The Nutrient Blueprint for a Longer, Healthier Life

25:15Now, drugs, they affect a single pathway to create a single outcome. For example, if you have a blood pressure pill, it's a calcium channel blocker. It does that one thing. However, vitamins and minerals, they might have the effect on hundreds and hundreds of different enzymes. So magnesium or folate or other nutrients may have the ability to affect the function of literally hundreds and hundreds of different chemical reactions. That's why they create such widespread problems. So just to understand that this is a super important thing, and based on these genetic differences we have, you know, I said one-third of our DNA codes for enzymes, based on these genetic variations, different people may need different amounts of nutrients and may need different forms of nutrients.

26:03For example, if you have a gene that is called MTHFR, it means you can't convert the folate from your food very well into the folate that's active in your body, 5-methylfolate. So you need to take the preformed version as a supplement, for example. Or let's say you are somebody who has vitamin D receptor issues and can't absorb vitamin D well. You might need not 1 ,000 units of vitamin D a day. You might need 10 ,000. And so there are a lot of variations in the population. That's why it's important to test, not guess. And again, that's why I created with my colleagues and friends and co-founders FunctionHealth.com to allow you to get all these nutrients we're talking about today tested and many more.

26:41Go to functionhealth.com forward slash mark and you can find out what's actually going on. Okay, so let's get started. What are the most common micronutrient deficiencies? Well, iron. Iron is the most common nutrient deficient globally, affecting about 25 % of the global population. Now, the consequences include short-term problems like anemia, particularly in preschoolers. Nearly 50 % are deficient if they're not getting iron-fortified foods, right? So the at-risk groups particularly are vegans. Almost all the vegans I know and test are iron deficient. Vegetarians still. Menstruating and pregnant women because they use up a lot of blood in either menstruating or creating extra blood for the baby.

27:21Vitamin D deficiency also extremely common. And it may, depending on how you look and define it, insufficiency or deficiency may affect between 80 to 95 % of the population. And we're going to put all the references in here. I'm not making this stuff up. You just have to look at the show notes to get the scientific papers that are reflecting what I'm talking about here. Now, while frank deficiency symptoms like rickets are not common today, although they are sometimes in the developing world, suboptimal levels have significant health impacts. As I mentioned, suppressed immune system, muscle weakness, fibromyalgia, fatigue, depression, immune dysfunction, and even cardiovascular risk, cancer risk.

28:01I mean, all these things are related to low levels or insufficient levels of vitamin D. The next big one is magnesium deficiency. Now, this affects about 20 % of the population based on the minimum amount to prevent a deficiency disease. That's 20 % who have overt magnesium deficiency. That's quite serious. Subclinical deficiency could affect up to 80 % of the population, which is very important because why? Magnesium is crucial for over 600 enzyme reactions affecting every single biological system, affecting overall health and risk of chronic disease. literally everything from your mental health to your immune health to metabolic health, diabetes control, muscle function, everything, pretty much everything.

28:45Vitamin B12 deficiency is also really common. About 80 to 90 % of vegans and vegetarians may be deficient in vitamin B12 because there's not any vegetable food, basically. That's how it is. Just fact of life. Now, over 20 % of adults may be deficient in the vegans because only about 2 % of the population is vegan. But basically, even the rest of the population, it can be deficient in vitamin B12. Part of it has to do with our drugs we're taking, like acid blockers. Part of it has to do with our digestive function and lack of absorption in some cases, or just lack of intake, right? Because people aren't eating B12-rich foods.

29:19Now, what about calcium deficiency? Not that common, because the body regulates calcium pretty well from the bones. But what happens is basically, if you don't have calcium, because your blood levels have to be controlled really tightly, it just sucks it all out of your bones and you get osteoporosis. But a survey in the United States found that about 50 % of teenage girls and about 10 % of women over 50 and about less than 22 % of teenage boys and men over 50 meet the recommended calcium intake. So a lot of people don't meet it. And it depends on your age and your sex and so forth. But we need to make sure we have adequate calcium.

29:53But ideally, you want to get it from food. Calcium-rich foods are really common. Greens, often seeds. Sesame seeds are great. Chia seeds are great. So there's a lot of ways to get calcium. You can get it from bones, from a can of sardines, which I like. But anyway, you probably don't like that. I like to eat that can of salmon with the bones in. Again, that's how people living on islands used to get calcium. Anyway, you can take a little calcium, but I don't think you want to overdo on a calcium because of problems with calcium affecting the heart and creating other issues. So I'd be careful about that.

30:26Anyway, omega-3 fats are the next one. This is a big one. We don't eat the foods we used to eat as hunter-gatherers, which are wild foods. or a lot of sea-based foods for coastal people. Those are very rich in omega-3s, but our modern industrial diet and our lack of intake of wild fish has really dropped. And so 90 % of Americans are not meeting the recommendations for omega-3 intake, which is one serving of fatty fish at least two times a week. I think that's a bare minimum, right? And I'm talking about like sardines, herring, mackerel, maybe some wild salmon, anchovies, small fatty fish. Now, there's a lot of other deficiencies.

31:02and this is from a large national study, it's called the NHANES, or National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. It's a big mumbo jumbo. It's a government, ongoing government study that's been going on for a long, long time that tracks people over decades, tracks their blood work, their health issues. And basically they found that 45 % of the population is deficient in vitamin A, 46 % in vitamin C, 84 % in vitamin E. Why? Because it comes from whole grains and nobody eats those. 15 % are deficient in zinc. And why this matters is that these subclinical deficiencies or just frank deficiencies can lead to really serious health consequences.

31:38And they may not have initially obvious symptoms, but they will ultimately. So what's the truth about supplements? Well, getting enough vitamins and minerals is not just about preventing deficiency diseases. Well, that's part of it. They're also essential nutrients to power every aspect of our biology, as I said. Vitamins and minerals and amino acids play key roles in a whole set of biochemical reactions in the body. As I mentioned, they act as cofactors. I'm just saying this again because it's so important to understand. They literally are the grease that lubricates the wheels of our massive metabolic and biochemical machinery.

32:13They power metabolism, our detox systems, our energy production, our antioxidant systems, which all are important for overall health. Your antioxidants need nutrients to work. For example, you need zinc and copper to activate in manganese one of the most important intracellular antioxidants called superoxide dismutase. So nutrients are key for everything, right? For example, you can't make ATP for energy for your cells without magnesium. If you want to turn tryptophan from your turkey into serotonin, which is good for your mood, you need B6 for that chemical reaction. And you need magnesium and you need folate, right?

32:46So if you're low in those and they're really common to be low in, of course you're going to be depressed. You want to make thyroid hormones, right? To make thyroid hormone T4, you need iodine. And then to make T3, you need selenium and zinc and vitamin A and vitamin D to make the thyroid hormone work at the cellular level. So without optimal levels of these essential nutrients, our biochemistry just can't function properly. And that leads to these low-level functional imbalances. And they manifest as just feeling crappy, right? Now, we call it feel-like-crap syndrome or FLC. Or worse, they They can lead to these long latency deficiency diseases, accelerated aging, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, depression, and worse.

33:26And also they lead to immune dysfunction. That's why the elderly often having higher risk of illness, infection, because they tend to have poor diets. They tend to have trouble absorbing nutrients in their stomach as they get older. And so they tend to have more deficiencies. Now, a new study published in the European Journal of Nutrition studied blood levels of magnesium, really important, my favorite mineral, and homocysteine, which is a measure of B12 folate and B6 function in the body. And they looked at these levels in about 172 healthy middle-aged people from Australia. And they found that low levels of magnesium and high homocysteine were linked to an increase in DNA damage.

34:07Now, what is the minimum RDA for magnesium? It's about 400 milligrams, which is fine. That's a pretty good amount. But here's the deal. In order to get that much magnesium, you'd have to eat 115 almonds, seven avocados, and 12 and a half bananas to meet that amount of magnesium. And that's why supplementing is so important in today's modern world. The question is, do Americans need supplements? Do people in general need nutritional supplements? Because if you listen to most doctors, you don't. I mean, I think that is the thing that is so hard as a consumer in this space, is just the wildly different opinions.

34:46And it's the doctor gap of people who say expensive urine to the ones who are like, this is exactly what to do for this. And it's also like the explosion on social media. There's this whole kind of N equals one world right now where people are raving about, this supplement is just changing my life. It makes me see in 4K. But then they also have their supplement store right behind it. So it's an extremely difficult space to navigate. I mean, there's a lot of snake oil sales. There's a lot of snake oil sales. Yeah. Or, or, and look, there might be people who are having actual real great experiences, but they're not aggregating that data in a way that, you know, allows anyone to make sense of it.

35:21It's just their individual story. And I think we're going through such a big, you know, battle right now in America, uh, around the individual and the institution. Right. And like who to trust in this. And that trust is, is really a road. Institutional trust is, you know, continuing to go down. And, you know, 51 % of Americans say that they have bought a health or wellness product from a social media influencer from something that's on social media. Well, I bought in shorts and shoes on supplements. Yeah, yeah, fair, fair. All right, see, we'll kind of dive a little bit deeper for us into what is Subco and how it works and why it's so important.

35:52You know, we like to say that we're helping users make sense of supplements through our website and app. We're helping you figure out what supplements are right for your health, what products and brands you can trust, how you can save the most money and get results. To do this, we've cataloged over 200 ,000 supplement products that you can search in our app or by their scanning the barcode. And we've built an in-depth trust score rating from 29 different attributes that let you understand the manufacturing standards and quality of your supplements. For those looking to figure out what they want to take, we have 80 expert protocols that you can go in to find guidance on different health topics like brain fog or heart health and women's hormones.

36:31To get starting, it's pretty easy. You enter a little bit of information, start scanning your supplements to kind of catalog what you're already taking. We give you an analysis of your stack so that you can kind of get a score that's easy to understand how you can improve quality, how you can improve trust, and make changes to kind of improve that. You also then can share your stack with your doctor, your friends, kind of get feedback from different people, create a conversation around it. That helps you understand if you're taking too much or too little of something, which happens to a lot of people.

37:00And then we have a smart scheduler that lets you make sure you're taking your products correctly. Are you taking them with food? Are you taking them at the right time? which, you know, we'll then also start tracking to see whether or not you're getting results. We launched a beta in early October. The response has been amazing. We're getting like nearly a thousand users a day right now. October 24. October 24. Yeah. And we're getting a thousand users a day without even having your protocols or excited to get your protocols and stack on the platform soon. And, you know, I think what's for us people to know right now, everything on Subgo is free and we'll launch a premium membership later this year, which will have some premium features and eventually help people save money on their supplements as well.

37:38We don't sell any of your data. There's no advertisement on Sufco either. And yeah, we want people to come in and be aligned with them so that we're just as excited when they stop taking something that doesn't work as when they start taking something. So you're not selling supplements. We're not selling supplements. And if we do, we will never profit from them. We're guiding people on how to take the best products for them that are the cleanest that that are actually matching their goals and needs. And you're just providing this incredible service, which I think is such an important gap in the marketplace that you're filling.

38:14So what is the problem of nutritional deficiencies today in America? What do we know about the level of insufficiency or deficiency of nutrients? Is it widespread? Is it rare? I mean, look, I think this is your world. I think this is the one that you particularly would talk best about. I know my own individual struggles, But honestly, like you've got this data. This is your world. I mean, the data is so impressive. You know, when you look at the, and I'll just sort of share a little bit to kind of set the stage. But, you know, NHANES is called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

38:44And it's conducted by the government. And every year they drive around, they get blood on a whole bunch of people. They test their levels and they see what's going on of all sorts of things. And nutrient levels. And what they found is, you know, 90 plus percent of Americans are deficient in one or more nutrient at the minimum level to prevent deficiency. And this is really an important concept for nutrients because if you look at, for example, vitamin D, you need maybe 30 units so you don't get rickets. But you might need 3 ,000 units so you don't get osteoporosis or cancer or dementia or heart disease or autoimmune diseases or a whole bunch of things that we call long latency deficiency diseases.

39:24There's a guy named Robert Heaney who was a professor and brilliant scientist who wrote a paper called Long Latency Deficiency Diseases. And what essentially he was talking about was like, yeah, there's nobody walking around really in America with rickets anymore or scurvy or beriberi or pellagra or xerophthalma. These are these severe deficiencies that we actually found in the turn of the century when we started refining our diet and taking white flour and white rice. that's actually how they found it was in prisoners they gave them white rice they all became deficient had these horrible diseases that were cured in a second essentially with minuscule amounts of nutrients when you look at the amount of deficiencies whether it's you know 90 plus percent deficient omega-3 80 plus insufficient deficient vitamin d and some people say even more magnesium is about 45 zinc's about 40 iron you know we have a lot of deficiencies and And with Function, we now have 150 ,000 members at Function Health.

40:24And now, by the way, there's no waiting list, so you can just join, go to functionhealth.com slash mark. You can get in and go ahead and check your levels. But we found that in looking at all the data, almost 70 % of our members have a deficiency in a nutrient that is at the minimum reference range of the lab. Right. So in other words, for iron, this is an example, your ferritin level, which is your iron source, should be 45 or more to feel good, to not have fatigue, to not have hair loss, to not have insomnia. There's a whole bunch of things that come with low iron. The reference range goes 16 or lower, but it should be 45.

41:03Sure. Right? Or homocysteine is just like the level's 14, which should be more 6 to 8, which detects B vitamin deficiencies. Or vitamin D should be probably 45 to 60, not 30 or 20, which some lab reference ranges are. And at the minimum level, which is how much you need to not get rickets or scurvy or any diseases, this is what the RDA is. It's not the amount you should be taking. It's the minimum amount you need to be taking so you don't get some of these horrible diseases. We're seeing almost 70 % of people are deficient in these nutrients in a cohort of 150 ,000 people, which is a massive amount of data that we've collected at Function Health.

41:40And we're learning about the kinds of things we're seeing in the population. So it's a real issue where people are not getting the nutrients they need, and they don't know why they feel bad. They don't know why they have these low-grade symptoms. I had one patient, she came in, she was a radiation oncology resident at Mayo, and she had the most severe migraines. She was on narcotics. She was on major anti-vomiting medication, and she could barely function. And she came in and she said, oh, I have terrible migraines. and i started taking her history i said oh you have other symptoms like constipation or do you have you know muscle spasms or do you have anxiety or irritability or palpitations or uh constipation and she's like yeah i got all those things i'm like well that's a magnesium deficiency and it was so easy and i gave her she needed like a thousand or more milligrams of magnesium to get her going and clear everything out and that cured her migraines wow and you hear someone who was at mayo clinic saw their best migraine doctors did everything she could they They couldn't even diagnose a deficiency.

42:43And by the way, magnesium deficiency, we test magnesium with function and we get your red cell magnesium, which is a better indicator. But to do a real magnesium loading test where you give people IV magnesium and you see what they keep and what they dump out is the best way to actually really tell. But even so, just by history, I could tell. And after doing functional medicine for 30 years, I can tell you without a doubt, and doing nutrition testing on tens of thousands of people and deep analysis of minerals and vitamins and antioxidant levels and oxidative stress and CoQ10, all the things that people normally don't look at, it's so widespread.

43:15Nutrient deficiency is so widespread in America. So that kind of then leads into the question of, well, if that's true, then why is that true? By the way, what's shocking about that is 75 % of Americans take a dietary supplement, 55 % are regular users, yet 70 % are still getting those lab results from you. So they're definitely taking the wrong things or not enough of the right things. So I think that just speaks to a lot of the stuff we're trying to sort out. Sepco is giving people the ability to actually know what they're putting in their body. One of the big features of being able to kind of enter everything that you're currently taking is you'll actually see your nutrient totals across all the different products.

43:51Vitamin D is coming from six of the products I take, you know, and like actually having a conversation with a doctor about what's actually going in your body. Right. Doesn't really happen. I remember talking to a nutritionist in the beginning. They're like, she was like very good. She said, yeah, I would spend four hours, you know, actually going over the nutrients that people were getting from the products they told me. But most people don't ever do that. I don't know who has a conversation with their doctor who knows actually what they're putting in their body. I think this is really important.

44:15So Sepco is your company that you started to help solve this problem of what to take, quality, how can you trust who you're taking, what's the total amount of nutrients you're taking. So people might be taking 10 different supplements and like I said, they all might have selenium in them and then you're getting toxic doses of selenium. And you don't know that because you're not adding it all up. You're not putting a spreadsheet. You're not doing the math and you created a product that does this now i i believe in this so much because i it's it's what i tried to solve when i started my own sort of store for my patients which was essentially trying to curate a small group of products that i personally had investigated that i visited the factories that i did the analysis that i looked at the third-party testing my god i mean i curated basically three four hundred products for functional medicine applications for basically helping people with you know cardiometabolic issues for hormonal issues for gut issues and so on so forth so that was a lot of work and and uh and i i've been confident that i can recommend these things to my patients or you know people who follow me but i don't think it really solves a bigger problem of like how do you figure out everything all together and i i know personally that i don't have enough time to do this for myself even totally you know i'm buying different things i'm using things right they're like how do i how do i know so that that's really why i become an advisor to supco and i'm sort of helping you because i think this is such an important gap in the marketplace and it's such a need.

45:37When you look at the landscape today, tell us some of the problems in the supplement industry. Why is this need? Because people are just buying stuff and they don't know where it's coming from, where they get it. They can buy it on Amazon. And often the stuff is sitting on a pallet for a long time where it's like it's some sort of ripoff product that doesn't have the nutrients in it. So tell us sort of unpack the real issues with the supplement industry as it is today. As I said, we've got about 200 ,000 products. There's like 195 already done and then a big queue of ones that have been submitted to us that we're going through.

46:08And that's up from 4 ,000 products in 1994. That's all there was, right? So it's been a - Wait, 4 ,000 to 200 ,000? In 1994, there's 4 ,000 supplement products on the market. And now there's over 200. That's insane. And so, you know, we've kind of gone in and taken each one of the supplements, taken the Supplement Facts labels and kind of taken the data so that you can get an aggregate view of, you know, what you're actually putting in your body. So that helps you understand what you're taking. But in addition to that, we've gone out and scored the top, there's 8 ,000 brands, which is insane too, if you think about it.

46:37We've taken the top 500, which covers a big percentage of it and kind of expanding down the long tail now. And we've given them a trust score. And so we basically have gone in and done what you were doing kind of manually and doing all these individual reviews. Built a 29-point system that goes in and checks what certifications, what kind of testing they're doing, and kind of breaks it down and gives them a score. That alone, that feature alone, you can scan any supplement for its barcode. You take the bottle, you put your phone on it. Yeah, I can do it here while we're talking too. Yeah, it's a pretty cool thing.

47:09And you don't have to manually enter it. You just scan your code and it knows the problem. You scan it, it pops up right away, and you get the trust score and all the information about the product. It's super fast, it's super easy, and the hit rate is really high. And if we don't have something, you immediately can submit it. You can AI scan the label and it'll put it in the system. And the queue is insane. Like the long tail here, there are 20 ,000 products in the system that only one person has taken. There's a long tail here that is, you know, absolutely insane. And that's - I mean, there's unique products that are kind of not commonly taken.

47:42Yeah. Like one person's taking, I don't know how they found it. I don't know if that's a trusted brand. And you've seen an explosion on Amazon of these kinds of brands that are just quickly coming to market because there's no real thing stopping you from bringing a supplement to market. You know, there's a big difference in the FDA around the federal code between pharmaceuticals and supplements. Supplements are governed under federal code 21 CFR 111, right? And what is that? And that's basically that like, you know, for pharmaceuticals, there's a whole process that they have to get pre-approved following CGMP standards and all these different things.

48:18That's good manufacturing standards. Yeah, current good manufacturing process. You know, with supplements, it's not something that gets done up front. You can be held to this standard retroactively, like if something comes up, but it's kind of up to you to just say you're doing this. It's self-pleasing. You can get retroactively. Someone can say they're having a negative experience reported with the FDA. They can come after you for not following the practice, but no one's checking up front. I mean, the amount of attention that the FDA pays this is very, very little unless there's some serious adverse effect or somebody has this problem with it.

48:48Right. And those latent things you're talking about, the ones that might be heavy metal exposure that take a long time to ever show up or you don't know the source of it. there's no guideline. I mean, a friend of mine was a researcher and he actually analyzed Ayurvedic supplements and found extremely high levels of heavy metals. Totally. So you're like, you're taking some Ayurvedic herb, which is some natural product and it hasn't been tested properly. And when they actually tested it, it was full of heavy metals. And if you, even if you follow CGMP, you're supposed to occasionally test your lots.

49:16I think it's like once a year. And then even then they don't provide the guidance on heavy metals. It's like kind of up to you to be like, well, for this type of product, to what should the prop 65 helps a little bit you know in terms of making sure you don't have to put the label on there if you exceed those numbers but it's it's pretty it's a pretty wild west to be perfectly honest and there is there are systems now that can say come up with an idea and a brand and get a supplement market in weeks so that's why you're seeing the explosion yeah so we've gone in and we've taken 29 different uh points and we've built a scoring system this is your trust score this is our trust score so basically you're taking 29 different attributes you know whether it's toxic, lot testing, C, uh, CGMP, if, if whether the biggest one that makes a difference is whether or not you're getting a third party to certify your CGMP practices, right?

50:00That's like kind of like the fundamental. So instead of you just saying, yeah, I'm good. You know, I'm going to self-certify that I'm following these practices. There's NSF and UL, these two big, uh, you know, firms that'll come in and do what you are doing, you know, go toward the facilities, kind of do make sure you're actually following, give you a certification. That's like a fundamental big one. And there's a surprising number of brands that don't. And that means that the manufacturing plant is clean. Oh yeah. The way they get sourcing ingredients. They're testing each lot, you know, and like there's a lot, you know, to that to figure it out.

50:30That's true. When I started in this field in functional medicine 30 years ago, there were a handful of professional brands that were only marketed and sold through professionals, doctors, nutritionists and so forth, chiropractors. And you couldn't get them otherwise. Interesting, yeah. You couldn't get like Metagenics or Thorne or Pure Encapsulations. They only distributed them through professionals because they were higher level, higher grade, a little more expensive, but you get what you pay for. So for example, Pure Encapsulations, they actually test every single product, every lot, and we do it before they make the stuff with the ingredients and they do it after.

51:09And if it says, you know, it's supposed to say 400 milligrams of, let's say, magnesium on the label, if it's 350, they throw it out. Yeah. Metagenics, who you brought up, is our 10 out of 10. They're our highest scoring brand on the platform. Yeah. They do like one thing that is rare, but we really, we give some points to it, is they make every batch test COA publicly available. So you can like look at your bottle, look at the lot number, go online, pull it up and see the results from the test. That's like a gold standard for us. Pure ranks very highly. But then there's a big spectrum. And the stuff that you get in the grocery store or Walmart or the drug store is generally crap.

51:50Like you sent me, they texted me a screenshot of Centrum. Yeah, we just did not have on this. This massive advertising, it's really a big product out there. Everything's Centrum, it's high quality, it's good. I mean, but why didn't you take a blue pill or a red pill or have titanium dioxide or have dyes and chemicals? Yeah, that was a super interesting thing about that Centrum pill in particular, is that like the Centrum brand ranking is pretty high, but we just started exposing the excipients, the inactive ingredients. And it had titanium dioxide, red 40, red five, like these things that I'm sorry, yellow five, these things that are, that are not good.

52:27I mean, titanium dioxide is not, it's banned in Europe, you know, like it causes DNA damage and they don't need to be in your, in your supplements. So that's another thing we just rolled out was not just the manufacturing standards, but now we're going down to the product level and actually going in, we have like a, forget how many, it's a couple thousand of these excipients that get added and bringing them out by, you know, how cautious you should be about them. Yeah. And there's a lot of stuff in them that we often are not known. Like there could be gluten or dairy, like lactose or other things that are in these, in addition to all the other kind of excipients, fillers, additives, colors, chemicals, things that make it look good or stick together.

53:06And I mean, you don't want that crap. You want the nutrient. And I think it's going to be interesting. We're starting to send out, you know, different supplements for our own independent testing to do what you were saying, just kind of like verify that even if they're highly rated, are they, is it actually in there what they say it is, right? So the precision of the nutrients that they're claiming are in there. It's a complicated market. And I think that what we've done though, by just making a simple score, like making it out of 10 is like, it makes it really easy for people to understand, right?

53:32The simple like red, yellow, green, like you can go deep and you can go look at each of the 29 points. Your trust score is one to 10. Like this is a nine, this is a two. That has been helpful for people to just like simply take a glance because some, the user base we have, you know, one thing I like doing in general when designing software is it's got to be easy enough for, for grandma to use, but powerful enough for, you know, the most hardcore user in the space to go deep on. Right. I did that with, with Splice, making sure that 40 % of top 40 music using it to create music. They're like the hardcore guys and the brand new music creators.

54:03Right. So we're doing this in supplements, right? There's a way to dive way deep into what those 29 points are and each one of the excipients and all that. Or you can simply look at the score at the top and be like, okay, that feels good. Because some people just, we got to meet the consumers where they are. Because nobody's really doing that. There was a company called Consumer Labs that I used to kind of use to reference stuff where they would go and test products. And I would rely on their independent analysis. But they weren't able to do the 200 ,000 products. So you basically, just for the simple scan of the barcode, the technology behind it, the use of AI, I mean, it's quite amazing now.

54:40You can literally see what is the problem or how good a product is and whether or not it actually says what it is on the label. Yeah, and, like, I think the big thing, too, is, like, we're not out here to – we just want to kind of arc the industry in the right direction, right? Like, some of our trust scores, if you find a negative one, we're not all doing the big gotcha, you know, story on it. We're having conversations. A lot of the brands have reached out to us. First, the top end brands are like, thank you. Right. Thank you for simplifying and raising to the attention how much work we are putting into testing.

55:12So like super appreciative. You know, sometimes they'll clarify a piece of data that we might not have. Right. Because we've collected it through our teams, you know, reaching out to them and they might provide something, which is great. And then we've had brands also reaching out when they want their trust work. The consumers are starting to care about this. And then how do we make it better? Right. And that's our big dream. If we can just help the industry move in the right direction on this with the scores, I think we've done something really great. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it.

55:40You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to The Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. And we'll see you next time on The Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions.

56:10Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient.

56:40It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.