252. What Is Bioavailability and Why It Matters for Your Supplements

You’ve been told that supplements just make “expensive urine,” and if you’re taking the wrong forms, that criticism is completely valid. In this episode, I’m breaking down the science of bioavailability and exposing why the supplement industry has been prioritizing cost and shelf stability over what actually works in your body. From creatine HCl vs. monohydrate to methylfolate vs. folic acid, the form of a nutrient determines whether it does anything at all. CLICK HERE TO BECOME GARYS VIP!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Thank you to our partners A-GAME: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: http://bit.ly/4kek1ij AION: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD AIRES: "ULTIMATE20 " FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/4a3Duze BAJA GOLD: "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa BODYHEALTH: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV CARAWAY: “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3Q1VmkC COLD LIFE: THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp GENETIC METHYLATION TEST (UK ONLY): https://bit.ly/48QJJrk GENETIC TEST (USA ONLY): ⁠https://bit.ly/3Yg1Uk9 GOPUFF: GET YOUR FAVORITE SNACK!: https://bit.ly/4obIFDC H2TABS: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg HEALF: 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S PEPTUAL: “TUH10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4mKxgcn RHO NUTRITION: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/44fFza0 SNOOZE: LET’S GET TO SLEEP!: https://bit.ly/4pt1T6V WHOOP: JOIN & GET 1 FREE MONTH!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST: YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps 00:00 Intro of Show 01:46 What is Bioavailability? 02:29 Different Types of Creatine 04:04 Folic Acid vs. Methyfolate vs. Vitamin B12 07:04 Magnesium Deficiency Solutions 09:19 Risks of Supplementation without Proper Understanding Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not intended for diagnosing or treating any health condition. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making health or wellness decisions. Gary Brecka is the owner of Ultimate Human, LLC which operates The Ultimate Human podcast and promotes certain third-party products used by Gary Brecka in his personal health and wellness protocols and daily life and for which Ultimate Human LLC and / or Gary Brecka directly or indirectly holds an economic interest or receives compensation. Accordingly, statements made by Gary Brecka and others (including on The Ultimate Human podcast) may be considered promotional in nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Gary Brecka?

  Maybe you've heard that supplements are only good for making expensive pee. And honestly, the critics aren't entirely wrong. Walk into any pharmacy or health food store and you'll find shelves packed with supplements that your body can't even use. Today, we're talking about bioavailability. It's the percentage of a substance that enters your bloodstream and becomes available for your body to use. The supplement industry has prioritized cost and shelf stability over what actually works in the human body. And most people have no idea. They're taking supplements based on marketing claims without understanding the form of the ingredient determines whether it will do anything at all. Bioavailability isn't a marketing term. It's absolutely real and it's rooted in biochemistry and genetics. And you understand it, you stop wasting money on supplements that don't work, and you start

• 0:45Gary Brecka?

  giving your body what it actually needs in the form it can use. This is actually fixable when the nutrient is...

• 1:03Gary Brecka?

  Maybe you've heard that supplements are only good for making expensive pee. And honestly, the critics aren't entirely wrong. Walk into any pharmacy or health food store and you'll find shelves packed with supplements that your body can't even use, which means you're spending money on tablets and capsules, and most of it is passing right through you unchanged. But the problem isn't supplementation itself. The issue is that most supplements are formulated with the cheapest possible ingredients in forms your body was never designed to absorb. I'm biohacker and human biologist Gary Brecka, and you're listening to the Ultimate Human Podcast. Today, we're talking about bioavailability. I'm going to walk you through why the form of a nutrient matters just as much as the nutrient itself, and why the supplement industry has been getting this wrong for decades. Let's start with the basics. What does bioavailability mean?

• 1:48Gary Brecka?

  It's the percentage of a substance that enters your bloodstream and becomes available for your body to use. That means you could take a pill with 100mg of a nutrient, but only 10% of that is bioavailable. Your body is only getting 10mg. But what happens to the other 90mg? That's the expensive urine we're talking about. This is actually fixable when the nutrient is... ...in a form your body can actually recognize and utilize. Your cells have specific receptors and transport mechanisms designed to pull nutrients across the cell membrane. If a supplement isn't structured in a way that fits those mechanisms, it doesn't matter how much you take. You're holding a key that's the wrong shape for the lock. Let me give you a perfect example of this. Creatine.

• 2:30Gary Brecka?

  It's one of the most researched supplements in sports nutrition, and it works, but there's a problem. There's so many different forms of it. One of the most commonly taken is creatine monohydrate, but it's not too highly soluble. You need about 500 milliliters of water just to dissolve a single serving. If you've ever mixed it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. That gritty residue at the bottom of your shaker bottle. Because it doesn't dissolve well, a significant amount of that creatine monohydrate never gets absorbed. It sits in your intestines, draws in water, and causes bloating. If you've been feeling the creatine bloat for a long time now, check your bottle and see if it says creatine monohydrate. Now compare that to creatine hydrochloride, or creatine HCl.

• 3:12Gary Brecka?

  This form is 41 times more water soluble than creatine monohydrate, because the solubility is so much higher, it has significantly better intestinal permeability. This means more of it actually gets absorbed into your bloodstream, or is more bioavailable. There was a study published in the Food and Nutrition Sciences that compared these two forms head-to-head in recreational weightlifters. Only the creatine HCl group saw significant improvements in body composition. They reduced body fat percentage and increased fat-free mass. The creatine monohydrate group didn't see those changes, because the monohydrate form causes water retention and potentially weight gain. You're holding extra water because of the large amount of liquid needed to dissolve it.

• 3:54Gary Brecka?

  Creatine hydrochloride gave them the performance benefits without the extra water weight, and that's bioavailability at work.

• 4:01Gary Brecka?

  Same nutrient, completely different outcome, based on the form. Now, let's talk about B vitamins, specifically folate and B12. This is where bioavailability extends beyond absorption and into whether or not your genetics even allow you to use what you're taking. Most multivitamins contain folic acid, which is cheap, stable on the shelf, and has been added to fortified foods for decades. You've heard me harp on this for years. But there's a problem. Folic acid is synthetic, and your body doesn't use this form directly. For folic acid to work, your body actually has to convert it into the active form called methylfolate, or 5-dash-MTHF. And this is where genetics come in. There's a gene called MTHFR that stands for methylenetrachydrofolate reductase.

• 4:45Gary Brecka?

  This gene controls the enzyme that converts folic acid into the usable folate. And genetic variants in MTHFR are way more common than you think. It's estimated that roughly 46% of the population has this gene mutation. If you have this mutation, your ability to convert folic acid is significantly impaired, or sometimes completely blocked. So while you're taking a supplement with folic acid, you think you're getting folate, but actually, folic acid is just building up in your body. This comes with its own issues. It can mask B12 deficiency. It can interfere with methylation pathways that are critical for everything from detoxification to neurotransmitter production. So now, if you take methylfolate instead, you bypass this problem.

• 5:29Gary Brecka?

  Methylfolate is already in the active form, the one that your body can use, the one that is more bioavailable. The same principle applies to vitamin B12. Most supplements use a form called cyanocobalamin. But cyanocobalamin is also synthetic, and your body has to convert it into the active form called methylcobalamin. You can actually take already-active methylcobalamin so that you aren't having to process and convert the cyanocobalamin. If you have genetic variance in the MTR or MTRR genes, your ability to convert cyanocobalamin is very compromised. You could be taking B12 every single day and still be functionally deficient. This might be why your B12 levels are so high in your blood, because they are so low in your cells.

• 6:14Gary Brecka?

  And remember, when our cells use it as fuel, the levels drop in our blood. Some studies will tell you that cyanocobalamin works just fine. There was a study that compared methylcobalamin and cyanocobalamin supplementation and found similar results in raising serum B12 levels. And that's true if you're only measuring serum B12. But serum B12 doesn't tell you what's happening at a cellular level. It doesn't measure whether or not that B12 is being converted into the active form that your mitochondria need for energy production. It doesn't account for genetic polymorphisms that affect conversion efficiency. It means that you can be taking cyanocobalamin and have high serum B12, meaning high B12 in your blood, and still be functionally deficient in B12.

• 6:56Gary Brecka?

  Methylcobalamin skips the conversion step entirely. You're giving your body exactly what it needs in the form your body likes. So let's talk about one more example: magnesium. Magnesium deficiency is incredibly common, and a lot of people try to supplement with magnesium oxide or magnesium citrate. Magnesium oxide is the worst offender. Cheap, but its bioavailability is terrible. Only 4% gets absorbed. The rest sits in your intestine and acts as a laxative. That's why magnesium oxide is often used for constipation. It works, but that's not the kind of absorption we're looking for when we're trying to support sleep, relaxation, or muscle recovery. Magnesium glycinate, also called bisglycinate, is a completely different story.

• 7:41Gary Brecka?

  It's bound to glycine, which is an amino acid that naturally promotes relaxation and enhances absorption in the small intestine. It won't cause digestive upset, and it's more bioavailable. So when you take magnesium glycinate, especially before bed, your body can actually absorb it and use it to support the parasympathetic nervous system, reduce muscle tension, and improve your sleep quality. Here's what all of these examples have to do with. have in common. The supplement industry has prioritized cost and shelf stability over what actually works in the human body. And most people have no idea. They're taking supplements based on marketing claims without understanding the form of the ingredient determines whether it will do anything at all. If you're taking supplements right now, look at the label. Check the forms of the ingredients.

• 8:25Gary Brecka?

  If it says folic acid, switch to methylfolate. If it says cyanocobalamin, switch to methylcobalamin. If it says magnesium oxide, switch to magnesium glycinate. If you're taking creatine monohydrate and dealing with bloating, try creatine HCl. These changes will make a measurable difference in how you feel and how your body responds. If you've enjoyed learning more about bioavailability today and you're ready to go deeper, I want to tell you about my VIP community. When you join, you get access to tons of perks like monthly live Q and As, exclusive private podcast episodes specifically for my VIP members, and my brand new course called Becoming the Ultimate Human. This course is a $1,700 value and I give it away to my VIPs for free.

• 9:10Gary Brecka?

  It includes modules on sleep, stress, nutrition, and mindset. Everything you need to become the ultimate human version of yourself. As we close out today, don't forget that bioavailability isn't a marketing term. It's absolutely real and it's rooted in biochemistry and genetics. When you understand it, you stop wasting money on supplements that don't work and you start giving your body what it actually needs in the form it can use. What works for one person might fail completely for another because your genetics are different, your gut health is different, and your enzyme activity is different. So the next time someone tells you that supplements just make expensive pee, you can tell them they're only half right. Bad supplements do exactly that, but the right supplements in the right forms based

• 9:53Gary Brecka?

  on your individual biology change everything. And that's just science.