Episode 99: Navigating the Complex World of Supplements with Dennis Wong, B.Sc. (Pharm.), FAARFM, CCN, ABAAHP, IFMCP

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Dr. Rob Whitfield, the board certified plastic surgeon specializing in explant surgery. Breast implant illness is a topic that is not often talked enough about, especially in medical community, but is something that affects many women. In this podcast I'll be discussing the latest research, treatment options and personal stories of women who have undergone explant surgery in an effort to heal breast implant illness. In this podcast, we'll explore the symptoms of breast implant illness and delve into the latest surgical techniques for explantation and the recovery process. Whether you are currently experiencing breast implant illness or are considering explant surgery, this podcast is a valuable resource for anyone looking to take control of their health and wellness. So let's dive in.

Today I have Dennis Wong. He has decades of experience, his pharmacy degree as well as being dedicated to revolutionizing patient centered care. Together with with his wife Cindy Wong, a fellow pharmacist, Dennis co founded Send in Pharmacies, creating a community focused healthcare hub that combines advanced compounding, functional medicine and clinical nutrition. Recognized for their innovation and commitment, Dennis and Cindy have been members of the Professional Common Centers of America since 2001, mastering specialty compounding pharmacy to address unique patient needs. Dennis's expertise has earned him collaborations with Manitoba Cancer Care and academic teaching roles where he has shared insights into integrative health approaches. As an industry leader, Dennis holds advanced Fellow certifications in Anti Aging, Regenerative and Functional Medicine from the American Academy of Anti Aging Medicine as well as advanced credentials in Clinical nutrition and Functional medicine. His contributions have been honored with prestigious awards including Canadian Compounding Pharmacists of the year 2011 and multiple recognitions for experience and excellence in patient care. Today, Dennis and Cindy not only manage their pharmacies, but also lead Sen Nutritionals, a professional grade supplement company. Outside of work, they church of their time with their sons Timothy and Christopher, fostering family values as the foundation of their success. Good morning Dennis. Lovely to have you on the show.

Thank you, Rob.

Oh, you're welcome. We'll get right into it. It's actually, you know, you're in Canada and today in Austin it's below 30 degrees which is incredibly uncommon here. And for all of us who live in the south of the United States, not accustomed to this type of weather at all creates a lot of problems. But for anybody who lives in the north like you do, not a big deal.

Yeah, well it's last a few days. We've been actually getting below minus 40 Celsius because we've got a polar vortex sitting on our area. For last a few Days. So we won't get warm up until about Thursday. Then we're gonna get to about 0 degrees Celsius, which is about 32. So we're looking forward to it.

Well, Dennis and I have talked offline many, many times and worked on different, we'll just say problems and certainly Dennis's background as it relates to compounding, development and distribution of substances for both anti aging regeneration and functional medicine in general. And we've talked at many meetings about this. So I deal with a lot of patients obviously who are interested in improving health span longevity. I take care of a lot of patients with breast implant related problems. And Dennis, I find it incredibly difficult to navigate just pharmaceuticals and supplements in general.

Absolutely.

I feel like it's a very confusing, you know, situation and maybe since I'll kind of gear it towards what I focus on a lot, which is things that will help with detoxification like glutathione or even vitamin C or methylated B complex or vitamin D3K2, like all of these things I find fundamentally, you know, important. And maybe from your perspective, those aren't compounded, obviously.

No, yeah. But it's a huge area of our practice and you know, we do like I created my own nutritional company 10 years ago and I do formulate my own supplements and stuff. So definitely that's a huge area that there's a lot of company out there. There's a lot of information out there, there's a lot of marketing out there. So for sure you need to know how to navigate through that. And a lot of time what I find it people get into issue is that they looked at, oh, you know, this company advertising with this price and this store selling with this price and just looking at the price, that's when you can get into a lot of issue because you don't know how supplens going to work.

Right. So that's a huge problem. Right. So the, the actual market forces that are driving pricing. And you know, I get asked probably as you do daily about a brand, if not a thousand times a day, probably in your position is this brand okay, you know, Dr. Witch Yield. I'm like, I don't know, how am I supposed to know if that brand is okay? That makes.

Right. There's so many, yeah, so many brand out there. Like even, you know, for me being a pharmacist and working in the whole function of medicine for the last 20 years and dealing with all these supplements, there's still companies out there that we don't know. We never heard of because almost every day there's a new company coming up on the market and patients bringing in supplement. Even the company that I know, one thing we have to also understand is every patient is individual. So you know, I have certain brand that I use with my clinical experience and response that I got last 20 years, but that does not mean that that brand's gonna 100% work for everybody.

Right? Right. Yeah. One way that I think you and I both have talked about this at meetings we've been at together is I switched from a lot of capsule or tablets to liquids because I have patients with so many absorption issues. So we use a lot of liposomal formulations in my practice.

Yeah.

I have found that a way to navigate what you just said, which is the variation in response to a given supplement. Maybe not to get too in the weeds about liposomals because that's a whole nother issue.

Right.

You know, we like liquids because one, they're easier. There's. There's not going to be the pushback about pill fatigue or size of, of capsule or tablet or, or any of that.

So.

And then they're usually I just ask them to take it once a day, which helps for compliance.

So the easy way to navigate these supplement is that a lot of people don't know this. Basically from our point of view, there's three different level of quality. To put it that, you know, easier way is that there's a supplement company that they will retail and concentrate on pharmacy store level. And then there's supplement that you can only get the brand that you can only get it at the health food store level. And then there's a supplement that you can only get at at professional level like you know, yourself and naturopathic doctors and myself with a functional medicine training that the company, certain company will only work with us because they have a higher concentration, higher quality. They call it pharmaceutical grade. So that it's the easiest way to kind of navigate to start with. And so that depending on which level of the brand you're going to be buying, the response that you're going to see is going to be different. Not that pharmacy level supplement does not work. It works for certain people. I've used it and I've seen the response. But for other people with the chronic condition like patient that you know, you're dealing with, patient that I am dealing with, pharmacy level supplement may not work for them because their background and chronic health issue that they have, they need a lot better concentration and quality supplement. And that's why you're Finding it working better for you with the liquid and liposoma because they probably already have absorption and digestion, the whole gut dysfunction. And so, you know, when they take capsule or tablets, the dissolution is going to be issue, the absorption is going to be issue. So giving them liquid, we eliminate that part of getting into solution for these capsule and tablet and then getting absorbed. So that's a huge thing. And then when you go to liposoma, that another level of absorption enhancement. So that's why, you know, I'm glad you're using the liposoma and you're able to find a lot of liquid supplement in your practice, in your area to help with your patient.

I think it's, you know, really in the last three years, you know, we started off like a lot of groups do with using basic capsules and tablets and the patients can have some ability to tolerate that if their absorption is good. But that's, you know, just like you highlighted. Yeah, I have a lot of patients with SIBO and gut dysbiosis and leaky gut. Sometimes they have chronic abdominal pain or they just from a food intake standpoint, have trouble just taking in their food.

Yeah, yeah.

To put it simply. So any way we can help them get the right nutrients to help their immune system? Because what I'm trying to do in my influence I'm having on, on patients is get their immune system working better. I'm using very specific supplements like glutathione and antioxidant and activated vitamin D with K2 and methylated B complex and, you know, some vitamin C. I know that sounds super basic, but from a diet standpoint, you worry that your patients don't really ever get those things through their diet. Now some of them, they wouldn't get through their diet anyway. But just in general.

Right.

You worry that they're not even getting those core things.

Exactly.

On a day to day basis.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, I'm sure you heard of that and that, you know, we Talk, listen to Dr. Mark Heim and a lot of his presentation and stuff, his podcast, he's talking about the food and using the food to get the nutrients and stuff. And we know that over even last 10 years, even you get an organic food. The food that we're getting are no longer the same quality of nutrients in there as compared to 10 years ago. So these basic supplement that you mentioned, like you know, active B complex and D3K2, those type of things, we really need to start supplementing it. Otherwise we are not getting enough at all. And People, you know, when I talk to my patients, I tell them you need to eat at least about four to six serving of vegetables a day to get these vitamins and minerals. And there are some cases I've seen some practitioners, such as up to 8 to 10 serving. Like if you listen to Dr. Deanna Minick, the PhD nutritionist associated with the IFM, her thing is rainbow diet. And you can go up to, you know, six to ten serving a day to get all these nutrients. And if you look at it, a lot of us, even myself, not getting that regularly, it's not easy to do.

No, I mean, I'm, I'm a much more practical person. No disrespect to the nutritionist, but in reality that's not going to happen.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, so absolutely having these like, and I'm glad you mentioned the active form of B complex. And people will, you know, sometimes ask me say, how come this burnout B complex is more expensive than that burnout B complex. And I'm saying if you look at it, this brand, the most expensive one has all the active form of B complex. The other one is like regular standard B complex. The difference is that a lot of people don't know that when you take these regular B complex, your body has to convert it to active form before it can use it. And there is some patient with genetic, you know, mutation that they cannot convert some of the vitamin B properly. So from my point of view, when I started creating my own supplement line of B complex, that's what I done is, you know, all active form of B complex. So that like, I know there's a lab test you can do to see, oh, you know, do they have a genetic issue that they cannot cover the B complex. And then we'll use the active form. For me was, no, let's just do everything at the farm. We don't have to wait for the lab test. Right. You know, like you said, be the reasonable and you'll look at what people need. Not, oh, you got to do this test and got to do that test before we can really give you something. If be complex type of thing that they, you know, they need just give them active form. Giving them active form is not going to harm them, it's going to enhance what the body need to do. So that's where you know, when you say, yeah, active form, it's absolutely, and I'm glad you said be complex because a lot of people come to me and say, oh, should I take vitamin B1, should I take vitamin B3. Oh, my doctor said I'm low in B12. Should I just take B12? And from my point of view, I'm sure you agree with that. When people get the vitamin B12 level tested at their GP office and come back and say B12 is low, if vitamin B12 is low, my point of view is all your vitamin B is going to be low. Rather than just using B12, let's go for the active B complex and then just cover it. And also, you know, you mentioned about detox. When you're trying to get your body detoxing, you need the energy and to get the energy production, mitochondrial function is all the vitamin B complex, especially B3, B6, B2. So you know, giving active form of vitamin B is going to enhance energy production so that the body can then able to detox. The other thing is that in the liver, the whole detox process, you know, there's a two part to it as we know it. The first part, there's a lot of vitamin B complex actually involved actively working in there. So there's, you know, so I'm glad that you said active B and that's the basic that we need and absolutely to your body to be able to detox properly.

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Your wellness routine for our patient population. You know, 40% of the population in general is going to be MTHFR positive. So everybody at this point should understand that there's different genes involved in the methylation process and it's best to have a methylated supplement and it's better to have a complete versus a isolated supplement. Do you have any thoughts about this? The synthetic B complex supplements versus a more naturally sourced. I know there's a lot of folks who talk about this and happy to open it up to get your thoughts on this because it's very hard to navigate. Once again, I hate to use that term so frequently, but what are your thoughts on this? All this synthetic B?

Well, from my point of view is as long as it's active form, then synthetic or natural only make it like 2 millimeter is how I see it. Like, for example, I'm going to talk about bioidentical hormones. There was a huge thing, you know, 20, 15, 20 years ago, you know, you got to go to bioidentical hormone and you don't want the synthetic hormones. And then there's some traditional gynecologists got into the discussion and he did argument with a lot of us and they pointed out that bionetical hormone like progesterone and testosterone that were compounding, they are actually synthetically made, but they are chemically exact identical to the hormones that our body produce. So they kind of use that term to discredit the bioidentical hormone, saying, oh, it's synthetically made, it's not, you know, natural. But if you look at manufacturer pharmaceutical like medroxyprogesterone compared to progesterone, bioidentical progesterone chemical structure is totally different. Both of them are synthetically made, but bioidentical hormone progesterone is chemical structurally exactly the same identical as our body made. But medroxyprogesterone is not. And then if you look at the estrogen site, you know, we used to use a lot of Premarin, which is hormones from estrogen from horse urine compared to estradiol synthetically made biological hormone. Again, it's exactly same chemical structure as our body makes. So when come to synthetic, you have to look at what's the chemical structure, all of that. So from my point of view, for vitamin B, either active form or regular one, as long as you get active form, synthetic or natural, doesn't make it too, too much different because the body see the chemical structure, it's like a, you know, lock and key, right? R receptor, all these vitamins work with the receptor, go into receptor and the enzyme, the enzyme then can then get activated. So if you cut the wrong key or wrong structure of the vitamins or minerals or hormones, your body not going to respond properly. And so for me is that's the key.

Okay.

Yeah.

I get asked, as you probably do as well, certainly about whatever the latest thing, it's being discussed on Instagram, of.

Course, or you know, and that's one of the warning that I wanted to put out is that there's a lot of marketing and social media stuff. You need to be careful with it, especially the marketing product that coming out. Like, you know, I look at many of them because my patients say, oh, you know, I saw this. What do you think? And after an hour of listening to infomercial, I'm like, I wasted my time because, you know, whatever. Like they hyped us so much. So just be careful when you're buying these online, like especially I'm not trying to, you know, give any brand name to anybody. But when you're buying online especially, how do you know this is a good supplement and good quality except whatever the company is advertising to you.

Right. You have no idea. And I have a lot of aggressive clients and they're willing to do just about anything to feel better. And yeah, let's talk about glutathione. This is one of my most asked about substances. You know, glutathione has been around for ages.

Yeah.

And if I talk to friends who are from Europe, you know, they can get glutathione in five or six different forms. And many of them had trouble sourcing it, you know, during the pandemic. And they were convinced it was coming, we'll just say out of Asia.

Yeah.

And they couldn't, you know, source it even through, you know, countries in Europe. I won't name any specific countries, but. And then magically everything's back and you have all these different options. We'll say so. And I use liposomal glutathione. In full disclosure, I use it for my, myself and my clients. What is your take on, you know, glutathione?

I love glutathione. One of the thing is that glutathione, you know, we call it super antioxidant. So it's react to every thing that can oxidize. So with that glutathione is very unstable. And the only form that I find it that work for my clients or my patient and myself is liposomal form that you're using. And up in Canada it's really hard to get liposomal glutathione. It's because Canadian system, up in Canada, if you want to market the supplement, you need to get the registration through Health Canada and get the approval for safety, etc. So that process itself is for say liposomal glutathione. It's going to take minimum 210 days before they approve it. And that's not going to guarantee that they'll approve it. So not a lot of company will go through that registration process. So we only have like one or two companies of glutathione, liposomal glutathione up here. So with that the price is a little bit on the expensive side and then you got to store in the fridge type of thing. So I have not used too much of the glutathione myself in my practice in last 20 years. What I've done is that I've used a lot of nac.

Okay.

And I would do up to like say a thousand milligrams three times a day of the NAC instead of the glutathione. Unless it's a severe cases that yeah, absolutely. They not going to have enough, you know, NAC in to convert to glutathione. Then I would then use the liposomal glutathione.

And you're using the NAC as a capsule.

Capsule, yeah. And for whatever reason that again, I'm glad you sourcing able to source good quality liquid, you know, vitamins and minerals down in your practice up in Canada. Again, it's hard to come by. There's not a lot of liquid. So my trick that I do with a lot of my patient is that when they said, you know, they can take the capsule, they got stomach ache, et cetera, it's because they are not producing enough acid in your stomach. So what I tell them to do is to take the supplement capsule or tablet with the half a lemon freshly squeezed with the 8 ounce of water. You take that lemon water with your supplement and that will enhance dissolution absorption. Break it down. Yeah. And then you don't have that stomach pain or you know, not getting that effect from the supplements.

And then maybe to wrap it up, transition from that to now you've formulated your own. And do you have your own manufacturing or do you work with manufacturers?

I work with what we call it contract manufacturer. Initially. 10 years ago when I started it, my goal was to have my own manufacturing plant so that I have 100% control of it. And then I found out that to start up the manufacturing plant in Canada, it's going to take about 100 to $150,000 to start with equipment alone. And there's a lot of subcontract manufacturer across Canada that GMP certified by Health Canada. So you know, for us is there no point of doing it and then sourcing the raw chemical are served these manufacturer, they have their contact and staff. So what I do is then as if I need to, I tell them specific branded trademark ingredients that I ask them to source for me and they have contact and then they will then talk to them. Do we have to then sign a contract with the supplier, like for example Curcumin. I'm bringing in Phytosoma, Curcumin into my capsule and I had to sign a contract with a company that owned the trademark Mariva Curcumin, which is the Phytosoma Curcumin, to use their trademark product, all of that. So it takes a little bit longer. But as long as we know what ingredients specifically we want in our supplement, you can talk to the subcontract manufacturer and they can then source that for you. So there's two layer of it using them advantage is that you don't have to go source these are ingredients yourself. Secondly, they already got CGM P certified manufacturing plant with Health Canada. So you know, you don't have to worry about going through that process with Health Canada with a brand new setup.

So okay. Well, I think outside of skin care supplements are the supplement industry and just the, the number of, sheer number of supplement is kind of overwhelming. And to try to stay, you know, on top of it like you do in your profession, I give you all the credit because it's very hard to constantly get asked about another supplement that's come to market. And so we try to keep ours obviously very, very simplistic for both ease of explanation and in our case for compliance with our patients in our clinic. Well, I really appreciate you hopping on today from Canada. It's been a pleasure and I look forward to seeing you at our next meeting. Can you tell everybody where they can learn more, especially if they're in Canada and want to work with you?

Yeah, if they're in Canada, they can actually go to my website, cinden.com, cind.com and then they can book the strategy, call with me and then I can discuss with them a little bit more of where they are and where they need to go. And sometime even like they're on some supplement already and I can kind of assess and say is it going to work for you or not? Because I have patient that come to me with on the supplement for five years and they still not feeling well, then that's definitely that supplement not working for you. You don't need to take five years and you still not feeling well, then it's not working. So definitely, you know, those kind of things within 15, 20 minutes discussion, I can kind of tease it out for them. So that will be the best way. And then if needed to then you know, we can then set up longer console, et cetera.

Thanks again for joining me, Dennis. I look forward to seeing you again soon.

Absolutely. Bye.

Thanks for joining me today. I hope you found the information and stories shared on this podcast helpful. And informative. Remember, taking control of your health and wellness is key to recovery from breast implant illness. If you're looking for additional resources and support, be sure to visit our online store, Dr. Rob's Solutions at drrobsolutions.myshopify.com you'll find a to way wide range of wellness products and supplements to support your journey to recovery. From specially formulated detox supplements to personalized skincare products, we have everything you need to aid your recovery.

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Rob's Solutions today at DrRobsSolutions myshopify.com Thank you for listening and we'll be back with another episode soon. Remember, you're not alone in this journey and together we can overcome breast implant illness. Take care.