We live in a world of juxtaposition. Let's take a look at two typical scientific personas we see online these days. The first one is the evidence-based person. They trust Big Pharma exclusively, only make decisions if there's a meta-analysis or randomized controlled trial about something, and they make fun of anybody who thinks that a supplement may be helpful. Then on the other hand, we have your friend on Facebook who is natural everything. They don't trust doctors, Big Pharma, or anything to do with the medical establishment. However, they take 15 supplements as they believe those are the elixir of life, and they think that anybody who takes a pharmaceutical medication is a sheep just following in line. The craziest thing is that you can routinely see in these people online each and every day, but in reality, they're both probably a bit wrong and a bit right. We all know the wrongdoings of the pharmaceutical industry, but is the wellness industry or supplement industry any better? While we've been vigilant about Big Pharma, we've given the big supplement industry a free pass, and I think it's time to change that. Welcome back, team, to the Building Life-Long Athletes podcast, thanks so much for stopping by. My name is Jordan Wrennke, and I'm a dual board certified physician in sports and family medicine. And the goal of this podcast, to help you stay active and healthy for life through actionable evidence and pharma education. And let's dive right in. We're talking all about the big supplement industry, how it compares to Big Pharma, so let's get going. All right, now we're gonna start off talking about the Big Pharma industry, and they have a reputation, that's for sure. Specifically online, everyone is saying they're the worst thing in the world. And the reason they have this reputation is not for no reason, right? They've done lots of shady things, and we're gonna dive into those right now. So we're gonna talk about a couple of the big controversial things. First is price gouging, right? So Big Pharma's been known to price gouge patients. So what is price gouging? Well, price gouging means charging way more than you actually need to charge for something. And they have done that multiple, multiple times, and that's why they have a terrible track record for being greedy and money hungry. So one of the big ways they do this, how does this actually happen though, is they use patent law very aggressively. So once a medication is patented, there's a monopoly on it. By monopoly, I mean like if you patent a specific molecule or even what they've done now is a delivery way, how you deliver that molecule, that is your entity, right? That's your intellectual property and rights, and nobody else can make it that way. And so you own that for a certain amount of time. And what they've been known to do in the industry is they tweak things little by little by little. So they're not really changing anything substantially in the medication or whatever the device, but that restarts the patent cycle. So it gives them access to being the only one to deliver it for a long while. And there's teams of lawyers that every pharmaceutical industry has to make sure this is like their job to do and understand that. And so, but that is one way where when you have the only thing out there and then you continue to keep the patent on it, you own it. There's nobody else can come in and come make a generic version of it. 'Cause what happens is eventually patents do fall off. That's like the good news. And then an option opens up where you can make a generic. So a company can come in and say, "Hey, we're gonna make this medication now." A quote unquote generic. So it's not the brand name anymore, but we're gonna, you know, the patent's no longer exclusive. You can say, "Hey, I can make this molecule now." And until that happens, it's just that one company making it. And so that's why they have ownership of that. And they pretty much own the market. That's a big thing. And another thing too is lobbying, right? So they have very, very strong lobbying companies or portions of their company to help make sure that their products are known and in their hands, right people. But some very notorious price gouging examples are in 2015, the pharma bro, Martin Shkreli here, he, everyone saw him on the news. He increased the price of a medication to treat toxoplasmosis, which is a very rare infection, by about 5,000%. And he was actually later banned from the pharma industry because of his actions. So he essentially literally just said, "Hey, like not many people need this. We own this and we're just gonna jack up the price." Like literally nothing other than just like, "We're gonna do this." Not 'cause, you know, it costs that much more to make the medication or anything like that. He just said like, "We're gonna do this." And so being at the whim of a company when they're the ones who own it, that is a thing that could possibly happen. Then we had 2016, we kind of heard about the whole EpiPen, right? So back in like 2007, it costs about $57 for a two pen set. So you usually get about a two pen set. Up by 2016, the cost was 600, or about a thousand percent increase, which is crazy. And eventually they had to have a settlement as a, they decided that they kind of committed some light Medicare fraud. I don't know if you've seen the rest of the development. I may have, I may have done some light treason, is what he says there. But the long story short is that they were just essentially just increasing the price because they could. They are the ones that had the patent on it and they just kept going, going. And EpiPens, as we know, are very important for someone gets exposed to bees or peanuts or whatever you have an anaphylactic reaction to, EpiPens are life-saving medications and they are pretty much just jacking up the price because they could. So that's another reason why people, they hate this. And then insulin is another one talked about recently. The people who own a majority of the insulin are Eli Lilly, Nolan Ordiske, and Sanofi. And back in the day, you know, in 1996, the price was about 21-ish dials of vial of Hemalog and which is pretty reasonable. But then by 2019, they're going up to, you know, $275 a vial or a 1200% increase. And these three companies own about 90% of the market and they kept making tweaks to keep the patent, like I mentioned before. And then eventually in 2023, Congress said, yo, we're in caps of 35 'cause as you know, insulin is good for people who have diabetes. It's helpful. And specifically those who have type one, it is life-saving and they need it. And so it's just one of those things, it's challenging, right? 'Cause people who put in a lot of time and money to develop these medications, to purify them, to make sure they're safe, to deliver them, like they need to be compensated. This isn't like a free thing. I mean, unless the government takes on that and does it, like, I understand that. But like to just turn things up for the sake of turning things up to make investors happy and make more money, it's very easy to see why people are very angry and not happy about that. So those are some of the big stories that I saw, which were very intriguing. And then I wanted to move on to next talk about marketing practices. Another reason why people don't like the pharmaceutical industry is the marketing practices. They have a known history for aggressive marketing and inappropriately marketing things as well. And, you know, there's been history and a couple of report instances of them. Marketing medications for off-label uses. And off-label means, let's say for example, you have a medication that was made for headaches. Made for headaches works really good. You find that using it though with people in certain studies and research studies, you find, hey, that actually improved their seizures or improved their stomach aches. Who knows what it is. So when you get an approval for a medication, you have to have an indication for why you're doing it. So for this would be, hey, we're doing this medication for headaches and you get approval for headaches, but then you find that it works for something else. Using it for the other reason for why it's, other than what it was intended for, is what's called off-label. And this is used all the time, all the time by physicians. I mean, there's medications I prescribe all the time that are off-label and we use them because they work well and they just weren't necessarily studied for that from an FDA perspective. And so it's not necessarily, they're not inherently wrong to use things off-label or it's not inherently bad, but when companies are aggressively marketing for the use of their off-label purposes, that is wrong because they don't have the data to back that up. And that's not the reason they started the medication or the reason they produced it in the first place. And so that's some shadiness right there. And also they have a long history of some aggressive and shady physician marketing. They will pay doctors thousands of dollars for educational talks or being a consultant. So they bring you out to Vail to the ski resort and you give a talk and you paid hundreds of thousands of dollars or thousands of dollars, whatever. And that is, it's not commensurate with the amount of work you did. You did a talk, which was what we do as doctors, we give talks and we research things and we learn, but you get paid way more than that, or get paid a lot of money to be a consultant on a board. And once again, I'm not saying this necessarily wrong. I'm not saying that getting paid for your time and expertise is necessarily wrong, but the way pharma's done it in the past can sometimes be a little aggressive and a little extreme. And essentially we've had data that shows that when people interact with the pharma industry, when they get paid by them or get things gifted to them or have gifts or lunches, they're more likely to use those products. And that's why they do it, right? They know that when physicians have exposure to this product, they're more familiar with it and they're more likely to prescribe it. So that's why they do it. But it's kind of shady. It's kind of shady, that's for sure. And they also give gifts. They'll fund continuing medical education courses where physicians learn. So they're learning straight from pharmaceutical companies, which once again, doesn't necessarily mean that's always wrong. 'Cause you can learn from people who have something that you don't know. Like, you know, if this is a product you're not sure about, you can learn about it. But when they pay for it and they're competent and everything's great, like that's once again where we get questionable, ethically speaking there. So nothing is inherently wrong all the time in these situations. It's just like when he starts stacking things, it's like, okay, the game here is to clearly get doctors. They just pretty much own them in terms of say, hey, like they're familiar with us. Like they're gonna refer to us to all these things. So that's where it comes from here. And yeah, that sort of thing. And a perfect example of that was the opioid. I kind of mentioned that a little bit here was, you know, Purdue pharmaceuticals essentially aggressively marketed to doctors saying, hey, opioids are safe and they're certainly not addictive and there's no problem with them. And then as we know what happened with the whole opioid epidemic here in America, lots of things and lots of issues happen, that's for sure. But that was another example of like aggressive marketing saying, hey, we taught them about these things and it turns out like they were just wrong. They were just teaching either they hadn't had the information yet, didn't know it or were lying. Who knows, I'm not gonna point fingers. I don't know the whole history of that, but that's a perfect example of how it can sometimes go bad. And it is worth noting that you can look to see if your physician is taking money from a pharmaceutical industry. So you can, since you go online, you have to report, like if you are going to a luncheon or something like that, or you get a gift from anyone, pharmaceutical or whatever, you have to report that and then you can see how much money. Or if you're, you know, a lot of times if you're on a consultancy, if you're on a board, you have to, you know, disclose that. So that's in the beginning of any scientific talk, there should also be disclosure saying, hey, are there any financial conflict interests that should be out there that should be common access to see and public knowledge for everyone to know. But another thing that pharma does really well is direct to consumer marketing. One of the two countries in the world, shout out to us in New Zealand, where you can have direct to consumer marketing. And this seemed firsthand where patients talk about a specific drug. I can't tell you how often I get patients come in my clinic and say, hey, I want to talk about this medication. And medication development is fantastic. It's awesome and it advances medicine and it's great. But a lot of the times I have to have conversations with patients and say, okay, this one doesn't actually work in your circumstance. It's not the right indication. You have to go explain that. Whereas now patient in their brain says, hey, I want this medication, or I think it might be helpful. And, you know, obviously they have their preconceived knowledge and they've done the research or whatever, they heard about it. And so you have to almost walk them back and say, actually, this is why I think it's not the best. And a lot of times it leads to wasted time in clinic, talking about things that are actually important. And a lot of times you'll talk about to say, I want this and then you realize your insurance isn't going to cover it anyways. And so then it's this conversation and this idea that you're going to want this medication and insurance won't even cover it. And so it's kind of a moot point to begin with, but it does a good job in brain recognition, right? I just saw an article talking about it, how, you know, there's certain autoimmune medications, you know, there's been hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars put into marketing to direct to consumers. So you see it on TV, it's one of the things you recognize on TV, you know, it's all these people who are super happy and the side effects are like, may kill you or give you explosive diarrhea or something like that. And they do a really good job 'cause it gets into the public's knowledge, right? And they'll ask for it and they want it. And that's helpful, right? 'Cause when you ask for it, I mean, look at the GOP ones right now, first of all, those work, that's why people keep asking for them. But everyone knows about those GOP1 medications and they're asking for it and that leads to more and more people wanting it and getting on it. And it's good for the pharma industry. So direct to consumer marketing, definitely questionable ethically. And I don't love that as a physician either, but that's kind of what we're going on. There's also research issues from big pharma, surprise, surprise, you know, they do, I will give them credit here, I'll talk about in a second. They do lots of research, lots and lots and lots of research and it drives kind of advancement throughout the world, quite honestly. And we are a big player in that in the pharma industry here in America is it's really driving innovation. So I'm not ragging on it entirely, but they do a lot of research. And sometimes they also do that in an ethically questioned way in terms of only posting positive results or burying negative results, meaning, hey, if they don't get what they want, they don't really necessarily show it. They can also do something called p-hacking, which is where you run different analyses to find something significant. So you do the study, say, I think it's gonna do this. But then you look at all these other variables as well and you kind of run stats until you say, hey, this is actually positive. So we can run with that and market it that way. That is something that has been known to be done in the pharmaceutical industry. And that can be once again, ethically questionable as well and not the best science. So, but that being said, I don't want to just rag entirely. There is good that comes from this. So the biggest positive from the pharmaceutical industry is how locked down and how much of a regulatory framework there is set here. So there is a strict FDA approval process through the pharma industry. They have strict safety testing, manufacturing standards, and everything is just strict, strict, strict, and safe. And so that's like the biggest takeaway here is when you're getting a medication from a pharmaceutical industry, you know what the dose is, you know what's inside there, you know it's been manufactured safely and all that, like that's so huge. And that's one reason why I will always say that is something very, very positive comes out of pharma is like the manufacturing process. Like everything is so tight because it has to be right. And to get there, the research to start a medication, you got to do clinical trials starting at phase one and two, three. So like incrementally, it's like, hey, we tested this on animals and we think, hey, maybe it's, I mean, literally it's like first mechanistically like, okay, yep, like this is what's going on, Petri dish. And then you move up to like animals and like, okay, yep, they're safe there. And after animals, you're like just a couple of humans and then we more humans. And so it's like, there's a stepwise approach to make sure it's very safe and it's very rigorous. And at any time they're always monitoring, they can stop medications and pull them if they're not safe. And that happens quite frequently, unfortunately. But yeah, clinical trials take a long time, take a lot of money. And that's where a lot of the price in pharma comes from is trying to recoup the losses, right? They're putting in, you know, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars into development or you got to like make that money back. But it's very logical, well thought out, and strict and the FDA oversees that. And so when you get a medication, this is the biggest thing, you know what's in that pill, you know the strength of it, you know how much it's supposed to take, what are the recommended doses, all those things. That's like the biggest, probably the biggest advantage coming from pharma, I would say, is like, we know what we're getting, where we're getting and the manufacturing processes. That is like the biggest takeaway. So that is, you know, pharma in a nutshell, one-on-one. And moving on next, we're gonna talk about, you know, the devil we don't necessarily know, which is the supplement industry. And the supplement industry has been huge. It's been growing enormous over the last couple of years. It's just blowing up at this moment. And it's, we'll kind of talk about why maybe specifically, but the big thing that kind of changed the whole sub-industry was in 1994, the Dietary Supplemental Health Education Act or the DSHEA Act came in and it had big implications. So unlike drugs, which require rigorous testing and FDA approval before they can be sold, the DSHEA exempted supplements from pre-market safety testing. So manufacturers are not required to demonstrate the safety or effectiveness of their products before selling them. Let's just let that sink in for a second. So supplements do not have to prove they are healthy or do anything before they're on the market. So literally you go to the store, you look, you have no idea of knowing if any of those medications are actually safe or if they do their job. That's like to get to the market, that does not have to happen. That being said, if they're dropping people dead left and right, they're probably gonna be pulled, that's gonna happen, but very, very low barrier to entry. And that's why you see your favorite influencer just started supplements because there's no regulations behind it, you can just kind of do your thing. And it's a scary thing 'cause I'm not saying everybody's bad who does this or every company's bad. They're definitely good companies. We'll talk about what to look for in a company, but it's a pretty low barrier of entry. And that makes me worried 'cause I don't want just some person out of their bathtub making supplements and selling them. I definitely worry about that. And really another thing they did, which was kind of fady was this whole law permitted manufacturers to make what's called structure/function claims with their products. Meaning, it does things like, hey, it supports heart health or boosts immunity without providing the same level of scientific rigor required for drug claims. So this opened the door for a wide range of marketing claims with limited scientific backing. So what they said was, hey, if as long as you have this like mechanistic idea of like, hey, this may help us one thing, in this study that we saw, this compound increased this one molecule that is good for boosting immunity potentially, like so we can say boosts immunity. And that is a far cry from actually doing anything for your actual body and immune system. And so once again, you can just get a supplement out there, no big deal. And you can pretty much just like make claims that it does something if there's a tincture, even just a small possibility of scientific plausibility. So once again, it's kind of like the wild west, man. You don't know what's going out there or what it actually does. So that's something we're looking at. And overall, there is a also another very weird thing called the generally recognized as safe loophole. And the DSHEA created a provision allowing ingredients marketed before 1994 to be considered generally recognized as safe and exempt from other stricter regulations. So pretty much you can just say like, hey, like this has been used for a while, so it has to be safe. Without actually knowing like, is it actually safe? Which is crazy to me. As I was researching all this, I just like, I was blown away at just like, who in the government like had someone who's a buddy who had a supplement industry was like, hey, like just make it way easier so we don't have to do anything. And they just went along with it. Like that's literally the only thing I could think about while doing this, but yeah. So that's what it is. It's kind of interesting. And then moving on to the supplement industry's dark side. I've kind of already mentioned dark side to start with, but we'll talk even more. You know, quality control issues is a huge, right? There's lots of studies, multiple studies out there showing that supplements don't contain their listed ingredients. And one study I looked at showed that about 12 to 58% of dietary supplements contain anabolic agents or other prohibited substances. So 12 to 58% of supplements contain banned or anabolic or some other substance that was not supposed to be there. 58%, it's like literally flipping a coin. Like, is this something that I'm going to take? Does it actually contain what it says? Who knows? And that being said, that's looking at a wide range of things. Obviously we're talking about different manufacturing processes and how you can hopefully minimize the risk of being exposed to that. But still doesn't make me feel very good. That's for sure. When I look at another 20, 23 studies showed that, well, 40% of the supplements they tested did not contain a detectable amount of any of the listed ingredients. So didn't contain a detectable amount. So 40%, once again, almost 50% didn't have a detection amount of the ingredient they're supposed to have. So, hey, I'm taking you a vitamin C supplement. Let's say something like that. 40% of people didn't have detective levels of vitamin C. Like that's literally insane. Could you imagine going to pick up your medication for your blood pressure or something like that, or your seizures, or your whatever very serious thing you have. And it's like 40% of those medications don't have a trace amount of the medications they're supposed to have. That's literally insane. We would be going nuts and we'd be calling for sweeping reform because we hold the pharmaceutical industry to such a high standard. That is, that's insane. So 40%. And not on top of that, which is crazy, only 11% of the products they saw were accurately labeled. So give or take 90% of the products were inaccurate labeled. So just let that sink in. We have labels, like what's the point of having a label, which is crazy. So they're pretty rampant, which is crazy. And another issue that we've seen is contamination. So the most common contaminants are things like anabolic agents, prescription medications, heavy metals, all that stuff. So anabolic agents, usually these are in the muscle building compounds. So people are saying, "Hey, we're taking this muscle builder building thing, this proprietary blend to make you jacked. And how do they get you jacked? Well, they put a little bit of anabox steroids or substances in there. That's one. Another one is actual prescription medications. I've seen this before with patients who've come in and they take supplements and they find that they have actual medical grade stuff in there. Like specifically, like sexual enhancement things, a lot of times we'll see on like sexual enhancement drugs, we'll see like actual Viagra or Cialis is in there. It's like one of the ingredients that we see. And it's because those work and they're trying to ride the coattails of that. But yeah, that's something you can see as well. And then heavy metals, things like lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, which are all not good when they accumulate in your body. So something we have to think about as well. And as I mentioned before, very inconsistent dosing as well. And then another thing we talk about marketing with big pharma, how bad is, well, big supplement definitely markets too. So as we've seen here in the rise of YouTube, if you're watching this, you probably got a ad before this. Hopefully not. Hopefully didn't get an ad, but if you did get an ad at some point before watching this video on YouTube, you might've got a ad for a supplement or something like that. And a lot of times we have lots of celebrities and influencers endorsing things. And everybody can think of a specific company. I will not name them, who you've probably seen. Talk about a maybe green drink or something like that. And it's healthy for your life and whatnot. But these companies are making money hand over foot off these influencers. These influencers are making money. And it's all those things where, where's the proof? Where's the proof? But they're marketing, right? So like big pharma markets to us, so does big supplement. You better believe it. They are guilty as charged. And another big thing is they have lots of pseudo scientific claims. So as I mentioned before, you don't have to have actually any evidence, you can pretty much just claim anything that is reasonable. And so you can do what's called that structure function claim, which doesn't require FDA approval. And these claims describe the role of a nutrient or a dietary ingredient in affecting the normal structure function of the body. Meaning, once again, think about supporting heart health or boosting immunity. And they required to be truthful and not misleading, quote unquote, truthful and misleading. So once again, you find the smallest mechanism on plausibility. You can say, hey, like I'm being truthful. It has this thing that does that. That may help heart health. It is what it is. It's crazy when I was reading this. I really, once again, could not believe it. And then what they'll also do is constantly give you the natural marketing angle, right? So they're kind of exploiting that. This is called the naturalistic fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy is the mistake of assuming that because something is natural, it must be good. And therefore what's found in nature is inherently better. And that's just patently false. There is so much stuff in nature that can kill you. Like so much stuff that can kill you. All the things, yeah. So when people think it's natural, it's gotta be fine. That is very, very incorrect. 'Cause you know, you can go out and eat something and eat a wild mushroom or eat a berry and that may not turn out well for you. So the naturalistic fallacy is interesting. Meaning that, hey, like it's natural, therefore it must be good is one idea. And then, hey, it's natural, therefore it can't be harmful is another idea. And both of those things are wrong. Both of those things are wrong. I always kind of joke about this from the naturalistic fallacy. People say, heck, I like to be natural. And I say, cool, well, some people's natural is dying of a heart attack at age 45. Like, or having a stroke when they're 50. That's natural. That is natural if you just let nature do its course, that's natural, let's do it. Is that good? No, that's not good, right? We wanna adjust that and avoid that and prevent that. So just 'cause something is natural, it does not necessarily mean it's better or doesn't mean that it's necessarily safe at all. So that's something I want you to consider about as well. And health risks are something that we see quite consistently. So there are documented cases of supplement related injuries. I've personally seen people admitted to the ICU after taking various supplements. I have, like literally, which is the craziest thing, I've admitted people to the ICU with liver damage, with kidney damage from taking supplements. You know, they end up taking supplements all over. Another gentleman just regular floor for vasculitis, for taking sexual supplements, all these things. So they are, they're not safe. Like they are not inherently safe, I should say. Not necessarily they're all dangerous, but they're not inherently safe 'cause you don't know what you're getting. That's the big thing when you're getting there. You get something laced or has a medication and you don't know about it, that's bad, you gotta know about that. And because we don't know what's in there, it can have interactions with prescription medications as well, which is a huge factor. If you don't know what you're taking, you don't know what it's interacting with, it could be affecting your actual medications if you are taking them. And then moving on to about the money, the money of these markets, they are big. Pharma is way bigger. So I'm obviously gonna say that. I'm not saying it's close, no. It's about 1.5 trillion in America versus 200 billion in the supplement industry, with 200 billion still huge, but they're growing fast. You know, about almost double digits per year. And so still a lot of money, $200 billion, a lot of money. And a thing that I thought was interesting as I was going through this is that Big Pharma, Big Supplement, are they really just kind of the same? Are they kind of holding hands and just laughing at you for saying like, "Oh, like people who hate Big Pharma, "like Big Supplement, but here they are." I looked at a few of the top companies in the dietary supplement industry, and here are a couple of names you may remember. Amway, Abbott, Bayer, GSK, Pfizer, Herbalife. So Amway and Herbalife, those are like the multi-level marketing schemes. Those are big ones, but Abbott, Bayer, GSK, Pfizer, those are all pharmaceutical industries. Those are all pharma companies producing supplements. And so people are saying, "Hey, Amway and supplements are all natural." They're produced by Big Pharma and actually in a much less strict way. And so it's very interesting. Honestly, I'd probably trust those supplements a little bit more though, 'cause they actually understand how to manufacture things. But I just wanted to show you that like, literally, what are we doing here? It's the same companies that we're talking about in pharma. And there, obviously there's lots and lots and lots and lots of companies. So that's not all, but those are like the biggest players in the supplement industry. A lot of them are Big Pharma. And yeah, there's money to be made. So of course, why wouldn't pharma be getting in there? That's for sure. And so all this stuff, I'm just ragging. And you're like, "Jordan, what the heck, dude? Like, I'm so scared. What do I actually do? How do I protect myself?" Well, if you're going to do supplements, there's a few rules you should follow. So you can do this safely the best you can. Obviously, nothing's ever perfect. I mean, we hear batches of actual pharmaceutical grade things having bad contaminants or causing issues. So I'm not saying like, "Hey, pharma's perfect. That's it." But it's the gold standard right now. And so how do we take the best approach that we can, the safest approach we can to supplements? This is kind of my framework for this. So the first thing's first is find them with third-party certification. So things like NSF, it's probably the most well-known. It's other ones out there. USF is out there. They have other ones as well, but this is what it does. It's probably the most consistent. It's a third-party testing. What they'll do is they will review and make sure what's good. They'll be testing things that, hey, the supplement's actually showing what's going on. They have a label claim review to certify that what's actually on the label is in the bottle, which is awesome. They have a toxicology review to certify both product formulation, meaning that, hey, how they actually made it is actually what's happening. And they also have contaminant review to ensure that the product is contaminant-free, or at least free from undetectable levels of contaminants. And they also have a certified-for-sport certification, which makes sure that these supplements don't have any contaminants on the banned substance list for various organizations. So if you're an athlete, you're like a powerlifter or just like a professional athlete, finding that, make sure it's certified for sport is very important so that you don't accidentally take something and then get a drug test and come back positive and then have to get, sit out and all that stuff. But this third-party testing, essentially what they're doing is making sure, hey, is what's on the label actually in the supplement? And is the formulation safe? Is it clear of contaminants? That's like a big thing they're looking at, third-party there. And then, oh, another one is a fine one that has batch testing. So each, this means that each batch is tested to make sure that the standards for safety and quality are met. And then that's like the two main points is, so we're getting someone who's a third-party certification, batch testing. And then a third idea is that take supplements when you need them, not just for fun, right? 'Cause as we've seen before, anytime you take a supplement, even with third-party testing, any, taking anything, even pharma, you know, a pharmaceutical medication, anytime you take something, there's always a risk of something can happen. That's like the thing I talk about all the time as a physician, like, yeah, we can do this. It's relatively safe, but like every time I do something, something can happen, whether I inject you or give you medication or, you know, what are you exercise, something can happen. So there's nothing, there's no free lunch. And so we have to think about, you know, what is the risk, is the risk worth the reward? So anytime you take something, make sure it's actually like, you need to be taken. So we're just not putting ourselves at risk. And then, you know, avoid supplementations that have proprietary blends. This is a huge one. This is simply marketing talk to get you to spend more money. Wait, proprietary blend, what that is, is essentially it's protected. You know, I don't know what's in there. It's this, a little dash of this, a little dash of this, a little dash of this. It's a proprietary blend. It's our, you know, our company's proprietary blend to make sure it's the best supplement ever. What that is is marketing. It is marketing. I don't like proprietary blends. I do not want a proprietary blend. I want to know what's in there. Give me the actual ingredient list of what's going on, what percentage of what, and that's what I want. Proprietary blends are a way of obscuring that, so you don't know what's actually in there. Because what will happen is they say they have this medication, but it's way under dosed or maybe way overdosed. And so proprietary blends, if you read that, I would run away. That is a way to essentially just market to you. And it's not in your best regard in terms of safety, that's for sure. In overall, just kind of finishing out here, I thought, I hope this was helpful, but I don't want to come across as a hater. I'm just offering a different perspective, right? Everyone rags on Big Pharma for good reason a lot of the time, but for whatever reason, everyone just quickly then runs to Big Supplement and says like, "Hey, I like things natural." It's like, "Cool, natural is great, but are you one, actually taking what you say you're taking? You may not be, you may not know at all. Two, are you putting something actually harmful in your body and you're supposed to go all natural, but you're just, okay, cool, naturally taking a bunch of arsenic and cadmium. That's not great as well." And so I just wanted to play devil's advocate here and say that, "Hey, just because they're not Big Pharma doesn't necessarily mean they're good." And so I think, as I mentioned in the intro here, if people think all natural is great, and some people are like, "I don't trust supplements at all," there's probably a happy medium, right? There's probably an area, like most things, and that's social media. Social media is easier to live on here. I try to live here. That's my goal in the gray zone. That's where I thrive. But really, there's probably benefits to both. There are definitely benefits to both. You just gotta be conscious. If you're going to do this, if you're gonna need to take supplements, be conscious on where you're getting it, where you're getting it sourced from, and don't just blindly trust, say, "Oh, it's natural, it's gotta be good. I'm not worried about it." 'Cause that is a great mistake that could essentially get there. And as I mentioned before, natural isn't always better, and this instance can actually be much less safe, and just do your due diligence. Do your due diligence before doing this. So, I'm open for sponsorships from Big Pharma or from Big Supplement. No, just kidding. But either way, truly, I think, like all things, we need to be able to step back, and you need to be able to assess for yourself what is good, right? Let's say you have a rip-roaring infection, right? You've got sepsis in the hospital. I think it's wise to take antibiotics. I think it's wise to save your life and do that, and not just say, "Hey, I'm gonna take natural herbs here." Whereas otherwise, sometimes, hey, you might need a vitamin to replete your low vitamin D. That's very reasonable to do. We have pharmaceutical grade. Sometimes you can take supplements. So, it's one of those things like, pick the right tool for the right job. That's what I'm all about, right? I'm trying to create this idea of hybrid medicine, where like, hey, take ideas of traditional medicine, and functional medicine, and lifestyle medicine, and meld them together, and use the tool for the job. Don't just fit your approach. Like, "Hey, I'm a functional medicine person. Everything has to be functional. Hey, I'm a traditional. Everything has to be traditional." No, pick and choose the right thing. Patients are individual people. Everyone has individual needs, desires, wants, all those things. Find the right tool for the right job. That's my biggest thing. And so, I wanna have a big toolbox, which includes supplements and pharmaceuticals, if need be. All those things are in there. So, I just encourage you to keep an open mind, and yeah, do your best in finding the right tool for the right job that you feel best about, and you feel safe with. But that's gonna be it for today. Thanks so much for stopping by. I really appreciate it. If you liked this, if you commented, liked, subscribed, or shared with a friend, that would mean the world. And sharing this is like the biggest compliment. I really appreciate it. And thanks everyone for getting some more comments recently. It means the world. I really appreciate it. But hope you enjoyed this. And if you did, yeah, just let me know. I'd love to hear that. But now get off your phone, get outside, have a good rest of your day.
