Mark Bell's Power Project - 80% of Supplements Are Fake | Shawn Wells Exposes the Industry

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Shawn Wells is one of the most experienced supplement formulators we’ve ever had on the podcast. He’s built products from concept to shelf, helped scale brands to massive exits, and has patented dozens of ingredients across the industry.In this episode we get into how Shawn got into supplementation, the wild early days of prohormones and sketchy products, what’s actually going on with Amazon supplement quality, and the ingredients he’s most excited about right now, including paraxanthine (the caffeine metabolite designed for “flow without the frazzle”), plus training-focused staples like creatine, betaine, magnesium, and more.We also talk gut health basics, why collagen is often misunderstood in “high protein” foods, and how to think about buying supplements without getting burned.Find Sean: @shawnwellsMore: www.shawnwells.comSpecial perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK/TRT/PEPTIDES! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com and use code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off Self-Service Labs and Guided Optimization®.🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!

Ohimbi combined with things like ephedrin and all these things that they were stacking at the time. And then you're taking pro hormones on top of it. The early 90s was wild. How much stuff out there is fake? If you look at Amazon, about 80% of them tested below label claim. About 60% of the population metabolizes caffeine poorly. When you remove the methyl group, you get 1-7 dimethyl xanthine, which is parazanthin, which has all the benefits and none of the side effects. probiotics you can run into monoculturing where you have too much of one probiotic and it ends up kind of

limiting the variability that you need of many strains i patented about 40 unique ingredients formulated about 1,200 products help sell 11 companies all right sean wells you have probably the most knowledge that we've had on the podcast of supplements since you actually make and create and formulate them it's kind of hard to You know, a lot of times you get to these people that might be excited about particular brands or products and they start things. And I have my own supplement company and I make products too, but I don't make them, make them. You actually make them, make them. How did you get into all this in the first place?

I think, well, my mom sold Shackley in the 70s and it's a European company and maybe like an early MLM, if you will. And I remember her having the tackle box in the 70s with like the, that was called Vital. Lee, it was like a whole food multivitamin, and she had vitamin C, which was popping off because the line is pauling at the time. And he did orthomolecular data on vitamin C, which up until that point, everyone thought 60 milligrams prevents scurvy. But he was looking at multiple gram doses to like affect, you know, cold and flu and energy. And so that really, honestly, vitamin C was probably the big thing that changed the supplement industry and really started setting it on its path. But I remember the little vitamin E soft gels and all that stuff.

And she would give me these things when I was feeling sick or if I needed more energy. And I really started believing in the power of supplements fairly early on. And then I went to school undergrad for business, but I started working out. I was morbidly obese, actually. really overweight a lot of trauma bullying things that I went through when I was young but I ended up working out using creatine which had just hit the market and like massively transformed my body I went to my doctor he was shocked this is in between my sophomore and junior year at business school and he was just blown away and I was telling

him how much I believe in supplements and I was reading Bill Phillips supplement guide and you know all the like dan duchin and we went down a similar path it sounds like yeah yeah all the things i did keto and creatine and all that stuff yeah yeah uh yes exactly yeah keto with the uh what was it dan's book the body opus body opus yeah yep um so i ended up telling him about all this and i thought he was going to just blow me off medical doctor this is uh early 90s and uh he ended up like drawing out this lifeline for me like between 20 and 80 and saying, why not be happy between here and here? And he really, like, encouraged me to go pursue this passion as a job. And I remember, like, there was ads for muscle tech in the

magazines where I ended up meeting them and becoming friends with them where this guy, uh, was the formulator in his lab coat, you know, for muscle tech and, you know, holding up like a, you know, a blue vial of something and, you know, these bodybuilders in, in the lab, like, taking this stuff. And I was like, wow, you can do this as a job? Like, you could be a formulator. So I went to some counselors to try and figure out, like, I want to be a formulator. What would that look like? Well, it's good that you have this business background, but, you know, you're going to maybe need to work on nutrition, biochemistry, maybe be an RD. And so I did all those things. I became a dietitian, a biochemist.

And then I started working clinically for about 10 years, but on the side, working with companies in the supplement industry, going to the Arnold, the Olympia, working at supplement stores on the weekends just because I loved it and, you know, giving out advice. And that was huge on bodybuilding.com, like the forums, just helping out there. And I literally just kind of came up the hard way. And then eventually I got, you know, paid positions. My first big job was at Dimetize as director of R&D there, formulated hundreds of products for them there and helped them go to sale. And then I got picked up at this company, Biotrust, helped build it from zero to about 200 million and then sold it in about four years.

And then I started working on my own with my own company, Zone Halo formulations to help other. companies formulate products and I have a team where we do everything. We literally do the regulatory work, the sourcing, packaging innovation, quality control, quality assurance, stability testing, adverse event reporting. Insane the amount of stuff that goes into it, yeah. A lot, a lot. I do all the flavor work. I go to the flavor houses and work with them and I've flavored like hundreds of even RTDs, ready to drink products. You guys would be really surprised on how much like back and forth there is, even with something as simple as like artwork for a package. Tons. Stick pack. Like, oh, I want to

make this in stick pack because I want to make it convenient. It's like, well, there's a specific machine that does that. So everything needs a specific machine, specific company. But it sounds like you guys kind of take all that guesswork out for people. We do. We do. And then I also am chief science officer for N&B nutrition and we have hundreds of ingredients we sell probably more than 35 branded ingredients. And then a lot of my other ingredients that I've come up with are also with other companies in the industry like a Nutra Science, Glambia, Pernova, TSI distributes my Parazanthine called Infinity. So I have ingredients just all over. over the industry and I patented about 40 unique ingredients,

formulated about 1,200 products, helped sell 11 companies in the supplement space. Yeah. What are the two or three things that you created that you're most proud of? Well, I have like these ingredients now that are really exciting and truly popping off. Like Parazanthine, the metabolite of caffeine.

It's branded as infinity. about 60% of the population metabolizes caffeine poorly that are slow metabolizers essentially don't get hardly any stimulation from caffeine probably exactly but have mostly the side effects so if you're actually a very fast metabolizer you get very little benefit but no side effects if you're a slow metabolizer you get very little benefit but you get all the side effects that's my wife she can drink coffee and go to bed so she's a fast metabolizer yeah and then there's some Goldilocks zone somewhere in there where you're ideally metabolizing it getting the effects but getting very little side effects. So that would be kind of that Goldilocks zone somewhere in there. And maybe 15% of

the population is in that zone. So I guess it's better to be the fast metabolizer and not getting all the side effects, but I'm a slow metabolizer where literally days later I still have the caffeine in my system. It's a huge variance. It's about a 7x variance from person to person where someone may have a one and a half hour half life for caffeine. Another person may have 10 and a half hours. Huge, huge, huge, huge difference. So I am one of those people that has all the side effects. About 60% of us are because we're actually poorly metabolizing it to the dimethylanthines. So caffeine is a trimethylosanthine and it gets demethylated. You remove a methyl group on either the one, three, the seven.

And depending on where you remove it, it becomes theobroming, theophylene, or parazanthine. And so when you remove the methyl group on the third position, you get one seven dimethylxanthine, which is parazanthine, which has all the benefits

and none of the side effects, truly. like theophylene has tons of side effects it's a bronchodilator you get like the arrhythmia the sleep disruption the agitation the brain fog the all the side effects a increased heart rate tachycardia and parazanthine just as i went through on our other podcast it has incredible neutropic neuroprotective effects that are not even close to the same as caffeine so it increases bdnf and nge of neuroplasticity, increases nitric oxide via PD-9 inhibition and GMP to the brain. So more blood flow to the brain. Decreased oxidative stress and increased glutathione and catalase.

Increased dopamine dramatically, serotonin and acetylene. Decreased beta amyloid plaque. So almost every way that I can think of that the brain ages, it's actually reversing. me sold. I've never tried it before. I'm looking forward to trying it out. Well, and it's actually better at adenosine inhibition, which is the wakefulness component that you associate with caffeine. And again, without having nearly, really almost no side effects.

I wouldn't take it maybe, like, you could have it, I'd say four hours prior to bedtime and still get great sleep. So you can have your nighttime workout and still get great sleep. That's what we hear all the time. actually see improved the HRVs, not worsened. If you were to take caffeine, you know, at 8 o'clock and work out and try and go to bed at midnight or whatever your schedule is, you would see your HRV like tank, just like having alcohol.

But we don't see that with Parazantham. We actually see improved the HRVs because it's healing the brain. When we looked at in a, we did a 10K race with athletes and we did a stoop test, a multitasking test before and after the race, we, saw a 10% decrease in mental errors post-race when they were fatigued with parazanthine. With caffeine, we saw 23% increase in mental errors. And with control or placebo, we saw about a four to seven percent increase in mental errors, which you would expect. Like that's just, you know, you're a little bit more tired, a little bit more

mental errors. But it shows that caffeine is more that frazzle of a kind of CNS stimulation. You're kind of more frazzled, less focused. But with parazanthine, it's the opposite. We're seeing it have a ability to protect the brain and actually put you more into flow state. So I like to say that it's a flow without the frasal. And then we also saw an e-gaming study that we did that there was a time effect with parazanthine where when you took it before the e-gaming you actually improved as time went on over the two hours of gaming and then when we looked zero to six weeks they were improving over the six weeks as well so the brain is actually healing and improving whereas caffeine has a negative time effect the more you use it the worse its effects and you have to take more and more and more and you get

less and less and less out of it. So this is where a Parazanthian is really exciting and it's just exploding. There's a drink update that has it. You can go to drinkupdate.com or at drink update. It has 300 milligrams of it. And when is this releasing? It'll probably be like two, three weeks. Okay.

Then I can say this. Kim Kardashian just came on board for update. She's going to be the chief branding officer. It's going into Walmart. I actually have equity in this, but it's exploded. And then there's another drink called LifeSider. That LifeSiter X has Parazanthine as well.

It's exploding, going into Walmart, going into Costco. There are many pro athletes, including maybe the most famous athlete in the world. I can't say his name that's coming on board potentially. It's huge. it's taking off. But there's other pre-workouts that have it. My friend Chris Gethin, like unmatched, has it in there.

Euphoric with Muscle Tech has it in there. There's several brands. Mind F or F-U-C-K, which is mutant, I believe. There's a bunch of products that have it. You can, if you like the pouches, actually the number one user of Parazanthian right now is actually this company, Ultra. and they have like oral pouches that use the parazanthine and that hits like really instantly like in like a minute um so you know that one's been huge and if you know my other ingredients that i did prior

i did tea cream and dynamine which are in tons of pre-workouts neutropics fat burners etc so parazanthine has kind of been my crowning achievement dilucine which is a dipeptide of lucine lusine you might BCA, EAA, muscle protein synthesis, trigger, all that good stuff. I looked at data around the peptone transporter in the gut that preferentially takes up dye and tripeptides and actually makes them go to plasma, your blood, faster than free amino acids. That seems counterintuitive that a two or three amino acid chain

would be faster than a single, but this is true. And so I thought, well, what if we do dilucine? Sure enough, it's 189% faster. 60% more muscle protein synthesis. We saw 159% increase of muscle protein synthesis over a placebo, 60% more than lucine. And lucine, it's not a matter of taking more. There's like what we call a refractory effect. So it's just kind of blunts at some point. It's really about how quickly it gets into plasma more than how much, like how quickly it spikes. And so this is in young adults and we actually think the results would be more dramatic in people like our age because of what we

call leucine resistance or anabolic resistance that this is very powerful now stack it with hmb and now you're inhibiting muscle protein breakdown promoting muscle protein synthesis and it is crazy the effects i'm getting like i'm putting on muscle like like like it's great like i'm a kid like really it's it's wild especially like when i moved to taking it twice a day take it like before or sorry after my morning workout and then I take it before sleep so these two have just it's been selling out like for muscle tech for Chris Gathens unmatched there's a company a bn that has it there's a bunch of companies right now that are that are selling dilucine and it's just selling out for everyone so that one lucine uh is the is the is the dilucine version is it any

easier to flavor because I think lucine's about the same kind of like yeah that's a little bit It has like that burnt tire kind of flavor. But we actually make a version of it that's kind of masked and more soluble as well, if needed. But yeah, it's about the same. It's not great, but it's not terrible. Certainly, I've had tea cream and dynamine that are just awful, like horrible. That really hammered the sales of that. Like even though it's a great ingredient, it makes it really tough and, like, flavored applications.

you must have tasted some really awful shit over the years yeah oh my god because it's like it can be really difficult to flavor these things some things don't mix well some things aren't very water soluble oh man something's clump and something smell gross oh yeah so buterate by the way going back to the uh we talked about this on the other podcast the short chain fatty acid the postbiotic that one oh my god a little bit like puke probably exactly that's it that's it's it That's the smell that comes from rancid butter or dairy as well as vomit that we identify with the vomit. And I remember-

Call it vomit-flavored on the package. I remember opening the bag and my wife at the time upstairs could smell it. Like it is, like when I say rough, it is rough. So like that's why we did the triglyceride form of it, triacilacylaclycerol form of it. And we've coated it and all that good stuff. We keep it like under wraps kind of. Yeah, it's wild. But that stuff is super powerful.

You know, I remember going to bodybuilding.com years ago and talking to a lot of the staff and they would get stuff, you know, sent there for free to sample and so forth. And I was shocked at how many people got, like, messed up, how many people, like, ended up in the ER. There's products over the years that I've tried where I was like, holy, you know, this thing's just insanely powerful. I remember Ultimate Orange from Dandushane. That thing was like, you know, taking a nuclear bomb. And then there was also a red line, which I don't even know if that's still on the market. But man, that was intense. Super intense.

You know, all these supplements are exciting. But sometimes they can be kind of, they could be kind of dangerous. All the testing and all the different things that you've done, have you sort of messed yourself up before a little bit? Oh, yeah. I remember it like just like. Because you don't know the dosing. Like you're creating the dose. Totally. I mean, and even like kind of early on, like using Cintrax. What was that product?

They had this uncoupling protein product, UCP, Cintrax. I'm trying to remember the name of it. But anyway, like it literally shut my liver down. I had to go to the hospital. And that product was meant to be canceled. And Derek Cornelius was the, owner of Cintrax and it was super shady. Like a lot of these companies like you're mentioning, you know, Jack Owock and VPX slash Redline like gangsta test, monster test. Like they had like the little syringes and pro hormones. They're riding that line. And things. What is the name of that product? Is it UCP mucco polysaccharide concentrate product by cardiovascular research? No, it's Cintrax and it's a UCP

it works on like uncoupling protein i'm trying to remember the name of it but um if you look up syn tracks it's s y n t r a x anyway shut down your liver yeah and then i use some things like um from umabolic extreme a x they had um what the super drawl and ferroplex and that was probably the most potent pro hormone stack and same thing my liver just absolutely shut down like it was the most potent like methylated oral steroids that you could think of that were literally putting like 30 pounds in like you know three months on people like it was just and they got they got these things off the market right oh yeah yeah the pro hormones really aren't on the market anymore there's there's sarms that get overdose that have a lot of side effects as well what is the name of

the product is it nectar no or matrix matrix uh no it's okay what about what about some of these companies too I think they were putting like legitimately putting like trend I think in some of like there was a product years ago called trend yeah high tech was actually trend I think

I want to say maybe you can look this up high tech pharmaceuticals I think they just got maybe the guy just he got like some massive fine and maybe he's going to jail I want to say, Jared, Jared Wheat. But high-tech pharmaceuticals, they're known for, like, having put a hit out on an FDA agent, like, literally. Jesus.

But they had, like, D-Ball, you know, like was the name of the product. And it had actual Diana Ball. They had Xanax spelled with a Z, and it had real Xanax in it. And, like, they were just wild, like unmitigated wildness. Yeah, two-time convicted felon CEO

and his dietary supplement company convicted of 4.7 million. Oh, yeah, it was tax fraud. But what he's got, I don't even, like, I don't want to get a hit put out on me. Yeah. Anyway, it's wild. Like, high tech has done some wild stuff through the years.

So, yes. Yeah, there's some gnarly supplements out there. And then sometimes just have a weird reaction to something. I remember taking, you know, hymn buying years ago. Oh, Yohimbi is terrible for me. And it just, yeah, made the whole body shaky. and sweaty and then for some reason you're like well maybe that was just like maybe that's something else so you try it again you're like and it just makes you feel sick i hate it it's i get

very sensitive to that like yeah blood pressure issues i go hypertensive like high blood pressure and then hypo and uh yeah it just it's the worst yohimbi and yeah so yohimbi combined with like things like ephedrin and, you know, high doses of caffeine and all these things that they were stacking at the time. And then you're taking pro hormones on top of it. Like the early 90s was wild. I took a lot of, uh, a lot of fedron. Me and my friends, we'd go to the gas station. We'd get many things. Like, yeah, we'd get many thins. And then like, I remember like we were put in like a blender with like a metric shake. I mean, it just got out of control. Caffeine. We'd ECA stack, diet fuel, rip fuel.

Yeah, we dumped all that like a blender and then drank it before we worked out. And we would be like so tweaked that we could barely even train. Yeah. It's like, what are we doing now? Like we got way off track. What the hell's going on here? So, you know, some of these things, they can be, they can be dangerous. But I've always liked supplements and I've always, I've always felt like it's a supplement.

You know, it can supplement your diet. And for me, I've always like vitamins and minerals. but then also kind of drifted off a little bit too and got more into like actual supplements like things like creatine and look at how long creatine has been around for i mean bill phillips put that on the market probably in the early 90s and it has i started taking it in 93 yeah it's been around for a long time and now there's more and more research my daughter um she's uh 18 and she just started getting into like lifting and she's like all my friends are taking creatine yeah i actually wrote one of like the most authoritative chapters and papers for the ISSN on creatine about 15 years ago

and I took a lot of heat for mentioning some of the preclinical data towards the end of my chapter I started getting into like how it protects the brain and may help with traumatic brain injury improves function of like with eye health reproductive health bone health may help with acute cognitive function and I went into all this stuff and like I took so much heat from the scientific community over that like I have gotten attacked for all kinds of things because I'm tend to be more out on the kind of the edge but when you're creating ingredients like I really feel like I have some of my scientific brethren that they won't believe in something until it has 10 15 20 30 studies and like by that point like we're way too late like you know my friends now believe in

creatine and beta alanine and you know whatever and it's like cool those have been out for like 25 years and they have all these studies that's great I tend to be a little bit more quicker to the draw than that and um well you have to be if you're going to be entrepreneurial about it if you're going to try to capitalize on it you can't be 20 years behind the research you know totally and people ask me all the time with my ingredients they're like parents anything how did someone not come out with that? I'm like, I don't know. Like, I was the first to come out with it and, you know, same with dilucine. How does it? Like, I don't know. I mean, a lot of times, like, I also feel like people just don't have an eye for things. Like, they just see something every

day and they assume that's the way it is. That's the way we all walk through life. And I think my brain has now been trained to kind of look at things a little different. And, you know, I'll do something. And to everyone it may seem obvious but you know they would they didn't jump on it but i also like where i'm really blessed is i do have like an incredible group of people around me to make these things come to life in a way there's people that could have ideas but they don't have over a hundred scientists you know in china and factories and tens of millions of dollars of you know testing equipment and hundreds of millions of dollars of factories and and and facilities and you know I have people that help with my patent write-ups and study design and

you know filings and all these things that it literally takes probably probably like one to five million dollars and two to five years of just work down per ingredient to get this stuff done. So, and in the case of something like with parazanthine or dilucine, where I know it's going to be huge, I've had other ingredients, I know they're going to be good, but some, you know, they're just going to be huge. And those are the ones where we do like a lot of extra work before even mentioning anything. You know, it's bulletproof by the time it gets to market. And you're foregoing some potential revenue by just locking it all up and locking it down, like, because this industry can be tough. How much stuff out there is fake? This is a great question. So if you look at Amazon,

Now Foods, great legacy brand, when I was working in all these supplement shops, like Now Foods was always my favorite. The quality was there. They've been around for, I don't know, 40 years. And it's family owned. Good prices, usually. Good prices, just the best quality, best prices. But they're losing to the Amazon companies that are listing things for like $8 and Amazon's choice and all this stuff. And they're like, okay, we're going to test products on Amazon. The easiest way to test is single ingredient products. So they took 13 different ingredients, things like berberine, ashtazanth, maybe ginseng. I can't remember all of them. A bunch of popular stuff. Popular ingredients, single ingredient products. About 80% of them tested below label claim.

and 20 to 30% had no active at all. Wow. And this is actually reinforced by some data that SUPCO, a new company that has an app to help kind of build supplement stacks and track them, they've seen this as well. And then creatine gummies is a train wreck on Amazon as well. Like both SUPCO and another company, I think Consumer Reports,

tested those and those are almost all creatinine because of the moisture content. But with the products on Amazon, about 20% in another study have found to be counterfeit as well of the kind of good brand names. So like your thorns, your muscle text, your designs for health, Zimogen, like pure encapsulations, whatever, like make sure if you're going on Amazon to buy from the correct party, you know, someone you trust, like a G&C or vitamin shop that would be selling on there or a first party, you know, designs for health, selling designs for health, and not buying from Joe's Crab Shack on Amazon because it could be counterfeit, might not test out at all.

So if a product, a lot of these Amazon choice products have fake reviews are selling way below what it even cost to make the product. if it's proprietary blends like watch out you know i like full disclosure and so you got to look at all this stuff and and think that through when you're buying on amazon but i guess about 80% of the industry is not legit what are some of the best supplements out there i know on other podcasts we also talked a little bit about magnesium can you talk about because there's a lot of different types of magnesium and they have different functions. Can you maybe explain like why people might need magnesium and then the different types they should be looking for? So magnesium is important

for over 200 chemical reactions in your body. And it's a co-factor in those reactions, meaning it's necessary to make these reactions happen. So think of like muscular contraction. Magnesium's important. Bowel movements, blood pressure. and vasodilation, blood glucose, stabilization, brain function, relaxation. There's so many things that we see magnesium be important for, and this is why of all the ingredients I talk about, it's probably the one that trends almost viral every time I post on it. People know magnesium, and about 75 to 85% of the population is deficient in magnesium.

not getting enough of it. All right, Mark, you're getting leaner and leaner, but you always enjoy the food you're eating. So how are you doing it? I got a secret, man. It's called Good Life Protein. Okay, tell me about that. I've been doing some Good Life Protein.

You know, we've been talking on this show for a really long time of certified Piedmontese beef, and you can get that under the umbrella of Good Life Proteins, which also has chicken breast, chicken thighs, sausage, shrimp, scallops, all kinds of different fish, salmon, tilapia, The website has nearly any kind of meat that you can think of lamb. There's another one that comes in mind.

And so I've been utilizing and kind of using some different strategy, kind of depending on the way that I'm eating. So if I'm doing a keto diet, I'll eat more fat, and that's where I might get the sausage and I might get their 80-20, grass-fed, grass-finish, ground beef. I might get bacon. And there's other days where I kind of do a little bit more bodybuilder style, where the fat is, you know, might be like 40 grams or something like that.

And then I'll have some of the leaner cuts of, the certified Piedmontese beef. This is one of the reasons why, like, neither of us find it hard to stay in shape because we're always enjoying the food we're eating. And protein, you talk about protein leverage it all the time. It's satiating and helps you feel full. I look forward to every meal,

and I can surf and turf, you know? I could cook up some, you know, chicken thighs or something like that and have some shrimp with it, or I could have some steak. I would say, you know, the steak, it keeps going back and forth for me on my favorite. So it's hard for me to lock one down. but I really love the bovette steaks.

Yeah. And then I also love the ribbys as well. You can't go wrong with the ribbys. So guys, if you guys want to get your hands on some really good meat, you can have to GoodLifeProtines.com and use code power for 20% off any purchases made on the website. Or you can use code Power Project to get an extra 5% off if you subscribe and save to any meats that are a recurring purchase. This is the best meat in the world. Our soil is depleted.

calcium actually competes with it and we're we're getting into a really a huge almost epidemic with calcium calcifying arteries like we're getting too much calcium in supplements and it's causing calcification if you don't get enough vitamin d3 and k2 so that's something that is really critical as well get your sunlight take the supplement that's really important as well. So magnesium, vitamin D3, I think, are two critical things. As far as the salts, like the bioavailability is going to be the amino acid chelates, meaning the magnesium paired with an amino acid. So think glycine, think three in eight, like with three anine. These are going to be better. And the organic Krebs cycle acids work well too, like magnesium citrate, magnesium.

malate or you know something along those lines the kind of inorganic ones like magnesium oxide or carbonate uh these are really uh inferior forms like have very poor bioavailability and tend to be the cheapest so i tend to avoid magnesium chloride oxide carbonate and go for the organic acids or the, my favorite are actually the amino acid chelates. And so in particular, my two favorite, for going to sleep, I like the magnesium glycinate. And it's also really the most price effective. It's very cheap to buy and it works. But probably the best one in terms of research is a branded one, Magteen, which is magnesium

3 and 8. it does cross the blood brain barrier the best and does seem to have a pretty neotropic benefit and seems to have some potential to be neuroprotective and even heal the brain on some level. So maybe that one's the most compelling. And I'd probably just take both, magnesium three and eight potentially during the day and magnesium glycinate at night. what about you did mention uh d3 you know there's a little some people say to take it some people say you know don't take it some people say try to get it you know naturally from the sun and some people even believe that there's certain times a year that we shouldn't be getting it uh what are your thoughts

i think this is another one that the majority of the population it's it's somewhere in the order of 80% of the population is deficient in vitamin d it goes well beyond being a vitamin it is part of the endocrine cascade on the other podcast we talked about circadian rhythm and these cascades are like our body is set up to have homeostasis where it stabilizes itself and neurotransmitters and hormones and everything's like running in a concert and when something's turned up something else has turned down and it's really a beautiful process and vitamin d is a hormone. It is not just a standard co-factor, something that we call a vitamin, like most of the other vitamins. It's really an important hormone and affects all the other hormones and affects

mood and depression and affects like metabolism, blood glucose control, your immunity. You know, We certainly saw a lot of that with COVID and flu. You know, vitamin D is just critical to a number of processes in the body and affecting all the other hormones. We see like when vitamin D is down, like testosterone tends to be down and all these kinds of things. So vitamin D is part of your HRT, your hormone replacement therapy. It's really on a whole different level than vitamins. And I think it should be thought of that way. the D3 is the best form, potentially.

There is a form that's kind of what I would say is gray. Like there are some kind of controlled prescription forms of vitamin D, but there is one that's kind of gray called calcidial instead of colicalsiferal, which is D3. Calcividial may have less issues with absorption. There is probably 20% of people that have, issues with having vitamin D3 where they're not kind of optimized for it similar to like the mtHFR situation with uh with folate so maybe look into that calcophadial but getting sunshine is

important especially if you have more melanin if you're you know black or or tan-skinned individual like you're going to need more sunshine not less and you know the more you're wearing more clothing and not having as much skin surface available to sunlight, the more the chances are that you're going to be deficient in vitamin D. And obviously, if you're living kind of further north, they've shown that, like, the exposure to the sun is less potent. So, like, if you're living in, like, New York and Maine and Massachusetts and Washington State, that sunlight exposure is not the same as, like,

if you're living in Florida or California. Sacramento. There you go. It's cold and cloudy right now. So that can be a factor as well. So I would say especially if you're dark skinned, if you're living up north, if you're wearing lots of clothes, if you tend to be inside, especially in the winter, you know, those kinds of things.

Like it is a big concern. You're not getting enough vitamin D and it's far more than just like rickets and and kind of having weak bone. Like I said, we're seeing D be associated with so many things. Like it's immunity, it's your metabolism, it's all these things, it's mood regulation. So I think vitamin D is very important and can't be underestimated. And it should be taken with K2. So D3K2 you see a lot together.

Definitely do that. MK7 form is maybe the best form. maybe even most ideally you could take mk4 with mk7 these are two different forms of k2 that are that are really effective and studied so that would be the stack i would say and the things that you need to take above and beyond any multi any multi that you're going to take is probably a dry form of d which is going to have very poor bioavail availability the liquid oil based vitamin D is much, much better absorbed, especially when you have it with a fatty meal or some kind of fat source. I think that's really important to think about the bioavailability.

And then the doses tend to be too low in a multivitamin of vitamin D. They tend to be around the 400 IUs or 1,000 I use. We're seeing other countries recommend 2,000, I think 5,000. and maybe even 10,000 short term or through the winter is actually called for it's ideal if you have this tracked by blood work but I really feel like 5,000 is the ideal level and then with magnesium for sure you're not getting enough in a multi because it takes a big dose like you know you need to take two to four capsules a day of just magnesium so you're not getting that in a multi

you're getting like a very very small amount so even if you're taking a multi take an additional oil-based D3K-2 and take additional magnesium. I know in Iceland they have like at a lot of places that you go to they have like these little shots of cod liver oil and the cod liver oil has you know a lot of vitamin D and some polyunsaturated fats and so forth. Yep and the rest of the because it's liver it has the rest of the fat soluble vitamins so it has A D and K so that's the rest of the fat soluble vitamins so that's it's actually great like um just to practice there everyone just takes like it's like um you go to like a restaurant and i'll have like a little you know maybe like bar area where you're picking up your

food or whatever and they or on the other other types of restaurants where it's more of a seated environment they have it like on the table yeah exactly you just see everyone take like a little mini shot of it that's it's great stuff that's really like a super food in my mind yeah yeah um what are yeah what are some of your thoughts about like organs and stuff like that organ powders and those I love it. I think we've gotten away from eating nose to tail as they talk about. When we talk about carnivore or keto, most people are, which I'm all for. Like I said, I did that for 20 years. And I love the effects I got from it. It was tremendous for me. It gave me like a lot of cognitive clarity. It gave me control over my metabolism. And then I, you know, went down the rabbit hole of

cyclical and targeted keto. And, and, um, even the UDP 2.0, I think, from Dan like we were talking about. But with, with, what were we just talking? You're eating muscle meat and stuff like the organs. Yeah, yeah. So nose to tail, you know, I think most people are eating just, yeah, as you're saying, the muscle meat and they're not eating the skin, which has the collagen. They're not eating the organs, which has collagen, which has the other vitamins in it.

So I do think we're by and large, very deficient in college. We're getting very little, what would be, you know, hair, skin, nails, bone, tendons, you know, joints, whatever. We're not eating that kind of stuff, right? And that used to, if you were a true carnivore, like an animal, you would be eating all that. And certainly what we were eating years ago, we would have ate that. And then if you look at like, you know, soul food, for example, right? They're eating like a lot of the stuff that would get thrown out. but they were eating like a lot of these organ meats and skin and connective tissue and there's so

much health benefits in that and ironically I mean while the the muscle meat is protein and certainly that has lots of value we were missing out being the population at large on having these these organ meats and having the skin and having the bone broth and having you know, marrow and we're just missing out on so many nutrients now. And then, you know, certainly the food that the animals are eating is, you know, another thing that you could discuss as well when they're eating like, you know, corn and soy and that are GMO and all this kind of stuff. So it makes it to processed food, basically. I mean, a hundred years we were eating, a hundred years ago, we were eating nose to tail without a doubt. And, and I think that's just gone

away. And again, you're seeing the effects in particular with collagen. I think I would say that someone now needs to, if you're not going to eat nose to tail, needs to have 20 to 40 grams of collagen a day. What are some supplements that you like to recommend to people? You got like a top three or so that you really like to recommend for people that like to work out and things like that let's see the top three i would say i mean i don't want to go back to like my own ingredients but they're the ones i use every day and the most effective so i'll just throw this out again of course but i would say like for the muscle stack it's going to be the most effective things that i know of are the dilucine the hmb in particular free acid

betane uh creatine of course i think GAA, which is a precursor to creatine, is really interesting, but make sure you're getting B12 and folic acid with it, in particular methylcobolam and methylfolate, because it can potentially make your homocysteine rise if you take GAA and you don't take the folic acid and the methylcobalamine. So I think those would be great. The tane is interesting, isn't that also? TMG. TMG, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's a great methylator, you know, contributes to strength. Glycine in it actually contributes to going back to collagen synthesis, but also creatine synthesis. Glycine's also been shown to be relaxing, anti-aging. Glycine is actually really compelling. That would be something I do recommend at night taking three to five grams of glycine. There is incredible data coming out on that. a really interesting one that I would recommend that I'm getting kind of new preclinical data on

that's super compelling is lithium orate. Lithium, you may think of schizophrenia and things like that, but that's literally anywhere from like 100 to 1,000 times the doses that would be in lithium orotate. And lithium, when they plotted on this graph, all the minerals and how they relate to Alzheimer's, and dementia and the aging of the brain, there was one mineral that was like dramatically on a different end of the graph from all the other minerals that were just towards the bottom with very little effect. And then there was one that was like the North Star on the other end of the graph

and it was lithium. And because our soil is depleted, maybe because we're not eating bone and all these things like that I was talking about before, we're just not getting enough lithium at all in the diet. even our water is filtered so we're not getting lithium in the water anymore and this is so related to a brain function potentially healing the brain again and preventing Alzheimer's i'm finding this data extremely compelling so i think and you're also seeing lithium like improve uh cognitive and emotional resilience like people are just more relaxed more at ease more able to stay out of

kind of mental loops and be able to pivot in terms of things that come up with lithium orate. So that one's a really good one. Five milligrams at night would be something I'd recommend along with your glycine would be amazing and maybe take some collagen and that's a great nighttime stack. Glycine, by the way, for people that maybe you don't know, if you get it like in a powder form, it kind of almost has like a sweetish taste to it. So you can probably add it to a drink or add it to a protein shake without it really altering the flavor and making it taste too gnarly.

Mm-hmm. Exactly, yep. Yeah, it has like amino acids don't taste gross. Yeah, yeah. What about like EAAs and stuff? Are you a fan of that? It sounds like the lysine, the lysine. The dilucine, yeah, I think the, like a dilucine enriched.

Actually, Muscle Tech just did a study on this dilucine-enriched EAAs. I do think that dilucine is probably the most powerful thing to take. I think, you know, BCAAs, EAAs. it's just maybe giving you some extra aminos. I feel like it may matter if you're in like a really protein deficient space, if you're hypoloric. But if you're someone that's hypercaloric and you're training and you're taking plenty of protein and you're, you know,

getting plenty of calories, I really don't think EAAs are that potent in terms of effect. But I think if you are cutting, then that's where like you might see more of an effect. And it does seem like the data is more compelling on EAAs over BCAAs. But I would say dilucine and HMB are probably more important. And then getting like a just post-workout protein shake to me is easier. Do you remember when designer protein came out?

Yeah. You know, we've been around long enough to know, to have seen like when weight protein kind of first hit the market. Is there anything like that that you're seeing that is potentially coming down the pipeline like is there another creatine is there it sounds like the um GAA is actually really interesting that's the creatine that's the creatine precursor and and like I said there was some concern because of the homocysteine pathway we don't take some methyl folate methylcobalmine with it but GAA what's compelling about it is it seems like one gram really enhances the effect

of the creatine and helps its uptake in particular in places like the brain where it's passive transport. This is why we see like 20 to 30 grams be effective for cognitive function, whereas of regular creatine. Of regular creatine. It takes very large doses because it's passive transport, whereas it's active with transporters at the muscle. So you need very big doses.

And there's been studies, like there was one study where the participants were underslept. they got five hours of sleep instead of eight hours which is probably your normal amount of sleep and they showed the signs of it you know they had the brain fog and like poor mental and physical performance when they took the creatine they functioned the same as the people that got eight hours of sleep wow so but what we're seeing with the GAA is it's kind of like supercharging the creatine where like you know the three to five grams is actually like the 20 to 30 grams. So this is where it's really compelling

and people are getting the kind of cognitive enhancement that they don't normally see from creatine or think about creatine for doing that when they take the GAA plus creatine. Yeah. Where do you stand on all these like protein bars and snacks? I know someone that, you know, you came from keto.

So you probably saw the keto treats over the years and some of the things can really, you know, bother your gut. you've got the allelose and the various things you got uh built bars legendary foods you got quest you got all these you know people making uh potato chips and uh donuts and what are some of your thoughts on some of those products i have very i have very mixed feelings on all that like because i think probably everybody yeah because it's it's still like ultra processed food is it slightly healthier options than than other options yes built bar they're delicious Love those, love the texture.

It's a great job. But they're mostly collagen. And I think that's not very clear. And I find like a lot of these bars are using collagen as their protein source. Which is a little disingenuous on my mind. Because it's an incomplete protein, correct? Yes. And not to say collagen isn't important.

I do think it's important. But the reason you may be taking that bar is not to have better hair, skin, nails, joints, etc. bone, you're thinking muscle, I'm taking this for muscle. And so it's a disingenuous in that way. I would love, you know, to have a whole body protein that has 25 grams of weigh and, you know, 10 to 20 grams of collagen and, you know, some ingredients like dilucine in it. Like that would be like my ultimate kind of protein. It would be an expensive protein, but like that would be a great protein but i i do see a lot of bars using collagen very disingenuously yeah yeah it makes it uh it makes it tough when you think about a lot of people are addicted to food and so these are probably

like better options uh but they also might overeat those things because they taste delicious oh and sugar alcohols just destroy your gut those are the worst and the lot of these foods and bars are loaded with these things that just wreck you and if something is giving you bad gas like that is a sure sign that this is not something that's healthy for you it's not working great um we mentioned a little bit on the other podcast we talked a little bit about gut health what are some supplementation recommendations that you have uh for gut health maybe even some products you can direct people towards yeah so um we mentioned collagen collagen uh helps with the gut lining. Glutamine helps with the epithelial cells of the gut lining. In particular, like when

you think of leaky gut and the tight junctions and zonulin and all this kind of stuff that can cause like pretty severe issues in terms of digestion and GI distress. Then there's the idea of synbiotics, which is the idea of putting together pre-pro and postbiotics. There's even like a class called psychobiotics, which are like the neutropic probiotics that affect like your brain function, which is a really interesting class. So there's a lot of work going into bacteria and like how they affect like the gut brain axis. And a lot of your neurotransmitters are actually in your gut. A lot of your immunity is in your gut. So when we talk about regulating the gut, it can transform your physiology. You know, it's how you're absorbing and take

in these nutrients and it's how you're also filtering out the things that shouldn't be in your body these toxins in particular is the liver and the gut lining is how you're getting rid of some of these things and if you have leaky gut like some of these particles that can be very inflammatory are going right through the gut into the bloodstream and causing havoc like typically like immunological havoc like rheumatoid arthritis or Hashimoto's or autism potentially a lot of things. So getting your gut straight can be profound. So prebiotic fibers like, you know, FOS, GOS, you know, inulin, these kinds of things are prebiotic. I believe that if your gut is disbiotic, meaning more bad bacteria than good, it can actually feed the dysbiotic bacteria.

So you want to make sure your gut's kind of in a healthy space before having prebiotics. And, you know, even things like kaffir and sauerkra and these kinds of things are great as well for feeding the gut like that probiotics I believe you need to this is where like you can have a lot of probiotics may not test out because they're not stable they may get destroyed by heat light moisture unless they're the spore-based probiotics. You can run into monoculturing as well where you have too much of one probiotic and it ends up kind of limiting the variability that you need of many strains for many uses in the body. And so I'm just reluctant to like overuse probiotics for this reason because I think the body's intelligent and how to like create that variability and what's

needed in the kind of milieu of of the gut. So what I think is most important is providing that prebiotic so that the body can make enough probiotics and then providing the postbiotic which comes from the bacteria which is the short chain fatty acids which are critical for immune health and gut health. And this would be the short chain fatty acids are things like Acetic acid, which is C2, like two carbons. Propyanoic acid, which is C3. And then we're everyone's huge fans of butyrate. There's a lot of data coming out on this.

This is C4. And then really the best form is this tributrin and the triglyceride form of butyrate. So that would be one that I would definitely take is tributerine. Maybe a spore-based product like, bacillus subtilis i'm a big fan of and then probably my favorite prebiotic is not one of the short chain fibers but it's what's called a phage phe a g where it kind of breaks down bad bacteria and promotes good bacteria so that's actually the ideal way to do this and the patented ingredient is called

pre-4 pro and so those would probably be like my ultimate stack together your mother was leading the charge with supplements and showing you supplements from the time you were young what are some things that supplements have helped you with over the years I transformed my body on them you know I went from being morbidly obese to really thinning out and then becoming more of a bodybuilding you know natural natty physique as a bodybuilder natty-ish with all those supplements running through your veins that's true fair fair Yeah. I just mean like I wasn't, it means like I don't look like I'm, you know, jacked out of my mind. Like that's what I mean. But yes, that is fair. Like we're, none of us are really natty. So I'll take that. But, you know, the creatine and protein and, you know, at the time I was doing all the products from EAS and, you know, it was vanadil and glutamine and, you know, all these different things. B it came out with. It's as good as DECA. It's a great ingredient, but that's ridiculous.

Yeah. That definitely helps sell it, though. Those are great ingredients. And I really transformed my body. And it was amazing. I remember at the time, there's no better feeling than like every time you go to the gym, you're like going up a set of dumbbells. You know, it's like it's very encouraging. It's the best feeling in the world. It's a lot harder when, you know, it's 20, 30 years later and you see a little tricep and you're like, whoa, this is great. You're getting all fired up. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's a little bit different.

But man, especially with creatine, I was like, whoa. Like I remember just like flexing in the mirror and like for the first time kind of being proud of my body. And, you know, so that that transformation was powerful. And then I ended up getting very sick actually like around the time that a lot of this liver damage happened. I got very sick with my immune. system too and I ended up getting Epstein bar fibromyalgia chronic fatigue syndrome I couldn't get out

of bed for about six months and tons of pain like really horrible I was literally crawling around in my in my house and just sleeping 23.5 hours a day it was just the worst and supplements helped me work my way out of that I kind of switched over from all these bodybuilding ingredients to like really diving down into like immune function ingredients and how to make my body healthier. And that really kind of transformed a lot of my thought process around just aesthetics and performance to like, well, like anti-aging and immune health. Like this stuff's important too. And like, and then I started getting like a lot of my sports nutrition ideas from this other set.

Like, you know, where they were talking about all these other ingredients for anti-aging and immune function and I was seeing like oh these ingredients can have an effect on performance over here and so that was helping me formulate kind of and do novel things because I was really outside of the box that's cool I think that's a great story you know you're you're heavy you're overweight you ended up with some illness and you're able to correct a lot of it and then now you know you were so enthusiastic about all that now you're creating these products that are helping millions of other people and I think it's awesome I'm so blessed by God you get to make money off that that's cool i'm living my dream i love educating on this stuff i take all of my supplements

like if i sound passionate it's not me selling this stuff it's like i literally make the ingredients for myself first and foremost i'm like that would be cool i want to take that like parisanthine tea cream and dynamine where because i have a terrible caffeine metabolism and it sucks for me and every time i saw someone taking caffeine i'm like damn it's like like i want to have that I wish I can enjoy a cup of coffee. Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, now I have decaf coffee, but have Parazanthine. You know, like, it's great.

Like, these ingredients have really transformed my life. Do you make a product like that that has decaf coffee and the combination together? There is one. It's called... What's your favorite way to consume? Rarebird. It's called Rarebird. There is a coffee that has Parazanthine, yeah.

Yeah, what are some of your favorite ways to consume it? honestly that the oral pouch thing is pretty cool because it hits instantly that it's called buckle or sublingual absorption buckle like you know along the gums and and sublingual under the tongue like it's it's really cool because it like hits in like 30 seconds 60 seconds and like you can feel it and even when you have the the RTDs the ready to drink beverages maybe even with the ready to mix like pre-workouts I feel like it hits a little faster than a capsule because there is some of that absorption happening when you're just drinking the liquid and it's in your mouth.

And they've shown that data with like caffeinated gums and caffeinated drinks that there's like some different, what's called PK and PD like pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of the caffeine hitting the plasma versus just taking a capsule. Where can people find you? At Sean Wells, S-H-A-W-N on the socials. And then shonwells.com has like my newsletter. If you want to work with me, a lot of the cool content,

like all of my content is free. There's a lot of infographics. And, you know, if you want to read my book, a best-selling book, the energy formula. I have the e-book, the audible hardcover, soft cover on Amazon. I have a chorus on my site, a video course. If you want to go to Mind Valley, I have the ultimate guide to supplements. If you want to learn more about supplements, how to stack them, all that good stuff.

And just DM me if you have any questions, and I'd love to answer them. Great. Thank you so much. Strength is never a week. This week, this never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.