SS 132 – Supplements- What’s Safe, What’s Effective?
Episode 132 Show Notes
Grant and Heavey discuss supplements and the safety of taking them considering there is no regulation on the use of these or how they’re manufactured for that matter. Are they really, truly healthy? Is it safe to use them? What measures can you use to test the effectiveness and safety of a product? All these and more in this episode.
[01:40] A Growing Apple Ecosystem
First off, Grant talks about his experience in using a Beddit Sleep Monitor, a very thin-as-tape tool placed in between the mattress and the top sheet that enables you to track your sleep and interpret data. Grant recommends using this tool to those curious about sleep. It tells your heart rate while you’re sleeping, respiration rate, etc. It’s an expensive piece of hardware but it’s neat. They’ve actually come up with a newer version called Version 3 that has a newer system for connecting to your bed. Grant’s was connected like a sticky tape that you can only remove and replace once. This newer version is infinitely irreplaceable, easier to travel with, more sensitive, etc.
Now Grant recently got an email from the company telling him that they’re not going to support his system anymore since they’re upgrading their software. They were only going to support the newer version so his hardware is going to be useless. So they sent him a free upgrade to Beddit 3 at no cost, overnight shipping. Grant has had that thing for two years. Thinking there was a catch to it, he clicked the link, went through the process, no credit cards, they shipped overnight a brand-new, in-the-box, sealed, free and upgraded Beddit 3. Whoa!
However, this week, Beddit was in the news again and it was announced they were acquired in full by Apple. It was only two weeks after they sent out the email and Grant can’t help but wonder if there is any connection between the two. But this is a pretty significant accessory in their ecosystem. The fact that Apple is picking it up is really interesting. Heavey has additionally read on the news the past week that Apple has become the most valuable company in U.S. history with $800 billion market cap.
[06:48] Checking In on Grant’s Progress
Just to give you a brief recap from the past episodes, Grant went through his lab work and Heavey gave him (off-air) a list of a handful of supplements to see if they helped the way he felt.
Grant ordered them all and he has been following Heavey’s regimen. The biggest problem was he screwed up ordering the unflavored cod liver oil which you would have guessed what it tasted like – cod liver. Worse, the oil really coats your mouth and it sticks there. Other than that, Grant finds that the rest of the supplements are really easy to take. Heavey basically gave Grant a regimen or protocol of when to take everything. He finds them easy to take and he’s excited to see how much this would help him.
[08:45] One Thing a Day
Grant is taking eight supplements and it will take him over a week of adding one thing a day to get on the full protocol. Heavey explains that everybody responds differently to these products so they want to understand how the body is reacting and what that might be due to.
If you get three supplements in and then you start having trouble sleeping or whatever, then you can associate that with the product. If you just start taking eight at once and something’s off, then you would have no idea what’s going on. So this helps them to get more information and to ramp up on a protocol that is best suited for him.
In terms of which ones to take first, Heavey says this is based on the things these supplements are addressing in his body. They started with the anti-inflammatory ones and then with the most gradual soft product or those easiest on the body. Then you go more aggressive and build up from there. It will be interesting to check in next week once he’s fully on the protocol or the week after he’s been on everything for a week to see how it goes.
[10:55] Cod Liver Oil versus Fish Oil Pills
Both are made from different products. The cod liver has a couple of extra vitamins like Vitamin D and A and it has lower levels of EPA and DHA than fish oil. There are some evidence that high dose in the fish oil can be a negative thing. Heavey thinks this is a more mild approach to that especially since they’re going after it with some anti-inflammatories that operate the different pathways.
Heavey thinks fish oil is like the most popular supplement in the world but he adds that supplements are considered to be healthy by the general population. The notion is that when you’re taking supplements, you’re being healthy. They go into a health food store and a quarter of the store is devoted to supplements.
[12:15] Supplement versus Medicine
Heavey explains that supplements have got to do with the raw materials. They’re mostly herbal products and minerals and nutrients. As opposed to prescription medications, they are products that are engineered.
[13:03] Let’s Talk Numbers and Surveys
So many people take supplements so it’s not a surprise so much that a large percentage of health food stores are devoted to them. Half of U.S. adults report having taken at least one supplement in the last 30 days. Vitamins are an example of supplements. People may not identify the same but if you took that tea and put it into a capsule, they would call it a supplement so Heavey would group them into the same category.
A survey released by the Council for Responsible Nutrition suggests that 85% of Americans are confident in the safety, quality, and effectiveness of their supplements.
[14:04] No Regulation, No Cause for Concern?
Not only are so many people taking supplements but they think they’re healthy and there’s no cause for concern.
Heavey, however, is still very skeptical about supplements especially that there is very little regulation on them. In fact, back in 2014, John Oliver did a hilarious piece about the absence of supplement regulation on his show Last Week Tonight.
Heavey describes this model of “ask for forgiveness” with supplements, meaning the whole population is effectively beta testers for these products that the companies put out. The FDA only steps in and they only have the authority to step in if people are reporting serious adverse effects and they can come in and pull the product from the market. But there’s no approval that they have to give products when they go out there. Basically, a supplement company can just put what they want in the bottle and market it. There is no safety testing or approval that’s required before they start doing that.
[16:10] Drug Interactions
Supplements have fallen into this category that doesn’t get regulated. Most people don’t even really report what they’re taking to their doctor.
For instance, St. John’s Wort is a popular supplement used for a bunch of reasons, one of them is to help with depression. It turns out that the supplement has over 200 documented drug interactions including some with common depression medications. So this is bad new for people with depression taking this supplement along with some prescription depression medication.
Worse, there is no real requirement for the manufacturers to identify any potential interactions on the labels. Some supplements do put things on their label like if they may cause an issue or if you have liver problem but they’re not required to do that. If you’re buying some random stuff, there’s a chance there’s not going to have that interaction information on it. And people are getting hurt from that.
[18:29] People Get Hurt
A study Heavey found said that there are about 23,000 supplement-related emergency room visits each year, with about 10% of those resulting in hospitalization. In the grand scheme of things, that number is pretty low but that’s still a ton of people and that could have been largely avoidable.
Furthermore, out of those 23,000 visits, the average age of those taking supplements is 32, majority of them, women. The biggest problem categories for those supplements were weight loss and energy.
[19:50] Be Careful What You Take
On top of this, supplements have regularly been found to be tainted with fillers and other contaminants that are not on the label. Heavey found another study that looked at 44 different herbal supplements from 12 manufacturers and they they applied this technique called DNA barcoding, where they were able to evaluate what’s in the actual products.
They found that 59% of the products contain DNA from herbs not listed on the label. So you think you’re buying one herb and then you’re getting a different herb. 33% of those products tested contained contaminants or fillers not on the label. People could be allergic to a lot of different fillers or contaminants and this could be dangerous. The authors of the study even indicated that some of the contaminants may pose serious health risks.
[21:21] Labdoor: Ratings and Reviews for Supplements
Heavey concludes there are a lot of pitfalls associated with this category of things we put in our body that 85% of us think they’re totally safe and healthy. However, Heavey further explains this is an emerging field, an interesting area that’s been growing lately.
Heavey recommends using the website called Labdoor that gives you ratings and reviews for a variety of supplements. They started out just ranking protein and from there, they slowly added other categories of supplements. They test these supplements for various things.
[23:20] Be Careful What You Read
For example, Heavey pulls out a product, Now Foods Whey Protein Isolate, which he regularly bought in the past. Labdoor ran fifteen analytical test on it and rate it at 58 (category average is 62 out of 100). Heavey warns you about being careful when you look at these numbers. The total fat in the product was found to be 0.9 grams which is actually 0.5 grams per serving over what they claim. They look at cholesterol and found there’s 4 milligrams per serving which is 20% lower than the label which said 5 milligrams per serving.
The more important thing to look at here is they will rate the total protein. Some products have been accused of nitrogen spiking where they state a much larger level of protein in the product when there’s actually not. For this product in particular, its protein is 11.8% below its label claim which Heavey thinks is pretty solid compared to a lot of the other products.
[25:00] Nitrogen Spiking and Product Purity Testing
This is a way they’re able to measure their protein and label it. They have a way to manipulate it so that they can say there’s 30 grams of protein in there when there’s really just 15 grams.
In the past, there have been heavy metals found in different proteins so they also do a product purity test. This particular Now protein got a 90 on that test. They basically pass it through these mineral assays and they’re looking for under one part per million of arsenic, lead, cadmium, bismuth, and silver to make sure it meets those standards.
Labdoor does more than testing protein, they’ve expanded it to things like creatine, fish oil, multivitamins, probiotics, zinc, BCAAs. They’ve got a bunch of different categories.
If you’re taking a supplement, go check out Labdoor.com but actually look at the details before just looking at its rating because they may just be getting dinged for goofy reasons. You still have to dig into it and interpret it a little bit but this is definitely way more information than we had a few years ago.
[27:30] Do Your Research
You can still buy supplements you can’t find on Labdoor but you have to research on the brand as well as that old course of third-party testing and approvals. Good for Heavey that because of his experience doing research on these things, he has found a handful of brands that he has already developed trust in.
As to whether these companies are doing the manufacturing themselves, Heavey says most of the time they’re buying and packaging them. There are shortcuts in this whole thing, reason that people gravitate towards the cheapest supplements but a lot of times, you get what you pay for with these things. That said, you should not just shop for supplements and take them based on price alone. Heavey points out that you have to try to do a little bit more research because you could be consuming all sorts of shit you that you shouldn’t be and don’t want to.
[29:08] Amazon and Other Consumer Reviews: Should You Trust Them?
Grant does most of his research on Amazon. Heavey again mentions John Oliver’s show where John was going through Amazon reviews to prove a point on something and one of the reviews he came across was on the movie, The Wolf of Wall Street. Somebody gave it a one star review and said, “There weren’t any wolves in it.”
This summarizes Heavey’s perspective on reviews of supplements. Reviews have a place but it’s a consumer review so it can’t be rated upon that. Reviews are perfectly valid for certain things you buy on Amazon but for supplements, specifically, it might not be the best thing.
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