How to Choose Supplements That Actually Work

Supplement Absorption and the Biggest Lie 0:00

What's the most expensive lie they tell us about vitamins? The most expensive lie that you're absorbing the product you take. There are so many products on the market that as a practitioner, a doctor, a scientist, you know, do not absorb. For example, if you are taking an oral peptide and not injecting it, we already know that is complete garbage science. The biggest lie with most of these products is you're absorbing probably less than 20% of the product you're taking with the majority of supplements.

If you're overwhelmed with chronic health symptoms and still don't have answers, you're not alone. I'm Dr. Javin, and on redefining wellness with Dr. Javin, we'll be exploring root causes like Lyme disease, mold, and parasites, and I'll guide you with simple and practical steps towards real healing. Well, welcome back to redefining wellness podcast. I am Dr. J Van Moore, your host. I'm here today with Dr. Vaughn and he's a good friend of mine. I've known him now since school even. But what he's done and what he wants to talk about today is why he actually started a supplement company and what's different about what he's doing as we were talking through things.

Something that I always am looking for is, well, there's a million B vitamins out there. How do I know this one's better than that one? Should I just go with the cheapest one? Should I go with the most expensive one? And that's some of the questions that we're going to talk through today because it is important to understand all the little things on the label is like, are they important? Do they mean anything? So for instance, like nano, is that particle size? Liposomal, is that a good technology that we should be using?

Is there something better? And Dr. Vaughan here has deep dove that and he's creating formulations using technology in combination with understanding people are tired of taking 20 and 40 pills a day. So how do we maximize each dose for the best and most valuable uptake possible? So Dr. Vaughan, thank you for joining me today. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here and talk about some of the cool stuff we're doing. So your first product, you sent it to me.

Introducing Aegis Formulas and Nano Liposomal B Vitamins 2:01

It sat on my shelf. And I'll just be honest with you, I get sent a lot of supplements. And I'm like, what makes this different? And I'm just thinking to myself, it's just another product. That's what I say, what I think almost always, because I just got a pile of them. But as I started reading through the label, it said, nano liposomal methylated. And it was a B vitamin and a glutathione. You know, one of the things that I know is glutathione is really hard to absorb. It's really poorly absorbed.

B vitamins, your urine turns green because you're not absorbing them. And most people don't have a, what seems like when I read the label, like B complex plus a glutathione. So first of all, why do nano and liposomal, why is that important? And why does that make your B vitamin better? Why did you choose to do that? Well, first off, with glutathione, our biggest thing is that we want to make sure that any product we're developing, that it's going to actually be absorbed and utilized, right? And with glutathione is one of a handful of products out there that people buy and don't realize that what they're buying is just expensive peat.

They're not absorbing any of it. So if you just go and buy regular glutathione, you're going to absorb less than 10%. Even if you bump up to like liposomal, that'll get you more. It probably can get you like 20 to 30%. And nano is now taking that glutathione and I think dropping it down below 200 nanometers. And then on top of it, wrapping it in a liposome, which helps protect it all the way through and makes it more readily absorbed. When you do that, you get even greater than just regular liposomal.

And then when you put all of that, the nano liposomal, and you put it in a glycerin base, now you're looking at upwards of 65 plus percent absorption, which is going to be the highest absorption you can find in the market. And the nice thing about the internet nowadays is you can go and just Google this stuff. What's the difference in absorption rate between this version and this version? So I always highly recommend when people are questioning or wondering at a product is like, well, this one says this, this says this.

Well, look up what that technology means because you might realize that you're getting double or triple or in some cases, four times the absorption rate that you would. And actually up to 10 times the absorption rate of what you were getting with another product. And so that's the first part of it. And then we wanted to make sure that we also provided those B vitamins in methylated, like an already methylated form, because more and more people are hearing about the MTHFR genetic mutation. And the reality is if you have that, then you do a very poor job absorbing it or even utilizing it, which can also lead to other health complications if gone untreated.

So, and it's hard. Most people don't know. I think it's, I'm going to say 40% of the population have the MTHFR and 10% of that 40% know they have it. 90% don't even know. If I don't have it, but taking that vitamin in already methylated form, it is just basically in ready to use form. And so regardless of if you have that genetic mutation or not, now you can trust that utilizing this product, you're gonna absorb and utilize it. And then when you compare them or you put them together, well, what's one of the big things that the liver does?

The liver stores B vitamins, right? And then releases them as we need to utilize them in different pathways throughout the body. Now we're not only providing glutathione in an absorbable, really highly absorbable form, same with B vitamins, but for those that understand glutathione, that is our master antioxidant, but also really helps support the liver in detox. So combining those together really creates a great liver product and people feel great energy on it. So let me take us back a few steps, because you said some big words, and I think we need to break them down a little bit more.

One was nano, and you said it means that it's a smaller particle. And smaller particles are important. And just tell me if I'm getting it correct, because when you put something in your body, it has to go through your bucocosal membrane, which is your mouth, or it has to go through your gut lining, which is your digestive tract. And the size of that particle, the smaller it gets, the more likely you are to get the absorption. And then beyond that, liposomal, like you said, you wrapped it in a liposome, so you had a tiny particle that you now wrapped in fat.

And for fat soluble vitamins, that means it's going to cross across those barriers more effectively and be absorbed by your body and your cells at a higher rate than things that are not wrapped in liposome, right? Absolutely. And as a simple example is this, if you get vitamin C and then you get liposomal vitamin C, regular vitamin C you absorb between, depends on the person, but somewhere around between 20 and 40%. Liposomal vitamin C is so high, I think it's somewhere about an upwards of 95 plus percent.

Why Nano, Liposomal, and Glycerin Improve Uptake 7:00

that it's almost as absorbable as like an IV, right? And so that's an example. Now, each vitamin that is in a liposome, that doesn't mean that all vitamins absorb at that super high rate. But just as a simple example of vitamin C, that's the difference. It almost double to, you know, more than double the absorption rate and utilization. And then you also feel it. I'm thinking about a client that, you know, I work, I'm still clinical, right? I still work with clients every single day. And when I'm thinking about costs, I'm going, okay, I need you to take three pills twice a day, and that's going to be two bottles in a month.

And if a bottle is 50 bucks per bottle, that's $100. And if a person is absorbing 20% of that, because it's not liposomal, then if I had them switch to liposomal vitamin C, if that's what we were using, and they go off X, they're going to save a significant amount of money. But let's just be honest here, the technology you're talking about is not cheap to make. So it makes the supplements more expensive, but you're absorbing much more, right? Correct. And then that's usually what you'll find. You'll see that vitamin C, for example, is more expensive in the liposomal form.

But then you have to look at it, look at the, you can look at the math, you know, for those that are math people, look at the math and just see what are the percentages? How much are you spending? So how much are you really spending per pill or per dose when it's not liposomal? So yeah, you can, you can take less and you also, you feel different too. So it doesn't like with like vitamin C, I keep using that because it's an easy one. If you take too much vitamin C, you'll know, cause you will start getting the runs.

Whereas with liposomal vitamin C, because it kind of bypasses that digestive, even though it goes through the GI, it gets pulled through kind of differently. And you can take double what you're taking or triple what you're taking with regular water soluble vitamin C and not have that same diarrhea effect. So that's the other benefit of it. Personally, like I said, I had the bottle sitting on my desk and I let it sit there for probably three or four months before I even did something. I think you called me and you're like, hey, you tried that out.

I was like, no, I have not. I have not tried it out. It's just sitting here looking pretty. And so I started taking it. I started taking it at a full dose a day and it tasted kind of good. So I was like, I'll have it twice in the day because sitting on my desk, I'm talking to patients. I'm like, I'll take it another time. I ended up having a little bit of a detox reaction because after a week of taking double doses, which I've taken all kinds of vitamins, like every vitamin you can imagine, because I just cleaned off my desk here like this week and I had like my whole shirt pulled up and it was just like full of vitamins that I carried to the kitchen.

I was like, which one of these do we even need? But I had a little bit of a Hertz reaction because I was feeling my methylation and my detox pathways and those glutathione turning on. So for me, I've had clients on Good companies, quality brands, just sublingual, which is even a step up from regular methylated oral pills. And I switched to the Nano and I did see some increased absorbability, increased bodily responses for the positive in the long run. But at first, you know, sometimes if you haven't had B12 absorbing for a while and you've been living in mold or you're dealing with heavy metals, your body starts kicking that crap out, which is also a good thing.

So, all right, we did, we talked about nano, which is fairly easy to understand, liposome, which is wrapping things in fat because it increases absorbability. Then you mentioned glycerin. So expand on why glycerin and what you're doing here. I know that you're putting your supplements into a glycerin instead of an alcohol, but why? Yeah, so the glycerin with that extra fat in there, because that's basically glycerin. I mean, you've got fat and what it does is it really does increase that absorption.

It's crazy because when we did the, when we tested this with like just regular, without the glycerin, it was very different, even from a muscle testing perspective. But that glycerin, just that fat, that fat base, think of it this way. Think about how many times you've been to the doctor and they're on a very specific medication. They say, I want you to take this with food and make sure you got some fat in that food or protein. They're doing that because that's what it is. That's going to help increase and ensure a good absorption of that medicine.

And so whenever you add glycerin to any kind of tincture or liquid for that matter, you're putting in a fat which just makes it even more absorbable. So it's just another way of increasing absorption. So the options out there in functional medicine today or in supplement companies making things is you can do a pill, which is oftentimes, well, we got options here. You can do a tablet that's all pushed together and those end up in the toilet hole. You got a capsule and in the perfect world that'll crack open and everything goes into your body.

But it's purely just powder that your body has to then figure out how to work with and pull in. There's no incentivized need to pull that powder into your digestive tract. Just like if you got leaves blowing past you in the front of you, why do you want to pick up that leaf? That's your digestive tract with it to some degree. And then, you know, we're going into then sublingual, which is absorption under the tongue, which is good. Then you look at the liquids. You've got Basically, you can put it in water.

It's not something that anybody does because it'll start growing things in it, bacteria and mold. And you got alcohol, which is what most of our tinctures today, most of our vitamins are put into alcohol because nothing can grow in that. And then you guys did glycerin and you're saying that the fat helps to absorb. And it's because the body wants the fat. It wants the energy. It's like a resource. So it's pulling it in as if it's food. And because it's fat soluble cells with the outside layer of them all being made out of fat, there's a higher affinity to pull that in,

Methylated B Vitamins, Detox Reactions, and Clinical Use 13:00

right? Exactly. And so really what it does, it actually increases that absorption rate quicker because it's also not breaking down a capsule or a pill. It's already in that glycerin. So not only is it helping to absorb better, it's helping to absorb faster. So, and then the last part was methylation, which is methylated B vitamins. And that's just, as you said, genetically, exactly as you said, there are studies to show 30 to 40% of the population, which means about 3 billion people in the world, right?

3 billion. You can almost just say about half of the world doesn't absorb well. And, you know, as a doc, this is what I'm seeing. And this is why I use methylated vitamins or different versions of methylated bees all the day, all day long, because people will come in, they will have neuro symptoms, they will have fog in the brain, a lot of fatigue, they'll have that overwhelm, that fight or flight type feeling in their body burnout, and they don't know why. They live a healthy life. They're doing all the things right.

They're taking the supplements. I've had more people than I can count come in that are taking B vitamins, eating red meat. Their B12 in their blood is actually high. Like it says that it's over the range. So sometimes their providers have told them, stop taking that. I'm like, okay, let's go another level deeper. So we run a homocysteine test, which is a further blood test. And that goes up or elevates. It's higher when you're deficient of B12, when you're deficient of folate. So there's a few reasons why.

And then I run methylmalonic acid in urine. I run cobalt in hair. And I'll find that a person's deficient in B even while taking the supplements. It's because the absorption is crappy. And that's why I wanted you on here today is because when you do a nano liposomal glutathione, not glutathione, glycerin plus methylated, now we can get that into your bloodstream. And then I see those numbers come down and I'm trying to make sure to clarify this for everybody. Cause you did the technology and put the company out there.

I want to make sure people understand it because when you're shopping for supplements at this point, there's so many, what'd you tell me? How many new companies have started in the last five years? 30,000 new supplement companies since COVID. Thousand. And when you go to the shelf and you're standing in Walmart and you're like, well, which one of these things, the average person's like, well, they all say methylated, so I'm gonna go to the cheap one. this podcast, I want people to start to understand, don't just go to the cheap one, let's go to the right one for you.

Well, that's the thing is what is the right one and it's understanding technology and it's also understanding form. And we kind of touched on it's the B vitamins are already in absorbable form for those that understand, like for example, how the thyroid works. You produce two hormones, the T4 and the T3. And the T4 is in a form that can't be utilized by the cell. So it has to be converted into a usable form, which is B12. They have the same thing. They have to be converted into a usable form. So when you get them.

Even though in your body, even if you absorb them, it doesn't mean you're going to use them. And so that's where people really, really need to understand the difference there. And what's in your, I always look at this, what's the technology absorption technology of the product? What's the form of the ingredient? What's the base if it's a liquid? And what are the other ingredients? Really as clean as they say they are, let's say natural flavoring. but does it have a parentheses telling you exactly what that natural flavor is?

Because if it doesn't, I can guarantee you 100% of the time it is not natural. And so these are all little things to pay attention to when looking at, because a lot of it, I mean, it comes down to cost, you know, and we talked a little bit about that with costs. I also want to make things simpler for practitioners and for patients and make it more affordable. Now, if you were to have to buy just a regular liposomal glutathione. I'm assuming what, probably 60 to $80 just for a regular. Yeah. And then you add in a methyl AB complex, which would be cheaper.

But even if you got a cheaper one for like 30 or 35, well, now you're at over, you know, you're a hundred bucks because you're having to do two as opposed to where you can combine those products into one and sell it for 69 saving the patient 40 bucks. And so that's the other thing we're trying to do. We're not trying to just create SKUs, you know, we're trying to create solutions that one work that absorb, that are clean, and that provide a solution that maybe isn't already out there, even though there may be other forms of it.

But combining things and making things simpler and making it, with everything rising in price, just making things more affordable. So the tenet of Aegis is, one, absorbability. And then you're talking about the second tenet is trying to figure out ways to combine products because you know, again, I kind of did a pre interview with you because I was trying to figure out even for my own clinic, like what products I want to use. How do I want to present these declines? Why is one product better than another as I'm going through these things?

And as you said, combining supplements together for fewer, fewer usage. Cause what is the cost of a supplement? Like if you had to break this down for me, let's put the supplement industry out in front of people. And let's just say this like costs, there's the cost of what's in the bottle. Then there's the cost of the bottle, the label, the shipping and all of these other parts. The manufacturing of it too. That's a whole nother aspect of it. Yeah. So just the materials inside the bottle is what percentage, if you just had to pull something off the top of your head, what is the percentage of the cost of what you sell a supplement for of the materials in the bottle?

Of the material compared to the total cogs? Inside the bottle. Like just, if I want nano-glute and just the supplement part of it, not any of the other pieces, how much of that is the cost? I bet, I mean, this is just, I'm just shooting from the hip here, but I bet just the ingredient itself without it being manufactured or sonicated or put into a liposome, just the actual ingredients, you're probably, I mean, at least a third of the, probably, maybe 40% of the total cost. It depends though, because there's certain products we have where there'll be a single ingredient that's 40% of our entire cogs.

Yeah. So it kind of depends on the ingredient. Like with the clear, that GMI, that's like probably 70% of our total cogs. That one ingredient is more expensive than all the other ingredients, the material to create it, the bottle, the label, the manufacturing.

Combining Ingredients to Reduce Pills and Cost 19:48

So as you go through it as a supplement. company owner and you're thinking through all this like you put you're trying to decrease waste to plastic being thrown back in the environment because you're putting like for Tudka for instance you put liver support herbs and Tudka together, which really no one else is doing. Pretty much everybody else is doing just Tudka. And that's, you've explained why that was to me, because I called you, I'm like, why'd you do this? And they're like, well, Tudka is super duper expensive.

The actual ingredient, Tudka, and then adding these other things, add more to the value of the herbs and then when you add to that the cost of a tub a bottle labeling shipping the manufacturer dealing with it it's just really hard to do that and it makes it expensive but you guys put them all together and put it into one and that's one of the reasons why I switched to your Tudco is because I'm like I can get rid of two products for one and honestly save the environment for one more plastic bottle that I was using previously and I just really like that second tenant of like simplifying the number of pills per day because you're combining products.

Yeah. When I was in practice, I just, this was just me and everybody does things differently. My big thing was I didn't put anybody on more than five supplements at a time. Just because if I practice when they got over five, I saw the compliance dip and drop. And then, and for me, I'd rather have compliance and watch people get better. Then just try to load them up. And so it becomes very difficult when now I have to put them on a liver product. I have to put them on a gallbladder product, put them on a kidney product, because everything that I do, I do based off foundational medicine approach, which is addressing the terrain before you start addressing any kind of condition or disease.

So I'm sure that, you know, our organs are functioning properly and we're not, you know, vitamin or mineral depleted. And then I increased cellular energy in that first month. Well, now that's three products for three different organs. And two of those organs are basically, I mean, they're basically attached. They work in conjunction anyway. So it made sense to combine liver and gallbladder together. And then I put a certain amount of humic and fulvic in there that I know through clinical experience of treating people with kidney issues that it helps support the kidneys.

So now it's a three organ support product. So now I went from three products down to one product. Now it gives me the option to include some other products that they might need, but I'm, I'm waiting to the next month. So I'm not overloading them. And so it made it, it makes it much easier in that aspect. And like I said, now that's one product instead of three, how much money save on top of that? Yeah, you're saving on all the extra shipping and labeling and bottling. And just as a, as a, another piece of the pie, you said you added fulvic and humic, which definitely can help the kidneys, but it also has shown in some studies to also increase other herbal absorption from things that's taken with it, right?

Yeah, so fulvic acid, and so for those that aren't familiar with humic and fulvic, humic acid or some of the terms people hear online, chilaget, basically the same thing. It's just really, really, really thousands of years old decomposed dirt that is just so packed with nutrients and things that are beneficial for like the microbiome. Humic is something that's a long-chain carbon, so it stays in the digestive track. It doesn't go systemic. But fulvic acid is a nanoparticle of humic, and so it actually goes systemic.

And what fulvic does is it's adaptogenic. So it'll come down to the cellular level, and it'll do two things. It will help knock things off the cell that don't belong there that are bad. Maybe you'll see it with some different heavy metals and other toxins. But at the same time, what it does is it actually increases the electrical charge of the cell. And whenever you do that with the cell, you also increase absorption of anything that comes with it. You can have nano, you can have liposomal, you can have nanoliposomal, and then you can have nanoliposomal that you also have fulvic added to it, which just isn't even more of a driver to ensure even greater absorption.

And when you look at that, I can actually give you the numbers. Like with ours, with nanoglute, you're just standard glutathione, you're lucky to get 15% absorption, lucky, 30 to 50% with liposomal, nanoliposomal 50 to 70. And when you have nanoliposomal in a glycerin, you get up to 80% absorption. And so now start doing the math. There's not a huge difference usually in price between those forms, but there's a huge difference in absorption. And so then when you pair fulvic, like we did in Tudka, We try to, what we try to do is we try to include whatever absorption technology will help that specific product absorb better.

And so with the Tudka, that's what we did. That's our absorption factor there to help increase the absorption is that fulvic acid, because you won't see like nano and liposomal in that one.

Humic and Fulvic Acid for Organ Support and Absorption 24:58

And so, so each product we have has its own different absorption technology and grease absorption. Because each herb, vitamin, mineral, whether it's fat soluble or water soluble or so on, that's a big piece of what you're thinking through is how do you absorb this the best? We were just talking about a formula. I was like, can we make a a mold formula or parasite formula or a bacterial formula and use technology with it because I'm using those all the time when I'm doing anti-microbials and you're like well you can't do liposomal with these herbs but you can do glycerin with those so really thinking through the science of technology not just the microbial herb itself.

Now I put together some questions for you that I really wanted to do. And I just want to hit you with a few of these. These questions are on purpose, just kind of like going at the heart of some of the stuff that's in the dirty supplement industry. So I know you're fiery and I want you to bring out your controversial Von side. I try to say low key, but you pull it out. I'll go. Let's go. All right. First question. All right. Are 90% of supplements on Amazon actually completely useless? Yes, we've actually bought product ourselves, their own product that was not our product on Amazon.

The craziest thing about that is they've taken products that they have found to be fraudulent and scams on Amazon and like walmart.com. And when they tested what was inside of it came from companies out of China, it actually tested for animal feces and not an herb. It is absolutely horrible. So you have no idea what you're getting. I always suggest if you're gonna buy a product from a company that's a supplement, Buy it from their website. Do not buy it on Amazon or Walmart. All right. The animal feces thing.

We're going to use that instead because that is a hook. Is the supplement I bought on Amazon actually animal feces? That's what I'm going to ask you. And then you can just do that same thing. All right. So video editor, cut all this questioning out and we're going to use this one. Are the supplements that you buy on Amazon actually just animal feces? Some of them actually are. They've taken it and they have put it in the lab to test them because a lot of stuff you find on Amazon is fraud. And when they tested it, it came from a company out of China and they tested it in there.

There was zero urban there and it was actually animal feces, which is horrible and disgusting to think. If you're going to buy online, buy from the company. Don't buy on Amazon or Walmart because you have no idea what you're getting in there. You can literally be buying shit. Wow, that's incredible. All right, so next question. What is the supplement industry legally hiding in our vitamins day by day? One of the biggest ones that most people don't know is natural flavors and the FDA's law or rule with natural flavors has nothing to do with actual natural ingredient.

What it has to do with is if it has the essence of a natural flavor, you can put on the label natural flavor, although every single ingredient in there is synthetic. And so when you look at a bottle like that and it says natural flavors, make sure they define the natural flavor. If they don't define it, there's a reason they're not defining it. It's because it's synthetic. What's the most expensive lie they tell us about vitamins? Wow, the most expensive lie? that you're absorbing the product you take.

There are so many products on the market, certain products specifically that as a practitioner, a doctor, a scientist, you know do not absorb. For example, if you are taking an oral peptide and not injecting it, we already know that as complete garbage science, it doesn't absorb.

Dirty Supplement Industry: Amazon Scams and Hidden Fillers 28:38

Same with glutathione and AD, there's other ones like that. But the biggest lie with most of these products is you're absorbing probably less than 20% of the product you're taking with the majority of supplements. What is the most dangerous filler or ingredient that they add to supplements? I would say one of the ones you see that's common is polysorbate 80. That is probably one of the more common ones you'll see in there. They utilize it a lot. And yeah, I would say that's in quite a few, quite a few.

Okay. Well, my mind is blown that we've got animal feces supplements being sold on Amazon. So I'm going to leave that for our listeners as being the final thought for me here. Is there anything else you want to add in today? You know, we worked with a manufacturer and they did a really good job When they bring products and ingredients, they would run it through their lab and do DNA testing on it before it would go to the line to ensure that they were getting the ingredient that they were requesting.

And this is the thing the manufacturer told me. One, they turn away 25% of the raw ingredient they get sent because it's adulterated. And then of the other, and also some of that 25% when they're running DNA, like they're running actual like basically like fingerprints to make sure that there's stuff in here. They found things like nuts in some of these things. They had no business being in there. So if you have a nut allergy, that could be a simple vitamin product, could be a serious danger product for you.

And this is a big, big manufacturer and they do it, he said, weekly, they turn away product. I've worked with a lot of manufacturers, very few do what they do. So you can only imagine how many products on the market have ingredients that the manufacturer says in there because they ordered it, but it gets cut. Just like drugs, they cut it before they send it out. Okay. Well. Definitely something to be thinking through is finding a quality company that stands by their testing, that stands by their products that maybe pay a few dollars more for, but you absorb a lot more.

So it makes it way more valuable to have. Well, Vaughn, I think this is really educational. This is honestly a podcast I could just send out to patients of mine so they can listen to it and just be like, wow, okay. This is why we want to make sure that we're using quality brands that are trustworthy, that you can look at their third party testing online and know that you have, what you're getting in the bottle is what's on the label. Absolutely. Yeah. Very important. Well, what is the website for your company so people can take a look at what you're doing?

Yeah, our company is called Aegis Formulas and that's spelled A-E-G-I-S. Everybody always asks us, what does that mean? Actually, it's Greek for shield. And so we're trying to shield the health of people and help be a difference maker in this industry, providing clean products that you can trust, that absorb well, and that actually move the needle physiologically. I love it. Well, thank you so much for being on here. And we'll probably have to have you back as you continue to do new product launches and build out new cutting edge products.

Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to redefining wellness with Dr. Javin. If this episode spoke to you, please follow and share this podcast with someone who is ready to take control of their chronic health symptoms. Also, please consider leaving a review. It helps more people find the show. See you here again.