Episode #10: Supplements
Summary
In this episode, Kyle and Dr. K discuss the limitations of multivitamins and the importance of targeted supplementation. They emphasize the need for individualized supplement plans based on specific goals and dietary restrictions. The hosts provide recommendations for foundational supplements, including a high-quality multivitamin, essential amino acids, creatine, and omega-3. They also address the concerns of vegans and the risks of over-supplementing. The episode concludes with a discussion on protein supplementation and the importance of sourcing high-quality supplements.
Takeaways
- Multivitamins have limitations and may not provide all the necessary nutrients for optimal health.
- Supplement needs vary from person to person, and it is important to determine individual deficiencies through testing.
- Foundational supplements, such as a high-quality multivitamin, essential amino acids, creatine, and omega-3, can benefit most individuals.
- Vegans and those on restrictive diets may require additional supplementation, such as essential amino acids and B vitamins.
- Choosing high-quality supplements from reputable companies is crucial to ensure purity and effectiveness.
- Experimenting with supplements should be done cautiously, and working with a knowledgeable practitioner or health coach is recommended.
- Protein supplementation should be based on individual needs and obtained primarily from whole food sources.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Overview
01:22 The Limitations of Multivitamins
05:19 Foundational Supplements
06:07 Do You Need Supplements If You Eat Healthy?
08:09 How to Determine Your Supplement Needs
10:16 Supplement Recommendations for Vegans
14:12 Choosing High-Quality Supplements
19:08 Risks of Experimenting with Supplements
31:20 Protein Supplementation
37:57 Summary and Closing
Sponsors
This episode is sponsored by Toxic Roots. The optimal resource for online health coaching for optimizing performance and removing toxins. Click on the link below to get started on finding your toxic roots.
Website: https://www.toxicrootswellness.com/
Instagram: @toxicrootswellness
X @toxicroots
Sources
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3879660/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1186/s12970-018-0215-1
People
Peak Performance
- Website: https://peakperformancepodcast.online/
- On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepeakperformancepod/
- On X https://twitter.com/PeakPerformPod
Dr. K
- On Instagram https://www.instagram.com/theosteodoc/
Coach Kyle
- On Instagram https://www.instagram.com/toxinfreekyle/
Transcript
Kyle Hulbert (00:00)
Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the peak performance podcast. I’m coach Kyle, and this is Dr. K.
Ben Kosubevsky (00:05)
Hi everybody, thanks for joining us as today we’ll be discussing supplementation. Why isn’t one multivitamin just good enough for everybody? So we’re going to dive into how to tailor supplements to you, what to do for those people that don’t want to ever take a supplement in their life, what to do for those people that are taking way too many. We’re going to dive into a mini discussion about protein and everything in between.
Kyle Hulbert (00:28)
Enjoy the show.
We’re talking about supplements. Yes. Supplements. They can make you feel better. They can give you amazing muscles. They can give you the energy of your dreams or can they, and this is what we’re going to dive into today and overview supplements. And we’re going to talk about why one multivitamin just can’t cover it all. Dr. K how you doing?
Ben Kosubevsky (00:50)
Great, Kyle, how are you?
Kyle Hulbert (00:52)
I’m doing pretty good. Um, you know, it’s still, still fairly coming off that recent Ibu treatment. So, um, I’m still glowing. Uh, my wife thinks I’m beautiful. Uh, so that’s one, um, you know, it’s, it’s a good day. It’s a, it’s nice and chilly up here. So, um, I’m just excited to get more of these podcasts out cause I’m really pumped about getting, uh, getting this knowledge that we have about health and wellness that comes from not maybe a mainstream perspective out to.
Ben Kosubevsky (01:01)
Oh, I missed you.
Kyle Hulbert (01:21)
to the masses. So I’m hoping that if you’re hearing this right now, go to our Instagram, share our reels, share our podcast, please share your friends. Anything that you think that we say that can help other people, send it to the person that can help. And then reach out to us. We would love to start doing listener live questions. So we’ll probably start answering questions live on air, AMAs, and we’ll probably start doing online coaching so people will come on.
pop them in here and you’ll see them and then we’ll answer their questions. Uh, but we’ve got to get traction enough. We’ve got to get enough questions to pull that off. So please share and send in questions. Uh, and then you might make it on the show. So back to supplements, um, GNC or Walgreens or, um, or even CVS, you could just go get them like a multi-vitamin there and you’re good. You don’t need no supplement for the rest of your life, right?
Ben Kosubevsky (02:03)
Yeah.
I think it’s pretty much common knowledge nowadays that if you buy one of those supplements, you’re buying expensive urine.
Kyle Hulbert (02:24)
Yeah, and that’s the saying right? You’ve probably heard that a lot, you know, you’re buying expensive pee because most of it is just not absorbed It’s not bioavailable The research and the dosages a lot of these things are just not well researched or backed up Yeah, especially with the with those ones you buy it just big pharmacy type stores You have this like complete lack of absorption in some of them So there is some trickiness to that. So why do we like why?
Why would you give a supplement when your patients start? Okay.
Ben Kosubevsky (02:56)
So my biggest saying for that is everything you take has to have a goal and a purpose. I get patients that show up to my office all the time, they have like 30 or 40 supplements in a bag and they’re like, which of these should I be taking? And I’m like, honestly, probably not many of these because what are we doing here? Why are we taking these? And honestly, I think Kyle, you have a better overview of supplements than I do. So let’s start with how do you decide what you take?
Kyle Hulbert (03:25)
Yeah. So I take quite a few supplements. Um, I’ve got my down here. I’ve got my whole basket filled to supplements. Um, yeah, I’ll show it. Hold on. This is my supplement basket. No, it’s really not many. It’s about, it’s about 15, 15 to 15, 20. Um, and I actually don’t even take them all on a daily basis, but my, my thing is. Like, I don’t want to be just swallowing pills to swallow pills.
Ben Kosubevsky (03:31)
Thank you.
I’ve seen bigger.
Kyle Hulbert (03:55)
Um, and I’ve kind of learned this the hard way. When you get to the point where you’re just taking supplements, just because there was an ad somewhere that said it would be good for you, or you heard it from your favorite podcaster, um, you get to this point where you’re taking so many things that start to counteract each other or start to have negative interactions or start to, uh, multiply the effect, giving you too much of one of the effects of the supplements and it gets really confusing, difficult to track. So really you want to have a goal.
You want to have a goal in mind with each supplement. And then you want to look at how those supplements interact with the rest of the things you’re taking. So for me, like I’ll do, I’ll do rotations of supplements. I usually buy one bottle of targeted supplement for a specific goal and I’ll rotate it in for a month or two, and then I’ll rotate it out. So those are, those are the majority of my, you know, the supplements you hear on podcasts and things like that. And then I have base supplements. So these are the supplements that I know from my testing.
Um, and my body that I need to, um, adequately maintain my health and vitality, um, a lot of the base supplements can be the same for most people. So most people can benefit from three or four base supplements. Um, and I do recommend actually high quality multivitamin. And when I say high quality, there are very few on the market that are high quality. Um, I like the, uh, Mito core is what it’s called that you use. Yeah. Or.
Ben Kosubevsky (05:16)
Orthomolecular is the company, Mitecor is the line of it.
Kyle Hulbert (05:20)
Ortho-molecular mitocore, that’s a pretty good multi and then extend life is probably the best multi vitamin on the market. It’s got like a hundred compounds in it all backed by research. Um, it’s a very impressive multivitamins. So I think most people should be on a very high quality multivitamin. I think most people should be using some sort of EAAs or essential amino acids to make sure they’re getting the building blocks for tissue repair and tissue growth, maintain their health and their nervous system. Uh, creatine.
Probably one of the most researched supplements, uh, in history, almost honestly. And it has benefits, not just for the gym, but for mental, uh, aging, basically it is a, it’s a marvelous supplement. That’s incredibly cheap and easy to access. And the last one is, uh, Omega three. Um, so we really want to, most people are low on Omega threes and that really helps brain health, um, and, and kind of hormonal health also.
So those are the four main like foundational supplements that I think most people should look into. Would you have anything to add to that list or you think that’s a pretty good base?
Ben Kosubevsky (06:23)
That’s a pretty good base. So here’s going to be my first question to you. You know, I eat really good food. I eat healthy food all the time. I try to have a really balanced diet. Why do I have to take supplements?
Kyle Hulbert (06:36)
Yeah, that actually is a really good question. And the answer could be that you don’t. So if you eat really healthy, organic, very varied bioavailable food, and you eat a lot of it, meaning north of 3000 calories a day, uh, chances are you probably won’t have a deficiency in many things. However, most people are not eating a perfectly varied, perfectly, uh, biodynamic diet on a daily basis. And they’re not eating a ton of it either.
So, and the reason I say a lot is because our soil is not what our soil was thousands of years ago. So the minerals and vitamins in our food, especially from the vegetables and even the meat and the way it’s produced is drastically declined through history. And so we have to eat over 3000 calories just to get the minimum of what we need on a daily basis in terms of vitamins and minerals. And that’s if you’re eating perfectly every day.
So the people who would do that are probably 100.
Ben Kosubevsky (07:42)
Probably what?
Kyle Hulbert (07:43)
One in a hundred who can actually pull that off? Yeah, maybe, maybe one in a thousand. Yeah. I mean, you’re talking about, cause I mean, you think about it. 3000 calories is a lot of calories for a lot of people. So you’re talking about a large male who is like completely obsessed with diet. That’s like, that’s, that’s who you’ve got that can actually pull that off. So to fill in those gaps from our, from our food and our meat and those things, we really do need.
Ben Kosubevsky (07:45)
You really think it’s more than 100 people are doing that? I think it’s more than 100,000 people.
Kyle Hulbert (08:13)
kind of the vitamins and minerals that were missing. And the reason you need those vitamins and minerals is because your body basically has all these processes that are governed or use vitamins and minerals as basically co-factors to make your body function correctly. So if you’re not getting a perfect diet and a lot of it, you do need some kind of supplementation, but that actually varies from person to person. Did that answer your question?
Ben Kosubevsky (08:38)
I mean, you just led to another question. So it varies from person to person. So how do you know what you need?
Kyle Hulbert (08:46)
Yeah. So this, you know, unfortunately we, we talk about this a lot. It really comes down to budget. So if everything was free, I would do some, some very extensive micronutrient arrays on you, so I would do some micronutrient testing. I would do fatty acid testing. I basically run about $1,500 of tests and test every nutritional deficiency or, or the thing I could look for. And then I would targeted.
use that to supplement exactly what you need so you’re in the optimal range for your vitamins minerals and nutrients. That’s the perfect world. So this is
Ben Kosubevsky (09:24)
Won’t that change every like six months?
Kyle Hulbert (09:28)
It will. And if you really want optimal health, um, what you would do is you would test for all of the things and then everything that, um, usually what’ll happen is you’ll be treating or supplementing with a few, a few specific supplements. Uh, you would just pull that test, uh, to follow up. So it would be much less to test, uh, carrying on, but you would want to see if you made progress with it anyway. Cause if you didn’t make progress, you really have to step back and say, okay, well, I have a toxic root here. I have.
probably heavy metal interrupting mineral flow in my body or something like that.
Ben Kosubevsky (10:03)
be parasites in your GI tract that are literally stealing the nutrients from you.
Kyle Hulbert (10:09)
Yeah. So, so testing is, is the gold standard. So, I mean, that’s, that’s how you figure out what you need. Um, and this is, this is the way I recommend to go, um, for everyone, because I don’t want people spending. If you spend $1,500 on tests, uh, and then, you know, four or 500 bucks or a thousand bucks, you know, every year thereafter and following it up, I can save you that much in supplements, we can get exactly what you need. You can, you can get all of that money back and feel better.
because you’re not overdosing on other supplements because we’re targeting exactly what you need. That’s the gold standard, but not everybody can do that.
Ben Kosubevsky (10:45)
So what does the average person do? What should they do? Because I’ll be honest, the amount of people that come to my office and we do a B12 test and they’re over 2,000, it’s getting to be a little much.
Kyle Hulbert (10:57)
Yes, everybody’s just like taking B12. Yeah.
Ben Kosubevsky (11:00)
Yep. Everyone heard that, you know, it gives you energy. It’s supposed to help you. And so it’s basically in every supplement now and B12, 40% of the population can’t even process B12 properly.
Kyle Hulbert (11:07)
Yeah.
Yeah. So, if you can’t afford the testing, honestly, this is where those foundational supplements come in. This is where a good Multi, a good Omega-3, a good creatine and essential amino acids, and you can find a stack of those that will basically cost you about a hundred bucks a month. And those will cover probably 70% of the population’s needs in terms of addressing deficiencies and keeping them in optimal health.
Is it the best way to do it? Uh, probably not because you may need not all of those things or one or two of those things or two or three more extra things to fix exactly what you have going on, but that is a great foundation to start with and build, build on.
Ben Kosubevsky (12:00)
Okay, so, were the people that are taking, they already have a bucket of supplements at home, where do they start? What should they do with all the dirty things that they have?
Kyle Hulbert (12:11)
Uh, what?
Well, the first thing I would do is stop buying things. So I do this. Um, I do this actually pretty, pretty regularly. Um, and I do it with my, my freezer too. So I’ll, uh, every probably about once a year, I’ll just stop buying food. No food. We’re done for like two months. And then I’ll just, I’ll cook every single thing in the house until we have nothing. And then we’re cleaned out and we’ll start again with good, healthy food. Then we’ll start buying again.
So honestly, um, I don’t recommend anybody just like stop taking things or throw them all away, uh, cause I don’t believe in wasting money and a lot of supplements do have beneficial effects. Um, but I would just stop buying things and then, and then slowly rotate through your supply. Um, and when things run out, just let it run out and then note how you feel. When you come off of a specific supplement, note how you feel without it. And if you feel a big negative effect, then
That might be something you want to note down and say, Hey, maybe I want to test for this, or maybe I want to continue this one. Sometimes when you come off of one, you’ll go, huh, I feel so much better. What is this? What’s going on? And then you’ll note that down and be like, don’t take that because I don’t need it. So, and I’ve had, I’ve had this happen. It happens to me. So, I mean, it’s very much a thing. And the trouble with the industry is everybody’s got the miracle molecule.
You know, everybody’s got that thing that will just make you healthy and live forever because that’s their marketing. Um, and it turns out that everybody’s body is different. Um, so that might be the miracle bot miracle molecule for, uh, Susie, but it, it might be the thing that hurts Tom. So my testing is so important, but also how you feel. Um, so like I would rotate them, just rotate them out as you go. Note how you feel.
Keep the ones that make you feel bad when you go off them and get rid of the ones that make you feel good when you go off them Because it’s really supplement is supplementation is about enhancing your life. Not not making it worse We don’t want to make you feel bad from supplementation
Ben Kosubevsky (14:27)
You mentioned a couple of good companies for a multivitamin, but how do people know what’s a good company, what’s a bad company, where do they get omega supplements, where do they get all their other supplements?
Kyle Hulbert (14:41)
Yeah, that’s a can of worms right there. And I’ll take this time to mention that we currently do not have affiliate relationships with any supplement company. So anything I mentioned here today is just things I’ve experimented with, tested, used, have seen the science and appreciate what they do. But there’s a lot.
a lot of debate about like a fish oil. Um, the main thing you’re looking for in a fish oil is the, you don’t want to make, you want to make sure the fats aren’t oxidized. So you want to make sure it wasn’t in a hot environment. Um, you want to make sure it was, you know, captured and stored process quickly and effectively. Um, meaning, you know, if you order a supplement online, you’re in Florida, it shows up with an ice pack and it’s, it’s omega-3, it’s fish oil. That’s not the one.
That’s not the one you want to be taking. Um, so I personally like a company called big bold health. Um, they make their fish oil straight from wild caught fish and they have this, um, they have this state of the art boat where they’ll like reel in the fish and then they’ll process it right into fish oil, like right there. So it’s like, there’s like almost no time. The way they do it is like they freeze dry or something and it’s pretty incredible.
But it’s like the fastest process from the fish to the pill I’ve ever heard of. Um, and they do really well with shipping and controlling it and making sure it’s not oxidized. Um, so I really liked that brand. Um, you know, I, I really don’t like. Any brand that you can buy at a basic store, um, like CBS, Walgreens, GNC, um, chances are if they’re on those shelves, they are oxidized and they’re probably not a high quality fish oil. Um,
So I would just avoid those. And it really comes down to doing your research. There are companies out there. And if you wanna get into this, and if you don’t like big bold health and you want another suggestion, please send us a message. And I’ll link you to a few other companies that do a really good job. But that’s the trouble with the supplement industry, kind of to answer your larger question. How do you know if you’re getting a good supplement? And it depends on the supplement. Because some of them, it doesn’t matter if it was shipped in heat.
And some of them it’s crucial. So what you do really want to know is. As a very much baseline. I think we’ve talked about this with methylene blue is, is it third party tested? So if they’re not third party testing their supplements and you cannot get their certificate of analysis to see what toxins are the purity level of the supplement, um, you don’t, you don’t want to buy that company. Don’t don’t buy from that company because you want a company that’s dedicated transparency and you want a company.
that goes through the extra work and payment of making sure that their supplements are clean and pure. So that’s kind of the baseline. If they don’t have that, don’t buy it and go somewhere else. And again, this is where it comes down to. Like if you go to your general supplement store, your vitamin shop, your CVS, your Walgreens chances are a lot of those are not third party tested. Um, those are the bargain brands and they’re just kind of slinging things out there. Um, some of them are, um, some of them do a good job, but, but really it’s.
You need to be careful and shopping online is honestly the best way to figure this out. And if you can’t find a COA online, but it does say third party tested, you can usually email their support and they’ll send it to you. And if they don’t, don’t buy it.
Ben Kosubevsky (18:19)
I just want to add an asterisk to shopping online. Amazon does not count. The amount of counterfeit products on Amazon is growing day by day. There’s small companies that, you know, I’ve talked to distributors and they’re like, yeah, you know, sometimes patients will, you know, email us and say, hey, this supplement isn’t working. They’ll mail us the bottle and it’s not even our bottle. Someone just ripped us off. Because Amazon doesn’t regulate who sells what. Literally, you could just go to a vitamin shop.
Kyle Hulbert (18:25)
Hehehe
Ben Kosubevsky (18:47)
buy a bunch of vitamin shop brand vitamin A and start selling them on Amazon for the same price and people will buy it and you have no way to tell.
Kyle Hulbert (18:55)
Yeah, Amazon would not qualify as good supplement shopping. When I say shop online is the best way to do it, I’m talking, go to the actual supplement company’s website, um, and buy from their website. If, if they do not, if they do not sell directly to consumer, that’s another, uh, it’s another thing you might want to watch for. So there are, and there’s two, there’s two routes of this. Some companies sell only to many distribution companies, um, that put it in stores. That’s one I would probably avoid. The other route is.
Some supplement companies only sell to doctors, and usually those are actually pretty good supplements.
Ben Kosubevsky (19:30)
Yeah, about half the supplements I carry in my office, like Argentin 23, for example, the colloidal silver, you can not go into a store and buy it.
You have to get it from a prescriber. But having said that, Iherb, for example, it’s like Amazon, but for supplements only, they’re safe to use as far as I can tell.
Kyle Hulbert (19:37)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
What is it?
Ben Kosubevsky (19:49)
I herb.
Kyle Hulbert (19:51)
I herb. I herb? Oh, no, I haven’t. I need to check that out.
Ben Kosubevsky (19:55)
Never heard of that one? No. By the cost of the other one. You know, places that specialize in supplements and don’t allow third-party sellers, those are fine. They’re just buying from the manufacturer and reselling it.
Kyle Hulbert (19:59)
Yeah, I would, um…
Yeah. So, I mean, what, what this really, this conversation needs to involve is, is working with someone who’s in a hose, what they’re doing. Um, if you’re going to buy a supplement and you’re not going to be research on that supplement, you need to be working with someone who knows what that supplement is, what it does downstream effects, and we’ll research it if they don’t. This is where having a good practitioner or good, having a good health coach can really, can really benefit you. Um, Good.
Ben Kosubevsky (20:32)
Yeah. And one of the things, you know, a lot of things we talk about, you really need a doctor to be involved in your care. Supplements is one of those areas we don’t necessarily need a physician to be involved in your care. Someone like a health coach, Coach Powell, for example, he understands a lot about supplements. He is not a doctor. You know, you could see nutritionists out there that understand more about supplements than either of us ever will. So you just have to find a good person.
Kyle Hulbert (20:57)
Yeah, this is someone, someone who can work with you. And again, targeted supplementation, give you the targeted goals you’re going after and help you get the results you want. Not just kind of shotgun approach to, Hey, I think this is going to work. Cause I heard it on a podcast type deal. Um, that’s very important when it comes to supplementation. Um,
Where do we go from here? What else do people need to know?
Ben Kosubevsky (21:25)
Let’s see, so we talked about where to get supplements, we talked about how to pick out supplements for you, we talked about how to stop taking a bucket of supplements every day. I don’t know what other questions might people have.
Kyle Hulbert (21:42)
Yeah. I mean, one, I get a lot is I don’t like taking supplements. I don’t want to be on these for the rest of my life. So I get a lot of the opposite that you get. You get the people with the 30 bottles. I get the people that have never taken a nutrient in their life. And they’re like, I don’t want to do this. Um, so, uh, cause usually their first stop is not a doctor, you know, their first stop into health is usually a health coach or something intermediate.
And to those people, I say, you know, we’re going to start you on a regiment of supplements. That’s going to be too many for you and you’re going to be uncomfortable with it, but it’s based on what you need, your results. And then as we fix those results and optimize your diet, we’re going to take these things off and we’re going to get you down to the bare minimum, which usually ends up being those four foundational supplements. And usually people can take four. That’s they’re, they’re usually okay with that.
And, and it’s actually, it’s actually pretty nice because the EAAs essential amino acids, you can get in a powder. The creatine is also a powder. Um, and then the fish oil is a pill and the multivitam is a pill. So you can take your two powders, put it in water in the morning, mix it up, and then take your two pills with that. And then you’re covered and most people can handle it. They’re willing to do that. Um, and that’ll, that’ll cover most people. Um, but.
I do want to, I do want to take a second and talk to, um, all those vegans out there. Um, this is where supplementation becomes critical. Actually, you know, not just vegans, any diet that is highly restrictive. Um, it, supplementation is, is very critical at this point, because when you’re restricting entire groups of foods, what you’re doing is restricting entire groups of nutrients as well. So.
Again, this is where working with someone can really help because if they know you’re on a vegan diet or they know you’re on a carnivore diet, they will give you the specific supplements to supplement what you need based on what you’re eating. But if you’re not working with someone, the basics are vegans, I mentioned EAAs already, essential amino acids are essential for vegans. Often vegans aren’t getting the required protein intake to repair tissue, to be healthy, to regulate their metabolic processes.
and amino acids can kind of bridge that gap. There are huge benefits for your nervous system, your musculoskeletal system, your metabolism, if you are not taking enough, taking in enough protein or amino acids, if you supplement with them. So that one is a huge one for vegans. And then I also mentioned creatine. Creatine is mostly found in red meat. So if you’re not eating red meat, that is another big thing you’re missing out. They’ve done studies.
and we’ll link them in the show notes below. But they’ve done studies that show that if you give a meat eater creatine and then you give a vegan creatine, the vegan has dramatically more increased mental benefits from the creatine because they’re just deficient in creatine. So that is another huge one for vegans. And lastly is the B vitamin complex. Usually I see that low B vitamins and iron.
uh, in vegans and those can also be supplemented. They can also be covered in the multi. And so you’ll kind of see a, you kind of see a theme here that most of, most of what you can supplement with that if you’re in a restrictive diet, we’ll come back to those four, those four main supplements.
Ben Kosubevsky (25:23)
So I just want to jump on that protein thing you were talking about with vegans. To note, a lot of vegans would say, well I’m eating, you know, 100 grams of plant protein per day. I’m eating all my tofu and all my soy and whatever other things they’re eating. And so I have a picture of this, just the highlight from the study. I’ll send it so we can upload it. But basically they compared your absorption, retention rates of all these things compared to animal protein.
and everything is significantly reduced. There’s not enough variation in amino acids because protein is a whole structure but what we really need are the building block of amino acids in that protein. You need a whole bunch of them. So if you’re not getting all of them, that’s one problem. Second part is you’re not keeping. So the best one was tofu, for example. You’re only keeping about 40% of the tofu that you’re eating. And tofu is really just high in one amino acid and low in the others.
But let’s say you eat 100 grams protein of the 100 you’re supposed to have, you’re only getting 40. So you’re still 60 deficient.
Kyle Hulbert (26:30)
So that’s an uphill battle. And especially when it comes to, you know, you mentioned some of the good ones like tofu, but the majority of vegans protein sources, like you say, beans and things like that are not whole protein sources, meaning they don’t have all of the essential amino acids in them, which makes it even tougher to get the number of amino acids we need on a daily basis on a vegan diet, which brings essential amino acids into even more essential place in your supplement regimen.
Did, uh, I know, I know Dr. K your wife is, um, I guess she’s not vegan. She’s like, what vegan light vegetarian.
Ben Kosubevsky (27:08)
Cause it’s dairy and then no dairy is really the shortest way.
Kyle Hulbert (27:11)
Pescetarian. Yeah. So it’s like, like vegan light minus. Yeah. Well, did she see a benefit from supplementing with a essential amino acids?
Ben Kosubevsky (27:17)
Yeah.
It’s hard to tell, honestly. Maybe.
Kyle Hulbert (27:26)
Well, you did some, I think it’s like neuro testing or muscle testing on her with a supplement that had essential amino acids in it. And you had some kind of benefit there. Can you explain that?
Ben Kosubevsky (27:37)
Yeah, so I mean, what is, you know, you asked about neuromuscle testing, what is that?
Kyle Hulbert (27:45)
Yeah. Well, I’ll let you explain it. Cause you’re the one that can actually do it.
Ben Kosubevsky (27:48)
Uh oh. So, you know, some things we talk about are mainline medicine. Some things we talk about are alternative medicine. Some things we talk about are alternative, alternative medicine, and muscle testing definitely follows into that last category. For those of you that are familiar with what craniosacral therapy is, it’s a kind of a variation on that. Its technical name is applied kinesiology, but basically the belief is that certain things,
can affect your nervous system to a point, you know, if I touch you with sugar, for example, you get enough absorption through your skin that your body will react to it. And, you know, if I touch you with something bad like sugar, it will overload your nervous system and then it won’t be able to fire properly on other things. And there are things that fire improperly and things that make you fire better. That’s the basis of muscle testing.
Kyle Hulbert (28:40)
So basically you tested her with a supplement that had essential amino acids in it, and she had a better firing of her nervous system, which is something to be expected with someone who has lower protein consumption based on their diet.
Ben Kosubevsky (28:44)
Yep.
Clear.
Yeah, so the question for that is pretty much anyone you test will test positive for that. That’s one of the problems is how do you know who needs what? So there’s a formula that we use, now that we’re talking about protein, there’s a formula that we use for protein and how much protein you should consume. So I’ll talk about the way I do a first in the cow when you talk about your wife. So there’s, you’re going to take your weight in. So if you’re trying to gain.
muscle, then you’re going to take your weight in pounds and that’s one to one. If you’re just trying to maintain, if you’re getting on an age, then you’re going to do your weight in kilograms and that’s going to be one to one. And so what you’re going to do is you’re going to take a, for a week, you’re going to take a log of how much protein you consume. You just go on Google and type in everything that you eat for a week just to give you an average. And then let’s say you weigh 150 pounds and…
you need 150 grams of protein because you’re trying to build muscle. And on the average day you’re only actually consuming 80 grams of protein. So now you’re short 70, so you’re going to get 70 supplemental from other sources like EAAs. The same thing applies to the kilograms. If you need 60 and you’re only consuming 40, just find another 20 on average. And you don’t have to be exact. I know that if you’re a professional bodybuilder you want to be super exact about this. For the average person, close enough is close enough.
Cowhide.
Kyle Hulbert (30:23)
Yeah. I actually do it a very similar way to you. Um, if for the majority of people, I recommend one pound per, uh, one gram per pound of body weight, um, target body weight that is. So say I’m 200 pounds and I want to gain 10 pounds of muscle. I’m going to eat 210 grams because I want to be 210 pounds. Uh, I want to eat 210 grams of protein per day. Um, and then if I want to lose weight and if I want to be 180 and I’m 200, I would eat 180 grams of protein per day.
So I say per pound of target body weight. And then for people who want to do maintenance, I usually actually end up recommending them close to the same thing because they won’t get it. Mostly because the chances are they won’t get all the way to one gram per pound. And they’ll end up probably at 0.75 somewhere around there. And I, I’m a big believer of just having those, those extra amino acids floating around.
It’s just a benefit, especially if you go outside and do something, you lift something and that way it’ll help retain that muscle. Um, now that it gets into a bigger conversation about protein fasting and mTOR and all that, if you want to talk about longevity, but that’s a different episode and so is protein for that matter. So we do need to kind of circle back to supplementation, but before we finish protein, um, protein supplementation, like straight up, not just EAAs.
is another thing people ask. It’s probably one of the most common forms of supplementation there is. And again, to that, I just say be careful. They did a study on heavy metals found in protein powders and a lot of them were positive for heavy metals, especially the vegan ones. So be very careful on your brand and your sourcing on that. And then I tell everybody, we wanna get our protein as much as humanly possible from whole food sources before we go to supplementation.
So implementation is like a, oh no, I only have 50 grams of protein today. I need 150. Let me just drink 100 gram protein shake type deal. We don’t really wanna do that. We wanna get it through Whole Foods, but.
Ben Kosubevsky (32:32)
Well, you just brought up another tangent. A hundred gram protein shake. You can only absorb so much protein per sitting per hour. So drinking a hundred grams at once doesn’t mean you get a hundred grams for the day. You still only get like, was it 15 per hour, 20 per hour?
Kyle Hulbert (32:46)
Yeah. Well, actually they actually just came out with a study debunking that. Yeah. So what happens is, um, some of it, some of it won’t get absorbed, but it’s not nearly as much as we thought. Um, so I think, I think they’re estimating now about 80% of it, even if you way overeat what you can use at that given moment will just remain in your bloodstream as free floating amino acids ready to be used. So instead of. No.
Ben Kosubevsky (32:51)
Oh really?
Interesting. So you could store it for later like a camel?
Kyle Hulbert (33:15)
No. So you can’t really store protein. That’s kind of an issue of it. You can do, you can do two things with protein. You can use it for tissue repair or, um, basically you can store it via neo glucogenesis, which is basically turning protein into sugar and storing it as fat. Um, that’s a very expensive process in the body. It takes a lot of effort and it doesn’t happen as often as people think it would happen. So, uh, a study just came out showing that it will.
Basically the amino acids will remain free in your bloodstream for longer, and then they will be used when you need them. Say, you eat a ribeye at dinner, it’s 100 grams of protein, you go to bed, you’re not gonna use the 100 grams of protein, but if you wake up in the morning and you go to the gym, the remaining amino acids will be funneling in your muscles for that repair and building. So that was huge. I mean, we’ve seen this anecdotally for a while, but it’s been a while since a study actually came out and showed it.
Ben Kosubevsky (34:03)
10%.
Kyle Hulbert (34:10)
But we’ll circle back to supplements. We’ve covered the foundational supplements. We covered targeted supplementation. So, I mean, I’d like to speak to the risks of experimenting a bit. So I’ve experimented with tons of supplements and I’ve mentioned this with Methylene Blue before. I’ve given myself low-key serotonin syndrome. I’ve given myself low-key issues.
and overloads on certain supplements because of my advanced experimentation. And this is why I’ve landed at a process of targeted supplementation with my clients. I don’t want to experiment with my clients. I’m here to experiment on myself so I can learn what helps, what hurts, what doesn’t work, what works. So then I can take that learning and help my clients. So don’t just go willy-nilly, because there are negative effects that you can run into. And it ranges all the way across the board from having way too much of certain
minerals and nutrients. Certain B vitamins can give you like neuropathy. Like it goes across the board from every sort of symptom that you can pop up from over supplementation. So it’s not just a magic bullet, supplements aren’t.
So, okay. Yeah, so.
Ben Kosubevsky (35:27)
That’s a good pointer. Because I think a lot of people miss that is because like you mentioned earlier, well, Susie’s on this and Tom’s on this and Frank’s on this. So I think I should take all three because they’re all saying each one of those helps them.
Kyle Hulbert (35:41)
Yeah. And, and if you’re not careful, what’ll happen is the thing that Susie and Tom and the other person were taking, maybe they all have. A certain vitamin complex in it. And now you’re getting triple dose of that vitamin complex. This actually happens with fat soluble vitamins a lot. People will take vitamin D it’s all the rage. Everybody hears about vitamin D. Right. So if you go and buy D3, which is the active form of D3 or D.
and you take too much of it, it can actually cause calcification in your arteries. So, you know, the supplement company has solved this by saying, take it with K2. You know, if you take D3K2, you won’t have the artery effect. Well, now, if you’re taking that for years at high enough dosages, you’re gonna throw off your balance of your other fat-soluble vitamins, A and E. So I like an approach where you dose all four main fat-soluble vitamins, D, A, K and E.
at the same time in similar doses or effective doses for their vitamins to make sure that you’re not overriding the other ones by over supplementing in a certain.
Ben Kosubevsky (36:52)
makes a lot of sense.
Kyle Hulbert (36:52)
So, I mean, yeah, I mean, that’s kind of a, that’s kind of an overview on supplements. We’ll probably have individual episodes on, kind of like diving down and supplement stacks for certain goals. I have a, like I have an awesome stack for things I would recommend for people trying to beat addictions, trying to get off vaping. You know, I have some stacks for that. I have, I have stacks for things you can do to beat alcoholism. I have things for longevity.
So we might, we might dive into those and on like short little episodes and kind of download those stacks and how you could use them.
Ben Kosubevsky (37:28)
Yeah, absolutely. So that’s the future.
Kyle Hulbert (37:30)
And this, this is a good time to say I’m not a doctor and Dr. K is a doctor, but we are not giving you any medical advice. Please, uh, consult with your health coach or call me and I can become your health coach, um, before you just start taking any supplements or our advice or your medical practitioner.
Ben Kosubevsky (37:46)
Hopefully they haven’t stopped listening yet.
Kyle Hulbert (37:49)
Yeah, true. Should probably put that on the front end to be honest with you.
Ben Kosubevsky (37:53)
Yeah, that should be our intro. Anyway, so to sum it up, what have we covered today, Kyle?
Kyle Hulbert (37:56)
It should be.
We’ve covered, uh, foundational supplements, uh, risk taking certain supplements without knowing what you’re doing. Um, we’ve talked about. Targeted supplementation using it for what you need. We talked about some, some micronutrient, um, nutrient testing, um, and then working with a practitioner or health coach, someone knows what they’re doing to help you guide what supplements you take.
Ben Kosubevsky (38:25)
Okay. So I’m Dr. K or the osteodoc on Instagram. This is the Peak Performance Podcast and
Kyle Hulbert (38:34)
I’m coach Kyle at toxin free Kyle on Instagram. You can find us.
Signing off.