Do Vitamin Patches Actually Work? What Happens When Vitamins Bypass the Gut

Okay, real quick before we get into it, if you've ever swallowed a pill and even thought, is this even doing anything? This episode is for you. Welcome to The Biohack Method. I am Lindsey Burwell, and every week I break down the science, cut the fluff, and hand high-performing women the real tools like peptides, transdermal patches, quantum energy, and root cause biohacking to actually feel like themselves again. Let's get into it. Hey, welcome back. So glad you're here. I am Lindsey Burwell, CEO and founder of The Patch Method, a wellness brand that delivers vitamins and supplements through transdermal patches rather than pills or powder— powders for more optimal absorption. Before we dive into today's episode, a little fun update. We just celebrated one year with The Patch Method. It was so crazy, one, to think like a whole year has gone by. It's been one of the most incredible years. Um, but the celebration was so amazing. We had probably over 100 people within the community, um, from our team to affiliates, ambassadors, clients, customers, friends, family come and celebrate here in Gilbert, Arizona. We did a fun kickoff with a Pilates class with Alondra at Simplicity Co. We had mocktail cocktails that were very Patch Method-esque, and then we had a photo booth, a DJ. We had tons of giveaways. Incredible local companies that came in to give some biohacking giveaways, as well as some of my favorite brands put together these incredible birthday bags. And then one of the funnest things we did was we launched a new patch and you had to be at the celebration to find out which patch it was and to be able to get your hands on it first. And that new patch is called Her Balance. This patch is everything for balancing hormones naturally. So before jumping into any HRT or birth control, right? If you're one of those women who just feels like, man, my hormones are always off. I don't feel right. I don't feel synced up. This patch was created just for you. It has amazing adaptogens and vitamins that naturally balance estrogen, cortisol, and all different hormones that just help you get more in sync. Help you regulate, help you relax, and just help you flow. So if hormones is something you are working on right now, I highly recommend the Her Balance Patch. And if you do grab one, I'd love to see it pop on our social media. We get the best tags every day of people celebrating, optimizing their bodies, stepping into vitality, and wearing The Patch Method. So anytime you are out and about wearing your patch, feel free to take a photo, send it to us, tag us. We love Love, love to see, uh, we like to call it patches out in the wild. It's so fun. Okay, so let's dive into today's episode because I get this question all the time. Do vitamin patches actually work or is it just another wellness gimmick? I wanna answer this honestly because I don't like wasting time on things that don't hold up, right? If you know anything about me, that means so much. So. Here's the thing that's so important to know about what it takes to actually break down a vitamin. And this is something that I saw with them. And when I was in my practice working one-on-one, I'm an integrated health practitioner by trade, and I would see hundreds of women a year and they would come to me. We would look over all their bioanalytics. We'd look at the drivers of inflammation. We would study their metabolism. We would look at detox pathways. We would also look at diet, lifestyle, stress, and then what vitamins they were taking. And I started noticing a pattern within the last year of my practice. I started noticing women coming to me taking literally a mortgage payment worth of vitamins, yet their bioanalytics, their labs actually showed deficiencies in the vitamins that they were actually taking. So that just got me to start really questioning, like, what is going on here? I don't have a vitamin or a supplement to offer you because you're already taking it and you're not absorbing it.. And so I really just took it into my own hands to figure out, well, what else can I offer these clients to help them feel better? Right. And that's where I found transdermal delivery. And I really started studying the science of first-pass metabolism. So basically what happens when you take a supplement, it has to survive your stomach acid, and then it gets broken down by the liver, and then it passes through your digestive tract and your gut lining in order for it to then be absorbed by the, the blood, right? And that is called first-pass metabolism, and it wrecks a huge chunk of whatever you just took. That's assuming if your gut is actually even functioning well, right? So if you have leaky gut, inflammation, low stomach acid, anything that is causing microbial imbalance, you're absolutely not gonna be absorbing optimally. If you have heavy, you know, heavy toxic load, which Unfortunately, it's so hard to avoid in today's world, right? Think of all the EMS, the Wi-Fi, the Bluetooth, all these environmental interferences that our liver actually is very responsible for getting rid of, right? Our liver's job is basically getting rid of anything and everything that is not of the body. So just think of that. Think of the last 5 years even in our world and the exposures we're having, the modern society we live in, and how much harder our liver is required to work. Just to get rid of these things. And it's so, so, so powerful why a lot of people are not absorbing. And the studies are actually showing that most people are only absorbing about 20% of their vitamins. 20%. So think of like, think about all the vitamins you're taking, like maybe 200, 300, maybe $1,000. I mean, there was a point there, I'm not even gonna lie. I was pretty proud of all the vitamins I was taking. I even remember like taking pictures on social media, like Here we go. You know, biohacking. Um, and I remember also having the thought of like my, it's like my intuition knew it was too much. And, and just thinking about like, man, I'm spending a lot of money here. Like, is this actually working? And so that's what's so important about is step, taking a step back, really auditing, looking at what you're taking and knowing that it is a lot on your liver to have to break that down and have to process that. And that could be a lot of money. That's really just like going down the drain. I always joke it's very expensive pee, right? So this is where transdermal delivery is so powerful. So when I learned about the first-pass effect and I was searching for what could be next, transdermal delivery was an option that was really powerfully written back by science. That's actually been around a really long time and works very differently because transdermal delivery, it works with the largest organ of your body, and that is your skin. And basically it enters the body through the skin, right into the bloodstream. It bypasses the gut, it bypasses the liver, and has no first pass effect at all. And this actually isn't new science. You guys think nicotine patches, hormone patches, motion sickness patches. These are all things that have actually been around and medicine has trusted for decades. And it's a delivery route that actually works. So not every patch on the market was something that I was looking for. And that is where, you know, I started searching, okay, transdermal delivery can be a powerful option, but what I was finding was not what my clients really needed. Because again, I studied and specialized in the metabolic pathways, metabolism, inflammation, inflammation, detox pathways, and there wasn't really a lot of patches out there for that. And I also really cared about it being high quality, USA-made, unfiltered vitamins. I also wanted to consolidate the vitamin routine. I didn't want one patch for every vitamin. I mean, you'd be wearing probably 100 patches a day, right? So upwards of 10 vitamins in each patch was something important to me. And because there was nothing that I liked on the market, I thought, well, maybe I can find someone to make this. And initially I thought about making it really just for the clients I was working with. But what was so fun was when we launched The Patch Method and I was able to get my clients on this modality, the overwhelming feedback, the texts, the messages, the follow-ups that were like, I feel this. I feel incredible. I'm sleeping through the night. I'm waking up less inflamed. I have more mental clarity. I have more energy. I love not taking the pills, which side note, I think that there is absolutely a pill fatigue, um, really issue happening today. Um, I know for me, when I got into this work, supplements were the thing and it was like a promise and it was exciting to be like, okay, yes. This supplement is gonna fix me. And fast forward now, 12 years, people have tried a lot of supplements and they don't feel any different. And again, a lot of that is because of the first pass effect, cuz the world we live in, our liver is inundated, our gut is out of whack. And so we're kind of just like, yeah, I'm a little fatigued at the pills. I don't know if I have a trust with the supplements. I don't know if that is gonna be the thing that's gonna really move the needle. And so when we launched The Patch Method and got all this incredible results, I knew this was a product that needed to get in the hands of other women to really help them level up, step into that vitality, and really just start feeling incredible. And so the transdermal patches truly are so amazing and how it works and why it works with The Patch Method is that you have to get the molecule of the vitamins actually small enough to be delivered into the skin. And that is something my team specializes in. The formulation needs a, a very specific delivery model to be able to absorb past those, um, skin barriers. And that is what makes The Patch Method so distinct is because we utilize not just those smaller molecule vitamins and adaptogens, but we also have incredible enhancers to get it actually in to the bloodstream. So this is what makes Truly Us so revolutionary is that we are utilizing unfiltered vitamins, small molecule vitamins. We have the enhancers, they're USA-made, unfiltered, and they have upwards of 10 different vitamins within each patch to be more bioavailable. Here's some really interesting research, um, that we have done within transdermally we have found about vitamins being absorbed. So vitamin D, for example, a clinical study actually showed that a daily vitamin B— D patch increased blood levels by 22% in 8 weeks. Huge. Glutathione. In 2023, a pilot study proved that topical glutathione boosted blood antioxidant activity and reduced oxidative stress in just 2 weeks. 72 hours. This is huge because think about our cells in the world that it lives in. What causes, causes our cells to actually start breaking down is from oxidative stress, from stress of the environment, also internal stress. That's what ultimately causes aging is really just our cells breaking down. So antioxidants come in, they preserve the cells, get them back in their youthful state to get them working more optimally. And with the patch, the glutathione in it, it is increasing that activity just in 72 hours. Absolutely huge. Let's look at CoQ10. In a controlled trial, a transdermal CoQ10 patch achieved greater total absorption than any CoQ10 absorb, um, supplement within all blood levels. Huge, huge. CoQ10 is better absorbed basically. Via skin than in blood. So very powerful. And we have that in every single one of our patches. Another thing we add is things like, um, peppering and different enhancers to actually, again, cross that fatty acid membrane. And it actually has been shown to double nutrient penetration through the skin. I also will pause to say that if you have been following us recently, we actually launched a derma roller. We call it the Pre-Patch Ritual. This is a derma roller where if you roll it across the skin for even just 30 seconds, it opens the micro channels of the skin. Studies show absorption increases up to 10,000%. Amazing. Incredible. Oh my gosh. Completely obsessed with this. Also, little hack, you can actually use it on your skin, which, side note, skincare, transdermal delivery. Have we not been doing this our entire life, right? We're utilizing vitamin C on our skin. We're washing our skin. We're putting all these amazing ingredients, hopefully amazing, on our skin, and that is being absorbed into the body. And so that again is another example of transdermal delivery. Same with like a magnesium bath. I'm going on a tangent here, guys. I tend to do that, but think of when, when your muscles are tight and how effective a warm magnesium bath is. It's because that magnesium. Entering the body through the skin. That is a transdermal delivery. So going back to why oral supplements fall short, and it's truly again, that limited absorption in the gut, that scut, that stomach irritation has— have you guys ever taken a vitamin? Like, oh my gosh, like I feel nauseous. Huge. Hate that. My kids do that all the time. Um, and then just again, vitamins when you are taking them. It's like a fire hose to the liver. We can't control how much is being absorbed per, per person. So it fluctuates blood levels per person. That is why a lot of doctors also will prescribe estrogen cream over estrogen pills because they can control the dosing better and support their clients better, right? Their, their customers, their patients better. And so this is just, again, an incredible modality. Our formulas are so powerful, clinically validated nutrients, vitamin D, glutathione, CoQ10, zinc, milk thistle, sulforaphane, and then proven bioenhancers, which really make our patches supreme, the number one on the market. And again, with that consolidation makes taking care of yourself so, so, so easy. So I have a little fun biohack for you guys this week, and we're going to start implementing this because Listening is one thing, but actually executing and implementing is where we see change and start taking those steps forward to the person, the vitality, the life you want to live. So my challenge for you this week, I want you to go into your pantry or your supplement cabinet, your supplement graveyard, I have heard people say, and I want you to look at what you're taking. Also, just look at what you have and be like, holy crap, I've spent a lot of money on this stuff. Um, look at what you have, go through. All the different vitamins and ask yourself honestly, like, am I absorbing this? And then what I want you to do is check out our ingredients in the patches and see if maybe there's an opportunity to consolidate. Maybe you are already taking methylated B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin D. You can get rid of those vitamins and take one patch instead, right? Um, instead of spending $200 on a detox, Grab the detox patch that has sulforaphane and milk thistle, has glutathione, methylated B vitamins, sodium to help with fluid retention. It also has, um, the DHM, incredible for, um, detoxification. I love to wear it at night because your body does go through a natural cleansing cycle and we can support that and enhance that with the detox patch. Let's say, you know, cold and flu season, get yourself some immunity patches, have those ready to go because those are gonna be able to support your body with vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, elderberry, CoQ10, powerhouse of immune boosting ingredients. And you can forget all the pills. Also amazing. I love using it with my kids. One and done. They go to school. It's a no-brainer. Um, the metabolism patch. Gosh, if you are really working on inflammation and supporting blood sugar, which is essential for getting your body into a fat burning state and getting out of glucose burning, the metabolism patch has the berberine. Oh my gosh. Amazing for blood sugar. It's got some great fat burning amino acids in it. It's got the glutamine, which is huge for healing your gut lining. That is where your GLP receptors are that help with satiate— being satiated, right? And full from food. And so that could be a really great patch. We have such incredible tools where you can consolidate and really just actually start absorbing your vitamins. I right now, I'm actually wearing the detox patch over my liver. I had it on at night. Um, these are 12-hour patches, so I have a few more hours I'm kind of soaking in out of it. So go to thepatchmethod.com and you can actually put in a promo code PATCHMAGIC for $15 off your first patch kit. Also, our subscription model is amazing because you're gonna get not only a discount, but the patches right to your door, and you're gonna be able to stay on top and not to think about the reordering and making sure you don't run out, things like that. So I am so, so, so passionate about this topic. There is nothing, nothing I care more about. Women taking their power back, stepping back in alignment with their body, and start showing up for their life. That is the mission behind every single thing I do, including the blood and love streaming through The Patch Method. And this is because, you guys, I have been in a season of my life where I did not feel great. I was inflamed. I had absolute hormone chaos. I was crippling with anxiety. My inflammation was through the roof and doctors just said I was fine. My blood work looked fine, but I did not feel fine. And more than that, I wasn't showing up for my life. And so my mission is to help women not just feel amazing. Yes. Your clothes fit better, your skin is glowing, you have more energy. Love, love all of those. But how are you showing up for your life? There's no dress rehearsal. This is it. And when you feel that vitality, you see a shift. It changes you and it also changes the people around you. And that is really the mission of everything, like I said, I do and the love behind The Patch Method. So thank you so much for joining. I will see you on the next episode of The Biohack Method Podcast. That's it for today's episode of The Biohack Method. If this lit something up in you, share it, tag me @lindseyburwellwellness, and drop a review. It genuinely helps this show reach more women who really need it. I'll see you next time.