195: Jeff Byers: Inside the Supplement Industry: The 4 Supplements That Actually Matter

Walk into any supplement aisle—or scroll through social media—and you'll find thousands of products promising better energy, performance, brain health, and longevity. But which supplements actually work? And how do you know what's really inside them? My guest is Jeff Byers, a former NFL athlete and the co-founder of Momentous, a performance nutrition company built around rigorous standards for supplement quality, sourcing, testing, and efficacy. His path into health and performance started long before Momentous. As a freshman football player at USC, a devastating hip injury led to two major surgeries and the possibility that he might never play again. That experience forced him to rethink his identity beyond football, eventually earning his MBA before going on to play in the NFL—and later channeling that same resilience into entrepreneurship and human performance. In this conversation, we clear up the confusion around supplements and get practical about what actually matters. We break down four foundational areas—creatine, protein, omega-3s, and fiber—and why consistency, proper dosing, sourcing, and product quality can matter just as much as the supplement itself. We also discuss when supplements like vitamin D, magnesium, iron, and B vitamins should be guided by bloodwork rather than guesswork. In this episode, you'll learn: • The four foundational supplements we believe can have the biggest impact • How to choose a high-quality supplement—and what NSF and USP certifications actually mean • Why creatine goes far beyond building muscle, including its emerging role in brain health and cognition • How much EPA and DHA to look for in an omega-3—and why "fish oil" doesn't necessarily mean you're getting enough • Why fiber is critical for gut, metabolic, and cardiovascular health • How bloodwork can help determine whether you actually need vitamin D, magnesium, iron, B vitamins, or other targeted supplements We also explore why more isn't always better. Taking dozens of supplements you don't need isn't the goal. The goal is to master the fundamentals, identify your individual deficiencies, choose products you can trust, and build a routine you can actually stick with. If you've ever looked at your supplement cabinet and wondered, Do I actually need all of this?—this episode will help you cut through the noise. Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: drshah.com https://drshah.com Clinic: next-health.com https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram: @darshanshahmd and @extend_podcast Learn more about Jeff Byers: Website: livemomentous.com https://www.livemomentous.com/ Instagram: @live.momentous Thank You to Our Sponsors: Momentous: Head to livemomentous.com https://www.livemomentous.com/ to discover more about Creatine, Fiber, Omega-3 and Protein, use DRSHAH at checkout for up to 35% off! Next Health Longevity Summit: Visit next-health.com/summit https://www.next-health.com/summit to get tickets to our first ever Next Health Longevity Summit! You will have the opportunity to hear from Dr. Shah, Dr. Jeremy London, Dr. Vonda Wright, Dr. Louisa Nicola, Dr. Will Cole and more. You will also be able to taste products from Momentous and experience the top brands in longevity!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Before we get started with this episode, I'd like to invite all of you to the first ever Next Health Longevity Summit, happening in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Conrad Hotel on Saturday, September 12th, 2026. This is an all-day summit where you're going to be hearing from some of the best speakers in longevity's medicine, including Dr. Vonda Wright, Dr. Luisa Nicola, many of the podcast guests that you've heard here on the Extend Podcast, and of course, I'm going to be there, curating the entire day. We also have incredible vendors coming, so you can try the latest technologies in health, wellness, and longevity. Go to next-health.com/summit and buy your ticket today. We only have 400 spots and

• 0:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  they're going quickly. That's next-health.com/summit. I look forward to seeing you all there. Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview

• 1:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 1:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend. This is Dr. Shah, and this is the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health span. Today, I'm joined by an extraordinary guest, my friend Jeff Byers. Jeff has a unique journey. He started off as a former NFL player, a two-time USC team captain, and earned his MBA while still on that scholarship. He then transitioned into the world of biotech and government contracts. After his career in biotechnology, he transitioned into the world of supplementation, co-founding Momentus, one of the leading wellness companies focused on science-backed performance and health solutions. Jeff experienced fans from the elite world of professional sports to the cutting edge of human performance

• 2:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  nutrition. In this episode, we're going to be doing a deep dive into clearing up all of the confusion around supplements, exploring the Wild West nature of the industry, and discussing how to cut through the noise to find what truly moves the needle of your health. Jeff shares invaluable insights on resilience, the importance of mastering fundamentals, and always-forward, never-straight path of entrepreneurship. Get ready for an awesome conversation that will change how you view your health and your performance journey, and give you a completely new understanding of supplements.

• 2:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Jeff, this is such a pleasure to finally get you on the podcast. Thanks for being here today.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, excited.

• 2:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, this is, this is something I've been wanting to do for a while with you, just because I feel like you have such an incredible depth of knowledge about, one of the most interesting group of questions I always get from my patients is on supplements. And I say, I say it's interesting because people are wild in their preconceived notions about supplements, what they think works, what doesn't work. And some people have such an incredible depth of knowledge, yet still miss the big picture. And the people with no knowledge are also out there giving other people advice with zero knowledge at all. It's just such a wild industry, right?

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, uh, it is definitely the Wild West, and I think the noise and the confusion in the, and maybe in our category, might be the greatest of any category that's out there. And I think part of that is, there's very low barriers to entry to be a company in our space, and very easy from a marketing perspective to get big very fast, right? Using TikTok, Instagram, or whatever that may be, because the virality of health and wellness and claims go, can go big really fast.

• 4:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And especially, it's so accelerated now with social media, Amazon, like you can launch a brand within months, I think, now, and just, you know, go get out there and get pretty big pretty quickly with like zero credibility.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yes, 100%. And I think, you know, that's the problem is, our category is huge, like multi-billion dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe globally, but the trust in our category is so low from a consumer standpoint. Like, consumers do not trust the category, yet they still use it, which is one of the craziest things in my mind that happens.

• 4:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's crazy. And I, you know, I've said it many times in this podcast, that I feel like supplementation is essential in this day and age, from my view of all the literature and the science and the medicine around it. And I've seen thousands of times now, you know, we have tens of thousands of patients in Next Health. I've seen supplements really move the needle for people in ways that pharmaceutical medications can't even do too, right? And so I think it's, this is such an important episode, because, I mean, the title is, let's clear up the confusion on supplements today for people listening. I think it's super important.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 5:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. So before we do that, though, I want to dive into your history, because you have such an incredible history, starting from the NFL, moving to government contracts, and now here we are. So why don't we talk about that a little bit? Like, where did you start off? And how did, how did you make the transition from a pro in the NFL to be an entrepreneur?

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, man, that's a, it's really interesting, because like many kids, I dreamt of being a pro, right? And I was obviously incredibly, a pro at something. I thought I was going to be a pro basketball player. Michael Jordan was my hero. I just turned out that I couldn't shoot or jump, and therefore I didn't play basketball, and I was big and strong, so I played football. But I feel very lucky that I was able to live that train. And a lot of things went right my way, too, to be able to play in the NFL. But I went to school at USC. I guess for me, I had a, the game was taken away from me really young. And all athletes, like, everybody stops being an athlete at some point in their life, like playing that sport that they grew up playing. And when I was, my true freshman

• 6:13Speaker 01

  year, I started, uh, I started as a true freshman on SC's national championship team. I blew my hip out. And we're basically told I was never going to really play football again. I had two major hip surgeries. But when you're a 19-year-old kid, that was like devastating. But it made me realize that there was more to life than ball. And I started taking school very seriously. You know, I remember, I was like, I went to Southern Cal, and like, we're in LA, and I was talking to my dad after visiting the doc after my first hip surgery, and being told I need a second one, crying. Like, I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. Like, football is my life. And he's like, grow up, you know? And he had no pity. Like, I remember the story. He probably remembers it differently. Like, I remember getting zero pity of like, you're at one of the top institutions in the world, go, you're getting it paid for. Nobody feels bad for you, right? Go figure

• 6:57Speaker 01

  it out. Anyways, and that really, like, threw into like, football does not define me, I define me. I get to choose my path forward. And so at 19, I really started a plan for life after football. And so I got, I got on track to graduate undergrad in three years, which I did. And then I got into the master schools of, the Marshall School of Business, and I got my MBA while I was still under scholarship. And then with my MBA, I went into the NFL. So I had a really unique kind of path. And so while I was playing in the NFL, I had an MBA, I was working full-time in the off-seasons. It was really important to me to stay relevant, because I saw that football was going to end, right? And often, you don't get to pick when it does. And I just really became passionate about building, creating impact in the world, but I didn't quite know what I was going

• 7:40Speaker 01

  to do. So I, when I retired in the end of 2013, 2014 season, I jumped into finance, because I had a longstanding job offering finance, and I realized very quickly that that was not who I was. And that was just my personality, my wiring as a, as an athlete. And I learned what I loved about an athlete was, right, really being impactful in all the things that you do, taking risk, right, moving fast, and like, really, truly, like, betting on yourself and betting on those around you. And ultimately, I joined an early-stage biotech that led to what is now Momentus. So in 2018, my co-founder and I spun out of a biotech. We won a $1.8 million contract with the Department of Defense, which was a huge coup. But we weren't in the supplement space. We did not start our business in the

• 8:23Speaker 01

  supplement space. But what I, what I found out I loved is, I love building, I love team, I love this, like, this concept of, I call it like, the ball always gets snapped, meaning like, you always got to move forward, right? We're not operating around the fringes. Like, we're, we're trying to do real things, real meaningful things in big. And that's what I loved about entrepreneurship. So anyways, like, that's kind of this journey outside of football. I knew there was life after football. I also really cared about traumatic brain injury, and, you know, it honestly started to scare the crap out of me of like, the longer I played, because that era of like, 2010 to 2014 is when all the TBI, CTE, all that stuff started coming out. And it was like, we don't know, like, we don't know anything. And you're like, oh, man, like, this is scary. So.

• 9:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. We got to dive into that a little later, because the role of creatine in traumatic brain injury, we should talk about.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is great, but that was not a thing back then.

• 9:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That was not a thing, right? And I, I've done a couple of episodes and spoken to a few audiences on CTE, traumatic brain injury. And I mean, it's still, it's still a big problem, right, for athletes and so.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 9:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's, especially now with soccer becoming a huge deal in the United States. We're seeing more and more kids with concussions. And it's, yeah, something we should talk about a little bit later, and how supplementation can be a piece of the overall protective.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 9:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Protocol on that, right? But before we do that, you know, I think as an athlete, I think you have to go into every game, just giving it your all, but then you still fail.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right? And I wonder, did that resilience to failure help you in your entrepreneurial journey?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  I mean, when I think like, it's that grit.

• 10:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  That like is what comes from failing. It's like being a piece of gristle. Like you just gotta be so tough and never go away. Right? And that's what it takes to be a great pro athlete. That's what it takes to be a great, right? Husband, father. It's what it takes to be a great entrepreneur. It's like, it's so hard. Right? And you just gotta bear down sometimes and just say, you know what? I'm gonna eat this crap sandwich. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go forward. And so the like, sport taught me, right? As long as there's an ounce of, of energy in you, you continue to go. Right? And it's uncomfortable and it's hard. And also playing at the level I did, you, you learn to

• 10:40Speaker 01

  love that. Like, like it's, it's kind of sick when you think about it, but it's like, you learn to love to suffer.

• 10:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Right? And that suffering becomes actually not suffering, but your happy place.

• 10:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Because you know, when you're pushing yourself to the limits, really good things come, but it doesn't always come right away. But you've seen it enough that if you just keep pushing and you keep pushing, special happens.

• 11:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. It's, it's so true. And like, you know, you told me a couple of stories, stories about making this company momentous, that like massive challenges where you probably thought if sometimes like this is all gonna die, but you kept going, right?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  There's a, I mean, in everybody's journey, all like, right? Every, we do such a job painting, like the Cinderella story of companies and entrepreneurs. And like, you as an entrepreneur, it is never that, right? And like, when you look back, it's like, oh, man, we were up into the riot and this was great. It was like, oh, man, I know about those five times we almost died.

• 11:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  You know, and it's like, what about the time that I didn't take a salary so we could pay, right? Make payroll, right? Like, those times weren't that long ago in our business, um, that, that people that I even forget about, right? And like you do too. It's like, cause we were in the, in the forest. And it's like, when you step back from the forest, you realize that it's not always smooth. Right? It's not always up. And when, when you look over a long period of time, it looks like it's up. But when you look at a short periods, it's, you know, like, it's, uh, you know, there's a great line. It's like always forward, never straight.

• 12:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, that's so true, right? It's never straight. Yeah. So you know, you then transitioned into kind of biotech and getting these government contracts, which is like such a major shift from

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, playing NFL football. But I think like, you, you know, you were kind of built for it with your MBA and your, your entrepreneurial drive. What did working with a government and government contracts kind of teach you about the next phase of your life?

• 12:30Speaker 01

  I think that early phase of our business, like 2018 to 2020, it really taught me around, what is your core ethos? And like, who are you? And like, for us, it was, we wanted to be at the forefront of high performance. Cause we ultimately believed what was happening there, right? Could and should be democratized out. But that is where the leaders are. That is where we can build something special. And I thought, I think what it taught me too, was the people we worked with, they like, they were black and white. You either did what you said you were going to do, or you didn't. Right? And what I saw was a lot of other people that were in, in the same types of areas we were,

• 13:14Speaker 01

  that said they were gonna do something that didn't, and they ultimately just got out. And we just continued to make progress. And like, if I said, yep, we're gonna do that, we did it. And if I said, we're gonna show up, we're gonna show up. Right? And I think that attitude of like, if we say we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it. And we're gonna show up and we're gonna be curious. Cause also during that time, we're like, we had early clinical data on this really niche performance product. That's not like, not really even part of the business anymore. And we didn't have all the answers. And when you're talking to like, the head of the high performance of NFL teams and head researchers in the Department of Defense, like, if you say, you know, if I sat in the room and like, here's what it does, here's all the answers, they'd been like, out.

• 13:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Right? And it was like, here's what the early data says. What questions do you have? Like, we don't know, like enough, like we know outcomes are happening, but we're trying to figure out why? What should we study? Where should we go? And that was a big thing for me of a learning of like, being humble, being curious, surround yourself with the best. Like, I don't need to be the science nerd. Nobody expects me to do that. What I know how to do is a very different skillset. And what I wanted to do is aim the smartest people in the right direction. And I wanted to go execute on that.

• 14:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  So keeping that performance core and being very curious and asking questions.

• 14:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  And humble, I guess.

• 14:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And the humility that comes with that, because we don't know everything.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, working with some athletes and both former athletes and current athletes, I think they are very in tune with what's going on with their biology, right? So if you give them something that works, they can

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Feel it more than the general public can.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But more importantly, if something is not working for them, they know, they know, they, they know that they just shaved off a half a second of their time.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it, it was like due to this product, right? And so it really, you know, you get real time feedback, I think a lot of times too, from, from high performers, because they know if something is working or not.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  I think high performers are, they have like, really elite athletes have two things, right? They master the foundation, right? And they do it over and over and over and over again, like for decades, right? Tom Brady did this, like, did the right things. And then he found out, what are the little bit, a handful of things that he can do that create incremental gains? And so athletes do both, right? But I, I, I think the incremental gains piece to what you just said is something that is really unique to really high performers. When you've mastered everything else, it, it becomes easier to measure incremental gains. But also what athletes don't do is they don't do a hundred things.

• 15:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 15:49Speaker 01

  They do one or two, and the one that works, they keep doing, right? And then they'll add one or two more, right? And so they're very thoughtful in how they do it. And they have a very clear response loop, right? Cause it's typically a closed system. But I think the biggest thing that I took from athletes, that the consumer doesn't do is this bone, this bone crushing consistency around fundamentals. Because like, what makes you great is that. And what makes you healthy is that. And then it's finding the one or two things.

• 16:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  And maximizing those. But so many people gloss, gloss over the boring front end of like, the fundamentals of health and wellness, or of being a great athlete.

• 16:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Like, you gotta train, you gotta take care of your body, right? You gotta eat well. All of those things still exist.

• 16:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Right? Uh, and I feel like it's the same thing in all of, like, all of this health and wellness category. It's like, we can talk about, you know, you doing a hundred, a hundred step routine every day. But realistically, two of those things drive 80% of the impact.

• 16:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  And then pick one or two more. That's four. Four is way more manageable than a hundred. And four is actually gonna drive change. And then you add one more and add one more. And that's what athletes do.

• 17:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's such great advice, because I think a lot of people watch social media and they're following like, you know, the biohacker of the, uh, de jour right now.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Who's doing like a thousand things. And people just get paralyzed because they're overwhelmed with all the things that they think they have to do, right?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Like get in the sauna for 20 minutes and get in the cold plunge and then do this and then do that. And it's really just like, you're right. There's two or three things that move the needle, 80%.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  And just pick like, and just pick and stay with it, right? Consistency drives, right? Almost all outcomes and all the things we do. There is no magic pill or no magic bullet, especially in supplements, right? Nothing is gonna fix you overnight. Like, very few things give you the automatic return loop, because that's not how these things work. It's like, great, you ate healthy twice this month. Has no impact on your life.

• 17:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Right? Good, good for you. But it's a lifestyle, right? And it's how you make those decisions over time that matter. And that's the same as an athlete, like, and it's like, I, I get, I live in an industry, I'm passionate about health and wellness, and I get paralyzed by the amount of things that people have out there. Cause I'm like, you know, somebody on my team will be like, have you heard of this? I'm like, no. I was like, I can't keep track of all of the things that are continuously to come out and that you're supposed to do.

• 18:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I know.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Or you know?

• 18:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's hard to keep track of it completely. Yeah, for sure. So, you know, working with these high performers, obviously they're gonna demand high levels of quality and efficacy from you, right? And, and the products you provide. And I think a lot of people have heard of some of these like quality seals, like NSF.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But could you like, kind of give, uh, my audience, like, how do you know when a product is quality enough for a pro athlete, right? Cause they have a high, high bar here.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. So in the US, if you are a pro athlete, the team will not buy you any product that does not have a logo that's NSF certified for sport on it.

• 18:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What's NSF?

• 18:54Speaker 01

  NSF is a third party body that certifies all sorts of things. Like, they certify toaster ovens and refrigerators and supplements. They have this whole supplement line. And basically what it is, is like, you don't like, you pay them $3,000 or whatever it is per production run to verify that your product is safe on there. And so NSF is the only one that the pro dieticians really recognize in the US.

• 19:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  As a whole, it is because there's, their testing mechanism and how they test lots, not just banned substances, but also label claim accuracy. And they're testing randomly throughout the year. Like, they'll buy commercial lots and test those as well. And so it's not, it's not just a, you know, okay, we checked the box because we're a GMP facility, or you know, like the label is clean. It is a, every production run, we send finished product and it can, like, we cannot release it until it passes NSF.

• 19:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow. Okay. So you have to do that, like, as a rule, to be NSF certified, you gotta send them a sample from every lot you produce.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  All of it. And they all get NSF certified on there. And so for us as a brand, you, like, our roots are in elite pro sports.

• 20:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  True.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  And that's where we built our standards. As you know, like our business is far beyond that. Like it's such a small percent of our like pro sports is going to be a percent maybe of our company this year. Not even like we've been selling to thirty two or thirty two NFL teams for a while. It's really hard to grow that.

• 20:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  On there and they go and so it's, it's, you know, for us, it's our roots in elite performance is that center of the ecosystem. That ultimately is the reason why we're partners.

• 20:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Right? Because they have the highest standards in the world and they know the consequences are the highest for lack of quality and lack of transparency and therefore there are very few brands that they actually trust and they buy. And that has been able for us, that trust that we've earned. Because ultimately consumers care about trust. They just don't know where to go. And we have said, we believe in NSF certified for sport. We believe it's a really, really high, it's our roots are that therefore that's what we believe in. It tests label claim accuracy. So what is actually on the back of a label, right? We have all, all of this. What is on the back of the label is actually in it in the right amounts, which is critically important. And it doesn't contain any banned substances.

• 21:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's the key.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Right? And those things, I mean, it's like my dad's like, well, I'm not an athlete. Why do I care? And it's like, you care about quality. This is the standard of quality. There's another one that's really great. That's called USP, right? They're more practitioner focused.

• 21:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  But there are great certification as well. And those are the two, you know, if people were saying, what should I look for? Those are the two most important.

• 21:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I think it's super important because you touched on this. There's, there's really three things like what's in the label is really there.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it is there in the quantities that you say, right? Cause everyone's like, how many grams of creatine should I take? And I'm like, well, you know, somewhere between five to 10, but most creatine you buy online doesn't even have create that much creatine in it. And people are buying it, you know, in the form factor that is the one they want to choose. So they'll choose like a gummy and then they'll choose a lowest price gummy with the highest Amazon rating. Yeah. And then they get tested, you know, I.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  The gummies get tested.

• 22:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The gummies get tested, right? And then they're, they're just like, there's nothing in them at all, like zero. And so all they're doing is ingesting sugar, right? And so I think it's, um, it's fine to, to understand the dosages, but you have to really make sure you're getting the dosage. The second thing, like you mentioned was there's nothing in there that's going to cause you harm, right? Like these banned substances. Well, the banned substances for a pro athlete will cause harm in that they could potentially lose their career.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Millions of dollars at stake.

• 22:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Millions of dollars, right? But also these banned substances cause unintended biological consequences, right? And side effects and problems. And I can't tell you the number of people that, you know, I keep saying Amazon supplements. I hate to say that, but it's like, you know, the low quality supplements, right? With no, um, with no NSF or USP on it that say like, I took this supplement and I got really sick afterwards. I'm like, wait a minute, it's, it's, they'll say like an omega three, for example. And I'll be like, what omega three did you take? And then they'll show me, I'm like, what, I haven't even heard of this brand, you know? And so that makes sense, like that can happen. And then lastly is, I wanted you to touch on this more, heavy metals and other, other toxins in the product as well.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That could potentially cause issues.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's, it's kind of that full fold of what, what it is. Like it's like you, I like repeat what you said. First, the dosage matters, right? You have to do an efficacious dose. And I think you as a, as a doc, like that's the role that's one of the most important is like, take five to 10 grams. Don't take two, don't take one, right? Like efficacious dose. Number two is, are they sourcing really high quality, which ultimately leans to heavy metals and all that? Is the sourcing component is so important because where you source your fish from matters. And like we talked about, for heavy metals. And then it's the certification at the backend that actually, you know, trust, but verify. Everybody's like, oh, we're, we're great, we're high quality, but like that's trust, but verify.

• 24:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Right? Like we verify everything, like we source better than anybody else, like, but lots of things can happen in, in a manufacturing process from cross contamination or whatever. And so trust, but verify is like one of those core components of what it is. And so for us, like we use, you know, like we use SupCo and Light Labs and these other businesses too, to show what our heavy metals are, because heavy metals are in everything, as you know. But it's the transparency of like, people want like, what are they? Where are they from? Why are they there? So it's that transparency that we really believe in because like you can't get heavy metals out of cocoa as an example. Cause cocoa is natural plant and cocoa naturally has heavy metals. Like that's just the, the fact of the nature.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  It's a problem is if you don't know and you're not tracking, right? And if you're not tracking, therefore then you don't have standards.

• 24:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  And then you're just saying, what is, you know, like, it's got to be a little bit, the, like, the, the dangerous amount, which the dangerous amount is actually pretty high, but the danger is not hitting that amount. It's the compounding effect of like all of the heavy metal exposure that we have in our life and allowing consumers to actually be smart about where that is.

• 25:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly. And, and like you said earlier, you know, supplementation, the, the best effect is going to be from being on a good routine with it and being consistent with it. And you definitely don't want to be consistently putting heavy metals in your body every single day.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  At high levels, right?

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 25:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. So let's talk about a little bit now about, um, you know, the, the, the whole world of supplements out there. There's like you mentioned earlier, there's like thousands of ingredients potentially, right? And so people get really focused on, and I get this every day in my practice. They, they hear about some new ingredient that someone they heard on social media is taking. And they ask me like, what do you think about Sheila Jeth? What do you think about like this thing or that thing? And I'm just like, I don't even know anything about that. Like I've never, I've heard of it, but I don't know.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  About the efficacy, what it really does, mechanism of action, who should be taking it? And so, you know, just like to your point, there's so much noise out there. And once again, people get paralysis by over analysis and they're just like, I don't want to take any of it, right? And, um, how do you tell, or how do you talk to people as a company about why you picked the ingredients or the SKUs that you have in your line of Momentus? How many do you have?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  We have about 30 different products.

• 26:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Great.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Like so SKU versus product is the two.

• 26:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sorry, products, I meant not SKUs, right? Products, right? You have 30 different products, right? And obviously you could have made fifty or a hundred or a thousand, right? Why these 30 products?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I mean, I'll go back to, like, I get three questions when people, when I get, uh, introduce people like, oh, you know, what is Momentus? I'm like, oh, a supplement company. And you can automatically see their eyes roll. They're like, oh, God, one of these guys, right? Because there's so little trust. And then I start talking about, oh man, this is who we work with and these are our roots, right? And like, and they're like, oh, well, you're different, you know? And then the next question is, what do I take? Everybody's like, or this is what I take or what do you take? And that's like, that's the questions that I get. And I used to answer it bad. I used to tell people what I took, right? And what I realized was I'm an N1, right? Like ex pro athlete, I care a lot about my CT.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  I also run a supplement company, so I do more than I would if I was paying dollars, right? Because, uh, the economic, I don't have an economic.

• 27:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You get them for free.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  I get them for free, uh, free. Yes. But like that changes my perspective. So what I did was kind of what we did early on is like, we pooled our advisors and we said, okay, what, what actually matters and what drives impact? And it came up with what we call is the Momentus three, which are like creatine, protein, omegas. And we kind of said like, that's the core foundation of, right? Of, of health and longevity, right? And it's like three things, very hard to get from your daily diet in the right doses. Can you? Yes. Right? But also no cross reactivity, thousands and thousands of peer reviewed published clinical trials, no safety, no safe, high, very high safety profile, right? And so that's kind of how we went is like, hey, master these three.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  And then guess what? Blood work, doctors, condition specific things next. So you master this foundation and you build it on. The one caveat is we decided to launch a fiber product earlier this year. And we would throw fiber into now the Momentus four. Because it's also so foundational, um, as a whole. And but like, then, then it's like, okay, magnesium, vit D and all those ones. But those things are condition specific or blood work diagnostic. You don't need to guess. You just can go get the answer if you need to do it or not, which I think is really valuable. So how we picked the portfolio is like, we centered around the core foundation. And we also said, you know, like this 80 20 rule is like 20% of what we do drives 80% of the value. Let's build a portfolio around that.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  So like, we don't need to have every mineral or every vitamin or every dose of everything. We just need, right? The core that's going to drive the biggest impact. If somebody has a corner case, they can go find that someplace else, but we want to be that core. Like if you said, I want to open up your cabinet, I want to be, you know, I want to, I want to be 80% of the bulk of everything that you use. But you know, not only 20% of the products on there. And that was a very important decision that we made. And how we bring products to market is we have had this advisory board from day one of elite practitioners, dietitians, right? We, we kind of call them performance engineers, but heads of HP, uh, high performance, sorry. And then researchers. And we go and say, hey, this is what we're thinking about.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  How, how would you build this best in class? And so they've really given us the guidance because I don't believe the smartest people in health, wellness and longevity live inside a supplement company, right? I believe they're out there doing, practicing, researching, and that's super important. And that's a different approach than most business in our space. Because we don't make products based upon like, how do we make the greatest margin profile? We make products based upon where is our, where is the research on health and wellness going? And what do our, what do our partners want? And so that's how we picked that portfolio. And we also was like, do we want to play in every category? No. Cause I, to your point is like, when we started this, it's like chaos is what our industry is.

• 30:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  And I would rather be the core foundation of what people need for life than to be a fad or a trend or something that you might only need for a couple of days or whatever that may be like, I want to like, let's win serving the customer with the highest quality. And where quality and sourcing matters is when you do things daily. And that's like, it's a really easy story to tell is like, why do we care so much about quality and sourcing certification? Quality compounds over time, like use like, it just matters. And like, and so let's focus on those things.

• 31:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I love that. And I love the Momentus three, which is now the Momentus four, because I truly agree with you that that is kind of where every human, for the most part, needs to kind of start. Like, these are extremely well studied. We know that every human could benefit from fiber, protein, omegas, and now creatine as well, which I think creatine is a little bit different than fiber and protein and omegas, because there's not, you know, people aren't usually thinking about that as part of their normal diet, right? But and so like, but the research around it is so incredibly voluminous, being beneficial for most people. I do think of it like you do as a core supplement. So I would love to talk about those a little bit deeper and kind of like the differences

• 31:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  between other products out there and why you settled on the specific mixes that you have here at Momentus. But I also want to say that like, you know, the other piece of this too is vitam- vitamin and mineral deficiencies, right? And so you look out there and you see most, I would say 75% of the patients that I see in our clinic are vitamin D deficient. They have some sort of B deficiency that'll methylate well. And magnesium, for example, is also an issue. So I also look at, and you have these products, iron we have here, which is also an issue in many people. These are all things that if you get tested, then you know if you're deficient and then you can supplement. You don't have a supplement forever, but at some point, you know, you might need these supplements because you're deficient and that is affecting you.

• 32:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And if you stay deficient for year after year, decade after decade, it's going to negatively impact your health. Getting tested is key.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Getting tested is key and blood work is so democratized now, right? Whereas it was really hard even three years ago. And that's where it's just like, you don't need to guess on vitamin D. And maybe, maybe the right vitamin D protocol is do it for a month and be off. Maybe you're going to do vitamin D for the rest of your life, but blood work can set you free, right? And it like, blood work will actually probably save you a lot more money and keep you focused, right? On there, when you think about like, what's the cost of these things over time? Because the last thing we want to do is like invest in super, in, in super expensive P, right? Which is like one of the knocks on the supplement industry, but it's rightfully so. You can, like, you can go into one of your clinics and you can find out exactly mineral

• 33:22Speaker 01

  and vitamin deficiencies, right? It's quick, it's easy, right? And it's like, anyways.

• 33:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely. No, you're absolutely right. And so just for my audience, I think, you know, the best way to test for these is a specific test called a micronutrient test that we use. And this measures both the concentration of these vitamins in your blood, but more importantly, inside of the cells. Cause you know, if it doesn't make it inside the cell, it's not going to be efficacious, right? And so we do a micronutrient test and measures both. That's very important actually with like magnesium to see what's actually getting into the cell.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And then for iron deficiency, don't wait until you're anemic. You should be measuring ferritin levels. I can't tell you the number of people we see, men and women with low ferritin levels that need to be on an iron supplement. Vitamin D, to your point, very easily measured, 50 to 80 is where you want to be. Your doctor will tell you you're normal. If you're 30, you're not, you should go 50 to 80. And yeah, that's, that's, and then for the B vitamins too, I think, you know, measuring like homocysteine tells you if you're not methylating your B vitamins well, because some people, actually 30% of people have a methylation defect and they're not going to have adequate conversion of vitamin B to an active form. And therefore a B supplement specifically, I think you guys make methylated Bs.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  No, we have them in like iron plus has B and our multivitamin has B.

• 34:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it, got it. So sometimes you might have to get a, a specific supplement or taking with iron and multivitamin is fine too. So I just want to throw that all out there because a lot of times my audience is like, well, you never told me what to do. And so this is, um, this is a protocol that I use in my brain.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 34:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Do you agree with most of that?

• 34:57Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 34:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Want to add anything to it?

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then it then like, then it becomes like, people are always like, whoa, what about sleep? And what about this?

• 35:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, then it becomes conditional.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Then it becomes condition or goal specific. But if you start with just that and you haven't mastered the fundamentals and, and focus on deficiencies, then, then you're just putting Band-Aids on a Titanic, on the Titanic. It's like, no, that's not the goal. Like the goal is to build a robust, right? System underneath and then you build upon condition specific. And like, like for me, like a great example is like for me, like I have a ton of connective tissue health issues, so joints, ligaments, tendons, right? Because of that collagen is really important to me. But I also played a very violent game, right? That I put my body through the meat grinder. So collagen rises to the level for me that it, it might not for a lot of other people. And that's what like, that's what I learned in, in like my time when people asked me what

• 35:50Speaker 01

  do I do is like, that's not relevant. Like it might be relevant to you, but it might not. But I know that getting your blood work tells you what you should do, right? I know I'm like always, every time I've ever been tested for vitamin D, I'm low on vitamin D. Like just, just.

• 36:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Me too. If I'm not supplementing, I'm low on it.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's, but that's me and that's not everybody, you know? Like there are other people in our company that are not that way, right? That wives, like that, that come in their blood work and they're like, oh, I'm crushing vit D. It's like, you don't need to take vitamin D. Don't take it. So I agree completely on, on that stance. And then it's condition specific.

• 36:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And I think like, you know, people get supplement overwhelmed very easily because, you know, sometimes they'll go to like a functional physician and some functional physicians, they'll check a bunch of blood work and give them like 30 supplements a day. And now they're carrying on lunch baggies with, you know, three times a day, a handful of supplements. And then they just don't do anything because it makes them sick. They get tired of taking it. It's too much work, you know? And so I think supplement overwhelm is real. So starting with like the basics and building on top of that is, is the way to go for sure.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. That, I mean, it goes back to like, if you don't do it consistently, it drives no impact. Great. You took, you took a baggie of supplements every day for two weeks and then you're like, ah, this is a lot. And like, then it's nothing, right? And so it's starts, I like, people who are early on their supplement journey, start small. Just do one thing, right? Or supplement nutrition. It's just, anyways, then you build and you build. And for those, you know, like there, there are also like these people that are like, well, I take these nine things. What do these four things do? I don't know why I take them. And I'm like, oh, man. Oh, man. You know, and you just like scratch your head and you're like, you like, I heard it somewhere. I can't remember why. I was like, if you don't remember why you're taking it, you're wrong, right?

• 37:37Speaker 01

  And that's another thing that like, getting people in the right products is just as important as getting people out of the wrong products, right? Because they might be in the right products. They might just be taking also a lot of wrong products that are conflicting with the right products.

• 37:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 37:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Creatine isn't just the most researched supplements. It's actually proven to deliver results. So whether you want stronger muscles or you want a sharper mind, creatine is the energy source you're going to need to get there. Momentus just introduced signature spec creatine. It's their highest quality creatine to date. It has 10 times fewer impurities and two to five times stricter heavy metal limits than even other premium creatines. And it's all backed by six stages of testing and certification. Not to mention the ultrafine micronized powder makes it so easy to mix into your favorite drink or smoothie. Try it yourself at livemomentous.com slash Dr.

• 38:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Shaw and you'll get up to 35% off your first order using the code Dr. Shaw.

• 38:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So let's talk about the Momentous four. So let's do protein first, right?

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. I would say everything starts at, at the, at the scientific level for us. And it's like, okay, what is the research actually say matters, right? In these products. And the Momentous four is actually pretty simple because the research is so strong in all of their cases. But an omega is a great example of like dosing matters on EP and DHA. So if we go, if we take a step back, it's all about sourcing, sourcing from the highest quality, right? Is the next step. And so we go and say, how do we find the highest quality, most pure form that we can in whatever that is, right? So first science, then quality. And so our whey protein, we source exclusively from, right? European cows, European dairy industry has very, very high standards around grass fed

• 39:33Speaker 01

  and the use of hormones and antibiotics. And so whey protein, it's interesting is it's, a lot of people don't even consider it a supplement. It's, it's a dehydrated milk, right? But whey protein comes in many different shapes and forms. So you have whey protein concentrate, whey protein isolate, and you have different levels of that. And as it becomes more and more pure, there becomes less and less impurities. And so like, there's a whey protein concentrate, which is right, it goes like, you know, milk gets turned into cheese, right? Whey is a byproduct of cheese, right? And then whey, right? Gets condensed into whey solids, which goes into whey concentrate. And then it continues to get filtered up. And ultimately we have the highest grade of whey protein isolate, which is a 91% plus

• 40:18Speaker 01

  whey protein isolate on there. And that is the highest amount of filtration, which means the least amount of impurities in there. But when you have a really, really pure formula, right, and clean, you don't have to use, right, added flow agents, added, right, like anti-clumping, right, and you can flavor a lot easier. So it allows our whey protein to be very minimal, like have very minimal ingredients, right, and be really high quality, right, and a great amino acid profile. So where it comes from is we selected the highest quality dairy that we could find.

• 40:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  We use a dairy out of Ireland called Turlon. Um, and they're the largest Irish dairy anyways, like, and they have very different farming practices and they own it from, right, there's co-op. So the families who own these cows and milk them every single day, right, own the actual company that we're buying the whey protein powder from, right, to make it. So the next thing is it's all about added ingredients. And so for us, when you turn over our whey, what you'll notice is it's very, very limited ingredients. We will never use artificial sweeteners and artificial flavors. That is like core to who we are. Why would you put something in your body that's art, like that's artificial for your health? And like, yes, like using sucralose or aspartame, like, is it, is it necessarily bad? No.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  But quality compounds over time.

• 41:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  The thing to me is that you don't need to put those things in it. It's just a little harder, right, to formulate high quality without the, it's like, high quality tastes good. It takes a little more time, right? But it can be done. Like we've shown it like over and over again, that you don't need artificial things to make your products taste good. And that's an important thing for us. So that's our whey protein isolate.

• 42:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So can I ask you a couple of questions? So first of all, I love the cows from Ireland because you know, if, if I've been Ireland like six times and I've driven the entire island, like it's a completely different way that they raise the animals out there. I mean, these, these animals are being raised in the most idyllic situations on the planet, like, and they're out there just grazing and you could tell like, you know, green pastures that have been there for centuries and decades is really cool, you know, and so, and also the way they treat the cows and the animals, and all of this matters because if the cows are eating inflammatory um, substances, that same inflammatory signal gets transmitted into the milk and then to you, right? As if you, if you are consuming the cow's milk as well, or the, or the whey.

• 42:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So I think it's, it's really important to know where that whey is being sourced from. Now, I think most of the whey protein I, I saw out there, correct me if I'm wrong, does not come from Irish cows. It comes from like United States.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  It comes from all over the world.

• 42:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  All over the world.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Right, like, I mean, dairy is a global industry for sure. And they're like Irish dairy is the Irish dairy and you pay a premium for the highest quality dairy in the world. That's like when you go and you buy, right, Irish butter in the grocery store, it's more expensive because it's Irish dairy and they have higher standards and that ultimately dictates quality. At the end of the day, like, you know, when you have a good Kerrygold butter or, you know, a truly grass-fed butter from Ireland, it is a different, it's a different experience. And that's how I would explain Momentous Whey Protein.

• 43:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep. And then you mentioned too, like when you go from concentrate to isolate, you're getting obviously like more just isolated whey protein.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But what is being removed in that process?

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Uh, lactose um, is the main one being removed in there and lactose fats, like other solids, fats and sugars.

• 43:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Right? As a whole are being removed out and further, and further taken in a filtration process. So it's like, it's just filtration. It's not like a processing, like anything. And so like this micro filtration, they basically just run it through hundreds of thousands of filters and they're just like continue to run. And the more and the tighter the screen, right, the, the less impurities that are in it because the filters are, are creating those securities. But also that means, right, the higher the filtration in it, the, right, more you lose from a yield perspective and the longer it takes.

• 44:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. And then do you have different flavors available or how does, how do you?

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, uh, our whey isolate, we have, oh man, now 10 flavors, I want to say. Maybe it's less than that. Maybe it's eight. I forget because I get to taste a lot of flavors that we haven't launched and we're, we're uh, taste testing. So we have like our big three are vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, right? Like all, all of those. We also have an unflavored. Um, that does very, very well. And unflavored is literally just whey protein isolate. If you put it in a smoothie, um, et cetera. And then we have some specialty flavors. We have a, a pure cinnamon, which is only cinnamon and remem. Remem is essentially stevia are the two things in there. And that's a great one. It tastes like cinnamon toast crunch milk. And then we have mint chip. Uh, anyways, we have a lot. I'm like, like I'm gonna forget some or some that we might be out of stock and people get mad at me.

• 45:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I want to try the cinnamon one for sure.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  The cinnamon one's really, really good.

• 45:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love it. And then you said, you know, a lot of the lactose is filtered out because of in the process. Can someone who's lactose intolerant also try this?

• 45:21Speaker 01

  All things that come from dairy, right, all whey proteins, you have a lactose warning on it. So I will say that as a whole of like, if you're lactose sensitive, what we find is most people have a really easy tolerability of our whey because of the quality aspect of it. But if you're like, it's one of those things to try into. And I would just say from like, if you're dairy, like really dairy sensitive, like really, really like, you should just use a plant protein.

• 45:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay. Can we talk about creatine? No, let's talk about fiber next. Let's talk about fiber next. So, you know, I think there's a lot of confusion around fiber. There's insoluble, soluble, soluble fiber. You know, I think, you know, you and I had this conversation. Most people are just taking metamucil right now. Is there only a source of fiber?

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 46:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Can you break it down for us?

• 46:09Speaker 01

  I think like, first off, like fiber was a, oh, that's what old people do.

• 46:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  You know, not that long ago in my world.

• 46:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. If you're constipated, you take fiber.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  And it's like, oh, I'm like, my parents take fiber every day. Like what's fiber? You know, like I'm, you know, I don't need fiber. And that was probably my perspective two and a half, three years ago, right? And then we're like, you know, the science team and our advisors kept talking about like, fiber is not an old person or a constipated or whatever, like that's not what it is. And it is misunderstood and it is a core foundational, right, performance for life product. And we call like, that's what we call longevity or healthy aging.

• 46:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  And so there was also, and then it was like, everything's just psyllium husk, which is just one form of fiber. And then it become a, then it became a, well, the market hasn't had any, any innovation in it in a really long time. Plus, there's a giant consumer base that I was one of those that never thought fiber was for them, but it is. And so there is like, hey, we can go win a big market and build something meaningful, innovate, and we can tell our, our core customers that fiber is actually foundational. So that's kind of how we got to a fiber. Then it becomes like, how do you build an actual meaningful fiber product?

• 47:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  That is different, differentiated and innovative and has efficacy on there. And so we came up with, you know, through our advisory board and you know, we really, this was a product that Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's one of our partners was like, you need a fiber, you need a fiber. It's something that I like, I'm really passionate about. And so it was like, we used him as like a launch point, which was awesome. But we said, let's build a, a comprehensive fiber that's not just psyllium husk. And so we put soluble and insoluble fiber, which is psyllium husk and rice bran, right? One helps like, like psyllium husk really helps digestive uh, regularity. Rice bran helps strengthen your gut lining, which is incredibly important. And then we use a resistant starch, right? And that resistant starch is really important because it feeds the good gut microbiome.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Right? And ultimately those, we all have the, that microbiome in, in our stomach. And we said, well, we just need to feed the good stuff more of what it needs. And that's what the, you know, the potato resistant starch does in there. So we put three in one, really, really comprehensive formula that we're excited about, right? That is very different than a psyllium husk because a psyllium husk is just one, right? And for us, gut health is comprehensive. But also this is a way for us to, you know, enter into gut health in a different, in a different vein to our core consumer uh, as a whole. And I will say like, of all the products that we've made, very few of them was like a light bulb. Let me rephrase that. No product in our category

• 48:49Speaker 01

  has a, a, a noticeable impact like fiber.

• 48:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  When you start taking fiber and you're three weeks in, you're like, why didn't somebody tell me this? This is, this is like, like, like the gut health change that you feel is really like, I I I

• 49:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mind blowing.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Mind blowing. And I'm just like, hey, creatine is amazing, but you don't have that protein. You don't have that. Omegas, you don't have that. But fiber, you feel, right? And I think that is something that is so impactful. And especially given that ninety plus percent of Americans do not get enough fiber.

• 49:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  So.

• 49:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I really love that. I'm changing the narrative around fiber from it's an old person's, you know, thing that they take to poop better.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  To it really is a performance substance.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It is, you're regulating your gut health, and we all know the gut is connected to your hormones and your brain and your heart, all of it. There's some, there's a gut, there's a gut, brain connection that is incredibly important that leads to depression and attention deficit, et cetera, if your gut microbiome is unhealthy. And most people's guts are not healthy nowadays, and the treatment is not like more probiotics. It's getting your gut lining and your gut bacteria happy again through the use of fiber.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, also, like, you know, people are jumping to statins and other medications like metformin for high glucose levels and high cholesterol levels, but they're completely skipping the fiber piece.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's foundational.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Foundation.

• 50:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  For cholesterol, heart health, and also for absorbing less sugar in your gut and regulating your metabolic health. So so many benefits.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  I think the other thing that's interesting about fiber is when you look on the market, many of them are sweetened with artificial sweeteners or artificial flavors.

• 50:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  And artificial sweeteners and artificial flavors definitely get a bad rap. They're something we've chosen to be our standards. But realistically, the data around a lot of those, the only thing that the data is really bad on is.

• 50:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The gut health, right?

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Right? And it's almost ironic that so many of these products are using these things as their sweeteners or their their flavor profiles when they're trying to prevent, right, gut health.

• 50:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  But the only, but those added ingredients actually are kind of counterintuitive to that. So for us, like, it's again, why our standards matter is because we believe you don't need to use those things to make products taste good.

• 51:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, that's a really good point. You're doing fiber, but then you're, you know, the same bacteria you're trying to feed, you're also poisoning them with like.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 51:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  These artificial flavors and sugars and things. So let's talk about the dosing on fiber a little bit. Like, how does someone work through the dosing? Like, you know, we know that most people just don't get enough fiber. But if someone's really trying to optimize their diet, how do you talk to people on how to start fiber and dose it?

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, generally, broad brush, people should get thirty plus grams of fiber a day, which is crazy.

• 51:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's a lot of fiber.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  More than you think.

• 51:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Right? And it's a lot more fruits and vegetables than you think on there. And so just.

• 51:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Like eight hundred grams of fruits and vegetables.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  It's a lot.

• 51:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Leaves of forty grams of fiber. It's it's like.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  And the thing you think you might have fiber in it, you're like, that really didn't have that that much fiber at all. It's like, you know, it's like, uh, we did a fun exercise of like, hey, chat G P T, like, show us pictures of, you know, what thirty grams of fiber look like in fruits and vegetables. And it was like this plate of broccoli. And you're like, oh, my gosh, like, you're like, you don't, you don't realize it, right? You still need to eat your, right, fruits and vegetables, and you should always try to increase that content. And so I I just like, generally speaking, on that, if you're new to a fiber supplement, right? You start small, right, as a whole. Why? Because if you do a huge bolus of fiber, right, it is going to, right?

• 52:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Clean you out.

• 52:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it's gonna be.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  And that is not the goal. The goal, so, you know, for us, we did a two serving size scoop, and we did it for a reason, so that people could, right, dose up, right? To start, it's like, hey, start with one scoop. If you're new to fiber, right? You'll get, you know, a half a dose, like, three-ish grams, and then work your way up to two.

• 52:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Uh, two scoops. And some people might do more. Some people might do it multiple times a day as a whole. But I would say if you're new to a fiber supplement and you start with two big scoops, you're gonna know about it.

• 53:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, don't, don't go so too far from the bathroom, right?

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, and and so I think that's super important. I think the good, cool thing about fiber is you can incorporate a lot of different ways. Like, you can put in your smoothie, your shake, like, we bake with it a lot at home. So like, we put in our pancake mix, we have a cinnamon, or cinnamon flavored fiber that's really, really good in baked goods, right? But also, like, I'm a big, like, yogurt granola in the morning and berries. And I just put a scoop of fiber and a scoop of whey protein in my yogurt, and I mix it up. And it's like, really, really delicious.

• 53:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's a great idea.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  So it's just like, how do you incorporate it in? Because think of like, I think of fiber and protein as a food.

• 53:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Right? And it's like, okay, like, when do I incorporate it into food? And like, it's easy to bake with, it's easy to, like, uh, it's easy to throw into a smoothie. It's easy to throw into every time I have a protein shake, or in my yogurt granola, or whatever that may be. Anyways, or, you know, like, we got, you know, we have a ton of people that just, you know, do it like you would, put in your glass of water and mix it up and down the hatch it goes.

• 53:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I know. I love mixing it in food as well. And, you know, every time we do pancake sundaes sometimes at our house, and we just throw the fiber and the protein in there, and it just makes us feel better about having pancakes.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  That's like, I'm a, I make, I'm like, that's my job.

• 54:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  One of my jobs on the weekend is pancakes. My boy, my boys are like, it was not a weekend if you dad didn't make pancakes. And it's like, cool, I'm just gonna dunk protein and fiber in it.

• 54:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Because, you know, we're all gonna eat slam pancakes. Like, what's better than, right, Saturday or Sunday morning slamming pancakes?

• 54:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You and I are doing the same thing. I love it. We should do a protein pancake day together one of these days.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  I'll challenge you. I've got some recipes.

• 54:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, okay.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  I've got a lot of recipes. I've got a lot of very particular testers at home.

• 54:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Um, that will tell me when my, when I've done it wrong.

• 54:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Challenge accepted. Let's do it. I love it. This is my favorite thing to do with my family. Just have breakfast on a Sunday.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  It's really good.

• 54:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Cook it together. So much fun. Okay, let's talk about omegas now, because this is also a topic of mass confusion, I think. Specifically, when it comes to dosing of EPA, D H A. So can you break down the science a little bit for us then?

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so EPA and D H A are two of the three essential omega three fatty acids. They are the ones that are very, very hard to get from your diet and not produced in your body. And so we're typically, uh, we're typically deficient in both of those. And they both play a different role, but they're both really critical as a whole. And most omega threes, D H A and EPA comes from fish. You can also get it from algae. Um, and we have a vegan omega three that comes from algae as well. But I would say EPA and D H A are really important. So number one rule, momenta standard, follow the science. What does the science say? EPA, D H A, right, are not the same as fish oil, right? EPA and D H A can come from fish oil, but just because a bottle says it's fish oil

• 55:44Speaker 01

  doesn't mean it has high amounts of EPA and D H A, right? And so fish oil, all EPA, right, like, not all fish oil is EPA and D H A.

• 55:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  So, okay, then what is the dose, right? And the dose is actually pretty important here.

• 55:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Very important.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  Right? And it's, you know, most of the research is around this one point five gram a day or more of EPA and D H A combined. And that is a lot more than people are thinking, because they're buying it and they're taking the serving size. But when you flip over a bottle and you're like, oh, this is a gram of fish oil, but it's only two hundred milligrams of EPA and D H A. And then you do the math, and you're like, oh, I have to take how many? Eight capsules?

• 56:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  Right? Uh, and I thought this was a, you know, a hundred and eighty day serving. And you're like, a hundred and eighty divided by eight. It's actually, the math doesn't math.

• 56:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Right on there. And so dosage is incredibly important. And not just of fish oil, of D H A and EPA. We chose a one to one ratio for a very specific reason, right? Because we believe that EPA and D H A both play an important role. Like, if you're looking just only solely for brain health, then you want a really high D H A.

• 56:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Right? And if you, like, anyways, and so, but we would just believe that people should be taking high doses of both, because the research suggests you should, and you don't need to prioritize one or the other. So we did a one to one ratio on that. Um, and it's actually very hard to create a one to one ratio of of D H A and EPA. So ours is one point six grams per serving, two caps per serving. So it's eight hundred, eight hundred, um, of each EPA and D H A.

• 57:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  That we're super stoked about. Then it ultimately comes down to sourcing.

• 57:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Right? Because you're sourcing from fish, fish generally have heavy metals.

• 57:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Right? As a whole. And so where you source those fish from, A, sustainable fisheries are really, really important, and the type of fish are very, very important. And so that's for us. We source our omega threes exclusively from Norway. And those fish are kind of caught in, uh, off the coast of Morocco and Peru. And what the, what those fish are, anchovies, mackerels and sardines, right? So that family of fish, right, are typically lower in heavy metals, right? And and sustainable fisheries as a whole. And this sourcing, where we source from also really matters is, is like, you might have been pointing to like, there's a lot of things around omega. Oxidation matters. You know, like, oxidation is basically, um, right, as the fish oil turns in,

• 58:12Speaker 01

  uh, as the fish oil touches oxy- oxygen, it starts to get rancid.

• 58:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  And oxidation is incredibly, incredibly common in the omega three industry. And so what you want is that from when the raw crude oil is made, to when it's made into our one to one and filtered, you, it can never touch the air. Because once it starts touching the air, right, oxygen, it starts oxidating.

• 58:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  And so everything has to be nitrogen filled, right? And that is a really important step that we take that is, that is not that common in the category, because it's expensive and it slows the process down.

• 58:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What happens when it's oxidized and turns rancid? If someone takes a pill of this?

• 58:48Speaker 01

  It's just as ineffective.

• 58:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This is ineffective, right?

• 58:50Speaker 01

  And it smells bad. And it tastes bad, right? And and the cool thing about oxidation is you know.

• 58:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Right? Like, and that's, but that's why people are like, oh, I don't take fish oil because I get fish burps, or I hate the taste. And it's like, that's oxidation.

• 59:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Right? And that happens, right? And like, for example, like, if our product gets shipped and, you know, it sits in the sun for too long and it bakes and a capsule bursts, then it starts oxidizing.

• 59:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Right? And like, for us, like, we'll send you a new one, right? Because what you don't want is oxidation, and it happens, it's unavoidable, but you need to take all the steps necessary.

• 59:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  And then there's this whole, what, what type, right? What type of omega three? And so when, when you, when you look at, when you look at our omega three, so, so you take an omega three, right, the raw crude, and then you have to remove, uh, all of the, right, heavy metals, impurities. So you run it through that. And then ultimately, you know, you you break it down to concentrate it.

• 59:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  And then you bring it back to its its natural form.

• 59:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  Right? Which is the most bioavailable.

• 59:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  And that's what's so critical, is the filtration, right? The, the concentrating of it, right? So that you can get one to one ratio in one point six grams without having ten grams of fish oil. Um, and then ultimately bringing it back to its natural form that makes it the most bioavailable. And so for us, omega three is actually, to me, one of the, uh, in our category. The, I think of it like the Grand Canyon. The difference in quality and is as wide as the Grand Canyon, as deep as the Grand Canyon. It's like Nike, you know, and my dad, who's been like a huge not in the health and wellness space for forever. Has been taking omegas since I was a little boy.

• 1:00:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:00:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  And it, like, he was just buying the, you know, from the giant Costco, from the giant membership store. And Omega, he's like, oh, I get a hundred and eighty day supply, right? It's great. And I was like, turn around, tell me what it says, right? And this was like, uh, he was like, oh my gosh. I like, I, he wasn't even thinking, like, you know, he was like, I thought I was getting the right dose. He was getting one point five grams of fish oil, but he was getting two hundred milligrams of omega three. Right? And that was like somebody who was incredibly well educated in the category and been doing it for a long time. But that's what I mean. It's like, it's not like consumers are putting a lot of money in omega threes that are not actually efficacious.

• 1:01:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. And we check a lot of omega, we do like this test called omega quant, right?

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Yeah, and it tells us, and we actually had the founder of that test here on this podcast. And he said it himself, he's like, almost a hundred percent of people are deficient in omegas. I'm like, but why? Like people take omegas and it's because of this exact reason.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They're taking fish oil, not a concentrated omega. And who wants to take like eight pills a day of fish oil? Like, yeah, those are huge pills, right? And so you just have to be very, very knowledgeable about the quality. And to your point too, like not getting the heavy metals, not getting the impurities in there. So, yeah, that, that's fantastic. And so I think that, you know, this is one of those, for me, is another foundational supplement. Because the research shows very clearly that people that are deficient in omegas have a much higher risk of cardiovascular disease, right? And so, go ahead.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm sure you've seen that study that's like compares people who don't take omegas, who don't take omegas and smoke, who take omegas and smoke. And right, like, it's like, basically more unhealthy to not take omegas than it is to smoke. Right? Like smokers that take omegas are more healthy than non-smokers.

• 1:02:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Smokers who don't take omegas.

• 1:02:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Crazy.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Which is like, uh, I, I must like, oh man, that is a mind blowing study on the impact that omega threes can actually have.

• 1:02:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, especially on cardiovascular health. And probably like even way further than that, we just don't know.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  All the benefits.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:02:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay, let's talk about the supplement of the year, I like to call it creatine.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Maybe the, maybe the decade.

• 1:02:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Of a decade.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Maybe the decade right now. It's, uh, it's on the, this crazy tear and it should be.

• 1:02:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  Right? The amount of research around creatine over the last three, four decades is immense. Yes, it started in, right, in.

• 1:03:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The gym.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  In the gym.

• 1:03:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  But the fundamentals of how creatine works is essential to every cell in our body. Because our cells use energy ATP, right? For all activity that does, and that's what creatine helps, right? It helps with ATP production, which is the critical energy source for all of our cells. As a whole, whether it's muscles, whether it's brains, whether it's heart, whether it does not matter. Which is why we're finding it has such broad implications across all, a lot of things in our, in our body. Because it's, it's a critical step in energy and our whole, that's what we run off of, um, as a whole. And so creatine is a fascinating one to me because I obviously was a gym guy. I played in the NFL. Creatine was like early, early days when I was a young, young kid. Creatine was almost like, oh, that's bad.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  You know, it almost had this like, it's a steroid.

• 1:03:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it was like a testosterone vibe, right?

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, very, very much because it, it was really effective.

• 1:03:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  In bodybuilding and weightlifting, but also that was back in the day when creatine might have had other things in it, other than just creatine. You know, right? And so it had this bad vibe and it's like, oh, creatine killed this kid. And it's like, creatine never killed anybody, right? I think that's, uh, and it's like, we, we positioned that back, uh, all the way through there. And then like, okay, I retired from the NFL and stopped taking creatine, right? It wasn't a thing. And then I'm like so passionate about brain health. And then we start learning about creatine and brain health. And creatine and TBI, traumatic brain injury and CTE. And like, it became this thing that the military and the NFL and all these things were talking about. And like, there's just whole flood of data, essentially. And so anyways, creatine came back into my life. It's like just a huge like pop.

• 1:04:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  And it was because all the people that I trust, dietitians and scientists are like, creatine for cognitive is real.

• 1:04:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Right? And this was like four years ago and nobody was talking about it. And we saw, like, because of the places we worked, we saw this wave coming, right? Before a lot of people, which was really, really cool to be on the front end of creatine, right? And then we got to thinking like, what actually matters in creatine? So creatine monohydrate is essentially the powdered creatine you get. It's ninety nine point nine percent bioavailable. Almost every clinical study, the tens of thousands of clinical studies are out there are on creatine monohydrate. It is a molecule, like, that's just what it is, right? No different than protein, right? Molecule. It is very well studied, like it can come from lots of different places. For us, right, we believe in quality in sourcing.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  And so what made me so bullish is we've continued to say sourcing and quality matters. We will go find the best and we will go make the best. And so creatine for me, like, yes, creatine monohydrate, awesome. You can get it from a lot of places. Ultimately, quality compounds over time, we talked about that. And with creatine, if you're going to use it every day for the rest of your life, quality compounds. Therefore, we continue to invest in how do you make the highest quality creatine possible as a whole? And that's the momentous creatine. We call it our signature spec creatine. Why? Because we went out and built our own creatine spec sheet.

• 1:06:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  We said, we believe we can demand better from this space and we can get the purest creatine possible. That has the fewest amount of impurities, right? On market. And that's what we did with our, our momentous creatine, which we're super excited about. And like recently, we just launched this. We had, we had what has been the gold standard for a very long time on market and we were really, really proud. But momentous is not our goal and our vision is not to sit on our hands, right? Leaders lead from the front and they push to find better.

• 1:06:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  And so we went out and built our own, which we were really excited about. It also is a much finer powder as, as we've seen.

• 1:06:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  And what that means is the mixability and the grittiness. And we talked about this, like, consumers need to stick to behaviors to have impact. And so by creating a finer powder that has more mixability and less grit, actually helps people stay on their rituals and habits. It's one of the things we got huge complaints about surprisingly or not in customer service, like, oh, it's gritty, it doesn't mix well. It's like, well, that's just creatine monohydrate.

• 1:07:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  Right? And then it's like, oh, we can find a, we can get a tighter mesh size, um, which basically means we can make it finer, right? And it stays in solution longer and is not as gritty. And that was a huge evolution too. So higher purity, better mixability is the momentous signature spec creatine.

• 1:07:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love that. And you know, like to your point, almost every supplement company out there is now making creatine, right? And a lot of it is sourced from really questionable sources. There's tons of, um, uh, heavy metals and other, and other ingredients, ingredients that are not supposed to be in the creatine there.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And, um, Subco did a big study on creatine as well. And they found that most of the creatines that they tested off of, like, you know, direct to consumer brands that were on Amazon, for example, had a very low concentration of creatine, but a very high concentration of heavy metals. And so it's incredibly important on the sourcing on this.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, I mean, oh man, that's where, that's the, the dirty secret of our industry.

• 1:08:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Sourcing is everything, right? And sourcing ultimately dictates the end outcome of a product. And so you can't, you can't get around bad sourcing. But our industry is full of layers and layers and layers. And so it's like, you can go buy a creatine, you don't know where it came from. You don't know what factory it came from. You don't like, because you're buying from a middleman, he's buying from a middleman, he's buying from a middleman, right? And, or you're buying from a co-manufacturer, he's buying from a middleman. And so the transparency in the industry is so tight. And ultimately what we said is, we can't do that. We have to know exactly where is it coming from, what region, what country? And then we control that, right? Because ultimately sourcing is where quality starts from.

• 1:08:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Right? And manufacturing, like putting it in a tub is commoditized. Like creatine monohydrate, all we do with like, is put it in a tub.

• 1:08:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Right? Like we're not adding anything to our creatine monohydrate, like that skew. And so it's not, uh, manufacturing is not where a lot of things happen. It's all upstream. And so, and creatine, like a lot of supplements are made via chemical process. No different than our body, like our body produces creatine via a chemical process. Like our body's a chemistry set. And that's like, uh, people at first were like, oh, it's just chemistry. They're like, oh man, it's, this is chemistry. And you're like, that's the human body.

• 1:09:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The human body.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  Um, and we are just creating it outside of the human body and therefore we use chemicals. But those raw ingredients to make creatine matter, right? And how it's reacted, how the, how it's washed.

• 1:09:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Right? So you can chemical wash creatine or water wash creatine. And those both have, chemical wash is really cheap, right? But chemical wash, right? It spits off DHT and other types of impurities. And water wash also has implications. If you wash it too much, you get increased your creatinine levels, which is an impurity. If you wash it, uh, with bad water, you, right? You get heavy metals in it, right? Because heavy metals are in water and like, you have to wash it all. Anyway, so there's all these steps that matter in the purity aspect.

• 1:10:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This one is washed with reverse osmosis.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  Reverse osmosis filtered water.

• 1:10:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. And that, that is no heavy metals in it by definition.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:10:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Which is like, and that's how like, I hope more people do that, right? The goal would be to continue to set the standard because you can do it. It just costs a little more, but it's not even that much. A creatine is so affordable, right? But when you buy, you buy quality, right? No difference in food, no different in everything in life. Like if you want quality, it does cost something because using a water wash, using chemical wash is cheap. A regular water wash is a little more expensive than using a reverse osmosis water wash is even more expensive.

• 1:10:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Right? And then like the wrong green, and so it, it compounds. But at the end of the day, when we're talking about like, our ninety serve of creatine is, you know, a dollar, two dollars more expensive than generic creatine? Ninety divided by three dollars is three cents.

• 1:11:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  You know, like.

• 1:11:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So worth it, right?

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Three and some change. You're like, three cents a day for quality that compounds? Like it is a very different playing game.

• 1:11:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, I think it's pretty intuitive that we can give our kids whey, protein and fiber. What about kids and creatine? So, you know, a lot of kids are playing soccer, they're playing football, they're hitting their heads. And, you know, creatine can be protective, right? And so I'm sure you get this question, when, when could you start a kid on creatine?

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  Um, I would ask a doctor.

• 1:11:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  I'll be like, I'm not a doctor on any of this. And I'm incredibly passionate about the space in the category.

• 1:11:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  There are not a ton of clinical studies around creatine in adolescence as a whole, but the mechanisms of how creatine work, unless you have a kidney disease, creatine doesn't have any real long-term implications. And if you have a kidney disease, like you might be one of the few people that creatine, you should not take creatine on that. So for that, I would say when we think about a young adult, you know, high school age kid, it changes my perspective than a below high school.

• 1:12:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, absolutely.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  Um, like below high school, right? Like you need to really be conscious of what you do and you need to make very educated decisions for yourself and what those things do. If you're a high school kid, right? And you are playing contact sports or potentially in a sport like ski racing as an example, that it's not contact until you hit the snow. Um, and soccer's not, not a contact sport, but lots of traumatic brain injury in there. And so the, the data around creatine being neuroprotective is incredibly rich now, right? And it continues to grow and, and grow and grow. And it is something that, right? The top dietitians in the military and the top dietitians in pro and college sports

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  are giving to their athletes proactively because of its neuroprotective abilities and the ability that when you do sustain a traumatic brain injury, right? It will be minimized and you will recover faster, right? Because ultimately you have creatine on board in your brain and creatine is what helps produce ATP and ATP is the main energy source your brain needs, right? And therefore that is important. And again, adolescent, young adult, it is a question that you need to ask and you should never supplement your kid willy-nilly on there. But for me and my family and how I think about it is traumatic brain injury is a big deal and has long lasting implications in life. And we know creatine, right? The body of literature is not rich in adolescence, but we understand the mechanism of actions

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  that we, that I would make an educated decision that when my kids play sports, creatine is a valuable thing. Am I giving them 15 grams? Hell no.

• 1:13:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  Right? Um, because they aren't the size of me. They're not a grown man.

• 1:13:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Um, and so, but I do think like the number one questions we get is what I do with my kids.

• 1:14:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Right? And it's a really tricky one, right? Because kids are kids and you need to teach them really good habits. But there are certain nutritional things that you can do that can have an impact, right? On kids like fiber and protein, like those are easy. Like it's the same as drink, like the same as drinking milk or eating tons of vegetables.

• 1:14:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Good. And omega threes, like have like kids omega threes have a like brain health is like and brain formation, but creatine is the one that's the question. And I hope the research continues to progress, but I do think from an adolescent perspective in contact sports or sports that you can have, like you should do your own research, but because there are some neuroprotective and the long-term implications of, of traumatic brain injury and CTE are real, that you can do your own research and make that judgment. But there is, you will find that and you'll be able to make a decision for yourself.

• 1:14:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  But to me, we get one brain is very important to me to think about brain health long-term.

• 1:15:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely, absolutely. And that was all very well said. When my patients ask me, I say, look, you gotta check with your pediatrician because your pediatrician knows the history and everything that's going on with your child. But I do feel that high school age kids, to your point, it should be considered as well, but obviously, you know, people listen to this podcast, it is something to talk to your pediatrician about because I think that too many kids out there are getting head injuries and doing absolutely nothing about it because, you know, kids are resilient, right?

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And then they, they come home, they from a game, they hit their head and then the next day they're back to normal and they're hitting their head again the next day, right? And so I think it's definitely something to consider and I, hopefully one of these days, to your point, it becomes more of a standard rather than something that's not known, right? And the research is going to take us there.

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  And I think the challenge is the other end of the spectrum is well, then just don't play sports. And you're like, sports are such a core community builder in society.

• 1:15:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  For sure.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  And they teach so many intangible lessons for kids that it's not a black or white situation. And so therefore, you know, it's, it's like you, like as an elite football player, like you knew that was a risk. I ultimately knew that was a risk.

• 1:16:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Right? And then you make, then you make decisions on how to minimize risk, right? And that's where the like, there's better helmet technology and like all of those things that matter. And you should un, like as a parent, you should unturn all stones to help, right? Do that. And it's like, if your kid plays, you know, football in high school and he like, you should make him wear the goofy helmet that's better because it matters.

• 1:16:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  Right? But you shouldn't say, don't play football.

• 1:16:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  Right? You should educate.

• 1:16:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And you're the perfect example of that. Like the lessons that you learned from your NFL career and sporting career made you the, or gave you the skills that you got to like form this incredible company.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And really, you know,

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  Truly.

• 1:16:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Take the risk and, and do it the right way. And it's not easy doing things the right way, but just holding yourself to that level of quality and even like holding your team together through,

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Through, um, you know, starting a company as we all know is very hard, ups and downs. It's just all the, the lessons you learn playing a sport go way, way, way beyond actually making that a career or not, right?

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:17:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Well, this has been fantastic. What an incredible masterclass in supplementation. I hope this cleared up a lot of the noise out there for my audience in the supplement space. And I'm a big believer, you know, I think whenever you have a supplement company that dedicates itself to high performing athletes and you look at the science that you guys have looked at and you guys have done as far as the quality goes, it very easily translates into the medical field, right? And so there are medical grade supplements out there and I think Momentus is definitely one of them.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:17:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And we use it for our patients and we don't have to worry about the quality. We don't have to worry about the sourcing, the serum levels, if it's going to work, et cetera. It just kind of makes it very easy for us to prescribe these to our patients. So I really thank you for the work that you've done.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. It's an honor to partner with you as well. And right for us, that's the, that's the greatest compliment we could ever get. So thank you.

• 1:18:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, no, thank you. So where can people learn more about you and Momentus and?

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, Google is a dangerous place for me. Um, because I have old Jeff as a football player.

• 1:18:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's all I see when I Google you.

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  Oh gosh, I know. If you want to have a fun rodeo, Google me. Um, because I was an offensive lineman, which means I do not look like this, uh, on here. Uh, oh gosh, that's a scary thought. Um, you can find us, Live Momentus is our website as a whole. We're on Amazon and like super exciting news, we're launching in Target, we're in Vitamin Shop as well. Uh, go to one of those great places to experience Momentus as a whole. But yeah, our website is the best place to learn more and dive in as a whole. And I'd also say like our customer service, uh, we call it customer success is great. Like we have a, a team of maybe 10 people that sit in our office, right?

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  That are incredibly passionate about this space that don't have all the answers, but will go find all the answers, right? And so if you have questions, reach out to them or if you have problems and for us, like trust is earned every day and we don't, we don't know everything and we're not perfect, but we want to know if you have feedback and that's important to us. So we have a great, a CS team, but our website is a really good place to find stuff.

• 1:19:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Awesome, man. Thank you so much for doing this with me today.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 1:19:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best and it's always important to seek their guidance.