2722: Fish Oil: Scam or Super Supplement? w/ Angelo Keely

25:13They'll show like 83, 84, but we say slightly lower on the label to make sure we hit that claim. But a cheap brand will be 30 to 60%. So you'd have to take twice as much to get the same thing. You have to get twice as much. You think you're getting this capsule, right? That's like, oh, I'm taking my omegas. But if you actually look at the amount of the active ingredient, it's very low in terms of the total oil. And what else is all that other oil? What else is there? Yeah. And so they're selling you a bunch of other junk oil. Wow. And now you're not required to list how much EPA, DHA is in there, correct?

25:45They do. They will. They list. If you look at any submodel, you'll actually see. And you can do the math yourself. So you can add the EPA and the DHA. You say milligrams divided by the total amount of the fish oil that's in it, and you can very quickly see. What about - On average, 30 to 80. That's a huge difference. Oh, yeah. What about, and I could tell the difference. Fish oil for me, or omega-3s, I have lowered inflammation. I just do. Let's talk about that for a second, how they affect inflammation. Why do people notice, why do I notice when I take a high-quality omega-3 fatty acid, I'm just less stiff, just overall?

26:18What's happening? So a lot's going on. So maybe like just a quick breakdown so everyone kind of even understands what the omega-3 is. So omega-3 is one type of a fatty acid. Fatty acids are all the little different types of like, we'll just call them like micro fats. They truly are defined as fatty acids that go into making oils or fats. So when you have butter or lard or olive oil or any of these types of things, those are made up of fatty acids. And there's a few different types of these. there are saturated fats, which people are, I'm sure you've heard these terms, saturated fats, monosaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats.

26:56And I promise you it's going to be worth going down this slight little science lesson for everyone. So like a saturated fat, literally without going too down the science realm, like it only has these single carbon bonds. And so they actually stack really well and they get really tight together. And so that's why saturated fat congeals at room temperature. So that's why like butter lard is like solid, right? A monounsaturated fat has at least one of these double carbon bonds. And that's what you'll find in like olive oil, olive oil is made up of oleic acid primarily. And then there's this other thing called polyunsaturated fats where there's more than one double carbon bond.

27:36And so that would be things like omega-6s. So that's like, that's typically actually what goes more into, you get from like seed oils, but from omega-3s, all these different types of oils. And in all of these, a key difference you can see and understand is at which point it becomes solid. So saturated fat's solid at room temperature. You know, something like an olive oil, you have to get a little bit cooler. You go all the way down to something like an omega-3, which is a specific type of this polyunsaturated fat. You have to go like negative 50 degrees to get it to go solid. And that's because of literally its chemical structure.

28:12It's got all these more bonds in it and it becomes more kinked and flexible. And what happens is when we eat fats, we don't just use them for energy. They actually go into making up our cell walls. So the simplest way of thinking about it is your red blood cells literally are made up of the fats that you eat. So if you eat a lot of saturated fats, if you eat a lot of omega-6 fats, if you eat a lot more omega-3 fats, whatever those proportions are, those are going to go into making up your red blood cell barriers, the walls of them. And when you have more of these very flexible types of fats, the omega-3s that you consume and they actually go into making your red blood cells, your red blood cells literally are more flexible.

29:00And so someone who does not consume very much omega-3s in their diet is going to have in the very low single digits, one, two, three, maybe 4 % of their red blood cell is actually made up of this omega-3 fatty acid. If you consume more and more, you get up into the eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 range, then there are these amazing health outcomes that emerge. Things like 15 % reduction in all cause mortality, 15 % reduction in cardiovascular risk, in cancer risk and dementia and all of these things. And so part of it comes from this kind of key aspect of literally your blood cells, all the cells in your body are made up of this fat that's more flexible.

29:44But another big component of it is that these omega-3s basically are precursors for not just anti-inflammatory agents, but actually these things called pro-resolving mediators. And these pro-resolving mediators, is a way of thinking about inflammation. Sorry, I've been talking for a long time. Just keep going. No, no, go ahead. Okay, yeah. So just to kind of like break down how inflammation works. Inflammation is not a bad thing. Like if - You need it. You guys have been athletes, right? I mean, it's like you twist your ankle and it gets swollen. Like that inflammation response is actually your body trying to heal.

30:22It's sending a bunch of attention there and unique molecules are being generated to try to heal that spot. And that's a good thing, actually. You want that to happen. The issue with inflammation in our current world is that our diets have moved from as much of a whole food diet to something with a lot more processed foods in it. So you over consume these calories, you eat tons of processed sugars, processed fats, etc. And all of those basically injure and stimulate the body in a way where you get this kind of low-grade chronic inflammation, which personally I used to think was BS. So I was like, ah, chronic low-grade inflammation.

30:57This must be, you know, it's like just like woo-woo or something. It's not. It's like a very real thing that we've been able to measure through. You can do blood tests on it. You'd like see reactive protein, interleukin-6. Like you can actually measure the amount of inflammation, low-grade that's occurring in someone's body. And so similar to, you know, like if you get injured on your ankle, you could choose to take an ibuprofen. And if you wanted to, what the ibuprofen would do is it would actually just like stop the process. It wouldn't heal the process. It would stop the process. The way that omega-3s work is that they're the precursors of these things called pro-resolving mediators.

31:35And they don't just stop the process. They actually enhance and speed up the process. So they help the body to literally heal faster. So they have this very unique relationship with inflammation that's totally different than maybe what our typical experience of dealing with inflammation is. Almost like an adaptogen. Well, it modulates the process. In this episode is Angelo Keely, the founder of Keon. If you want to go check out their supplements, which you should, they're some of the best in the world, get yourself 20 % off. Go to getkeon.com. That's G-E-T-K-I-O-N.com forward slash mind pump. Back to the show.

32:12Just to back you up, data on very powerful anti-inflammatory injections, like corticosteroids would say, show increased rate of joint destruction. Athletes that consistently use NSAIDs have higher rates of injury, lower rates of muscle building and adaptation because it doesn't modulate the process, it stops the process. And you need that process, not just for healing from an injury, but also from adapting to any stress, including exercise. Omega-3s modulate the process. And I'd love to point to some studies that seem to suggest that athletes who use omega-3s actually adapt better to exercise too.

32:54They have better performance outcomes and build more muscle. Can you speak to that a little bit? Because I think that's fascinating. That is true as well. I would just highlight the studies that show that athletes adapt better to omega-3 intake. It is pretty high doses. So I would just name like, you know, like typical dose for someone to be like a gram a day. That's like kind of the standard dose I'd recommend someone takes. If you are an athlete who's wanting to get better performance from it, or you're an older adult because the same thing is actually true. The thing we were talking about earlier with essential amino acids and anabolic resistance, omega-3s can also help overcome some of this anabolic resistance.

33:30And so basically what happens is as the omega-3s make up more and more of the cells in your muscle, they assist the process of stimulating mTOR. And we don't understand exactly why it happens, but the outcomes are very clear. We're literally, you get like, you know, you give these athletes, this is young as well as older adults. It's been shown to be true in both, that you give them these higher doses, 3.5 to 4 grams a day. Which is not that much. It's not that much. I'm not saying that's a crazy amount. I just want to highlight it. I've taken as high as 6 and 8 grams myself. Of course you have.

34:05So you do that for 12 weeks and you increase your one rep maximum over the placebo by like 10 to 15%. You build more muscle. So I want to build more muscle. So it's, it's legit. Like it really, you really do build more. I want to go back to something you said earlier, cause I want to hear what the, where the tipping point is. You mentioned that like, if you're taking these omega three or typically a person is there, it makes up like three, four or 5 % of the red blood cells, the lining or whatever like that. And then once we get to a certain point, a certain percentage, nine, 10, 12, whatever that is, you start to see these incredible outcomes and health benefits.

34:36Where is the tipping point and where do you, so I'm assuming based on what you said, the average person who doesn't take these or just kind of is in like low single digits, two, three percent of the wall, cell wall is made up of this. And then people that take it are probably north of eight, nine, 10. Where's the tipping point of where all these great benefits come from? So it's actually progressive. There's not like one set tipping point. So any amount more is better. That said, what the studies have really shown. So what I would say too is omegas, going back to like, you know, supplements that have been studied a lot, omega-3s have been studied, omega-3s, creatine, essential amino acids, whey protein, like these are the most studied supplements.

35:18The majority of studies that are double blind, placebo controlled on supplements are done on that. Are done on that. Like 80 % of probably all studies are done on the ones you just mentioned. Yes. And you have an immense amount of epidemiological long-term observational studies, meaning looking at people over 15 years and measuring what their omega-3 index was, how much omega is in their blood, omega-3s are in their blood, but also what their eating behaviors are, et cetera. Like, I mean, a lot of studies. So it's not only these random control trials. It's also looking at groups of people over a long time.

35:50So there's a lot of data. And so basically that's where these, what we're talking about right now is coming more from those observational studies because you have to measure people's blood over a long term and then see what happens to them. And so basically is the people that went from 4 % to 7%, that's where they do the cutoff in the studies. But what I would say is there was benefit at 6%. There was benefit at 5%. But when you went from like 4 % to 7%, that is where on average people added five years to their life. And there was a 15 % reduction in all cause mortality. Talk about the reduction in cancer risk alone.

36:26Yeah. I mean, it's similar. It's like, it's like a 15 % reduction. I would say any of these diseases that, uh, just to highlight though, this is not like, uh, you start taking it once you get cancer. This is like, these are, um, nutrition choices that also I would just name. So you could do this entirely through eating fish. You'd be eating a lot of servings of fish, which we can get into, but through eating fish or through taking some type of omega-3 supplementation, over the long term, you end up getting these results where it's like a 15 % reduction in basically any disease that seems to be related to inflammation, which is also dementia.

37:03I mean, it's so broad. It's unbelievable. Here's what's cool. Here's what's interesting about this. Usually when we're talking about supplements, I would say whole food sources are better. Just go with whole food. If you can't do that, use a supplement. Here's where I've heard the argument and i think i agree with it that supplementing with omega-3s is probably the better option and it has to do with how difficult it is to get fish that isn't right yeah contaminated or farmed or unless you're eating sardines which i talk about all the time and a lot of people i don't want to eat sardines because that's a you know it doesn't seem to have a lot of heavy metal it's like it's it's actually probably better just to supplement with the omega-3s for just because of those in the context of finding the right fish, getting it clean.

37:49It's not farmed, it's wild and all that stuff. Yeah. I think if you want to get in these higher levels of EPA and DHA, which are the two main omega threes that are really the important ones, you need to be eating a lot of sardines. Right. Um, if you want to be avoiding heavy metals, because the, because basically, just to clarify too, uh, this is not coming from all fish. This is from fatty fish. You need the fat and fish. So like a can of tuna is not going to give it to you. Yeah. Yeah. We're talking like Like salmon, mackerel or anchovies or yeah. So it's like, it's got to eat a lot of fatty fish.

38:21So I would say if you ate tons of canned sardines, like that is kind of an option, but we're talking a lot, a lot of sardines. You know, I think on this level of like, if you want to get the equivalent of like a gram a day of, of EPA and DHA, you'd basically want to eat four servings of those sardines per week. I'm the least doing that. Per week. per week oh per week I thought you'd say per day not per day not per day but I would say even four servings of sardines per week that's probably more than what you do because nobody does that that's a lot and you eat more sardines than anybody else I go through bouts of doing it because I'll get sick of them myself and I would just say that's for the gram if you want to get to if you want to do the three grams a day and I personally choose I'm not saying everyone else should do this but I personally choose to take three grams per day I mean that would be three times that amount it'd be like 12 servings of sardines a week and that's not not happening It's not happening for me.

39:13Something else that was revealing to me a while ago, I learned this a long time ago. I worked with someone who was very, she was just ahead of the curve when it came to stuff like this. And I was taking omega-3s. And she said, hey, Sal, open that capsule and smell it. And she goes, it's rancid. These are food. It's food. It goes bad. And so a lot of these companies are selling you bad, rancid fish oil, which isn't doing what you think it's doing. How do you ensure it's not going bad? like what is that yeah what's just like poking a hole in each one and finding out for yourself well something that i do do and i take this as my personal responsibility is every single day when i take my omega-3s i chew one oh you do i literally do it every single day and it's just like a habit that i built like a long time ago but not saying that that's our full complete quality testing i think uh what you do is i mean freeze them is that no no no we're talking about bad yeah we're You do not need to freeze them.

40:13But if you buy them and you freeze them right away, so you're - No, no, no. I would just say like, so a quality, if you choose one of the highest quality brands, Keon Omega, it has no significant level of oxidation after two years of manufacturing. Right, right. And if you do not have to, and I'm saying this is stored in your house. No, I'm talking about supplement companies that sell you if you're bad already. No, I get it. But I also, I mean, it could also go bad, right? Right. So I thought they have a long shelf life if they're produced, if they're produced well. And so it really comes down.

40:44So freezing them was a waste of time. I was freezing the fish burps. That's why I had you freeze them. Yeah. But even that you don't get fish burps with a really high quality fish oil. So I mean, I chew the capsule. It doesn't taste like fish. It's not that fishy. No, no. But really what it comes down to is a few things. I mean, the fish burp thing is going to come down to that kind of concentration and purity issue we talked about earlier. if 70 % of the thing you're eating is like junk fish oil. It's not even like the really concentrated EPA and DHA. Yeah, it's going to smell like nasty. But also there's a question around, this is another thing where people like to cut costs, is the preservatives that you use.

41:19So for example, we choose to use organic rosemary extract and astaxanthin. And astaxanthin is actually something that comes with fish itself. It's what keeps salmon fresher longer and gives it that pink color. It's also good for you. It's also very good for you. Your preservatives are good for you. Yeah, our preservatives are actually good for you. But we put enough in to where they simply they there's like no risk of the oxidation anytime within the expiration window, but even beyond that. So really, the quality, the issue is like getting it really high concentration, very good purity from the very beginning, not buying junk oil to begin with, and then using really high quality preservatives.

41:55And if you do that, you will not have rancid fish oil. Like, and I mean, I look at the test all the time. There's bro. There's not oxidation. Yeah, no, and it's crazy because I'll say this in the supplement industry, the supplements that have the most data where people are the most aware, like if you say omega-3 today, right? Maybe not 15 years ago, but today if I say, hey, omega-3, people say, oh, yeah, that's a good supplement to take. Everybody knows that they see the data. Doctors recommend it. when you have that much awareness and that big, a large of a competitive market, the odds that you're going to get a product that is not great is higher because you have so many companies now trying to compete.

42:33And what they're trying to compete is over is cash, is money. So when they do consumer reports on testing and they test 15 omega-3s, what you'll find is 13 are going to have problems and two, maybe if you're lucky. I've seen consumer reports where none come back. That's a really good point. And I think a helpful way to have people understand where and why and how the risk develops. Because just that you're saying, like everyone's saying it's good, but no one really knows exactly why it's good. So then there's lots of, you know, business people out there, maybe don't have the best interest at heart.

43:06They're just, you know, taking advantage of the marketing hype versus actually trying to make something great. Totally. Where do you source yours? Is it sardines, krill? Where are you getting? It's coming from anchovies off the coast of Peru. Oh, wow. Yeah, and the reason for that is there's a few things. One is these smaller fish have a much lower risk of any type of heavy metals. Right. But also there's certain regions of the world that have the way that ocean currents work, etc. There's a lot lower risk of pollution reaching them. And then on top of that, in this region, there's better opportunities to do more sustainable fishing.

43:43so for example there are certain certifications that you can get to ensure that you're not doing really terrible like exploitive fishing practices and it's it's more available from this region so we're able to get the highest quality fish that doesn't have a bunch of contaminants in it and that on top of that as well is like not gonna create longer term ecological problems for us so i have a question uh to ask about sixes and nines uh yeah and i'm terrible I'm not like Sal where I can remember the exact study and draw back to it. So I'm going to do my best. But I remember reading that if you were eating like in a calorie surplus in a high saturated fat diet, so a lot of nines, right, and sixes, that the sixes and nines outcompete the three.

44:29So even if I were to take a fish oil, that the cell wouldn't get it and that would outcompete it. Is that true? Yes, that's a good question. So just to clarify too, so saturated fats are separate from these omega-9s and these omega-6s. So saturated fats are their own thing. Omega-9s and omega-6s are types of these polyunsaturated fats. Got it. Yeah. So there used to be this idea that you wanted to have a good ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. Yes, right. And that is a mechanistic understanding. And what I mean by mechanistic is there's all different types of studies. Like we were saying earlier, you could observe populations over a long time and see what they eat and see what happens to them.

45:09Right. Or you could do a RCT, double blind placebo study and like give these two different groups, you know, different things and see what happens. Or you can do in vitro where you see what happens in a cell. Or there's these kind of mechanistic studies, explanations where you're just trying to understand what's going on. That's more related to this kind of cell type study. Okay. And so what we know is there's actually two essential fatty acids, and they're not the ones we've been talking about. One is this linoleic acid, and it's an omega-6. And then there's another omega-3 that's the alpha-linolenic acid, ALA, that's an omega-3.

45:49So there's an omega-6 and omega-3. and it is true that those two essential fatty acids compete in the same enzymatic process the uh omega-6 the linoleic acid wants to make for it to be able to make arachidonic acid which is actually more common in meats and things like that and is it is good for you it does things it's gotten a bad rap it's not all bad actually can do some good things and ala for it to convert into EPA and DHA. That's what this whole conversation about omega-3s has really been about. They compete for the same enzymatic process. So if you have a bunch more omega-6 than in this linoleic acid, then the ALA can't do its thing to convert into EPA and DHA.

46:34But here's the deal. ALA only converts at like 2 % to 4 % to EPA and DHA. And that's why EPA and DHA is fundamentally a conditionally essential amino acid. So it's not truly essential. Like your body, essential just means your body cannot make it. That's right. It doesn't mean that it's what's most important for your body. It doesn't mean like a bunch of other things. But like, as we've been talking about, if you actually consume these way higher amounts of EPA and DHA, you get this incredible set of benefits. There is no way that you're going to consume enough ALA to convert it into that EPA and DHA.

47:11And it doesn't matter with the enzymatic process anyway, because you're taking it already as EPA, DHA. So that's the point. I think what the point is, like, you're not going to, and I think this is an advocate for people saying, you don't need to eat fish or get them from marine sources. Like, just eat chia or flaxseed oil, which are high in this AL. But here's the deal. It's not going to convert into the EPA and DHA. So the big thing is if you want to have these more flexible red blood cells, if you want to have way more of these pro-resolving mediators that are going to resolve all this inflammation in your body, if you want to have these benefits from strength gains, and if you're older, hypertrophy as well from omega intake, you have to take DHA and EPA directly.

47:53It is not going to come from ALA. so this whole argument of the omega-6 omega-3 balance it really it's it's like an old school way of trying to think and understand think about and understand what's going on and what we need that's really not relevant i'm so glad you cleared that up because i know i've seen people use that that study or that and as a way to shit on omegas as if you eat this much saturated fat in your diet anyways and most americans eat this much you're basically flushing your omegas down But to put it plainly, it doesn't matter that the enzymatic process isn't going to happen because it's coming pure already as the DHA.

48:33Bottom line, you need to take in the EPA and DHA regardless. You either need to eat fatty fish multiple times a week or you need to take a daily EPA and DHA supplement. if you want to have more of your red blood cells be made of this thing and avoid these diseases. I'll say this, Angela, and I'd love your opinion on this, but just my strong opinion based on the data, and there's a lot of data to support this. There are two supplements that I think most people should take. And I say most because there's always variances out there and I can't speak for everybody, but most people from a longevity perspective, and I mean not just longevity, but health span, because longevity is how long you stay alive, but I mean how long you stay healthy.

49:20There's really two supplements that have a profound impact. Omega-3s, high quality ones, and creatine. Those two seem to show benefits across the board from the brain to the organs to performance to pretty much everything. Would you say - They're at the top of my list, definitely. Okay, let's talk about creatine for a second. because I love talking about creatine. Years ago when we started the podcast, I talked about how it would be the future longevity supplement. At that time, this was over 10 years ago, it was just muscle building. And I was like, uh-uh, this is a long, and now we're seeing this is a major longevity.

49:59Let's talk about some of the benefits of creatine outside of you build more muscle and strength. So what I would say is, and this is one where I want to be nuanced because I think it could end up being even broader than what we're about to talk about. But at this point, what the studies show is that it's really good, again, for stress physiology. Meaning if you're really sleep deprived. Yes. If you're older, senior citizen, and you're suffering from certain types of mental impairments, not things like dementia, but like focus, working memory, etc. Although some studies show for dementia and Alzheimer's, it seems to be a benefit, but that's a little more speculative.

50:36I think that's more speculative at this point. So you got good integrity. Yeah. So I'm just trying to be like, you know, real about really. Yeah. So what I would say is similar to the to the mechanism in the way that it works in muscle. Basically, the way that creatine works is you take creatine consistently on a daily basis. It saturates in your muscle cells. And then when you go to exercise, you have a this super quick form of energy that allows you to exercise better. Right. And stronger and get more reps in. and thus you get stronger and you develop more lean muscle and more strength. So what happens is if you take a lot more creatine, so I'm going to give the example that's probably more relative for us and our age group and anyone younger.

51:16And actually, I would just say everyone. If you take 15 grams of creatine on a day when you are sleep deprived, it has been shown to improve focus and working memory. And so why is that? How is that working? What's going on? Well, what we think is that initially the muscle wants a lot of the initial creatine. It's trying to absorb it and get it. But what's left over, if you give this surplus, goes into the brain because the brain is the other primary place where creatine gets stored. And we don't understand the exact mechanisms of action. But what it seems like is in a similar way to the muscle where it kind of gives this quick burst of energy or this conversion into ATP.

51:55It's doing something similar in the brain that's allowing you to basically overcome this kind of stress physiology. where typically it'd be like, it makes sense, right? It's like hard to remember or I can't really stay focused. It gives you this more accessible energy. So that's, I mean, that's kind of the core of what the studies have shown for people our age. When you look at older adults, it's higher doses. It's like 25 grams. So 25 grams is like, I mean, I take typically five grams a day. So it'd be like five scoops. At 25 grams a day, they have seen consistent improvements in working memory and focus, et cetera.

52:32But it's definitely a lot more. And so I just say that because I know, as someone who sells a creatine, like I don't want someone to get hyped up on this, tell their mom to start taking it. They're only telling their mom to take five grams a day and they're expecting her brain's gonna work totally differently. It's like, that's not what it's shown yet. That said, typically in the way that supplement science works is you start with really high doses because you wanna show that it's gonna work. So it could end up being that over time we find, you know what, 20 grams was enough. Actually, 15 grams was enough for my 70-year-old mom or grandma.

53:03So we may find that lower doses are sufficient. Yeah, and it's very safe. It's been tested a million times for maybe not a million, but lots and lots of times for safety. But it helps my body produce more ATP. What cells don't run on ATP? Do you know of any? I think they all use ATP to an extent. Do you see in the supplement industry issues with quality with creatine? Yeah, that's actually a pretty significant issue. Especially now with the gummies. Oh, yeah. All the gummies that are coming. I see a lot of tests coming out on the gummies that are just mostly like just - There was a huge study.

53:37It was like 90 % of them didn't even have any creatine thing. You were just eating candy. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. And I actually have done it before. It's hard to tell with a creatine because it doesn't taste like anything, which is also a weird reason to make a gummy. Like the gummy thing has seemed weird to me just because it's not a difficult thing to take down. But like other supplements that have strong - Because we're children, Angela. it's the only way i take my vitamins bro okay don't judge other supplements that have stronger taste you know like aminos i've tried like gummies and like this doesn't taste like you know and you get it tested there's nothing yeah like buying supplements off amazon or of some brand you don't know it's like you literally could be buying nothing and it is more going back to this question earlier about like doing all of the testing you know suddenly creatine is this very hot topic and everyone's interested in it well i promise you there's a bunch of up-and-coming entrepreneurs and online marketers that want to get into that business and they want to do it.

54:29And they don't know how to, they don't know anything about creatine, right? So they're just going to try to go to some manufacturer, going to make some product and they don't even know if what that manufacturer is giving them is legit. So, I mean, that's, I think that's, that's the risk in the space, but even more broadly, like the actual process by which you make creatine is, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a complex chemical process. And in it, if you don't pay very close attention and be very committed to quality, you can have trace amounts of some of the inputs that you don't want ultimately.

55:01And so it's, that's another issue that comes up in like cheaper versions of creatine. So yeah, I think there's both a risk of, you know, contamination with things you don't want in it all the way to like, it's not, it's not a hundred percent creatine you're getting 70 percent of what the label actually says is on it yeah and either one of those is you know just not worth it especially with with the supplement that's like even if you look at a brand like kion and you're like oh it seems more expensive than what i can get from bulk supplements you know it's like it's not you're going to be taking it every like as you're saying sal too this is the type of supplement to take every single day for the rest of your life yeah it's like buy the one that is you know all to save five bucks you know yeah Yeah.

55:41It's like, come on, come on, come on. You know, it's like, and so for example, there's, there's one primary ingredient manufacturer of creatine called CreaPure. And so that's the one that Keon uses. It's the one that's made in Germany. And it's the one that has the best relationships with all the scientists doing like all the newest, best studies. It's a micronized form. It's super clean. So it's, you know, that's why, and again, it actually is interesting. It happened during COVID during the COVID years. Um, there was a real struggle to get this ingredient, CreaPure. It was very hard to get. And I watched a lot of my peers and brands that I respected.

56:15And I thought, oh man, they're like the legit supplement company switch. To Chinese creatine. To switch to Chinese creatine and stop carrying CreaPure because they couldn't deal with the supply chain thing. And we literally just throttled sales. We had people on subscription. We couldn't really sell anymore. And we just kept doing that because I didn't want to go and sell some crap product that I didn't want to take or I didn't want to give to my teenage kids or give to my mom or dad. What an awful predicament to have to be in, you know? Well, there's nothing worse than taking a supplement every day to improve your health and to not realize that there's some contaminant or some byproduct that you didn't realize was in there through the crappy process or heavy metal.

57:00And you have no idea that you're actually making your health worse because you've been taking something that's cheaper for 10 years, which our industry, your industry, I should say, our industry is terrible too, but the supplement industry is just, every time a consumer report comes out where they test supplements, I always make this face like, okay, here we go. And I read it and it's never, nine out of 10 of them came out great. It's always nine out of 10 of them had some weird stuff or had nothing in it or we found all this other stuff. I think, in fact, I would love for someone to show me a consumer report that shows different it's almost always the majority are not good so this is like a big deal i'm proud to say though that we we're batting 100 still with anybody we partner with yes you know yeah that's always something i remember the first time that's a big deal for me when we first started oh yeah no that's like and i think you have to do that i think that when these reports come out and 50 60 80 of them are bad it's like yeah and and people Well, just to save three to five bucks.

58:00It's like, it's crazy to me what people will choose because of that. Well, the problem is you look at a bottle that says Omega-3, you look at another bottle that says Omega-3, you think you're comparing the same thing. That's the issue. It's hard to tell. I mean, I get it too. Like it's not an obvious thing to just get. Like maybe after listening to an hour long podcast, like you understand this one specific thing about Omega-3. But who has the time to do that or who, you know. Yes. Do you guys feel like, though, that that's shifting and changing? I feel like the I mean, we're at an interesting time now.

58:31I mean, look at where we're at, where, you know, you you actually as a founder now are like you're forward facing like just 20 years ago. No one knows who the founders of any companies really are. Where now you kind of have to be out there. People expect that they want to hear from the guy who's behind this. And I want to hear him talk about his thing where that wasn't a thing before. Yeah, well, talk about the, I guess, I mean, for lack of a better term, the courage it takes to get on a long form of media like this and have three hosts ask you all these questions. I mean, seriously, most companies wouldn't do that.

59:06Most CEOs wouldn't do that because it's scary. Well, because they couldn't. They wouldn't be able to answer questions like you answer right now. I mean, that's part of the thing that I think what landed you with the conversation the first time with us was, you know, first of all, you wanted to counter a position that we've taken on. We feel pretty damn confident about all of our positions. And you articulated it so well. So I was like, okay, tell me more. I want to hear this. And then you've been able to come on here and handle any question and handle it with integrity. I don't know too many founders that can do that with their supplement company.

59:40There's not a lot of them. Back to creatine, I remember having Dr. Seeds on. Now, he's one of the lead doctors and researchers on peptide science. Brilliant man. And we talked about creatine as being beneficial for people with methylation issues. So people who have the MTHFR gene, they have to make sure they take B vitamins that are methylated. He's like, oh, creatine, it allows more methyl donors to be available to these other enzymatic processes in the body. uh that's a big deal for health and longevity there's a significant percentage of people that would benefit from that and i'm one of those people and you know praise god i've been using some creatine since i was 16 years old so it's been beneficial in that case are you familiar with any of that i'm not i'm not as familiar with that science yes it's really really cool very that is quite interesting how common is that sal and somebody uh it's relatively common well it's not super common but it's a it's a significant percentage of people enough to where you know people have significant as in more than 10 or oh okay i mean millions of people yeah yeah oh okay so okay yeah yeah and these are issues these are people who have issues with getting rid you know how does somebody how does somebody test to find out they have a gene test you know the problem is that people are uh that their people are afraid of revealing it because they may get docked with insurance and stuff like that so some people in fact i had i won't say who it is we had someone on the podcast uh he's a health wellness guy and he has the mtfhr gene variant And he's like, don't say it.

1:01:07I don't want anybody to know for that very, that very reason. Policy stuff. I just, I think afraid of the future insurance companies and, you know, medical companies and stuff like that. So yeah, pretty interesting. So tell me about how you decide to carry a supplement at all. Like with go through the process of like, we're going to add this new product. Is it just, you got to see lots of data? Yeah. I mean, to be totally honest, we haven't added a bunch of stuff. We kind of started with core stuff and we've stuck with core stuff because it's, um, it works. So, um, from the most fundamental level though, yeah, it's like, is this a product that is worth taking every day and that is going to meaningfully create benefit in our health and in customers health?

1:01:55And that has really good data behind it. And it's, it's really, that's some, it's like, that simple of a, of a formula. And it's, it's in sometimes produced kind of like a weird thing, like coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. So like, why do you have a coffee? Well, I believe actually in caffeine every day. I like, I like, I like cool data for it. I mean, honestly, like, and the antioxidants of coffee are legit. And it was one of those things where again, it was hard to find a super good quality coffee that I wanted to consistently drink every single day. So there's, there's, I don't want to make it seem like too personal because it's not just like pure, like, what do I want to take every day?

1:02:35But there is a real thing behind like, Hey, Omega threes are legit. I really do want to take it every day. Other people should take them every day. My family should take them every day. Same thing with like a protein powder, same thing with the creatine. And so that's kind of like the fundamental base. And then, and then really like, is there science behind it too, though? Like, is this something that we're going to be able to, um, build, uh, a real business around. And, and then after that, it's like, you just need to do it really well. Um, you know, I admit like there's other, you know, it's, it's interesting when I was younger, um, I got these staph infections and the only thing that got it to stop for me was this very unique garlic extract.

1:03:14And I'm still believing that garlic extract, man. And I still take that supplement, but like the data behind it, it's like, no one's really invested enough into getting the studies done, et cetera. And it's like, if I was going to do, you know, some kind of cool breakthrough thing, it maybe would be that, but it's like, you know what? That's like, that's not what I'm up to with on Keon. On Keon, it's like, what are the daily essentials that I'm going to put in my body every single day? I want my family to put in their body every day and that I can be proud to stand behind and that our whole team can be proud to stand behind.

1:03:42Since you brought up the coffee, I want to give you your flowers because Keon coffee has been my favorite coffee for so many years. Justin loves coffee. I wish, and just so the audience knows, 100 % it would be a sponsor of the show and I would sell the shit out of it if I could sell thousands of bags every time I talk about it. The margins are so slim. It's so hard for us to give you guys your return on your investment for a commercial just straight up being honest with the audience. It's the coffee that these... My whole family. I have my whole family on Keon Coffee. It's just amazing. It's amazing coffee.

1:04:19And I remember when we first wanted to do it. And we've – coffee – we don't move enough. We just – we don't have that big of an audience where I can sell thousands of bags every time I talk about it. But I wish I could because I would talk about it all the time because I drink Keon coffee every single day. So got to give you your flowers for that. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Wish I could. Why does it taste so – it really does taste – it's the best tasting coffee I've ever had. These guys are religious about it. We go to Truckee. If Keon coffee's not there, they're pissed. It actually happened once.

1:04:49Is it the roasting or is it the beans? It's multiple steps. So to make this kind of coffee, the first thing you start with is a really high quality raw ingredient as well. So basically, it's all single origin, which is funny because we don't even advertise that, but that's like a whole coffee snob thing, right? So it's their single origin beans from Central America, but they're from very specific farms and co-ops where they're not only organic and they're not only specialty grade, but they are dried on machine dryers. Because in some of these cases, you can just dry the beans like on the actual like green bean sacks out in the fields.

1:05:28And in that process, that's where things like mold and other types of contaminants can get into the coffee bean. whereas if you take the wet beans you immediately take them and put them into these like machine dryers then there's nothing there's no other kind of like remnants of junk and stuff that gets on it and like some of that junk could be actually dangerous you know like mold other other things could just be like others you know um dirt and other stuff that gets you know brought in i didn't want to say bird poop i don't even know that yeah i don't even know that about it but when i describe it to somebody i say it's the purest cleanest tasting coffee i've ever had smooth yeah That's right.

1:06:02It's the purest, cleanest tasting coffee I've ever had. And I absolutely love it. And that makes total sense why that is. You said something. I didn't know this about coffee. Single origin. So is that very common that you just gather beans from all over and throw it all in one batch and then - Cheaper coffee. Yeah. Cheaper - And you call it a whatever. It's like a medley at that point or whatever. Yeah. I mean, the - And is that why Starbucks kind of, what they say, kind of burns it so it makes it - Yeah. That's what I was going to say. So the easiest solution for making a coffee, And if you can imagine to like in older times where like they're bringing coffee beans on ships for like months at a time and they're probably getting pretty gross by the time they get there.

1:06:41You mix a lot of different beans and you dark roast burn them because it just makes it the easiest way to consistently offer a coffee. Right. I can only imagine if you were constantly tasting your coffee and every cup tasted a little different. You'd be like, I'm over this. I'm not. Yeah. So how do you make a really consistent coffee that is single origin? That is actually maybe the greatest challenge to what this, to the key on coffee, because like a lot of like what they call third wave coffee, these hipster coffee shops, you'll notice they maybe have like a different new light roast thing every time.

1:07:13This one's from Ethiopia and this one's from Columbia or whatever. And it's like from a special farm or whatever. And sometimes they're like really bright tasting. You ever had that with like super acidic? It's because that's kind of like the hip thing in the coffee world is to, I can get this one really unique coffee bean from this one place and get the really unique flavor profile out of it that like, it won't taste like anything else. And so, um, whereas the opposite of that would be like Starbucks, you know, or traditional French roast, just like whatever coffee beans I can get and just burn them.

1:07:42And if you burn them, no one can taste the difference of it. So the interesting challenge was like a key on coffee as well. Even our dark roast is not that dark of a roast. We have a light roast, medium and dark. And really what it is, is you get this really high quality coffee bean, but it can't always come from the same, you know, Honduran farm or Mexican farm. Like sometimes you have to get it from a slightly different place, but they all need to have the same profile so that you are tasting the same awesome Kion coffee that you've been drinking for however many years. So it's very difficult to source them to get the same kind of profiles, the same notes of chocolate and caramel, et cetera.

1:08:16And then it's really extensive testing, which again, we're, and it's crazy to say this because when we first got into it, I assume like coffee brokers had been through this. They didn't, we're not, had not gone through it. We're like, we're testing all the green beans. And then we have these contracts where like, once you transport to the United States, it has to pass the test again. And if it doesn't pass that test, we'll reject it. Like, dude, we're not doing that. And it's like, we just negotiated it over time. But we came up with things. This is an interesting thing. I never would have imagined where we tested it.

1:08:45in the other country, right? Yeah. And then it gets shipped to the US and we roast it and it pops for like pesticides. And we're like, how could I have pesticides? You can buy an organic coffee as a coffee producer and then they will put it in one of those green sacks. That's someone else. That was a conventional sack that had been used prior for non-organic coffee beans. So it's getting covered in the pesticide remnants that were on the conventional coffee beans. Dude, how often does that probably happen to people that claim they have organic coffee and we were like the with they had never heard of this they'd never like we're the ones that uncovered this in 2020 or something i'm like i i kind of blew my mind that no one had come across it before how long did it take you to figure that out because i'm imagining you guys well we had to just like stop that all that caught you know we had to stop that whole yeah but that whole um lot of coffee basically and move on to another one and figure out what was like yeah but how'd you tie it back to the sacks i mean because i imagine when that first pops you're going like how did this happen and your first thing is someone sprayed it.

1:09:43You don't think a bag that it travels in is contaminating it. Do you? It was literally just like an audit of the full process to the point where then we got the green bags and yeah. And our part, our primary partner that helps manage the coffee side was like, we just got to test the bag and test the bag. And that's what popped. Wow. Yeah. That's wild. That's crazy. That's wild. Yeah. What's your top seller? Uh, essential amino acids. Wow. Yeah. Consistently? Consistently. And I would say that's though also, I mean, what I would say is we don't really advertise the coffee either. Cause just to be real about it as a business, the margins are very, very small.

1:10:16So if you want to go out there and you want to advertise and tell the story of it and do ads on, you know, Facebook or something or Instagram, like you just can't, it can't pay for itself unless you have, and I, there's another part of our businesses. We've been bootstrapped from the beginning. We don't have some big financial bank or partner, you know, like we didn't, um, who can burn a million for a couple of years. Yeah. It's like, no, like from the very beginning, we had to like actually like make it make money. You know, it's like, like I borrowed a lot of money personally to make the thing work early on.

1:10:46So it's like, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't a thing where we could just, you know, just try to get customers, but not make money from it. So yeah, it's just, it's, it's tough on, on that side of things. And what I'd say, so then like naturally supplements have better margins than, than coffee does. But really early, early on the essential amino acids started to take off as kind of like just the story of what they are and how they work. And with a little bit of an older audience and, you know, we follow that intuition and we devoted more resources to marketing them. And you said earlier, Sal, you know, like omega-3s and creatine, and I know I haven't converted you yet on how important essential amino acids are.

1:11:25I think in that tier, I think they're in that tier, particularly as we age. I think if you, if you talk to, you know, a 20 year old, I'm not telling him you need to start taking essential amino acids. I would say, you know, you start taking omega threes now and over the long arc of your life, you raise these omega three levels in your blood. You have a much greater, you have much lower risk of these diseases. And you want a little bit of, you know, you want a little bit of advantage in the gym, take the creatine. It's going to work. I would say the EAAs are also going to give an advantage. But as we get older, as you're 50 years old, the creatine is awesome.

1:12:03The creatine is going to give you more energy when you're in the gym. But after 50 years old, particularly any way in which I can stimulate a little bit more and like a little bit more anabolism, like I can actually build some muscle or stimulate the replacement of my old muscle and the proteins in my body without even having go, go to the gym. That is, that has literally no side effects. Like there's no, there's, I mean, we're talking like hundreds of studies on essential amino acids, similar to creatine. Nothing. There's no bad things that happen to anyone yet. You get people putting on pounds of muscle without any additional resistance training.

1:12:44They had some kind of existing resistance training program, pounds of muscle within months. And over the course of decades, 10 pounds, 15 pounds of muscle, no muscle loss as they age. So it's like, I think the essential amino acids still are a sleeper. It's like, it's kind of crazy to me that it still hasn't. I don't disagree with you. I agree with you, especially as you get older. The game of fighting aging is complex, but I'd say you could, in a nutshell, it's to slow down or stop the catabolic effects that happen from aging. So anything you can do that prevents the catabolic effects is going to improve your longevity in that case.

1:13:21And I think essential amino acids, uh, definitely do that for sure. So I would agree with you a hundred percent. Yeah. Love that. Good stuff. Great. Thanks for coming back. Thanks guys. Thanks for having me on. It's always fun. I appreciate the education and I, I know our audience appreciates it. Uh, I think a lot of them take omega threes. I know everybody takes creating. We've been, uh, you know, touting that for, for since we started. So I love your integrity and honesty. It takes a lot to do a business that you're doing. Uh, I know a lot, I have a lot of friends and know a lot of people that scale supplement companies.

1:13:50And, and the model is once you build a foundation, you have is you do go chase every product just to build LTV on your people, which doesn't matter if it's that good or not. It's just like more stuff to sell your people, regardless of how much of an impact it makes. And so just stick to your guns and do things that really move the needle and stay in that space. I know how difficult that is. And I have a lot of respect for that. Yeah. Thanks, Adam. Thank you for listening to mind pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super bundle at mindpumpmedia.com.

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