108. What MORE You Need To Know About the Supplement Industry Part 1 with Thomas Pennel

Thomas Pennel 0:03

So we think about again, cost raw materials, cost and what patients are actually getting. Most Expensive dietary supplement is the one that doesn't work.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 0:12

Welcome to the your longevity blueprint podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Stephanie gray. My number one goal with the show is to help you discover your personalized plan to build your dream health and live a longer, happier, truly healthier life. You're about to hear from Thomas penile. Today we're going to take a deep dive into why micronutrients are so important, why we need to supplement and ultimately learn what makes a good supplement. This is part one of a two part episode so please be sure to stay tuned next week to hear part two. Let's get started.

Thanks for joining me for another episode of The your longevity blueprint podcast. today. My guest is Thomas penile who is an account executive who has worked in the supplement and nutrition space for a company called orthomolecular products. After receiving a degree in Integrative Biology from the University of Illinois, a little health scare with his now fiance gave him his first interaction with functional medicine. After seeing firsthand how functional medicine impacted her life. This drove him to seek out professional nutrition companies for the opportunity to work with providers and help shape patient care.

He has worked with over 1000 clinics across the Midwest, including ours, which has included a wide array of practitioners, clinics and pharmacies. He has previously worked with practices across Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania and now resides in Iowa, where he currently works with over 400 active practices. He uses this experience to help providers consult and bring functional medicine to their patients with a strong focus on improving clinical outcomes. Welcome to the show, Thomas.

Thomas Pennel 1:43

Oh, thank you, Dr. Gray. Appreciate it. You know, I've been a big fan for a while, at least as long as I've been here. So it's pretty cool to actually talk.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 1:50

Well, I'm excited to have you on the show. I know you're gonna want our listeners. So as the audience may or may not remember, I had another Tom Tom, who early on the Show, Episode Six and seven where we discussed supplement myths. And I highly encourage followers go back and listen to those episodes if these topics interest you. But I think today we're going to expand and get this other time or Thomas, I should say, opinion on similar topics. So again, to remind my listeners, Chapter Four of my book, Your longevity blueprint discusses how important nutrients are for our body. And today we're going to talk about nutrients. So nutrients are involved in a wide variety of chemical reactions in your body.

Basically, nutrients come from food, and they can come from supplementation. So just to walk listeners through right digestion as food is digested nutrients are transported through the body to assist in all types of metabolic processes that happen in our cells, and that are absolutely necessary for life. So in my analogy, in my book, I share how nutrients transporting themselves through your body are a little like moving through the rooms and a house in which each room has a door that's locked. In order to move from room to room, you have to have the right key to unlock that door. The same is true with our body, every cell in our body has a receptor site that receptors bind to kind of like a key fitting and a keyhole. For that receptor to bind correctly. To unlock that door.

Your body requires all the micronutrients I mentioned in chapter four. And these are what we're going to talk about today. So when our cells don't get what they need, the body doesn't work, right and something or many some things that can happen, right? Like you get brain fog, fatigue and eventually chronic disease. So we used to be able to get a lot of these nutrients from our foods, right? My grandparents always were farmers, they they had a lot of home cooked meals, right? They didn't take a lot of supplements back then. But I think times have changed. So I want to kind of open this interview asking you, Thomas, why do you think our food sources are now more deficient? And we need supplementation? I know that's a loaded question. But let's start with why our food sources more deficient now.

Thomas Pennel 3:46

Yeah, why we need supplementation is a loaded question. But you know, you're incredibly lucky first off to have grown up in a space where your grandparents grew their own food, and you're able to eat and cook that, right because I talk a lot about nutritional deficiencies. And I you know, I didn't grow up in an environment where that was really the thing I actually in my parents backyard, I built a little raised bed garden where they could start growing their own food, which is awesome. My mom has totally adopted that and just kind of ran with it. But I didn't grow up with it. Right? I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. So the food that we got was whatever is coming from the grocery store. So first off, you're incredibly lucky, right?

But even so if you compare the food that for instance, your grandparents ate when they were kids compared to what you ate when you're a kid, right? Even then we're talking about nutritional deficiencies, because the either soil depletion so the minerals that are available in that soil, right are no longer there, because every time that we grow food, that food, like a carrot, right or even corn or whatever it is, right those things absorb minerals and vitamins and nutrients from the soil when it goes into that and we consume that we're able to use that. But each time we do that we live in Iowa, right? So there's farms everywhere. But each time that we do that we deplete that soil just a little bit further.

Right And additionally, that population is not getting any healthier. Right. We talk about patients all the time as it relates to digestion, especially gut health. In our ability, as you talked about earlier, unlocking those keys, our ability to break down that food, break down those nutrients and eventually absorb them is limited. So if our gut has high inflammation, we have chronic disease in our gut, if we're having issues with intestinal permeability, we're basically saying we're absorbing a lot of things we're not supposed to, right, we're going to create an environment where maybe we're not absorbing those same minerals. So even if the soil is, you know, as good as it possibly could be, if we're repeating the soil, and we're growing in our backyard, and we're doing all those wonderful things. Maybe now we're not as healthy as we quite used to be right. So maybe not, we're not absorbing things as well as we could. So it's a basically a double edged sword where gut health isn't getting any better, and the soil isn't getting any better, either.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 5:39

Good answer, I had both of those points written down in my notes, the deficient soil, and then also poor gut health. What about I talk a lot about stress on the podcast? Well, how do you feel about stress

Thomas Pennel 5:49

all the time? No stress, obviously, I mean, stress can be a few different things, right? So it can be cellular stress, it can be environmental stress, it can be mental, emotional stress, right? stresses on our body can basically push us a direction where we can end up with chronic disease, right? Or if we talk about specifically adrenal health can leave us in an environment where we're talking about low energy, low mood talking about fatigue, chronic fatigue, brain fog. Stress is it's a killer, it's a silent killer, right? Because we talked about people as it relates to you know, COVID-19 pandemic and trying to figure out what's going on with, you know, work and life and getting kids on Zoom calls for classes and things like that. It's a very stressful environment, right? So stress on our bodies is paramount that we manage that and are able to effectively mitigate that the best of our abilities.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 6:34

And I want to come back to adrenal health maybe at the end of the show, because I do want to talk about adrenals. But stress requires more nutrients, right. So when we live in this stress lifestyle, when we have that stress lifestyle, we need more, need more nutrients. What about I want to make sure we cover like medication, causing medications, causing nutritional deficiencies. Do you want to expand on that a little bit?

Thomas Pennel 6:56

Yeah. So recall that in the industry, we call that drug induced nutrient depletion. So we know you and I both know that the amount of prescription medications and it's not only a availability, so right, more drugs are entering the market now than they were 50 6070 100 years ago. Right, which is awesome. You know, it's obviously helped a lot of people's lives as it relates to, you know, patients who genuinely need medication, it's great thing, right? You know, antibiotics have saved lives or specific medications that have saved lives. But, you know, we now live in an environment where more people are medications that maybe could have been mitigated by lifestyle choices, right.

So talking about actually, you know, seeking out functional integrative care, and talking about actually using supplementation and using lifestyle modifications to avoid that. But when we take a lot of these medications, so if we think about things like Metformin, right, a foreman is able to block the absorption and B vitamins, and B vitamins are used everywhere for neurotransmitter production are used for energy production, right, as we talked about stress, we talked about CO q 10. As it relates to statin prescriptions patient on statins, it basically blocks our body's ability to produce its own co q 10, which longtime or long term I should say can be kind of insidious, it's not a good thing.

I mean, I can make there's, you know, 100 different medications we can talk about, but my point is, is that prescription medications almost pretty much in any form, disrupt some sort of pathway. That's their goal, right? We talked about different medications is to disrupt some sort of pathway in order to achieve an outcome. And when we do that, sometimes we get these secondary effects where we're depleting specific nutrients, either through absorption or body's ability to either use them, create them or make them absolutely huge.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 8:21

So medications are another variable there. Yeah. But if you're taking a medication, that's okay, there's hope, right, you can take the nutrient that the medication is depleting, you have. And at our clinic, we run a fancy nutritional analysis where we can literally, and I've talked about this before on the show where we can look for vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and toxins deficient in the body and then replace them. So the good news is we can replace them, there are supplements we can take, right? But consumers, I think many times can be fooled by marketing, they see a commercial and then they think, okay, I need to go take krill oil, so they go to Walmart, and they buy, you know, buying inferior products. So I really want to talk about what makes a good supplement company, and kind of how consumers can decide which companies are making high quality products. So let's start with what you believe makes a good supplement company.

Thomas Pennel 9:09

Yeah. So that again, that's a big question. Because if I think about it from a consumers perspective, and I know a lot of people listening to podcasts are consumers of dietary supplements and consumers of this type of education. That market is so watered down now. Right? It seems like especially because of COVID people are more invested in their own personal health than they ever had, which is a great thing, right. But as a result, you see money kind of follows where the demand is. So people have a demand for dietary supplements, they have a demand for specific nutrients and this type of healthcare. Now you see supplement companies popping up left and right, that didn't exist, right. Or even if you rewind the clock before COVID, there's still a lot of that going on. Right? So what I'm ultimately talking about is I'm talking about the difference between essentially what we call the professional channel and the retail channel. Right so the professional channel is kind of where we operate.

So we're orthomolecular products operates in We work exclusively with licensed healthcare providers like yourself, right? Because we know that you guys are actually out here transforming the practice of medicine, which I'm sure you've heard quite a few different times, right? actually improving patient outcomes, running those labs, running those micronutrient panels and sitting down and saying, Hey, how can we address these deficiencies in order for you to live a longer, healthier life? Compare that to the retail channel? I think this you know, it's pretty easy path to follow. There's a lot of companies who just want to make money, right? If you go down on Walmart, Costco, you know, it's just in Costco the other day, and they have a huge section. It's an absolutely massive, right.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 10:31

If your vitamins right, as you walk in, right as you enter it. Yeah. And

Thomas Pennel 10:35

as you're checking out, too, it's on both sides, right, which is good marketing.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 10:38

I mean, absolutely. Good marketing.

Thomas Pennel 10:40

Yeah. Now, marketing, right. Because these companies, they're not invested in, if you look at their, you know, their mission, and kind of what they're trying to do, they're not really invested in patient health care, what they want to do is they want to offer patients options, they want that shelf space. So if you think about retail products, as they exist in the market, what are basically and I'm sure you've heard Tom say this before, but what are basically the two ways that we can change the cost of a dietary supplement, there's two ways we can do it, we can lower the quality of that raw material, right? So we're actually the company is buying cheaper raw materials, or we can lower the amount of that raw material that's in that product, right? Because one gram of something cost less than five grams or something, right? It's just how it works.

So if you think about it, from a patient's perspective, you know, these companies that exist more in the retail space, I'm talking about anything that's available in big box stores, online, Amazon, eBay, whatever it is, a lot of these companies, what they are, is they're owned by corporate shareholders, they're owned by people who are executives who want to make money because that's why their shareholders are invested in those companies. So their goal is to ultimately, like I said, make money, they're not really invested in patient outcomes. They're not invested in clinical outcomes. So the what they're doing is they're doing those two things I talked about before, where they're lowering the cost of the raw material by getting something that's inferior, right?

Or the lowering how much is actually in that product. So now it's an inferior raw material, inferior product, not having as much as they should, right? So sub therapeutic dosing, it's not doing as much as it should for your patients. So if you look at it from a patient's perspective, and it's kind of hard to see, because if you look at it, it's all marketing, right? These labels are very flashy, fancy, you know, they have got these big signs, buy one, get one free, whatever it is, right. It's very hard to sift through that. And I totally understand that. So my advice, and I'll kind of dig into more specifics, but my advice would

Dr. Stephanie Gray 12:18

be, please do Yeah, this is good.

Thomas Pennel 12:22

My advice would be to kind of seek out an integrative or functional provider in your area, or if you can work with Dr. Gray, right? Because, you know, that's ultimately where you're going to see practitioners who have spent the time to seek out high quality companies like ourselves, or have specific training, who are actually trained on these supplements or trained on these nutrients to actually run a panel. Right, so talking about micronutrient deficiencies, or run further bloodwork, to actually evaluate what your specific micronutrient needs are. It's very confusing, right? We go online, if you type in CO q 10. In the Amazon, there's 100, different products that will show up and not all those products are created equal. Not all supplements are created equal. Right, which talked about without, so I can get more specific with it. But that's kind of my big advice is just seek out someone you know, in your area, who's very well versed in it. And there are practitioners,

Dr. Stephanie Gray 13:08

I totally agree. Good answer. Let's go back to kind of the two ways you were saying other, you know, brands can lower their costs. So one is to essentially not put the therapeutic dose of that raw material or whatever ingredient in the product. And that's something that we certainly pride ourselves on is making sure that everything is on the shelf, you know, that we're selling to patients is of therapeutic potency. So can you talk a little bit about I know there orthomolecular has kind of three major points with their products that they definitely they source, high quality ingredients. Let's go there. And let's talk about the therapeutic potency. And then there's a third point to

Thomas Pennel 13:47

Yeah, so one of those points is that therapeutic dosing, you know, so if you look at ortho, what we call ourselves, which is absolutely nail on the head, it's we are an evidence based natural solutions company. And what I mean by that is that every formulation that we come out with every raw material that we use, every specific reason that we have 60 milligrams, 100 milligrams, 200 milligrams of something in a product is because there's a study that's associated with that raw material for improving patient outcomes. I call that window dressing, we call that window dressing, when a company will have kind of the main components, but maybe they're just putting her like icing on a cake, right? Or sprinkles or whatever you want to think about. I know we're not eating a ton of that stuff back grade.

But you know, if we're just putting sprinkles on a cake, it doesn't really add a lot of nutritional value, but it makes that cake look really pretty. Right. So a lot of companies will just put a little dash a little sprinkle, you know one milligram of something to say, hey, we have it in here, right? But the cool thing about a lot professional companies, especially orthomolecular products, I can speak on this very honestly because I work is every product that we come out with there's a specific reason why that amount is in there. Is there some sort of study, there's some sort of human clinical trial where we seek out specific pans and raw materials that have human clinical trials on specifically that shows Hey, if you take 600 milligrams of those for X number of days or X number of months So this is the outcome that we expect to see. So that's kind of the big difference is putting things in there just to put them in there or is it in there with the purpose isn't in there for a reason?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 15:08

I want to expand on that for a second, because not only do you do that, but you also try to, I believe source your ingredients from whatever you want to call it areas of the world, where those studies have been done. Like, for instance, I've mentioned this before, I think on the show, with citrus bergamot, that we know there has been there is a lot of evidence showing, right? The benefit of bergamot, however, orthomolecular sources there Bergamot from Italy from where that research was conducted, because let's face it, you know, someone in California can grow bergamot and then try to also sell that supplement. But that doesn't mean that those outcomes are going to translate into you know, where the original research was done. I don't know how to explain that easily. But I think my point came across there.

Thomas Pennel 15:51

There you did it perfectly, because that's literally exactly what happens. Right? So it actually goes back to the first question you asked me which was about different parts of the world, different soil nutritional deficiencies. Absolutely right. Because if we grow talking about citrus bergamot, which we know has specific bioactive poly phenolic fractions that actually help mediate our cholesterol pathways, right? If we grow that plant in California, versus if we actually grow it in Calabria, Italy, where the studies are done with the initial studies by Dr. Ben Chenza, Malachi, we're done talking about, again, different raw materials that are either patented or have research, which is what we're doing here.

This is a perfect example. If we grow it in Southern California versus if we grow it in Italy, those are a two completely different soil compositions, right? They're two completely different parts of the world, maybe they've been farmed completely differently, right? The sun is different, the angle of the sun, the way that the sun is obviously the same, right, but the angle of the sun, and how much sun they're getting, and where they're getting the sun from is different. And it actually matters when it comes down to growing that plant. Right? The amount of time that they will spend outside, you know, the different basically, the environment isn't the humidity, everything, you can try to match it by going to different places.

But that's not what ortho does, right? company like our own in the professional channel, we go with a researcher. So the research was done in Italy, by Italian doctors on that specific plant in that specific region in the world. So could we grow it in California? Yeah, there are companies who do that, right. But ortho is not going to source it from a company that's doing that, where the research wasn't that we're going to use the specific companies that are actually they're working with those doctors to come out with those studies. So that's kind of actually a perfect example, I'm glad you brought that one up of exactly what I'm talking about, is actually growing, you were supposed to be grown using studies and actually telling you about getting high quality raw materials, because that's ultimately what it is.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 17:32

Let's stay on raw materials, because that the sourcing is also something that sorry, for the listeners, I'm losing my voice here. But I'm in a cold. So I'll be taking some immune support, which we're going to talk about in a little bit. Let's go back to sourcing, can you give us some other examples of where ortho seeks out literally around the world, you know, the best location to source individual ingredients, because I know you guys search far and wide and you know, if something is unavailable, you're not going to be able to manufacture that supplement cuz you're not going to compromise the quality of the product to get inferior sourcing, which may be even cheaper, right, which, that's what a lot of companies do, they get the cheapest ingredients. So spend some time talking about how ortho sources the ingredients.

Thomas Pennel 18:17

So we first off, we kind of have a China last policy as kind of our policy as it relates to sourcing raw materials, because a lot of a lot of raw materials that are coming out of that part of the world, either a adulterated, they're very inferior, they've either been synthesized, you know, with adulterants, or things that get added to them that maybe we don't want patients taking, right. There's certain extraction processes for different raw materials. I know you talked about this with Tom. But also I recommend any listener who wants to dig even more, you know, it's specifically go listen to townhalls episodes from the very beginning, he did a fantastic job, I could not do it any better than he did. But you know, there's a lot of raw materials that are extracted in ways that we necessarily don't want them to write either using benzene as a way to actually to perform that extraction process, which we don't want patients taking.

Or they're just from parts of the world where they're grown in environments where there's high pollutants. So talking about environmental toxins, that could end up in that raw material, especially as we talked about growing things like herbs and botanicals that are sitting there in their environment doing their thing. They're going to absorb these things that are coming out of factories and pollutants and parts of runoff or whatever it may be. Right. So ortho chooses to source a lot of raw materials actually out of Europe. There's a lot of really high quality raw material companies, we just talked about one, right, like it's coming out of Italy, right? There's a lot of high quality raw material companies that are coming out of Europe or locally in the US. They do a really, really, really fantastic job delivering a high quality raw material. Right.

So as it relates to price, obviously, that's something consumers need to be concerned about. You kind of pay for what you get when it comes to the dietary center world. Right? And are there companies charging more than they should for their products? Absolutely. So this is another one where it's kind of hard to sift through the weeds. But if you look at a higher quality company, they're going to charge a little bit more so I would also say this is a good time to plug if you see those Buy One Get One freeze or you go like you said the Sam's Club Walmart and they've got 200 capsules was a fish oil for, you know, $8? That's something I would question, right? Because why are they able to sell that for so little?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 20:06

Yep, totally agreed. I don't know if you know off the top of your head, but can you for the listeners just to give them an example of again, far and wide where ortho gets ingredients from if I remember, right, like your Alpha Lipoic Acid comes from Germany, is that correct?

Thomas Pennel 20:20

Yep. Where Germany, Spain, obviously, the United States, our official actually comes off the coast of Chile, which is the least industrialized coast in the entire world, we partner with a company down there, that actually they own the boats, they pay the fishermen, they own the entire process right there. So we don't need to ship it around, which actually leads to a really high quality product, which is awesome. We go places, and we seek out the companies that make and this is no exaggeration, the highest quality raw material that we can possibly put in a product. Because again, we work exclusively with licensed health care providers. So there are doctors or practitioners and pharmacists who have an expectation for their products when they give it to patients. And we know that we know that every single day. Right? So it comes down to our processes, our systems, actually what we're doing, you know, as it relates to our facility and our manufacturing, how we're testing, all of that comes together to make high quality product. Absolutely.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 21:07

Is it your current facility? What was it like $50 million? Or something? Or what I mean, it's just huge. Is it like the largest talk about?

Thomas Pennel 21:17

Yeah, so we now have a 200,000 square foot facility, which is absolutely massive, I've been on a couple tours up there. And it's it's incredible. It's state of the art kind of sounds like a very flashy term, right. But there's automatic doors, there's people walking around, there's very high quality stuff, I'd love to talk about the lab, if we could, because that's really where everything starts. So even though we're sourcing high quality raw materials, we're sourcing the highest you can possibly get, there's still an opportunity, even if a company is sending those raw materials to us, we have a list of approved vendors that we work with.

But even if those companies are sending raw materials to us, there's an opportunity where either they made a mistake, or something maybe is not quite what they thought it was. And they put it in a batch and they send it to us, we test absolutely anything and everything that comes to our facility, every single raw material, every single product, every single anything that comes into our facility gets tested, and it gets quarantined before we even begin to use it in our product. Right. So when I might, what I mean by that is, let's say we get a big batch of vitamin C, right vitamin C can come from a lot of different countries can come from a lot of different places, right. And a lot of people can hide a lot of different things in vitamin C, right.

So their vitamin C comes in, what we do is we take a big samplers, so he tested all the way through the bag, or the VAT barrel, or whatever it's coming in. And we send that right to our lab, right. And we have very smart people fantastic people up in our lab. And what they do is they're performing everything from thin layer chromatography, mass spectrometry, so they're actually it's pretty cool process. For those who don't know, they're shooting an electric beam or laser being essentially into that raw material, and it bounces back. And we're able to read, basically what those bands look like, as a science major, I get very nerdy about these things. But we're able to basically read what those bands look like when they come back, right.

And each specific compound, if I put vitamin C in that tube, or if I put vitamin D in that tube, they're going to have completely different outcomes, right, we're gonna see a completely different band pattern, we know what they're supposed to look like. So we can compare them, right. And the cool thing is something that I really appreciate about ortho is that if we get a raw material that doesn't meet our standards, for whatever reason falls outside of spec, we incinerate it. Because there's an opportunity if that company made a mistake us right. I'm not saying it's, you know, insidious or intentional, but sometimes it may be right, we have no idea.

So if that company is accidentally sends us something they're not supposed to we incinerate that raw material, we have a company that comes picks up stuff and actually destroys it. Because we know if there's an opportunity for them to send that to us, they may also send it to a notice. Yeah. So that's just another way that we help protect the channel, because we're very passionate about this. And if you can tell, we're very passionate about this. And we want to make sure that if we're doing everything we can, that we're also helping everybody else, right, we like the term rising tide raises all ships, right. So the tides going up, everyone else is going up. If we can help do our part, we're actually doing that as well.

So we also have expiration dates. That's another big thing that people could look for in a dietary supplement, we have expiration dates, and all of our products and the way that we do that, and it's very regulated process, but the way that we do that is once we manufacture a lot are manufactured basically a giant batch of bottles, we have to take those bottles and store them separately. And what we do is every three months, we pull a random sample out of that bottle, we do the exact same process all over again. So we take those raw materials, send them through the lab, we either send them, if it's a live organism, like a probiotic, we actually PCR cycle to actually test to make sure that those strains are what we say they are because we can't put anything in that bottle. That isn't what it is. Right?

Or we're performing those same processes we did when we originally got the sample. Why are we doing that is because we want to guarantee that what we have on the label in the amount that we say is there is actually what's there. Because again, we work exclusively licensed health care providers. We want to make sure that you guys are getting products that you can trust with your patients, which is awesome. I get very excited about

Dr. Stephanie Gray 25:00

I get asked all the time, what's one product that I just can't live without when it comes to maintaining my own health and longevity? And my answer is something you've actually heard me mentioned on several episodes. It's called mitochondria complex and it's pretty much the Cadillac of multivitamins, and it's packed with antioxidants, including three key players acetyl, l carnitine, Alpha Lipoic Acid and an acetyl cysteine. Think of a steam engine that requires coal to be continually shoveled into the furnace to power the train forward. Acetyl l carnitine. Does that for your body by shoveling short chain fatty acids into your cells to provide your body with energy. This is an absolutely essential task to keeping you running. However, what's a byproduct of fire? You guessed it smoke. Unfortunately, in this analogy, smoke from fire equals free radicals. To combat those free radicals. Other antioxidants are needed and that's where alpha lipoic acid and acetyl cysteine come in.

Together they scavenge free radicals and help boost and recharge glutathione the most potent antioxidant in the body. To top it off mitochondrial complex also contains a little bit of green tea extract, broccoli seed extract with sulforaphane and even resveratrol. Research has shown that when athletes and individuals that are under stress begin taking this product they are less likely to get sick as they're giving their body what it needs to conquer those stressors. Who doesn't need protection from stress and cellular damage at this time? I certainly do. I take this product every day. If you're interested in learning more about how mitochondrial complex can help support you living a longer healthier life, check out my blog post on why antioxidants are important found at your longevity blueprint.com forward slash y dash antioxidants dash r dash important for in chapter four of my book Your longevity blueprint to get 10% off our mitochondrial complex, just use code energy when checking out at your longevity blueprint.com.

Now let's get back to the show. I talked a little bit about on this on the episode with Tom cool. And that your for instance, your probiotics potencies right are guaranteed at the date of not manufacturing but of expiration, right because you may purchase a probiotic over the counter that says 50 billion, you know colony forming units. Well, that may have had 50 billion colony forming units two months ago. But by the time you're putting it in your mouth, it may have zero colony forming units. So that's another from a marketing standpoint, right? Good marketing, how they label the bottle, but there's really no guarantee what it's going to be when it gets to your home. So if I remember right, you guys date based on so like, for example, with probiotics, that expiration date that you maybe you can explain this better, but the potency is still guaranteed at the date of expiration? Yeah, so companies who

Thomas Pennel 27:33

manufacture probiotics get a lot of options when it as it relates to the language that they can actually put on that bottle. Right? So what we choose to use is we choose to use an expiration date and a lot of consumers listening to the lot of patients listening to podcasts, or doesn't everyone use an expiration age? Shouldn't you use an expiration date? answer's no. Right? And the reason is, is because they don't have to, right. It's another opportunity for those companies, like I said earlier who are more concerned about profits than patients, and they're actually going to actually make a product that necessarily doesn't really do a whole lot for that patient.

So if you think about it, those probiotics, they're living organisms, they're alive, like you and I are right. So they die, they replicate, they die, they use nutrients, they exist. And over time, if I take that probiotic, and I just leave it over time, they're going to die, it is going to happen. Right? So as it relates to manufacturing a product, a lot of companies can just put on the label. Yeah, we put 20 billion Cfu colony forming units or probiotics at time of manufacture, what does that really mean? Right? It means that when we made that product, we put 20 billion Cfu in there, that's it, that's all it means. It doesn't mean that they add anything to it, that's actually gonna help protect them, it doesn't mean that they're doing a specific packaging that helps keep them stable.

They're not doing anything. Right. So as it relates to that product, you can imagine, and I've seen data that actually suggest this, and we can talk about that in more detail differently. But then data suggests that you know, over time, these actually die really quickly. You know, if you look at refrigerated probiotics, that's kind of what we call old school technology, right? Those companies are asking you to slow down that degradation process as much as possible by literally cooling the probiotics off, right. So there is no regulation on those probiotics after they've been manufactured. They don't have to write, which is obviously something that you know, I think needs to get changed, but it's something that ortho is aware of. So we choose to use, again, the expiration date, because we want to say, hey, we've got 20 billion CF use of a probiotic in that capsule, that's how much your patient is going to get if they take that product before the expiration date. It's a guarantee to guarantee that if they take that they're gonna get at least that much.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 29:32

And how can we guarantee that in that what are the things that you're saying other companies may not be doing? Like, what are you doing to preserve your those organisms? So

Thomas Pennel 29:39

yeah, yeah, so like I said, they're living organisms, they're gonna replicate, they're gonna die. They're gonna do everything that you know, we would expect those little cellular organisms to do. So well, we do it we do a couple different things. So every company makes probiotics has to freeze dry, right? Because that basically kind of knocks them out if you want to think about it that way. Because otherwise they're going to be replicating replicating very quickly, or they're gonna be doing the thing very quickly. That's just how they exist, right? So what we do is we freeze drying to kind of say, hey, go to sleep for a little bit, right? And then what we do is we spray them with a salt polysaccharide layer that basically acts as a coating, right? And acts as a basically like an m&m coating on an m&m shell, if you want to think about it that way, right? I know, patients aren't even allowed m&ms, it's okay, I do. But it's okay.

If you think about it, when you open up that bag, you don't have a big puddle of mushy chocolate, right you have individually, basically, little beads of chocolate that are protected by this coating, it's the same concept with our probiotics, right is that they're sprayed with this layer. So when they get freeze dried, or protects their cellular membranes or protects what they're doing. So that's one way that we do it, in addition, that we also manufacture with a slight overage. So we know that even though we're doing that we put a little bit extra there, right, we don't bring that cost to the patient, that's something that we know that we have to do to make sure that that product is actually viable, and there's going to be something that's going to last, which leads to an ability where these products can actually be shelf stable.

So now we're not requiring refrigeration, which is awesome, because we think about it from, you know, patients perspective, you know, we think about you guys is that you guys have all of your supplements, and you have maybe a particular medication that you're taking, or whatever it may be, if you're putting it in your pill counter, which is something I do no shame in that, right? Some way to organize is that you can put those products in that pill counter, you can keep it with all of your other products or keep it with your medication.

Because I know what happens, right? You take that refrigerator, probiotic, you put it up your shelf, and you go out and you get your almond milk and your eggs and you bring them home and you put them up there, right? Where does it end up? speckled shelf, right. So what we're doing is we're just adding little bits and pieces. And we can do this for every product, or we're adding little bits and pieces that makes it a little bit easier for the patient to take, again, more therapeutic. That's just one example with our products that demonstrates that we could go over pretty much every product and give a reason for that, which is.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 31:50

Well, thank you. I want to go back to the lab though. So I love that you're basically saying to the listeners, we test every single ingredient to make sure that it is what it says it is right. But I know there's another piece of that, because you're also looking to see if there are any contaminants correct. So what are other things you're looking for that you don't want to be in the product? Yeah,

Thomas Pennel 32:08

absolutely. So even some of those botanicals and some of those raw materials, we take little agar plates, which are these little gel plates, and we actually spread that on there and actually see what grows. Right. So we want to see if there's any potential like see things get recalled for salmonella or some of these other potential pathogens. Yeah, right. Or we're actually seeing if there's anything that specifically added to it. Right, so maybe talk about vitamin C, again, that isn't vitamin C that ended up in that vitamin C sample.

That's not something that we want, right? Because if we say that there's 600 milligrams of vitamin C and a particular product, well, then we have to guarantee that that 600 milligrams we're putting in there is the vitamin C. And if it's not vitamin C, again, that's an opportunity for us to say, hey, we need to incinerate this and then go back to our vendor and say, Hey, what are you guys doing? What's going on here?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 32:50

Sure. What about heavy metals? Chemicals? Absolutely. Well, that okay,

Thomas Pennel 32:54

all of those heavy metals, chemicals, pesticides, anything that we would be concerned with that we don't want patients taking concentrated, obviously, in a product every single day, that's something we're obviously looking for as well.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 33:05

Awesome. Just taking a few notes here, I want to go back to fish oil. Sure. I do want to get to like how supplements are regulated and whatnot. But I, I want to go back to fish oil for a minute. Because you mentioned you're sourcing this off the coast of Chile. And I know in a quick, you know, short ad or commercial that I do run on the podcast, I talk about the CDs shelf life. But for listeners who don't know, their CD shelf time, I should say I've many official products. But for listeners who don't know what I'm talking about, let's talk just a little bit stay on the topic of fish oil and where you're sourcing it and how fresh it is. And kind of brag about that. Because that's I think that's really important.

Thomas Pennel 33:42

I could brag about that. The so the fish oil industry, if you guys want to know how that is basically done is every single official, it doesn't matter who it is doesn't matter if it's us or the Costco brand, or you name it. What happens is, is people obviously catch fish, right? So they're catching fish, they go out there. And then the first process, the literal first thing that they do is they physically squeeze those fish. And we physically squeeze those fish, what we're trying to do is extract the oil, right, we're trying to get that oil on the fish. But you can imagine, when we actually squeeze those fish, we get a lot more than just the oil, right? I'm not talking about guts and eyeballs and all that real stuff that we don't want our product either. We ended up with whatever toxic material microplastic heavy metal, you name Mercury a big one, yeah, and whatever that fish consumed over the course of its lifetime, right.

So every single company does this, we press them out, take out the oil, and then what we need to do in order to actually extract and purify that is we actually perform a process called molecular distillation. And molecular distillation is basically a very fancy way of saying we're going to take that we're going to purify that compound to remove all the heavy metals, all the toxic components microplastics whatever it is to leave us with official right to leave us with an actual oil that we put in a capsule. Problem with this process is in order to do that first step, what we have to do so what they are is triglycerides, that oil is actually a triglyceride, because we actually have to remove that glycerol backbone and reattach an alcohol at the backbone onto that products now becomes what's called an ethyl ester. For the patients.

This is an alcohol based backbone Fisher, this is what you will find well over 90% of the time, if you go by that big bottle from Costco, and it's $8, right? And it's very inexpensive, and it's got 200 capsules in there, and you're probably really excited, right? You open it up? Was it smelling? Sounds like fish, right? Or if we actually, every take that product, we start burping up fish, right? Reason is, is that fat is fat, right? So it's going to oxidize really quickly, especially in the presence of alcohol. So alcohol based backbone is going to make that oil go rancid, a little bit quicker. That's what those fish burps are when patients take fish oil, and I'm sure there's someone who's like, oh, my gosh, what am I doing? Let's do this right now that fish oil actually becomes rancid. And it goes bad quickly.

And then when you burp it, that's what you're tasting, which is gross. Right? So what ortho does, and this is another opportunity and we eat this cost we don't deliver just the the patients you notice are actually officials is relatively cost efficient compared to that is that we actually perform a second molecular distillation, because we're not going to leave that raw material in the ethyl form, right, the ethyl Ester form. And this comes down to the science behind it right. So we talk about reasons why we do things. There's a study, there's a reason there's some sort of scientific article or thought process that goes behind everything, right? We know that the ethyl ester is not as incorporated as well into the cell membranes, which is actually where the rubber meets the road. That's where fish oil is actually able to interrupt inflammatory pathways, we're actually able to reduce inflammation at the cellular level. Right.

So what we do is we perform that second round and molecular distillation, we're actually take off our alcohol backbone again, and we're reattach LISREL, back on back on. So now we have what's called a rheostat, terrified triglyceride, it's re esterified triglyceride, which is the same foreign that's coming out of the fish. Right. So that's the form that you would get if you're actually consuming the fish. And we know that this is incorporated, there's numbers I could throw, but this is incorporated significantly better into the cell membranes, right? This is going to be significantly better for the patients. So if you think about, again, cost raw materials cost what patients are actually getting, most expensive dietary supplement is the one that doesn't work, right, or the one that patients won't take, right? So the one that patients are actually gonna get more benefit from by taking less, in my opinion, that's more valuable than the one patients have to take more of to get less outcomes.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 37:20

You've probably heard a lot about fish oil. It's one of the most common supplements available after all, but have you wondered if you should be taking it and why you might want to think about it? The simple answer is yes. If you don't have access to fresh fish several times per week, you can likely benefit from supplementation and may even need to I test many of my patients fatty acid levels and have found that the overwhelming majority of my patients are low in omega threes. omega three fatty acids are essential cornerstones of human nutrition. They are deemed essential because we need them for proper health much like certain vitamins and minerals, but unfortunately, we can't produce them on our own.

As a result, our only option is to consume these fats either through our diet or through supplementation. omega three fatty acids are known to benefit cardiovascular health, support healthy brain function and cognition, and have been proven to maintain a healthy inflammatory response. For all these reasons. Achieving the proper balance of omega threes is an important health strategy one for which most people require supplementation. Simplified visual can help improve your cholesterol glucose helps your memory reduce pain, even headaches and menstrual cramps. I typically start my patients with one to two grams or 1000 to 2000 milligrams per day of combined Ecosa pentameric acid which is EPA and docosahexaenoic acid which is DHA daily.

Our your longevity blueprint Omegas are stabilized and vitamin E oil and rosemary extract is used to ensure maximum purity and freshness. This exclusive fish oil is purified vacuum distilled and independently tested to ensure heavy metals pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls PCBs are removed to undetectable levels. Plus, our official has the shortest sea to shelf time meaning from fish to bottle or capsule of only three to six months as compared to the industry average of 18 to 36 months. Seriously.

That means most of the fish oil you buy over the counter is old, oxidized, rancid and not helpful. That fish oil purchased over the counter could be three years old already before you ingest it. Yuck. With over 10,000 published studies in the last three decades, EPA and DHA from fish oil are among the most researched natural ingredients available and have a long history of safety and efficacy. Check out more product information on our website, your longevity blueprint.com and use code omega threes for 10% off. Now let's get back to the show.

Thomas Pennel 39:37

So as it relates circling back to our product and how it actually relates to the quality is that we partner with a company off the coast of Chile that pays for the boats. They own the molecular distillation plant, they own the encapsulation plant they own everything. The entire process exists off the coast of Chile, right. So they pay the fishermen they go out and they catch the fish they bring it back in immediately. They start to perform molecular distillation, excuse me. So what they do And as they actually perform that distillation there, they perform that second round of distillation there, and then they encapsulate it and send it right back to us.

That entire process happened relatively quickly, right? So we think about the retail space, a company that is looking specifically to lower the cost of their goods, they're going to send that fish oil, wherever it's least expensive to perform that process, wherever it's the most cost effective solution for that company, is where they're going to take that product, right. So if they're catching the fish, or they may not be catching fish, but they just buy the fish, whatever kind of cheap fish is available, right and mass bulk, and actually send it out perform that molecular distillation say, Hey, we're good with the ethyl Ester, that's official, we don't need to worry about it, right.

And then we send that off to a company that's going to do the encapsulation. They may be in different parts of the country, or different parts of the world, excuse me, right? So they have to send this product out. And the way that they do that was actually freeze that fish. So that fish is on ice for a very, very long time. All right, well, too long. So the industry average for catch the capsule time for any fish oil, and this may gross out some of the listeners, it's about 18 to 36 months. So this

Dr. Stephanie Gray 41:06

which is nuts, when I first heard that I was like, what, like That's nuts.

Thomas Pennel 41:10

So I like to fish, I like to go out and actually eat my own fish, which is great, right? If I had a fish in my freezer, that was a year and a half to you know, 36 months old, I would not eat right. So compare that to ours, our ended our our average, catch the castle time partnering with this company is about three to six months, right,

Dr. Stephanie Gray 41:29

which is an amazing notch is the best in the industry period, you're just not You're not going to find better period,

Thomas Pennel 41:35

you know, night and day difference, right, which obviously leads to higher quality product. And if patients try Fisher, which I recommend you to do, right, your longevity blueprint special, what we're actually going to see is that we're not going to be burping up that fish oil like we would if you're just taking something from retail space, you're not going to taste that product.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 41:50

So not only is it fresh, what you said before is you guys are essentially taking on the cost of re it's called Reus. Terrifying. The official with a triglyceride form, which is the form you would get if you were eating salmon if you were eating fish, right, which is easier for your body to absorb. So you're getting an easier version that's a fresher right that still distilled of any potential contaminants. And I believe this fish oil we're talking about is sourced from sardines and anchovies too. Is that correct?

Thomas Pennel 42:18

smallest possible fish we can this goes back to biological concept called Bio accumulation. Where if this is super oversimplified, but if that anchovy eats one toxic particle that Anchovy has one toxic particle in there, right? But if a salmon comes along and eats 100, anchovies, well, that salmon now has 100, toxic particles inside of it, right? It's a lot easier to process the smaller fish because they're less likely to consume other fish that have high concentrations of toxic material inside of them. Absolutely.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 42:46

So just in general, for the listeners, you want to avoid fish oil that comes from larger fish. So if it says salmon oil, or tuna, oil or whatnot, and bad, just you can just get rid of that. Right there. So let's This is excellent. Let's go back to how supplements are regulated. You've touched a little bit on this. But obviously, you guys have an amazing facility and you highly regulated your products, but tell us in general, how supplements are regulated? Because I do think a lot of consumers just assume well, if I do go to I keep saying Walmart, but any big box store, the products going to be safe. And if it says it has, you know, 1000 milligrams of vitamin C is going to have vitamin C, and you know, that must be the dose that I need. I think they assume that and that's not the case. So expand on how you what your answer would be to how supplements are regulated.

Thomas Pennel 43:31

I wish that was the case, I wish the patients could go into any store. And there's a high quality product available. And this is available to the masses. And this is something that's just everywhere. And there's a really good understanding of what's in products and what patients can take. Because that would lead to a lot healthier country, in my opinion. But the problem is, is as we get a big influx, right, we're talking about post COVID-19, and patients more concerned about, you know, their health and wellness than they ever happened. We get a big influx. And it's a problem even before but you get a big influx of these companies that just start popping up to make products because they want shelf space. That's what they want, right?

They want their product on the shelf that you can go and purchase. They make $1 Every time you do that, right? So what we see is that we see that these products, and I think that's a big misconception, you address this one with Tom, which was awesome. That's a big misconception that dietary supplements aren't regulated. They're highly, highly, highly regulated, right? The Food and Drug Administration, the FDA comes through our facility every now and then, you know, it's not a consistent number, but every now and then, and they will actually ask for and we have to record so I'm gonna rewind a little bit, but every time that we get a batch in and we weigh it out, and we open it and we do something, we have to have an individual who physically does that.

And we have to have a second person who stands there and actually records and verifies that that's the amount that's coming in or coming out of that specific raw material. And the FDA comes and they regulate that they actually ask for all of our papers and they look for irregularities. Right? So our facility receives very, very, very high scores. We've been the FDA I like to say likes us because we do a pretty good job right? And the FDA is actively and it's kind of an open will battle because there's more companies being created, in my opinion than the FDA has the ability to actually go out and shut down, they pop up, they start making products.

And I'm not even saying these are big facilities like ours, they're small operations, right? So they pop up make products, maybe they're making claims that aren't true that they can't make them illegal, or they're making products that are maybe adulterated or unsafe for the consumer, the FDA has to go out actively see them before they can shut them down. Right. So we talk about products that are available in the retail space. Sometimes that market is going a little bit faster than the FDA can.

But it's a big misconception to think that we're not regulated or that we're not regulated like pharmaceuticals, because in most cases, we are regulated just like pharmaceuticals. We're making products for patients, right? And the FDA is aware of that. So they want to see everything they want to know from start to finish how we're doing something, what we're putting into product and that we verified that that is correct. And then we're testing and actually doing all the things that we're supposed to, which we do, which is fun to say.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 45:51

Awesome. Awesome. So how do you some companies? So do some companies get by with contaminated products, just because like you're saying is your answer to that the FDA can't quite keep up with some of these smaller shops is that

Thomas Pennel 46:02

yeah, people just keep popping up. And it's an unfortunate time right now. I mean, it's a great time for dietary supplements that people are actually carrying and doing things, right. But just like with everything, there's bad people out there who aren't really concerned about the patients, but they're concerned about his profits, right? So they just want to make a product to get it on the shelf. And that's really all that they care about, right? Especially online, as online sales boom, as we see more patients trying to seek this stuff online and get answers online. You see a lot of stuff that just flashy marketing, right? You know, it's kind of an uphill battle. But the FDA does highly, highly, highly regulated, and they do shut down people who aren't doing things that they're supposed to, they've got a checklist that they walk through. And if you're not following procedures, you're not allowed to make dietary supplements, period.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 46:40

Sure. But that doesn't mean that the ingredients from all these other companies are sourced appropriately or in therapeutic potencies for certain clinical conditions. So just want to make that disclaimer. I have learned so much from orthomolecular. Throughout the years. They are truly a company that educates clinicians like myself so that we can help individuals like you. As Thomas mentioned, they don't sacrifice quality at all. I know that their products are thoroughly tested sourced from around the world and provided at therapeutic potency so that they work. I can't tell you how proud of your longevity blueprint products I am. They are manufactured by orthomolecular products. So everything you heard learned today applies to what we sell. I do believe we sell the best supplements in the industry.

Learn more at your longevity blueprint.com and use code best for 10% off anything. Stay tuned for more from Thomas next week. In part two, we're gonna dive specifically into what nutrients best support energy, adrenal health and immune health. See you then be sure to check out my book your longevity blueprint. And if you aren't much of a reader, you're in luck. You can now take my course online where I walk you through each chapter in the book. Plus for a limited time the course is 50% off, check this offer out at your longevity blueprint.com and click the Course tab. One of the biggest things you can do to support the show and help us reach more listeners is to subscribe to the show. Leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I do read all the reviews and would truly love to hear your suggestions for show topics guests and for how you're applying what you've learned on the show to create your own longevity blueprint. The podcast is produced by the team at counterweight creative as always, thank you so much for listening and remember, wellness is waiting.

The information provided in this podcast is educational. No information provided should be considered to be or used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your personal medical authority.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai