Innovations in Mineral Testing and Delivery with Barton Scott and Sachin Patel

Well, my friends, and welcome to perfect practice Today. With me, I have somebody who has literally changed my life, Barton Scott. He is a biochemist and a extremely knowledgeable and generous human being. So I'm super excited that he's sharing his wisdom and knowledge with us today. He actually sent me a package. I didn't even know who it was from. And fortunately, I'm in a position where I get a lot of cool, free stuff and I get to try out products. And he sent me this. I hope you can see it. It's called upgraded magnesium. And at first, I was looking at the bottle. It says, calm, focus, deep sleep. And the universe has a way of conspiring and giving us what we need exactly when we need it. And around this time, my deep sleep was tanking for a variety of different reasons. And I was getting a little concerned because I weren't oura ring every day. And I was getting, like, some nights 20 minutes, some nights half an hour, which is very unusual for me. And so, as a result of getting what I suspect to be Covid, I never got tested, but it checked off a lot of the boxes. Everything was fine except my deep sleep. And I just couldn't shake it. For whatever reason, started taking the upgraded magnesium, and boom. Now my deep sleep, on average is over two hours, so it's even better than it was before. So totally upgraded my sleep, which obviously we all know upgrades our quality of life. And once I found out who the package was from, through a mutual mentorship and mastermind that we belong to called Mindshare, Bart and I instantly connected. And I said, man, more people need to hear about this. And as I started learning more about him and the amazing work that he's doing in the world, I started learning that there's so much information that he has to offer. And I said, hey, you know what? Let's do a podcast. Let's share this information far and wide and get as many practitioners and, you know, prospective clients and patients aware of minerals and the extreme value that they have in our health and how overlooked they are. You know, a lot of times we're looking for, you know, fancy solutions. Sometimes the simple solutions are right under our nose. So we're going to talk about testing today. We're going to talk about, you know, certain key facts that we need to know about minerals and how to replenish them, of course, is going to be a big thing during our conversation today. So thanks for joining me today. I appreciate you and the impact that you've had on my life already.

It's great to be on with you, Sachin, and so great to hear that.

Yeah, I'm sure you hear things like this all the time, right? Like people reporting back to you, telling you how much your products have made a difference. So we're going to share some case studies today. I'd love to hear some of your favorites, and I always like to start with your origin story. So, as a biochemist, it seems natural that you'd get into human biology and helping people. But where did your journey really start?

Well, for me, I started supplementing by the time I was 12 because I did several sports and one of the sports was wrestling. And, you know, you have to make weight and you can't just eat just anything. And I was just determined to, you know, to do well and was looking for some nutritional edges that didn't involve things like steroids. So I. It taught me to learn the world of supplements much faster than I would have. And that was in the late 90s and then, you know, so I'm in my mid-30s now. And when I was in my mid-20s, mid to early 20s, I was finishing up college and I was working to help my. I was born to older parents, so I was working to help my mother with her health. And unfortunately, that solution didn't come in time fast enough. We did make a lot of progress. She was never overweight, but she, you know, I helped her lose probably 20 pounds and, and really find kind of her ideal weight. But there were still certain issues. And what I noticed that was alarming for her was also becoming alarming for me, which was that we had deficiencies. Through looking at different testing methods, we identified different deficiencies that weren't improving. So I did a test, my girlfriend did a test, her dad and my mother, and we're looking at this data and I've had them on different supplements. Even before I was a nutritionist also. I remember just kind of acting as a nutritionist for people and applying a lot of this knowledge and what was kind of early days of functional medicine and running through different tests with different practitioners. And I noticed this one test, this hair analysis, particularly because I had a great consultation from someone that was incredibly knowledgeable. It opened my eyes, it changed my life. And that's a big part of why we're talking today is because without that, I wouldn't have gone on this path of, oh, we're not absorbing, oh, my God, what do we do now? Because we're taking quality brands, it's not about quality. And we're retesting the levels aren't moving, the symptoms aren't changing. She, my mother in that case is getting on more medication, which is leading to surgery because the body's having to detox the toxicity of the medication. I just remember thinking after she passed going, even if I can be at peace with this, there's still a system error happening. She, I think, was living an ideal American life where, you know, she had retired, she had had a good, good career, had access to great medical care, and all that slipped away because her health slipped away towards, you know, her mid to late 60s. And I remember thinking, like, how much wisdom is lost when the old die young? You know, like she should have had a solid 20 more years easily to live or more. Right. I didn't really see that there was anything tremendously wrong with our ever. What I would look at it now is it was a lot of calcium overload, for example, that was causing, not to get too technical too quickly, but causing an overload of calcium in the body, in the cells, making hard for it to absorb other minerals, causing imbalances in the body, things like that. And it's just a virtuous. Well, just the opposite of a virtuous cycle from there. And we see that's true today in a lot of the work we do. Many people have too much calcium, just as a side note. And a lot of people are taking vitamin D and that's increasing calcium absorption and furthering the disconnect between calcium and magnesium in their body and calcium and phosphorus in their body and calcium and potassium in their body. It really is more about the ratios and individual nutrients, in other words. So that's, that's where I started. And then from there I started applying. I was fresh out of school. I was still thinking like, you know, from an innovative place. And we had worked with nanotechnology applications and I had professors that had tons of field experience and PhDs as well. And, and I just knew that I could. I had the resources, I had the training to figure out what chemies normally do for huge companies in say, oil and gas or something that I could take a process, industrial process and improve it and do that for, in this case, minerals specifically, and just drastically improve the absorption so that the body due to gut dysfunction, due to low stomach acidity, things that plague nearly everyone we work with, even if they're moderately to very healthy, they still seem to have a lot of these issues. Very, very common. I knew if I was having those issues in my mid-20s and I was already so far ahead of the curve in what I knew and what I was willing to do from a place of discipline, I was still having those issues. Like, truly everyone would benefit from this. So that's where I just went to work. And I've spent the last roughly decade in this area.

Some. Thank you. So one of the things that you said that's important, I think, is, is ratios. You know, we as a society, especially as a Western society, we think if a little bit is good, a lot is going to be better. And that really throws the, you know, us out of balance. And that's what really health is all about, is. Is balance. So how, you know, when we go to the doctor, like, they're not looking at all the numbers, right? They're. They're looking at maybe calcium, if you're lucky, they're looking at vitamin D, and if you're lucky, they're looking at magnesium and zinc. But there's so many other minerals that they should be assessing and evaluating. So let's talk about the assessment process because, you know, I've heard of hair mineral analysis for a long time now, and truth be told, I've always been a little bit suspicious or skeptical of it. Maybe it's because I don't have any hair, I don't know. But you just don't know what, who to trust, what to believe, like what tests are valid, what tests are not valid. So I really appreciate your perspective as a biochemist and somebody who's, you know, really unraveled the mysteries of their own health and other people's health using this testing because it looks at a much broader picture. And now we can start seeing ratios and, and seeing where the imbalances are coming from and start correcting this. So let's talk about the testing and the process itself.

Sure. Yeah, I'd be happy to.

Yeah.

I think I was also in that camp of, you know, like, why are we using hair? Like, isn't, you know, don't. You know what, why haven't I heard about this before? You know, is it accurate? These are all just very valid questions. And the answer is, like anything, there are many labs out there that with blood testing, urine, all these different things that don't do as great of a job as some others. That's true of anything. That's true of individuals. It's true of companies, all those things. What we find is that when we send the same sample to all of our labs, we get within 3 to 5%, you know, of the same exact answer, which tells you a lot. The other thing that tells you a lot is when someone can be on a phone call or a zoom call with you, one of our nutritionists, for example, and they can, with their deep knowledge of the test, understanding it because it is much, it's seemingly easy to interpret, but it's more difficult than any functional medicine test that to interpret. It's easy to take because you don't have to do blood draws, things like that. You don't have to, you know, wake up in the middle of the night like ideally you would do with the Dutch test, depending on who you ask for that. But you know what's cool with this? What I find so interesting is that you get, like you said, the big picture. You get, you know, all the valuable nutrients in the body and you, you get to understand that. And when you have a great consultation, someone will be able to tell, ask, slash, tell you things that you would think they would have no way of knowing because the test is accurate and they, they're able to glean that information from the test. So when, when you can do that eight or ten times with someone, you start to go, wow, I get, I mean, I guess it's accurate then because they wouldn't know that I, I have this issue, that issue, that issue and that I, for example, may not have trouble falling asleep, but I have some trouble staying asleep as an example, or that I haven't remembered my dreams in quite a while with any frequency at least. So, you know, things like that are tremendously interesting to me and those, those things caught my attention early on and I found them incredibly fascinating.

Very good. So what are some of the things that you can pick up? You said sleep quality, right? Ability to fall asleep, stay asleep. How about things like hormonal imbalances, adrenal thyroid dysfunction? Are those things that you see clear patterns on, on the lab testing?

We do, we absolutely do. It's some of the things that I, the, the endocrine system in general is, is really the area I like to focus on a lot and on from an optimization standpoint and giving a. Identifying which nutrients those organs are needing most that are in that system and what is missing and then where to prioritize the support. All of that is really fascinating. We're able to see adrenal function or dysfunction, the level of dysfunction we're able to see and whether they're high or low, whether the adrenals are underperforming or over performing. Same thing with thyroid. We're able to see parathyroid dominance, for example. We actually have a course for practitioners Whether it's doctors, nutritionists, health coaches, they can go through, if they're interested in that, in becoming confident in it. Because it was a lot to figure out. I've just condensed this last decade into what is like a three hour course. And it, yeah, it really helps. So I wish I could cover all of it right now and give people understanding if that, if, if you're one of those people listening, but just know that we also have that as an option and, you know, if you have questions that we don't cover here, that's, that's a, just another path. But yeah, I find that those are interesting things. We can also look at someone's metabolism and tell a lot about what their protein intake is like, for example, or if they likely have low stomach acid by a series of. Not only looking at results, but asking questions. Right. So, for example, if one of the ratios that we look at is particularly high and the person says they're consuming, you know, somewhere between 0.7 to 1 gram of protein per pound, and they're trying to actually put on muscle and they're, you know, over a certain point in this particular ratio, it's likely that they have, you know, low stomach acid. It's likely that they would benefit from a protocol to support that, amongst other things. Right. So that, that's one of many questions. And then you start to build a framework and you start to really zone in and you know what else they're struggling with and what their goals are. So, like, really listening to people, I think, is a rare thing that gets done in our world. And I know you're certainly a proponent of that and so am I. Like, it's very frustrating, right, to hear that your levels are normal and you have like, either breakouts from head to toe or your energy levels are bad or you have insomnia.

Help.

Health is complicated. I'm not going to say for a minute that it, that it's easy, but I think with this approach, it simplifies things as much as possible that I've been able to find at least.

Awesome. Barton, I'm going to ask you for a quick favor. If you could just do a mic check. Your mic is rubbing against your collar. So.

Okay, sure.

So I want to make sure people don't miss anything you say.

Sure.

You know, and I think that's really important, what you just said there is kind of looking at the whole picture, looking at patterns, identifying patterns, and then helping people feel like they're being heard and being seen. Because a lot of times you go to the doctor and you're told, oh, everything looks great. And off you go, feeling terrible but frustrated at the same time. And thankfully, not everyone gives up. And unfortunately, some people do, right? They just think that, hey, this is the way it's going to be. But many people don't. And they end up finding practitioners like yourself or the coaches that you've trained, or maybe they end up in our practice or the practitioners that we coach. And it's great to have. You know, I love at home testing because it can be done from the comfort of your home. And I love being able to spend time with somebody, reviewing the lab results and really feeling heard and feeling seen. I think that's so much of the battle when it comes to finding out what's wrong with us and how we're going to find our path back to wholeness and wellness now, you know, as we continue this conversation, I'm curious as to we're talking about minerals, but I'd love to know how vitamins and minerals kind of dance together and the importance of having both.

Yeah, that's a great question. So minerals are enzyme activators for the body, right? Right. So as you're listening to this, you've probably heard the term that squished together fruits and vegetables, even though, you know, there's, there's quite a difference between those. And we hear the same thing. Vitamins and minerals. Right? We've, we've heard that for years and we think that one getting one necessitates getting the other. And you know, for us that have been in this, this world a lot longer, we know that's of course not the case. And from my perspective, the most important of the two are minerals, and for the reason that they activate all the enzyme pathways in the body. And for example, I did a long fast where I consumed water, salt, a bunch of our minerals. Based on the results and things I was low in, I was able to have a lot of mental clarity and do a pre painless fast. And you know, I got sunlight, I used fat for my body, and I use minerals to activate, you know, and support glandular function. And I, you know, I had plenty of energy, which is, I think, just what a lot of people are looking for. I felt like it was the greatest life hack I'd ever found because I also got a month's worth of work done in this time. So just with insane, insane clarity and know, upregulating all my hormones in the process from, from that protocol and really doing it the right way. So that's that's one way to think of it. The. Yeah, the interplay also is that we do need certain vitamins to active or to, to allow for the utilization of. Right. So, for example, B6 helps you utilize magnesium in the body. And we see a lot of people that need B6. And what that will look like on the hair test is they will say that they're not even supplementing magnesium or they're supplementing. Another example is their magnesium levels are low. They do a test with us, they start doing. One of the supplements that they start taking is upgraded magnesium like the one you mentioned earlier. And then the next test, they shoot up and their levels are high, which is great. We show that they're, they're getting a lot more. But maybe, you know, one of the ways that we look at that and this has to do with asking people questions too, like, hey, are you taking like, oh, I'm taking X amount. All right, that should be plenty. But that's not going to be enough to get you like super elevated. So what, what that is in that case is a artificial elevation showing that the body is not able to utilize it fully. And the same can happen with a little different story with sodium and with potassium. Sometimes those will show high because the body is conserving them because you're so critically low in them. And it's interesting. So people will look at that and if they're not properly trained either, a practitioner might walk through someone through it and go, oh, you need to lower these things, for example, when the opposite is true. They just need a CO factor.

That makes sense. Right. When you know what to look for, it makes it seem so easy. So why do people become depleted in minerals? I know there's so much to unpack. There is a diet. Is it the soil? Is it a combination of both? Is it our busy, active, stressful lifestyles? What leads to the depletion of minerals from our body?

Yeah, it's a really important question to ask and you're certainly right about that. In terms of activity, stress alone can deplete you. Even if you're eating a quote, unquote perfect diet. And you have great levels of stomach acidity and you're absorbing things really well just through stress. I call it your burn rate. While you're sitting, quote unquote, at your desk, your burn rate's just higher than it would be otherwise. Right. So the same event, you know, getting an email you don't want to get or something like that. You're, you're just stress or you're just it could be something really good, but you're, you're stressed preparing for it and whatever it is, just all the different things that we, we juggle in life really benefits from, from this balancing act. So, yeah, I find that those are some things that are think to worth really thinking about. The other thing is just the food that we're consuming has about 40% of the nutrients, 40% less, in other words, of the nutrients it had 80 years ago. So when you think about that, 1940 till now is what the studies were showing. That is not, that is not something that we can really deal with without supplementing. And from my perspective, always thinking very analytically about this is we're not doing ourselves any favors if we're testing once a year or if we're testing very infrequently, in other words, or not testing at all, God forbid, because we get in this place where we truly don't know what we. And then we're not as confident. So then we don't. If we were to somehow benefit from a placebo effect, if anything, it might be working against us because we're going, oh, I don't know. If I need it, I'm taking it. You know. And you know, what I really like is the idea that testing frequently improves your intuition. So intuition is a great gift, and you and I have talked about this before in different conversations, but intuition is a great gift, right? And when you couple that with data, your intuition gets better and you become more confident in that. So you follow it and trust it sooner and better, and you lean in and you have more energy, you sleep better, you're getting results, you're feeling better. All these things sort of just, you know, it's a virtuous cycle from there.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So one of the things that you and I had a discussion about is why blood work can be misleading. So I'd love to unpack that. I have a few ideas, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Yeah, with blood work, it's really a snapshot. It's true. If you've heard that, that's definitely true. Granted, there's still some things out there that I personally will still do blood work for. Like I'll still run a full thyroid panel twice a year, you know, and we can find a lot of that through hair. You can't find everything, but the, the bang for the buck that you get is just enormous. So because you get this overview, and if things are off from a mineral standpoint, they're Going to be off from a hormone standpoint. So that's one thing to know. The other thing is with hair, or let's say with blood, blood is really you on your best behavior, I think I've said it before, is like you walking to the principal's office, right, and going like, okay, you know, in trouble now, like dotting my eyes. And sure enough, we see that with people, even if they normally drink or smoke, they'll stop doing that for some period right before they go to a doctor. They'll get a screen, they'll get that snapshot and they go, oh, you know, all right, things are looking good. And, and yeah, like you mentioned earlier, a lot of labs don't even test for the right micronutrients. And then the ones that do are incredibly expensive. And, and, and then from there, the thing, the main thing that I would say is it cost aside, even if it costs the same, all that stuff, I still would choose this if I had to choose. Which, if you're a practitioner, you don't have to choose, by the way. If you're, if you're a patient, you don't have to choose. You can just get it as an additional data point, which is what I would encourage everyone to do, is not to necessarily drop other things you're doing, but to add it. Because it does give you, to me, the overview and it gives you the macro and the micro, the macro and the micro all at once, really. Because your blood is. What do we call it, we call the phrase lifeblood, right? Which means it's an incredibly poor, you know, important part of the region or just your whole body in general. Right. It's incredibly important that the blood is as good as it can be, so that it delivers as many nutrients as possible to your body. Right. So what happens is with your innate intelligence in your body, the body is so smart that it will pull. Right now, if your blood, right now, Sachin, is not in the ideal ph range, then it will pull nutrients to buffer that pH, such that your blood is really, really healthy looking. Then we put a dipstick in, in the form of doing a blood draw and we test that, we send that to the lab, not we, but just, you know, the standard protocol and approach. And unfortunately, we see us on our best behavior. And what I've, what I've come to know is that we can spot deficiencies years ahead of time, ahead of that, in particular with hair. So, and for that reason, so I think that's important to understand for people.

Nice. Yeah, I totally agree. The Thing is that for blood, blood is like, as you mentioned, people on their best behavior, but it's a snapshot in time. And I feel like the hair is almost like a core sample right out of ice. There's more history in it. With that being said, how does that work in terms of collecting the sample itself? Does it matter where the hair is collected from? Does it matter how we treat the hair? I know some people color their hair and they have certain shampoos and things like that that they use. How do we preserve the quality of the sample? How long does the hair have to grow for it to be a viable sample? Can I pull it from my beard? Does it matter where it's from? I'd be curious about that.

The preferred places on the body would be scalp, underarm and pubic. Those would be the preferred. Now can we do beard? Yes. Length of sample. It could be an inch and a half or less. So it could be the eighth of an inch closest to the skin because you, you buzz that part on the nape of your neck type thing. And that's ideal. That or that's, that's fantastic because that's the most recent data. Now but what we say in our sample kits, and we have instruction video where I'm in a doctor's office and we're taking a sample with nurses, that's on the website. But for people to check out and just to make it really clear, imagine Your hair is 5 inches long, for example. You want the inch and a half or less. So maybe it's a half inch or closest to the scalp or closest to the skin. Right. And that ensures the freshest data. Now, an inch and a half, even with someone that has fast growing hair, will be six to eight weeks. So that's an average. What that allows us to do is take a data point. The way it's done in a lab is we asked for a tablespoon of hair. The kit technically says two tablespoons. One tablespoon is fine. And there's instructions on how to do that. And you can. You take it obviously from many places, not just one place. I kind of laugh because people will go like, oh my God, hold on. It's scary. It's like we do this all the time. So just trust that there's a way to do this. Well, like, I, I don't know what to tell you. It's not going to be a problem for, for anyone. Even if your hair is thin, you just take it from 10 little spots instead of two spots. You know, your hair is super thick. So anyway, yeah, so that's, that's, that's how, how you do that. And I. Hopefully people. Hopefully that makes sense for people. If you have more questions, you can check it out on the website.

Yeah, okay, awesome. And then, you know, you sent me a couple products. One was the upgraded iodine, so I'd love to talk about that. The other one was the upgraded magnesium, and I'd love to talk about that as well. So let's talk about iodine. Iodine can be a very controversial mineral. I know there's people that will tell you we have way too much of it. There's people that will tell you we don't get enough of it. Some people will tell you that it accelerates issues like Hashimoto's. So I'd love your perspective on this.

My perspective is that what I know. I'll just share. The part that isn't my opinion, the part that isn't my opinion that I know is true is that for our thyroid to produce thyroid hormone, we have to have iodine. There's a number of minerals that are important for thyroid hormone production and just largely for people. If you're interested in hormones, then you're interested in this because the building blocks of hormones or minerals, they're minerals, fats, amino acids. And without an adequate balance of minerals or adequate supply, even so, both supply and balance, in other words, not having too much copper, not having too much zinc, not having too much selenium, not having fill in the blank, you could have too much iodine. Although that's really difficult to achieve because. Let me just tell a story real quick. In researching this years ago for my own health, I discovered a lot of research on iodine. And there's a study with 6,000Americans and 96% were shown to be deficient in iodine. It's likely that what you're doing, if you're listening to this, that. And you don't live in Japan where they eat roughly a hundred times more iodine each day than we do, or each in North America, you know, or really outside of any region where you're not eating a lot of sea vegetables like kelp and things which can have heavy metals, by the way. It's not like they're. They're testing those as easily. So. So that's one. Those are a couple of thoughts. I mean, the RDA or recommended daily allowance for iodine, laughably low, in my opinion. It is just enough to keep your thyroid from swelling and letting you know that, hey, you have a Real problem here. That's what that limit is there for. It's, it's a very much a bottom. You know, in the same way that we at some point learned that scurvy was prevented by vitamin C and you had to have a certain threshold of vitamin C, we have a similar thing with, with iodine, you know, and so that's really important to understand and knowing that, knowing that Japan is for example, the healthiest, the longest lifespan of any developed nation, I believe of any nation, that we should most likely be modeling what they're doing instead of thinking that we have it right. So if I'm certain that there's plenty of people there that also have Hashimoto's and they're still just eating a ton of iodine, that's a side note. But what I would say is that it's not iodine that's causing Hashimoto's and issues like that. And you, I mean you're, no matter what your condition is, you still want your thyroid producing thyroid hormone. Otherwise there's going to be systemic issues like inflammation and just incredibly low detox ability. Because. Why? Well, that whole endocrine system is very much related to how often, for example, you have bowel movements. If you're low in magnesium, if you're low in iodine, if you're having these, just the network effect of that means that you won't go to the bathroom as often, you won't eliminate as often, you'll reabsorb toxins because of that. I love this idea that detox is becoming more and more of popular thing that people are attempting to do and talk about. And yet. It's really a fool's errand if you're not going to the bathroom off enough, you can be taking a bunch of supplements. But if your gut motility is really low because of these reasons, for example, if nothing else, let's say you've done the work to heal just about everything else, then you're possibly missing the largest piece by not if, if you're not doing this. It's just, I get that it probably sounds complicated for people, but it's just how the body works. And these inter relationships I've found for years now are incredibly fascinating and incredibly important. And you know, the more nutrient, specifically the more mineral deficiencies you have, the more you accumulate heavy metals. And I think that's a huge point for people to understand.

What are other common mineral misconceptions that you've come across?

That's a great, great question that you can't and you touched on this earlier. I love that. A misconception is that you can't have too much of a good thing. For example, like, oh, you can take 10,000 IU of vitamin D and there should be no. It either won't help you as much as you need it to help you, or, or it won't hurt at all. You know, it's totally fine. And that simply isn't true. If you took just D3, which I'm incredibly concerned that a lot of people are doing this, that if they're not taking K2 to help direct it, and they're like, a lot of people are listening and they're nodding like, yes, I do that. Okay, please also take magnesium with that because that balances the absorption. The vitamin D is going to cause. Vitamin D is essentially a hormone. It's going to cause calcium to, to over absorb or absorb at a higher rate. You're likely already high in calcium as it relates to phosphorus, as it relates to potassium and magnesium. So that's, that's going to further the imbalance in your body. It's going to worsen your metabolism. Worsening, really. You know, imagine slowing the river, so to speak. The river is, is the, you know, carrying heavy metals and other toxins out of your body. It's going to slow the pace. Therefore, you'll have more sediment coming out of solution depositing in that river. And, and that's the opposite of what you want to live a healthy life full of energy, vitality, where you're achieving your goals and your relationships get better and better because you have plenty of energy and you have plenty of bandwidth. And, you know, it's just, it's all connected. So those, those are some, some thoughts certainly, that I would love for people to, to, you know, be aware of. And keep in mind.

What are some red flags, like when there are specific, like things that people say that make you immediately say, oh, my God, this is like too much calcium or this is too much phosphorus or too much copper. Like what, what are, what are some of those things that, you know, perk your ears, that perhaps a practitioner who's listening to this or, you know, prospective client who's listening to this, maybe they're thinking the same thought. Are there certain things, phrases that jump out at you?

That is, that is a terrific question. Thank you. The, you know, and one thing real quick too, about iodine is that it helps break down a calcium shell pattern in the body, which is terminology for saying someone has too high of calcium, which is blocking the Absorption of other nutrients. So iodine will help someone with that. And you want to be taking a lot of K2 to help redirect it during that time. Also plenty of selenium. There's a whole protocol there. And, and wow, what a great question. So, yes, when I hear people are taking, you know, 30 milligrams of zinc daily or more each day, and they're not testing their levels and they don't know where their copper is, or another tremendously important one is they are taking iron as a supplement and they don't know what their copper levels are. And they don't. More importantly, they don't know their copper to iron ratio. And that is deadly. Potentially. That's the one thing of all of these that is very, very. I mean, they're all important, but that, that one's potentially deadly. The other is salt. This will probably piss some people off, but I hope, I hope that you can take this with open mind, which is we've been lied to about salt. We need good quality sea salt. And most of us that are eating a healthy diet, especially for low carb, especially if we have a slow oxidizing metabolism, which is something we look at on the hair test too, then we're more likely to. Yeah, it's just very likely that we'll, we'll not have enough salt. That's something that we test for as well. If you're taking a lot of magnesium, the salts, you know, that might get pushed out. If you're doing way too much salt, it will push the magnesium out. So that's another issue, the vitamin D issue, you know, where people are taking extraordinary amounts of vitamin D and they're not testing their levels except for vitamin.

D.

That's particularly concerning. Those are some of the major ones. There's more, but those are. Yeah, those are some really, really important ones.

Hey, good to know. And then how does, like, how do you find that balance? Is it, is it really that delicate or. I mean, the testing, I'm sure it seems like they'd be the most obvious choice, but how do you prevent from becoming so imbalanced? I mean, there's a new mineral or new vitamin every month, right? There's a new flavor every month. And it's easy to say, oh, I've got all those symptoms, I'm going to start taking this. And then we forget about, you know, all the other things that are required to balance. Is there one particular balanced, know, trace mineral supplement that we can take that is a safe insurance policy, or do we, do you strongly suggest everyone get tested and then create and devise a plan from there.

Sure. So, yeah, couple of things. We, you know, our. My belief is that, you know, truly testing is, is the way that simplifies everything. And although it's maybe a little more work on the front end than just blindly supplementing, which I did for years, I was guilty of that. And I get it. People are busy and I get that you don't want to take time. But what I always try to remind people is if you test and we believe in this so much that even though we're innovative supplement company, we own the trademark Test don't guess. And that is just a philosophy that we really live by company wide. As you know, I always say, like we're in the business of replenishing people so that they feel renewed and reinvigorated. And as a, as a guiding principle, that that's really how I think of it. The other thing is looking at your deep sleep on oura ring like you were doing. I think that's the. As you and I have both talked about, it's funny that you use the word Lee Domino in one conversation we had. And I remember thinking that is the exact phrase that I also use with that. And if you can improve your deep sleep and it's trending and it's getting better and better or it's like yours is now really, really good, about as good as I've, you know, I've seen then there, you know, you know, you're, you're improving. I would still say, you know, bring in, you know, more data points. Right. So yeah, testing quarterly is really pretty affordable from a time perspective, a cost perspective. And I think it can actually save people money and give them their time back too because they have more energy throughout the day and they have more clarity and then they sleep better and then that just builds on it and then their hormones get better. And yeah, we have a lot of toxicity in this modern world. We have EMS hitting us right now. We're not getting enough light exposure. There's the nutrients in our soil and therefore our food, toxins in our water and air, all these things. We have a lot to defend against and that won't change anytime soon. We also need to give birth to innovators with mothers that are chronically deficient in a lot of important things. We pass those deficiencies on to our children and our heavy metal toxicities get passed on as well. If a child is screaming endlessly or crying incessantly, we've seen that be due to Heavy metals that can get corrected. It can also be chiropractic adjustments on infants, both of those literally on infants can be life changing. It's true for all phases and all stages of life.

So when you have like these type of deficiencies, do you see these being something common across entire families or do you find that there are truly unique patterns for, because people are eating the same, probably even taking the same supplements, how much of a variance is there between one person and the next in the family?

That is a great question. Right, because let's, let's say in a traditional model where, you know, for example, you and your wife are cooking and eating the same things. Right. And children. Right. So it kind of depends. You have one, one kid that isn't in any sports, for example, and he's eating, he or she's eating the same things, maybe even closely the same amounts of nutrients and micronutrients and macros and everything as a, as his brother or sister sitting across the table. And that child is in four different sports and is sweating and six pounds of water weight as a junior in high school. And in whatever sports, there's going to be a lot of deficiencies. There are nutritionally induced as well as. So, you know, taking large doses as well as just energy requirements and you know, your job and your output might be vastly, and therefore your energy requirements might be vastly, vastly different than anything that your wife is doing or vice versa. Right. So quite. And then combine that with, you know, one of you had acute heavy metal exposure at some point in your life due to fillings or, you know, and we, we can actually use different minerals to, to push those out over time. It's not an immediate process, but I believe it's the safest process. For example, pushing out certain heavy metals with the use of minerals that correspond to those heavy metals.

Okay, well, as you were sharing, I ordered my hair test analysis kit.

Nice.

And you know, this has been so enlightening and I'm excited to see what my hair has to say about my mineral status and nutrient status and how I can further upgrade and optimize and really dial things in. And I love this idea of being able to use at home testing in addition to, of course, we're no strangers to making lifestyle changes and doing all we can on our part. But then it's good to have this introspective view into what's going on inside of our bodies and to identify subtle things such as heavy metal toxicity, mineral deficiencies, mineral imbalances, and then come up with a corrective strategy and then see if what we're doing is actually working or not. So, thank you. Thank you for everything that you do and what I'm going to do in the show. Notes. For those of you that are tuned in, Barton's been very generous and he's going to be giving us the opportunity to get an additional 10% discount. So I'll share a link that you can use and I'll also share a special coupon code. The coupon code is living proof that'll take 10% off of your order and you'll be able to get tested. I did want to mention this, that the testing and the consultation are extremely affordable. So for about $250, you're getting, you know, the testing done and you're having somebody spend some time and review those results. Barton, what can somebody expect, you know, now that I've purchased this kit, what should I expect next?

Well, hey, thank you for doing that. I didn't, I didn't know that you'd already ordered a test, so I'm very happy for you to. And I'm, I'm happy to see test, test your results improve and things like that. And I love to hear that you're already seeing some improvement. The first thing that people would see there is, is that they would get the kit in the mail and, and then, you know, there's instructions for every step of the kit. There's a video if, if need. You know, if someone wants to look at a video, there's a video on the site. It's not needed or required, but the sample's taken, it goes off to. Our lab results are usually within 10 business days. And the only thing that would slow that down would be like a shipping delay, which, you know, could happen to them in any situation. But, yeah, so that goes off. You get results via email from our customer service team. And if you, at that point paid for a consultation already, then you would have a separate email that you can search in your inbox and find and with a link to book with one of our nutritionists of your choice. And they would recommend both foods or foods as well as supplements to help, you know, balance those levels.

Amazing. Well, I'm super thrilled, really excited, and I'm also excited to announce that we're, we're doing a special sleep study within our mentorship group. So more details. If you're a part of our mentorship, you can tune into a special announcement that Barton and I are going to record for you there. We're going to be documenting because all of our clients in our mentorship group get an aura ring. And so one of the things that our conversations have led to is, hey, how about we study this with a group of people who are tracking their sleep on a nightly basis so that we could actually witness the amazing changes that they're experiencing as a result of this. So fun project for us, of course work on both of our ends, but it'll be well worth it to see those glowing testimonials. And you know, I know everyone functions better when that lead domino of sleep is significantly improved. So look out for that if you're in our mentorship group and if you're not in the mentorship group, you know, check out the amazing products. You can go to the website which is upgraded formulas.com and you can use the code Living Proof, all one word that'll take 10% off of your order. And it'll also allow you to explore and try out some of their other products if somebody wanted to get the testing done but also, you know, start trying out some products. What are, what are the top products that you, you would recommend that you can almost guarantee people are probably low in or is a great place for them to get started?

That's a great question. A lot of friends and family ask me that all the time and what I did in response to that was what would I put my friends and family on if I could just pull a lever for them so that they start getting results, then they don't have to wait to get the hair test. And I guess as you're waiting on the hair test results, you can already start supplementing some things and start feeling better know quickly. Right. It's the goal to give people some quick wins. So that's a really good question. We have a bundle on the homepage of our website and that is two different options. The best sellers bundle which is one test, one consultation and several different supplements. Upgraded magnesium, upgraded potassium, upgraded zinc and upgraded memory. Upgraded memory is the five different minerals that I've found that after years of doing this that many people are deficient in and you know, provides a multi mineral basis for supporting memory from a bunch of different angles. That's a more of an over time supplement. You don't feel it really as quickly, but it's just something that you're starting to replenish these different levels. And those minerals also do other things in the body that are really, really good like protein utilization, reducing sex binding globulin, you know, being synonymous with intelligence. All just improving metabolism, all sorts of Things as well. Reducing soreness. There's, it's, yeah, it's one of my favorite products. And the, yeah. So that, that bundle and then there's a, there's like a before and after bundle that is an option there as well, which is two tests, two consultations and the same four products. And those that's greatly discounted and the discount would still apply to that too. So those, those are some. What I really feel like is the ideal place to start. I think iodine probably should be in that mix as well for people. And then from there it's just determining how much iodine and do you want to take and you know that can be based off of, you know, your test results. So yeah, those are, those are some. Just a fantastic place to start. And I travel with all of those. I take those daily, you know, in, in almost every single case.

So.

Yep.

Okay, awesome. And then I, I thought I saw this somewhere, which I thought was brilliant. But your products are all travel friendly, is that right? The sizes and stuff, because they're, because they're liquids.

Right? Right. So ver. Virtually all of the products are with the exclusion of potassium being a 4 ounce. So all of them would be, you know, nearly all of them are 2 ounce size and they're ultra concentrated so that people can, you know, travel with them without even checking a bag. If you are checking a bag, you can obviously, you know, travel with any of them. So that's, that's really easy as well. And yeah, so I thought about that for a long time because we initially I, I put a lot of formulas out that were larger format, larger sizes and it, you know, although that, it made it easier and more palatable for people so they didn't have to dilute them or mix them with, with water as easily. But what I found is that what people really wanted is they wanted to be able to stay consistent and travel with them all the time. And, and it was just easier, more manageable, took up less counter space, things like that. So we switched to that and I just ask that people dilute or mix the products. Just follow the directions. Unless you've had a consultation or gotten advice from another trusted medical advisor that you have in your sphere.

Amazing. Thank you, Barton. This was super informative and I'm thrilled to see what my results have to say. Maybe what we could do, if you're open to it, is when I get my results we could chat about that and we could share what those results shared about me. Maybe we could do like a little follow up podcast or a follow up interview and you could walk people through my results. I'm an open book, always looking to improve upon, you know, all the things that I'm doing and always open to share cool things that give me better insights into my health. So maybe we can talk about that. Yeah. So thank you. Thank you. Anything you want to share with people before we jump off here?

Yeah, I just, I love that you offered that. It's really generous of you for people to see, I think really valuable and so we can absolutely do that. And then. Yeah, just want to let people know that we also donate to a charity called Charity Water that does a great job providing clean water to people around the world. They're in 28 different countries. They help drill low cost water wells. They do it from a really high transparency model where every dollar you give goes to drilling a well because they have events every year that takes care of their costs and overhead. So it's a really smart model. I think more charities should follow that model and yeah, just thankful for the work they do. So a portion of each purchase goes to them and we'll look to drill a couple of wells with them.

This. Yeah, amazing. Thank you. Thank you for sharing and thank you for joining me today. So grateful for this opportunity to chat.

Same here. Sachin, such a pleasure. Thank you.