vitamin E, the founder of the International Tocotrienol Conference, and an internationally celebrated and sought-after speaker for his role in the nutrition industry. Before our conversation, if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. And if you want to get transcripts of the podcast, pop over to my website, highdeserthealthcoaching.com, and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebooklet called Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acids Testing when you sign up. If you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool test would help you get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now on to the show. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Tan.

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Me looking forward to talking with you. You and to your faithful listeners.

So I heard you speaking on the Chris Kresser podcast, and I immediately went out and got some tocotrienols to try. And so I was really excited when you were able to come on the podcast. And so why don't we just start with talking about what tocotrienols are and how they differ from tocopherols, which are the typical form of vitamin E contained in most multivitamin formulas?

Yes. And vitamin E are two groups of compound, tocopherols and tocotrienol. The tocopherol is more known and you can see them on your cereal box, and tocotrienol is less known. The plant make these two compound when the protection in the plant is more serious, then the plant like to make tocotrienol. So you intuitively know that it's probably more potent, and then otherwise if it's normal ones, they use tocopherol. So In the US diet, most of our vitamin E are tocopherol. And then, with a few exception, then the tocotrienol. So, the last 30 years of my life have been spent looking for the active form of vitamin E. Okay.

So, the tocotrienols are the active form, whereas the tocopherols are inactive?

Is that— Not inactive, less active, the tocopherol. And the tocotrienol is active enough that about this book. You can see from the title of the book, Tocotrienol, Vitamin E Beyond Tocopherol. And tocopherol is vitamin E people know, and tocotrienol people know less. You see, I was one of the authors. So, it's more an academic book, so I don't tell people much about it. They can look up. This is a more consumer book. I wrote it as a labor of love, and people can download on the website. It's free of charge.

Okay. The Truth About Vitamin E is the book.

Truth About Vitamin E. And then they can get it from here, download, just my name.

BarryTan.com/jacksonportsystem.

Yeah. Okay.

I'll include those links on the— this is, since it's just a podcast, people are hearing those things, but I'll be sure to put those links in the show notes.

Yeah. So I started my career as a University of Massachusetts professor in 1982. And then I started to study vegetable oil. So, intuitively, if vegetable oil is where you find vitamin E, the plant makes vitamin E to protect the oil from going rancid. So, that is like that. So, I know we are all to some extent very self-centered. Somehow, the plant makes things for us. The plant never make things for humans. We should ought to be grateful that they make things that is helpful to human health like that. They make it to protect themselves and for their own survival like that. And, plant typically don't make a lot of fat. But, when they do have a lot of fat like corn oil, soy oil, actually corn and soy is not a huge, huge amount of fat, but when they take the meal out and feed the animal, blah, blah, blah, or make tofu and then left behind would be the vegetable oil loaded with vegetable oil and then the vitamin E go there to protect it. However, when you think of a human being, we typically have anywhere from 20% would be exceedingly lean, 40% is on the obese side. So therefore, if you average it, a person have 30% fat. So, in general, a human person have more fat than a plant ever would have. So therefore, when we— so, from there, you can tell if we carry on average 30% fat, then this fat need to be protected. So, that's where I study vitamin E to find out how it can protect us from oxidative damage.

Okay. So I understand the tocotrienols that you work with are sourced from the annatto plant. So tell me how you came across this source of tocotrienols.

Yeah. I discovered the 3 major sources of tocotrienol from plant, which I had said earlier that they're difficult to find compared to tocopherol. The first one I found was in palm, palm oil. And people have question about taking palm oil, saturated fat and all that. But palm oil has a fair bit of tocotrienol. And then rice bran, the brown part of the rice bran also have tocotrienol. So, it's kind of like an open secret when you eat Japanese tempura, they deep fry with rice bran oil and rice bran oil is stable because of the tocotrienol in it. Otherwise, the oil will go rancid even faster. However, rice and palm contain about 25% to 50% tocopherol. Now, I'll come back to that later. So, I was looking for a source that is very rich in tocotrienol. Then, the year was 1994. There was a professor in Harvard. Her name was Johanna Seiden and she discovered that on the back of the retina of the eye, they're laden with lutein and zeaxanthin to filter out the blue light. If you fast forward to today, everybody know that if you take lutein and zeaxanthin, it's good to prevent macular degeneration, but this is back in 1994. People didn't— it wasn't long ago. And then, I know that in South America, in Peru, there would be a huge giant marigold plant. See, it's a younger me with hair. I went there to look for marigold petal to extract lutein from the petal that it would be good for the eye. But then, by this time, I already studying tocotrienol. Then, fate has it, literally 20 feet away from me, I saw the annatto plant. That would be this guy here. And you would have heard of the annatto plant because we use the color for coloring cheeses, Dorito chips, and macaroni and cheese. If you touch it like I pretend to do here, it will stain the plant. I intuitively knew something was unusual. By the way, the color is also a carotene like lutein and zeaxanthin, except it's very unusual. If you look at this fruit, it doesn't have a fleshy part. Like fruit have. If you think of any fruit you eat, it has a fleshy part, but this just have the seed and then this staining. Because I was a carotenoid chemist, I thought of something. If you think of carrot, you got to cook carrot to get the beta-carotene out. You got to cook tomato long time in oil to get it out if you do Italian sauce like that. So, I knew that carotene, which is so unstable, they are protected inside the cell of the cytoplasm. And, even in lobster and crustacean, you have to cook them and then they deprotonate and suddenly the yucky green or blue color become orange or red color. Like, you come to New England to eat a lobster. See, now when I explain it, it sounds so trivial like that, but it's in my DNA. I kind of know this thing. But, when you touch this guy here, It is not bound to anything. Notice that? You just stained your finger. So, I intuitively thought there must be a powerful antioxidant that protect the carotene from oxidative damage. It was only a figment of my guess. And, I thought that it would be a polyphenol, which will happen a lot in nature. Surprisingly, it wasn't. And, more surprisingly, it is a vitamin E molecule. And, most surprisingly, it is a vitamin E molecule that only contain tocotrienols. Tocotrienol and not tocopherol. So, that would be my third advent. Palm and rice contain 25% to 50% tocopherol and annatto tocotrienol is completely free of tocopherol. By this time, I had already been studying tocotrienol for some 20, 25 years. I immediately called my professor friend. At the time, he was in University of Wisconsin-Madison. And, I asked him that, "What do you think?" And then, I remember he told me, he said, "Barry, if tocotrienol wouldn't mitigate human chronic condition, this tocotrienol better be. Otherwise, you and I are completely a lost cause for our desire to bring this to bear." So, the last 25 years, I've been committed to do a chronic condition with this sort of vitamin E. And happily, they work on many chronic conditions that we study.

Interesting. And we will talk about that. But I did just want to mention, so I lived in Costa Rica for a year and a half and I learned how to make a few dishes there. And one of them, arroz con pollo, uses annatto as a spice. And they have it in tubs in the grocery store. They're just bright red-orange sort of tubs that you can take a chunk out of. And it's like a refrigerated margarine, about that consistency. Wow. Not like the pebbly stuff that you find here in the spice aisle. And of course, it tastes terrible if you ate it straight, but it adds a subtle flavor and of course, an obvious color to the whole dish when you add like a teaspoon or two. Wonderful. Yeah. I bought a couple tubs years ago and I still keep one in the fridge. And of course, it doesn't seem to go bad at all, which it— because of obviously the—

Yes.

Yes.

And if you could sometime, if you have my email, send me that you say the Spanish word, I would try to look for dishes. I know they're not classically American dishes. The South American use it for many of their food. I was able to track even the Inca Indian use it for their food in Peru and other places. Here, it's a very sterilized use, not a bad use, a sterilized use like we put it in cheese. It fixes the protein, the color intensity. But, besides that, it's not used in any food dimension that I'm aware of. And curiously, I thought of this one time. It is used, it is not known to the Asian context. I'm Asian with the exception of Filipino. And then I was able to track it because the Spanish that went to South America also was in Philippines for 400 years. Sometime when I tell my American colleague, it's hard for them to put their head together. The Spaniards were in Philippines for 400 years, as long as they were in South America. So, not surprisingly, many of my Filipino friends, they have Hispanic name and they look like me. So, you can tell they've been there for a long time. And, a lot of Filipino food also use annatto. Isn't that interesting? So, they brought the flavor and the seeds and they grow it in Philippines. So, a lot of Filipino empanada, that's a Spanish word, but empanada is if you ask Filipino friend, they know empanada, and then they make this little reddish looking, and then they put this annatto in. But otherwise, the other part of Asia or Southeast Asia is an unknown spice. They don't use it at all.

So, yeah. Well, I've got two recipes I think that call for it. The arroz con pollo, which is just chicken and rice, and then one another is a chicken dish. I will, I will send you both those recipes and I'll post them in the show notes.

Thank you.

So, I'm wondering, are tocopherols harmful to take as a supplement?

I would say not harmful unless you take in high amount. If you remember the late '90s into the 2000s, all the published work on vitamin E was negative. Even women who take it, Harvard Women's Health Study, and some of the women have higher incidence of breast cancer and men who took it have prostate cancer like that. I think that the reason is because of all the 8 vitamin E, 4-tocopherols and 4-tocotrienols, alpha-tocopherol is the only one that have a transport protein. That means that when they cross the cell membrane, they have a rite of passage. They have a protein that take them in. Only alpha-tocopherol has it. The other one just go by diffusion. Diffusion simply is an engineering phrase, low concentration, high concentration. You move from the high concentration to the low concentration. Just like if you put sugar, if you put a lot of sugar in a glass of water and then the sugar first sink to the bottom and over time you see some wiggly thing, it'll move from the high concentration as the sugar dissolve into the low concentration. That is a process of diffusion. And, that's how vitamin E would work with the exception of alpha-tocopherol because you have a transport protein that help. So, in those study when they use alpha-tocopherol, they use 400 and 1,000 milligrams. So, a lot of this vitamin E go in, it had no place to go, and I think that they are not good for you. However, if we were to eat a normal diet containing 10 to 15 milligrams, which is 15 milligrams is 100% recommended daily allowance, that would be fine. But however, supplemented, which is people will make 10, 20, even 30 times higher concentration of alpha-tocopherol, that's a problem. But we did not find that to be a problem with tocotrienol at all.

Okay. And so, what conditions has the research shown that tocotrienols can benefit?

Okay. How about I tell you some of the condition we study and then we can fractionate them. We did a lot of study in the last 20 years on chronic conditions. And I think that for the audience to appreciate this, we're not talking about a drug, we're talking about a supplement. And this is almost my entire lifetime studying this. So, this is— if I weren't here, I doubt a very large company would put this kind of money and time and effort and energy to do this. So, we did probably about 15 to 20 clinical trials. And the kind of studies we involve in chronic conditions were initially we studied dyslipidemia, high cholesterol, high triglyceride like that, insulin resistance, people who are pre-diabetic but not yet diabetic, that group. And then finally, we studied the group who people who are diabetic. And now, we have committed to have huge amount of resources to study people with fatty liver disease. Now, I mentioned all these. If the audience is having any of this condition, you would understand. For the audience that do not have this condition, so you're blessed, but just to give you some number. People who are prediabetes is about 90 million American. People who are diabetic, 35, and about another 100 million people who are fatty liver disease. Of course, some of these things overlap like that. Therefore, a huge number of American populace have this kind of problem. And now most recently, we are studying people beyond overweight, they are obese, men and women in Texas like that. So, in these studies that we are doing, people with prediabetes and dyslipidemia, our study calls for anywhere from 100 to 250 milligrams. Say you round it up 100 to 200 milligrams. And then, for people who are diabetes, the studies was about 250 to 350 milligrams like that. And then, for fatty liver disease, remember the liver is the largest solid organ, we actually did 3 studies on this, Lindsey. We did a 3-month study, 6-month study, and a 12-month study. We already were convinced 600 milligrams was needed for this, so we didn't change the amount. We just did the time. We did the time same because I weren't sure that after 3 months, if we were to be successful, that it will continue to be so in 6 months. So therefore, it's not a dose-dependent study but instead a time-dependent study. So, we stay with the same dose. We study different things at 3 months. We study stress enzyme and the stress enzyme calm down and drop. And the second study, we study steatosis, which is fat in the liver. We use ultrasound to map it like you use ultrasound to look for a baby in a mother like that. And then, we're able to see that the fat egress from it. It's a 6-month study. In the 12-month study, we decided to go for gold. We decided that I have to go beyond getting consumer to be interested or a primary physician to be interested. I have to convince the specialist to be interested, which means that these are liver specialists. So, we decided to do CAT scan and we saw that the fibrosis score is reduced, the steatosis also. Steatosis is a fat in the liver. Steatosis reduced. When the fat stays in the liver too long, they form scar. So, the doctors call them fibrosis and that's kind of considered are not reversible. So now, we can clearly confirm that fat is reduced, inflammation is reduced, liver enzyme is reduced, steatosis and fibrosis. But there is something I will keep it last to tell because I'm initially very skittish to talk about this. We noticed this in the 3 months. I was not very convinced. So, in the 6 months, We saw it again. And my science director, she's very sensitive to this. She said, "Barry, did you notice this?" I said, "And I saw this, but I'm hesitant to make a comment on this. How about we do a 12-month study?" And we repeated it. And the shorthand is the people who have fatty liver are already generally overweight. They lost weight. And in our clinical trials, we did not have a primary outcome. See, when you design a trial, you have to make a hypothesis. What are you looking for? And we did not look for weight loss, but then they lost about 10 to 15 pounds consistently in 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months. So I asked, "How are we going to report this? Factually, it is true." Can you imagine that? Most people will do the opposite. They just say weight loss and then they go sell a heck of a lot of product. I'm doing the opposite. You know, say, wait a minute. I don't know what to say. You know why I was worried, Lindsey Parsons? Because when you say the word weight loss, people expect a weight loss in 2 weeks to 4 weeks. Well, I never had data at 1 month. My shortest data was 3 months. Even so, you saw weight loss at 3, 6, and 12 months. Then, just say that. If people said, would I see weight loss in 1 month? You said, no, we don't have data on that. But you can say that we saw the weight loss. So now, we can consistently see sustainable weight loss on the largest organ in the body that at 3, 6, and 12 months. I think tocotrienol is not intrinsically a weight loss product. Instead, it helps people's metabolism out of kilter. To come back to balance and the inflammation drop, the stress to the liver drop. And as a consequence of that, their weight also come back to normality. So, that's our idea.

Yeah. So, does it matter whether the fatty liver is non-alcoholic or could it be alcoholic fatty liver too that this would impact?

This is a brilliant question. We only study Non-alcohol fatty liver. But the reason this disease was called non-alcohol fatty liver disease, it was discovered by Mayo Clinic, 1984, not so long ago. I don't know if you know this story. There was a cute story. Well, it wasn't cute when it happened. There was this guy, he went to see the doctor and the doctor looked at the numbers, came back. I just made up his name. He said, "Hey, Mr. Jones." He said, "Do you drink alcohol?" He said, "Mr. Jones, no, I don't drink alcohol." So he went back to the lab and came back again, and now a little bit more accusatory tone, he spoke with Dr.— he talked to Mr. Jones and said, "Are you sure you don't drink alcohol?" See, with that kind of intonation, Mr. Jones is upset. He said, "I told you I don't drink alcohol," like that. So that was The reason because Mr. Jones' liver looked somewhat like cirrhotic liver from somebody who drink alcohol and it wasn't. So, all this to say that when we take a lot of carbohydrate and fat, we can make the liver almost looking like someone who drink alcohol. So, a short way to answer your question is we believe that people who have a cirrhotic liver caused by alcohol, also would benefit from tocotrienol like that because their liver look the same, which is why awkwardly this disease is NAFLD, almost distinguishing that. And after NASLD, they become NASH, N-A-S-H, non-alcohol steatohepatitis. So, the liver look like a person with hepatitis A, B, and C, but hep A, B, and C are different because they are caused by a virus like that. And by the way, this tocotrienol also work positively for people with hepatitis C virus. Totally different mechanism. And that was done— sorry, I have to tell so many story. When we designed this study, Lindsey Parsons and me decided that if you have people with hepatitis C, you have to recruit people. He said, "We cannot— we have to exclude people with hepatitis C. If they alcoholic liver, we have to exclude them. Otherwise, then they have all the monkey on my back. I cannot interpret my data." So, that's how you randomize a study. He was fine with that. So, when he was recruiting the 100-over patient, about 12 to 15 of them were hepatitis C. So, he had to exclude them. But, what he didn't tell me was he was curious. He separately gave them tocotrienol. It was not in the study, it was excluded. Then, he didn't tell me. And then, a few years later, I found him and said, "Barry, did you see this? This tocotrienol, our tocotrienol is used on people with hep C. It actually worked to reduce the viral titer in the people. He said, "Really?" He said that, "I never knew of a study like that." Then, it tracked back to the author and the author is the same one that did the NAF-LD. So, he excluded it. And so, it also helped people with that. So, we did not continue that study because hepatitis C is a different direction, is caused by a virus. But, it probably, I think any damages to the liver, Whatever the reason might be, at the minimum, tocotrienol would help the liver. In animal study, we also study hepatoma. People, animal with liver cancer, it also support to reduce the severity of the cancer in the liver. So, supposedly, you can generalize the phrase that tocotrienol is a hepatotonic, a liver tonic. But, of course, if you say like that, it's too general and people don't know what it's for. So, I have to tell the clinical study. So, the best we have done so far is this huge group of people with fatty liver due to dietary mismanagement and that work on them.

So— Okay. And was the dosage for those people 600 milligrams a day? Yeah.

For the fatty liver, 600 milligrams. For the type 2 diabetes, anywhere from 300 to 400 milligrams in those study. And for the prediabetes and people with dyslipidemia, it's about 100 125 to 250 milligrams. So those are the range. I know we didn't discuss this. We have about 6 or so clinical trials in Denmark of people with cancer. And the cancer we study are for— 2 of them are specifically for women, ovarian cancer, breast cancer, lung and colon cancer. And my colleague in Florida is studying pancreatic cancer. And in that case, we are studying stage 4 cancer. So as you know, stage 4, there are no options available and it is an end stage. So we use the highest dose, which is 900 milligrams. People take 300 milligrams for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And in that series of trials, we have the ovarian cancer result back. The audience should remember this is stage 4 cancer, which means that there are no more options available. So they were taking Avastin, Bustin, which means that this is anti-angiogenic. It prevent the tumor from sucking food from the nearby artery. Angiogenesis is the growth of artery. Anti-angiogenic is you cut the artery off. Essentially, you starve the tumor to death. That's the word. So, they take chemo for that. And, in another group, they do the same. They take chemo because it's a standard of care plus tocotrienol. That's it. No other different inoperable not radiatable like that. And they have it in the registry in Denmark already. After 6 months, then in the group that had Avastin, they are not around anymore. And then in the group that took the tocotrienol as well, 60% of them still survive. And in Denmark, and this is a woman disease, so the nurses, which are predominantly women, And they really want the study to continue. So the principal investigator said that if we continue the study, what do we compare it with? Because the group that they compared with were no longer there. But anyway, for good reasons, they persisted and they were able to— and I'm glad they did. They persisted the study for 4 times longer into 24 months, 2 years. And even after 2 years, 25% still lived. So, that's a remarkable thing I consider. So, we are still hopeful that the tocotrienol would work in cancer, but I don't think I'll have a prayer to ask FDA for any claim. Maybe under the Compassionate Care Act of United States passed by Congress like that when there are no options available. Then the FDA may allow its usage. I don't know if we have the wherewithal and the financial muscle power at FDA, but we are willing and have the will to complete the study and then let people who read the study. So hopefully, in another year or two, if you still remember me, you can call me and say, "Dr. Tan, have you completed the study? I'd like to find out more on that." I mean, And at the end of the day, this is still a supplement. I am as fascinated and as touched by this as an audience listening to this would be. I believe that it is this powerful because it is uniquely tocotrienol and is the most potent vitamin E I have ever put my hands on. And as I told you in the story earlier, I didn't even go to South America to look for this. I was looking for something else. And I considered This spiritual to me. If you look at me, I'm Asian. I'm supposed to go to Asia and look for this thing, and then I cannot speak a word of Spanish, and then everything is in oddity. But then it's meant to me when I get to this part of the Amazonia. Other people could have discovered it, but they weren't curious enough to look. I was curious enough to look, and I'm not supposed to be there. I'm supposed to be in all these other wonderful places in Asia, but that was not where I found it. I showed you the picture. I was in Peru and I cannot speak. I'm sure you speak a lot more Spanish than I do.

I do speak it. Yes. That's amazing. Excuse this brief interruption, but I wanted to remind you that if you've been struggling with IBS, IBD, reflux, gastritis, SIBO, dysbiosis, Candida, diarrhea, constipation, and all that gut health stuff, that's my special specialty. So I work with clients not just here in Tucson, Arizona, where I live, but also virtually on video chat. And I offer single appointments as well as a 5-session gut health program for people with tougher gut health issues or mental health or autoimmune challenges that go along with that, who likely require testing and longer-term follow-up, as well as 12-week programs for weight loss. If you think that a 5-session or longer course of health coaching might help you meet your health goals, you can set up a free 30-minute breakthrough session with me to talk about what you've been going through. And I'll listen and hear if it sounds like I have something in my toolkit that you haven't already tried and let you know if I think that health coaching would be appropriate for you. You can find a link for that in the show notes. And I hope to hear from you. So you mentioned dyslipidemia. And I'm curious, does, do tocotrienols have any impact on apolipoprotein A?

We only did a study earlier on. It did drop the LP little a a little bit, but it's not dramatic. The consist on the whole cardiovascular emphasis, so that I should bear out so that you'll know what it works better than others. It consistently drop triglyceride. That's a good thing. I'm going to give you a teaching moment here. Before people become diabetic, when they're pre-diabetic, their triglyceride is high, but the sugar is normal high but still normal. The person who discovered metabolic syndrome, he called it Syndrome X before, and that was Professor Gerald Reaven. You can Google. He gave talks. He has retired from Stanford, endocrinologist, and passed away now. And, I remember one time I caught him when he would finish his talk on the run to catch his flight. So, he was a little bit irritated that I stopped him as he was walking out. I said, "Just tell me how to put my hand around this metabolic syndrome thing. And, he said one sentence and then he left like that. He said, "Dr. Tan, hypertriglyceridemia always precedes hyperglycemia." I never forgot it. So, in other words, before people have high sugar, they have high triglyceride. So therefore, if the triglyceride drop, that's a very good sign. And then, the LDL drop, most of the LDL that drop are the dense LDL, not the buoyant LDL. But in the Lp, we didn't study that in serious depth. We also studied oxidized LDL because oxidized LDL is atherogenic. And then tocotrienol is a very powerful antioxidant. So, not surprisingly, the LDL stay LDL and not get oxidized. So, we were thrilled to see that as well. So, So, pretty much, that is the group. Oh, the HDL did increase. Not by a lot. It's very difficult to increase HDL except when you exercise. And the HDL increased typically about 5%, better than the other direction. When people take a lot of carbohydrate, the HDL drop. And when you exercise, the HDL increase. And we notice with tocotrienol, the HDL increase, not dramatic, but 5%. Consistently, we see this.

Okay. So, I know that fat-soluble vitamins do build up in the body. So, I'm wondering if you can reach harmful or excessive levels of tocotrienols.

To the best of our knowledge, no. Because of the 15 to 20 clinical trials we study, the short one is about 2 to 3 months and the long one is about a year. We didn't see we didn't see that. Like this fatty liver study, we asked the physician, please, to report any unbecoming side effects. They report and they did not see any liver enzymes go up, kidney function is compromised, anything like that that they saw. So we didn't see that at all. And by the way, right now, the study in Texas is men and women who are obese, So, we were able to get an IRB, Institutional Review Board, to approve. We found this in animal all the time that when you take tocotrienol, because they're lipid-soluble, they are deposited in the fatty tissues like vitamin D, K, like that. So, we knew that in the animal. So, this is the first study we have biopsies of the adipose tissue. And then, so we'll be able to measure how much how much storage of the tocotrienol is in the adipose tissue in this obesity study. So, the obesity study will also complete by the end of next year.

Okay. And is it important to divide up the dosage that you take each day or can you take it all at once?

It's important if— you can take tocotrienol up to about 300 milligrams. And after that, if you need to take more, then you divide it, which is the classic example in the cancer study. They take 900 a 300-milligram soft gel for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to get the 900 milligrams. And in the fatty liver study, they take 2 300-milligram with lunch and dinner. And notice I always say with a meal, they're lipid-soluble. So, you shouldn't take it on an empty stomach like that. And then, for studies that only require 100 to 200 milligrams, they can take all of it at one time because they're They are not more than 300 milligrams a pop.

Okay. So I use some of the typical functional medicine lab tests with my clients like the Genova NutrEval or the metabolomics, and they only show tocopherol levels on those tests. So can you infer anything about tocotrienol status from tocopherol levels?

No, you cannot. On tocopherol, they readily do that. And I know So, that had made the tocopherol story last as long as it did. Because of the alpha-tocopherol transport protein, frequently when people take blood work because they're looking for lipid profile for cholesterol on a fasting stage and then it's about 12 hours overnight fast, then they look for vitamin E. If you ask for a blood work for vitamin E besides alpha-tocopherol like tocotrienol 12 hours, you're not going to see any tocotrienol even if they take it with the dinner about 10, 12 hours last night before. It was actually that on that one, it also have a story too. We did that 20 years ago and we found out that there were no tocotrienol in the fasting blood 12 hours after. And then, the research professor said that, "See, the tocotrienol is not absorbed. It's useless." I nearly got thrown away with the baby with the bathwater. So then, I said, "Wait a minute, you cannot say that because the blood is only a snapshot on Not that in the blood is no good, it's only snapshot. So, I have to go back to animal study. And, in animal study, this is it. In the cholesterol thing because the alpha-tocopherol, let's say if you think of it, 2, 3, 4, 10 hours like that, the alpha-tocopherol will go up like this. But, with the tocotrienol, and let's say this is 5 hours, it go up 5 hours and then it quickly go down, 6, 8 hours is back. So, if you have overnight fast, it's almost zero. First, we show this in animal. And, we show this in human. We actually did care. So, for me, it is as painful and it is heartwarming. We actually did the study just to show the pharmacokinetics at 5 hours and then it dropped back like that. So, why did it drop? It doesn't have a transport protein. And, when it dropped back, it was not pooped off or pee off. It has already delivered to the organ. But, the alpha-tocopherol, it keep being in the blood. So therefore, as a clinician, if you say that it's in the blood, therefore it's absorbed, believe that but only to a certain extent because many things are not shown in the blood. It's already been deposited into the organ. Well, if you deposited it in the organ, it's not going to spool and continue to be in the blood like that. We found that we have consistently found that in all different organ. Like I expressed in the liver, and when in animal, you can excise all the tissue. We see them all over in the brain, in the eye, and in the other organ. So, all this to say, the tocotrienol, which I didn't get to say, each person with 130 to 160-pound weight have 38 trillion cells, about 5,000 times the population of the Earth. Each one of them is like a cell, say, like a bean and has a cell wall. And most of the fat in the body is in the cell membrane and the tocotrienol go to the cell membrane. And the fattier the organ is, the more tocotrienol would be there. So, you would expect that tocotrienol would be found in your brain, in your liver, in your lung, and in all fatty tissue. Of course, in your adipose tissue like that. But, of course, in people, you say, "Well, how do you know?" We know this because they work to kill the cancer in those tissue, but we cannot poke and get a biopsy because human are not animal. So, you cannot do this. Like, in the liver study, in fatty liver, we were not allowed to do biopsy. It's a luxury we cannot have. However, if the person have cirrhosis, have liver cancer, Hep C, well, that's different. Then, they'll do a biopsy. So, the closest and the first ever we have this is with the obesity study. And for that, we are only allowed to have biopsies of the adipose tissue where the love handle is. So, that's minimally invasive, but otherwise, we are not allowed to do that. So therefore, in that case, it's legitimate to study it from the animal. However, we did have one study, is a cadaver study, and it was that we found out the liver thing. A lot of these are story finding. This professor in Ohio State got a U.S. government grant to study brain, tocotrienol in the brain. So, he was going to get $5 million grant, but NIH asked him, "But you have to show us before we gave you the $5 million to do your study that the tocotrienol is all the different tissue." Then, he said he was drawing a blank. How am I going to show him that the tocotrienol is in all the tissue? The reason NIH asked that was because they did not see it in the Oh my God. That was the reason. So, he had a problem. He didn't know how to deliver to the government that. And then, the university was so creative. He said, "We have end-stage liver failure patient. And, if they are on a liver transplant list and waiting, they may wait in vain and they may not get the transplant and then they die. So, if they give consent to take the tocotrienol and if and when they die, and they allowed their organ for human research, then you are good. So, he did. He gave it to the 20 or so patients, half of them passed away. And then, that's when he showed that the tocotrienol was found in the brain, in the eye, in the heart, in the lung, everywhere. So, he's got his money. But, a side note was half of the patients improved. Poo. Remember? He was doing this to show what he need to get the grant for the brain study. It was because of that we decided to do study on the fatty liver. It was pure. You follow that? It was not even a study. The study was just show me that the tocotrienol go to different organ. He did. He got his money, but he published a study in Journal of Nutrition. Then, he did and we And so, now, so asked by the U.S. government to show that it's found in different organ, now, we're able to find that indeed, it even helped people with fatty liver. So, sometimes, findings are not a sweet path, but it did lead to a good path. So, that's a blessing. So, it did not come from me, Lindsey Parsons. So, I cannot make claim. I'm thankful that that professor did it. So, we took the cue from that and decided to engage clinical studies.

That's awesome. So we're kind of running out of time, but I want to get to GG or geranylgeraniol, I think. So I know you've done research on that and that that might have some relationship to gut health. So can you tell me about that?

Yes. Yes. GG is an endogenous nutrient, which means your body makes it. I know that the body makes GG for at least 3 reasons, probably more. The body make GG to make the first two easier. In the back of me, that's a molecule of GG here, and the other molecule is coenzyme Q10. So, the entire tail, 2.5 times the length of GG. So, GG is used in the human body for the synthesis of CoQ10. So, everything you know about CoQ10, CoQ10, which I don't have time to explain, you need GG, otherwise, you cannot make CoQ10 in the body like that. So, second, GG is required in the body for making MK-4. Everybody in our industry know in the gut health, the gut fermentation in the gut makes MK-7. So, you can read everything about MK-7 and other menaquinone using vitamin K. But I wanted to change the audience and your understanding. In the colon, our body make MK-7 and other MK. That is to make the good bugs go up and the bad bugs go down so that your gut is in good place. But when people push the idea of making mannoquinone, remember, when mannoquinone 7 is making the gut, they are not absorbed. Absorption of nutrient is in the small intestine. So, when you make in the colon, it's in the process of making poop. It's excretory material through the rectum. So, only water is absorbed back and forth like that. I know time doesn't permit. So, I'm saying that GG help the good bugs to grow because they're feeding material for the bug to grow in the— So, they're growing more like prebiotic. By the way, another time, if you send me an email, I can send you the study. Tocotrienol works in people with Crohn's disease and inflammatory bowel syndrome. Maybe you should have another interview where I just talk about the colon like that. This one is more a general health. But for the GGPPs, the GG goes in the body and make MK-4. And the last part is about 30% to 40% of our body weight is skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle cannot be synthesized without GG. We need GG for making skeletal muscle. And so, not surprisingly, as we age, we have sarcopenia and loss of muscle mass. And, in a very specific instance, and I'm sure your audience will know this, many people take statin drug to lower cholesterol. The same pathway to lower cholesterol, just right below it is GG. So therefore, when you inhibit cholesterol, it's obligatory, you will inhibit GG. And the inhibition of GG is the reason why when people take statin, they have low CoQ10. Now, did I connect the dot? So, because you inhibit cholesterol synthesis, GG GG dropped, CoQ10 dropped. So, CoQ10 did not drop just because they took statin. CoQ10 drop when people take statin is because there isn't enough GG that statin inhibits and therefore CoQ10 drop. So, in other words, if your patient takes statin, if they measure CoQ10 and their CoQ10 drop, it is very likely that their GG has drug because GG is required for the synthesis of CoQ10. And, of course, also MK-4. And, MK-4 story is very simple. It would affect their bone health, the porosity. It would also litter the calcium in places you don't want them to be like calcified artery, kidney stone, and gallstone. So, that's a very short story about the GGPs. It's a very powerful biochemical. And, I'm only talking about it today because humbly on the same plant that I extract tocotrienol on here. After I remove the tocotrienol color, I still have some chemical there. It look yellowish like corn oil when I extract and study it. And, would you believe it? It is GG. So, I'm blessed. So, this particular plant, far out, it's kind of ancient plant in South America yield the secret of tocotrienol, which I explained to you, and now further yield the GG, which the plant makes for making all kinds of things. And for the human, it makes the 3 things I mentioned to you.

And so, would GG then be something that's helpful for people who have already calcified arteries?

Yes. We are hoping to do a study now. Currently, our two study we are doing, the main one we are doing is people who are on statin who are under a cardiologist's care and have myopathy. And, if they take a GG, if it would mitigate the myopathy on those on statin. So, it's a muscle type question at this point. And then, we're hoping to do some exercise on the muscle thing. And someday, we also will get to the sarcopenia on the elderly population. We hope to get into those area and we hoping also to study the MK-4. We believe the calcification is the MK-4 piece. When the body does not have enough MK-4, the calcium is not shuttled to the bone. You need MK-4 to shuttle to the bone and not leave it in the artery nor the gallbladder nor the kidney. So, we are now working to see how we can conduct a study to do that piece. It is so exciting. I'm supposed to retire after the tocotrienol. And then, I fumble on this GG. And this GG is very exciting. I know that the time is up. I want to tell you one thing. Please allow me. Only take less than a minute like that. GG is found in the plant. It is the last common step the plant and the animal share. And, the plant and animal is vastly different. They need green chlorophyll to photosynthesize. We need heme red to make oxygen. One need carbon dioxide, the other one need oxygen. Do you know that tonight when you go home and then you eat your food, your vegetable, you see green, you think GG. Without GG, there's no chlorophyll. Chlorophyll. And then, when you see your color, your beta-carotene, your lycopene, your astaxanthin, your lutein, your everything, all this beautiful color, you have to think GG. Without GG, there will be no carotenoid. So now, I feel very spiritual that I have this finding. GG is the last common step between these two. In the plant, it is essential. The plant cannot survive without GG. And in the human, I just told you the 3 things is essential. So, I'm just I'm thinking, wow, this GG is really cool. It is really an endogenous nutrient. And even if you take the sirtuin thing away, when we grow old, why do we have low energy? And then we don't make enough CoQ10, but nobody told me we don't make enough CoQ10 because we don't make enough GG as we age. Well, that's an important thing. And we have calcified Because we don't make enough GG and it's unable to make MK-4. And then, don't quickly jump on the MK-7. There are several menaquinone, but the only menaquinone that is making the human body is MK-4 using GG, not the other menaquinone. The other menaquinone is making the gut, however, but they're not absorbed.

Okay. So, would you be an advocate of the MK-4 form of vitamin K as opposed to the MK-7?

That is correct. I am a pro that, not for pushing any people to buy my GG. I'm saying that in true honesty. If our body make MK-4, 4 to the exclusion of all the other MK. Don't you think we should take notice? You can Google, do that. If not, you send me an email, I'll send you all the paper. I hope the Japanese scientists and the scientists in the world who figured this out, I hope that they're nominated for the Nobel Prize. This is actually a classic vitamin thing. They deserve a Nobel Prize. I don't deserve. I'm lucky that they told me this and then I'm bearing this thing out to people. If you Google, menaquinone-4 is the the only menaquinone made in 25 to 30 organs. You will never find an organ in the human body make MK-7 or 9 or 11 or 13. Those menaquinones are made by the bacteria in the colon. Now, in the colon, however, you want them to be made so the good bugs go up and the bad bugs are controlled. That you want. So, I don't want to confuse that. That's a good place. But, when they make them, they're not reabsorbed there. Only water is absorbed so that you either have diarrhea or constipation at that stage like that. But MK-4 depends on vitamin K1 being absorbed and then the tail is cut off. The ring, which is on your dark green vegetable, go in and look for 25 to 30 organ, look for GG endogenous, stitch it on. And when they do 2, that's your MK-4. I'm giving you as simple as I possibly can. And then, if you Google, you'll find a Japanese scientist studying this.

Okay. Well, now I know I should be recommending the vitamin D, K, MK-4 supplements, not the MK-7 supplements.

Yes. And then, if you want to know of a company to do that, Designs for Health. They are a very good company. I think their product is called Tri-K. Tri-K. So, they have 3 vitamin D, GG. They have GG in it. And then vitamin MK4, I forgot. So, if you just go to Design for Health Tri-K, you can find it.

Yeah, I have a dispensary. I'll put a link to it and people can go in there and I can even put my discount code for the dispensary on the show notes. Wow.

Thank you, Lindsey Parsons. Bless you and bless all your listeners to listen to you. Hopefully, in another year from now, when more of my clinical study come out, you you can have another interview of me, particularly more specific on the colon health thing and also on the other general overall health of the people. By then, I would have more clinical trials completed.

I'd love to. So briefly, can you just tell me about the supplements that you have that have the tocotrienols and the GG?

Okay. You mean who sells them? Design for Health, as I mentioned, AC grade. Allergy Research Group. And then, there are many people sell them on the internet. If you go to my website, American River Nutrition, and you say, "Buying tocotrienol," usually people said you can buy from it. We don't sell finished product. So, we list all the companies that use our— if you want to be sure that they come from us and not from other people, if it's referring to GG, it's called GG Gold. Like gold above. And, if it's tocotrienol, it will be Delta Gold because the main component is delta tocotrienol. We call it Delta Gold. We also make a product which is CoQ10 and GG. We call it Duoquinol. It's a play on the word, D-U-O-quinol. And then, some company out there sell. So, make sure that at the back of the bottle, it will say Duoquinol GG Gold. Or Delta Gold, then you know it is from us. And we make this product in the United States of America, right here in Massachusetts.

Okay. And so the ones, the supplements sold through Designs for Health are sourced through your stuff?

Yes, they are. They validated us to the nth degree and then we work with them and we are pleased that they did a thorough job. They came, they looked, they did this and that. And then we also FDA approved. Grasp everything, kosher, halal, and the whole world.

Okay, awesome. And then listeners can find you at, is it baritan.com? They can't see that. B-A-R-R-I-E-T-A-N.com, Tim.

And if you want the book, forward slash .book. Otherwise, if you lost that track, just simply type American River Nutrition, it will lead you there.

And I'll have these links in the show notes, so they should be able to find them quite easily. Well, thank you so much. This was awesome. I love your stories, and I'll definitely have you back on and would love to hear more about the Crohn's and colitis and the outcomes of your studies.

Thank you so much.

I just loved his enthusiasm for his work. He's clearly a very genuine person who is just interested in helping people with his discoveries. And while I know that this topic was a bit more tangential to gut health, I think it was important enough to put on the podcast because it impacts multivitamin supplements that many of you take, as well as many chronic conditions that many of my listeners may have. And if you are looking to switch to a multivitamin that has the tocotrienol form of vitamin E and not the tocopherol forms, in my FullScript Dispensary there are two: Integrative Therapeutics Pro Thrivers Wellness Multivitamin, which has a Delta Gold form, and Perk Lifeguard. And there's also Solar solo tocotrienol products in the dispensary. And then in my Designs for Health dispensary, there are multiple multivitamins—DFH Complete Multi, Metabolic Synergy, Twice Daily Essential Packets, Twice Daily Multi, and VitaEssence—that have the Delta Gold tocotrienols in them, as well as solo tocotrienol products with Delta Gold in them as well. And I will include my Designs for Health discount code in the show notes. And on another note, if you are a longtime listener or getting lots of useful information from the podcast, please consider becoming a regular supporter on And if you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page, join my Gut Healing Facebook group, or join my newsletter list at highdeserthealthcoaching.com, as well as Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Links for all those are in the show notes. Thanks for joining me today, and here's wishing you all the perfect stool.