supplements

Supplements Revealed

Dr. Cates: Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates on today’s podcast, we’re busting common myths around supplements. In my 20 years of seeing patients, I continue to hear misinformation and a lot of questions around supplements. There is confusion, persuasive marketing, concerns about regulations, social chatter and self-diagnosis online that have created a lot of confusion around supplements. So I asked today’s guest to come on The Spa Dr. Podcast to help us shed some light on supplements. My guest is Dr. Patrick Gentempo, a speaker, author and entrepreneur who has often been referred to as the philosopher entrepreneur. He is well known and respected in the world of health, wellness and business and has keynoted hundreds of presentations around the world. While practicing as a chiropractor he co-developed innovative diagnostic technologies and built a considerable international business of which he was the CEO for over 20 years. Currently most of Dr. Gentempo’s activities are around Revealed Films, a company he cofounded that produces popular docu-series films seen around the world. And one of these latest films, busts many myths around supplements, through interviews with leading experts. And the film explores this topic without a vested interest in what is revealed. So in today’s podcast, Dr. Gentempo shares his key takeaways from the interviews he did during the Supplements Revealed film, , what the biggest concerns are around supplements, safety, regulation, manufacturing practices, where to find the highest quality in purity, what to look for, and whether or not you even need to take supplements at all. I really enjoyed our conversation and I hope you also enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Patrick its so great to have you on The Spa Dr. Podcast, welcome.

Dr. Gentempo: Great to be here with you. Thank you Trevor.

Dr. Cates: I know we’re in Park City but in different places in Park City. Right.

Dr. Gentempo: Well if you could see behind me, we’ve got a lot of snow going out there today. So you know, you’re probably looking at it yourself from where you are.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, I’m just looking at my windows that way. Yours is behind you. But, yes lots of snow in Park City. And we’re talking about supplements today and it’s such a hot topic because there’s so many benefits to supplements as you and I both know as doctors, there’s also a lot of marketing hype and a lot of things that could go wrong with supplements too. And so you just, you’re host of this Supplements Revealed and I’m sure you learned so much interviewing all the experts.

Dr. Gentempo: You know, so with my background as a chiropractor and having really had a lot of businesses in healthcare and in wellness, you know, I would say that I had a good working knowledge of nutrition and supplementation. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, you know, I’m not like a biochemist and not a researcher, but I certainly had a good working knowledge of as a matter of fact, you know, I, when I grew up, my father had a health food store, you know, and back then it was a little weird, you know, for kids to be taking supplements. But I always had some context for it. And when we decided to dig into this particular project that Revealed Films, one of the drivers was supplements are very popular. It’s a multi multi billion dollar industry yet the vast majority of people, including myself, who’s got some pretty good background and experience here, it can be, we can be sometimes bewildered by the array of what’s out there and the conflicting information and is it regulated, is it not regulated, are we safe, are we not safe? So there was a lot of things to explore cause you know, you walk into Whole Foods, a GNC and you know, you see the shelves, you go to Amazon, you start looking up a supplement and you know, you could be reading for days and how do you sort this stuff out, how do you know what’s right for you? I mean there’s a lot of questions. So we decided to go ahead and tackle that.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, that’s amazing. And so one of the big questions that you brought up, are supplements regulated. So what have you found out about that?

Dr. Gentempo: So this was actually a really heated part of some of these conversations, so but you know, our style in Revealed Films when we go out, and we do these docu-series is we sit with experts and do a long form interview with them so they can really dig deep into their expertise, understand what they know, share it, et cetera. So we want to entertain, but we also want to educate and when it comes to that particular issue, the people who are in the industry, we did even speak to some lawyers and legal experts who’ve been some of the people who’ve gotten legislation passed around supplements, as well as manufacturers who have to comply with regulation and FDA experts. So the punchline, you know, is that supplements in the supplement industry, much, most people have this wrong, but it is extremely regulated.

Dr. Gentempo: There’s, as a matter of fact, I was just reading today a notice about a company that the FDA caused to do a recall of all their products because their manufacturing facility was inspected by the FDA. They were not following good manufacturing practices. The consequence of which is they had to go back for several years and do a complete recall of their supplements. Now if you’re unregulated, that kind of stuff doesn’t happen. So, now this doesn’t mean that there aren’t bad actors and people who aren’t following the rules and people who are, you know, swimming in the cracks and trying to make quick hit and maybe they’re not following the regulation, but how supplements are manufactured is regulated. What claims you can make about the supplements and what they do is regulated. What you’re putting on your label is regulated. So I think one of the things that we did learn is that it is a highly regulated industry. It’s not regulated in exactly the same way that pharmaceuticals are, because pharmaceuticals have to make claims. This drug is used to treat this condition a supplement can’t make a claim about treating a specific condition unless it actually has trials that show that this is occurred and it goes through FDA and gets approved to do that type of thing.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And, and I’m so glad you’ve clarified that because I’ve heard all kinds of things around that people misunderstanding that. Now it is important that people are actually following these regulations. And just because there’s a supplement company out there selling products doesn’t mean that they’re following within the FDA guidelines. Right? So how do people know? How can they be reassured that they’re choosing supplements that are actually complying with regulations?

Dr. Gentempo: So you’re asking one of the most important questions that anybody I think you might take away from the series a, that’s one of the most important questions is how do I know everything sounds great. Cause I could tell you what the supplement industry does have. It is a volume of excellent marketers and copywriters who just know how to get your attention to write good copy, to lead you down a road and then get you to buy. So now the question as you’re asking is, well, how do I know this is a really good supplement, it’s good quality, et cetera. And the, it’s, I wish I could say it’s a very simple answer. It’s not that simple. But I’m gonna give you some of the things that we discovered you through our experience. So there’s a couple of things. Number one, the manufacturers or the distributor of the supplement, hopefully they are also the manufacturer, but most people really do just contract with manufacturing.

Dr. Gentempo: But they will have, if you can figure out who’s manufacturing the supplement, they should have the various certifications and other such things that validate that what they’re doing and what they’re delivering to you is real based on the representations they’re making. So a really good manufacturer, for example, let’s say that we’re creating a multivitamin and we’re making some claim about a certain amount of vitamin C, certain amount of B vitamins, certain of whatever the mix is and what the potency is, et cetera. So let’s say I’m the manufacturer, well, I might be importing these source nutrients to blend and create this supplement from China, for example. And the person that I’m buying these sourced elements from is making a representation to me, this is vitamin C, this is the source of it, this is the potency of it, et cetera. If I’m really doing my job well, I’m going to take what I have and not only tested inside my own manufacturing facility to make sure that it’s all validated.

Dr. Gentempo: But I’m also, when I have the product, I’m going to send this out with third party verification lab who will take my product. So now this is a financially disinterested company. Now they’re going to take my product and they’re going to lab test it and then validate that what I am putting in the bottle and selling is actually what’s on the label and making sure that it’s all has the proper integrity in place. So most people, most manufactures who do that are really happy and not happy, but they want to brag about a little saying, Hey, here’s our website. Here are our certificates from good manufacturing practice. Here’s our certificates from third party labs. Validating that the product we’re delivering to you is, is what we say it is, et cetera. So that’s so one of the things, and it’s an extra step I get, this is an extra step for you know for a consumer but it’s not a hard step.

Dr. Gentempo: And like for example, if I’m at Whole Foods some labels now that I’ve noticed on some supplements, they have a barcode, a scan code, I can just take my phone, I can scan the code, it’s going to pull me to the site and it’s going to show me that the validation. So that’s one way to know. A second way to know is longevity. Companies that have been in business for long periods of time, typically, they have a pedigree. They have basically a history of being in that marketplace in sustaining for long periods of time and a reputation. And that’s very validating. A lot of times what happens is you’ll get the quick hit monsters who come in and they basically put together a formula, write a bunch of great copy, put out this product with the marketplace, really like, you know, they’ll buy Google ads and Facebook ads and all this nice stuff.

Dr. Gentempo: And if you go to search the company, how long they’ve been around, et cetera, you start to see that there’s no real history there. That is usually a red flag. That’s usually like somebody who’s looking to make a quick buck and then they’re going to be gone again. So trusted brands that have long periods of standing are typically another good signs. If you’ve got companies who are putting their third party validation up there with external labs, they’ve been around for awhile you know, you get a little bit of a feel for the history of the company. Now you’re going to start to see that that’s probably a pretty good product.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Okay. All great points. Now, supplements are sold all over the place. They’re sold online, they’re sold in drug stores, grocery stores, health food stores, practitioner offices there, you know, and spas, they’re all over the place now. So is there a particular place where people should, I mean, or your neighbor might be selling, right? So is there a particular place where you should be really looking for supplements, do you think?

Dr. Gentempo: Okay. The answer is yes. And there’s, there’s a strata in essence, meaning like you’ll see you can go into your Walgreens or your general supermarket and you have these very popular big box, you know, multivitamin, supplements, spectrum, you know, these types of things. And you know, here’s the silver, here’s the varying levels of it. And here’s what most experts said. It’s really interesting. It’s not like either a supplement is worthless or it’s great. There’s varying levels of it. Meaning they said, listen, those cheap stuff, if so, let me surface things. Most of the time not all the time, but most of the time in the supplement world, you are getting what you pay for. Meaning if you’re getting the cheap multivitamins, probably not going to be as good. A synthetic, your big box store, mass market multivitamin is better than nothing.

Dr. Gentempo: It’s cheaper than nothing. It’s, you know, it’s not two, it’s cheaper than the more expensive ones, but it’s not as expensive. It’s not as expensive, but so it’s cheaper, but your body’s utilization of it is not going to be as robust. So when you’re cutting costs, you’re probably cutting quality and bioavailability and some of these other important things. However, it’s still better than nothing is what most of the experts had said. Then you go to the next level and you’d say, okay, we have synthetics. Now we have products that are not synthetic, but they’re food based supplements. Those most experts agreed or are going to be better than synthetic. Then a level up there would be a little bit more expensive. The level up from that is going to be organic food based supplements. Most but not all experts, some experts, this was debatable some, and incidentally I’ll tell you where I personally fall, but some said it doesn’t matter if it’s organic or not, it’s not gonna really make a difference in how you’re going to utilize it.

Dr. Gentempo: Blah, blah, blah. Other experts. I would only take organic supplements. Personally, I believe that’s a good idea. I don’t like the kind of stuff that can go in there if it’s a non-organic supplement and what that might do to your body. So my own personal opinion after going through this whole experience is that organic is probably a good idea. And then you have fermented organic food based supplements that’s even more expensive, but the bioavailability is there and you’re going to get more out of it. So everybody gets to decide what happens to, they want to budget and allocate to towards this. And the thing that you know, everybody said in the series is that, that, you know, it’s not a matter of you’ve now take supplements to solve all your problems. It’s called supplementation. Meaning this is just an adjunct. It’s not the panacea answer that you can.

Dr. Gentempo: Supplements do not allow you to have a bad lifestyle and then make up for it. It’s a matter of saying, have a good lifestyle, have a good eating patterns, et cetera, are all the kinds of stuff that you would teach. And then in addition, supplement with healthier things. Now, one of the things that came up, of course you and I had this conversation too, is that, you know, a lot of was talk about, you know, what we’re putting into our bodies and I’m talking about these rules, synthetic versus your food based versus organic versus you know, when you’re putting stuff on your skin, this is also is getting absorbed into your system. You want to have also, you know, similar type considerations, which obviously you’re very expert in. So it’s interesting how what comes out. It’s not as many ways that things get into your body and orally through the mouth is only one of them.

Dr. Gentempo: There’s all these other ways that that happens. But in essence, one of the things I kind of learned is that, um, is that there are less, I going to use bad grammar just on purpose here, but there’s less good supplements and then there’s really good supplements. But just because they are a big box synthetic supplement, I mean, it’s not what I send to my mother. I said my mother really good organic even sometimes you’re getting fermented supplements. I know she’s going to absorb better and I spend the extra money, she would probably go to the store based on her budget and just buy a Centrum, which would be better than nothing, but I’d rather upgrade her supplentation regimen. So I think you know, it’s kind of a little bit of a sidebar to the answer to your question. So when you say where should I get my supplements, what’s the best place it has to do with what kind of supplements you’re looking for.

Dr. Gentempo: Some really good supplements are only available through professionals, meaning they’re only distributed through doctor’s offices. Sometimes, you know, whether it’s a naturopathic, chiropractor or medical doctor an acupuncturist, but usually people who are wellness oriented practitioners and they’re only distributed. And I know what some of those are. When I was in practice, I utilize those types of supplements and that’s a really good place to get segments because now you’ve got a licensed professional who actually did the research, is offering this to you. Then you can look and say, okay, are there good supplements that you can buy at like a Whole Foods? And you know I now go through and I look at the Whole Food selection they certainly don’t offer everything, but there’s certainly a good variety of supplements there that, that are, some of them are fermented, some are not some are organic some are not. But there’s a really pretty good variety there in that aisle. You’re hit and miss on the person who’s making the recommendations and working in that aisle, you know, you never know. So you have to kind of know what you’re doing. I think probably the least, the lower quality supplements are available kind of in the big chain stores.

Dr. Cates: Right, right. Okay, great. Thank you for saying that. personal experience is mostly with the practitioner lines, and I know people oftentimes ask me that, can I just go to the drug store and get something? Can I go to Costco? Can I, you know, where do I, my neighbor is selling this to me. I live in Utah, which is multilevel marketing capital, right? So my patients have neighbors selling supplements and so, but I agree like I think that there are high quality supplements available in all these places, but not, they’re not necessarily across the board. If you’re looking for something across the board where it’s a little bit safer, I would say practitioner lines, like you know what you’re saying. And also working with a practitioner that’s educated and that can help you really hone in on, on what you know, what exactly you need and not overdo it too on supplements. Right. I’m sure you talked about overdoing supplements as well.

Dr. Gentempo: Well, you and I both know, my partner and friend who is the producer, Jeff Hayes, and I’ve had many, many meals with Jeff Hayes. And whenever you sit with Jeff, the bag comes out and there’s, he takes so many supplements a day. And in part, you know, we, and we have this running joke between us because, you know, every time you sit with someone and they explain, their supplements, what they do, why you need them, et cetera, you’re like, Oh my God, I have to have that. And then the next one, Oh my God, I have that next thing. You know, you’re taking 23 supplements a day. So, I think it’s a good idea. And certainly some of the people we interviewed validated this, that you want to rotate in and out sometimes. Like it’s not like you have one supplement regime and that’s it for your entire life.

Dr. Gentempo: Like I can tell you right now, it’s winter here or I’m not outside nearly as much. I’m supplementing with D three and K2. You know, cause I’m getting less of it from the sun. You know, if, you know, there’s certain circumstances where I’m taking more C than other times, I might not. I like the lyposomal C, you know, so that it kind of survives the gut. So there’s you know, I don’t have the same daily regimen for months or years at a time. I’m rotating and cycling through various forms of supplementation. And as you said, practitioner lines are, you know, I think, you know, that’s usually the, you know, the very premium level supplements. And with that, you know, they’re usually more expensive than what you’re going to buy in other places. And that’s why you want to be working with the practitioners so that you’re not taking things that you spending a bunch of money on that you really don’t need. So now you’ve got a practitioner who’s got a high quality supplement it’s gonna be probably more targeted based on what your needs are. And you can feel, usually it’s not, nothing’s 100%. Usually you can feel like a practitioner based supplement is going to be a the premium quality substance.

Dr. Cates: Right. Okay. And so, and I know you, thank you for that. I know that you mentioned that you can’t, that you don’t want to just take supplements to make up for an unhealthy lifestyle and I completely agree with that. Now what, what about the people who eat really healthy that actually, you know, have a healthy eating plan and do they, do they need to take supplements? That’s a question I often get asked.

Dr. Gentempo: It’s a popular question. And again, another really good question. And my answer is yes. And the answer and the question we will, why, you know, my getting all my stuff from the food and the way I’m eating the answers probably for the most part. However, we have, you know, the, the nutrient deprivation of the soil in other words we’ve over farm, even if it’s organic, we, you know, the density of the nutrients in the soil has been compromised. I believe in most farmlands for the most part, especially in industrial agriculture, you know, massive amounts of production out of the soil, taking all the nutrients. It doesn’t have the time to recover. They’re not rotating crops through There’s a lot of, a lot of things about agriculture and food. It’s hard to get everything you need from the way food is sourced today. So I believe that, and just toxins and stresses I think are more extreme than usual. So this is why I believe that, even if you’re eating a very healthy diet you want to be looking at supplementation. You’re relative to who you are, what kind of diet you eat, where you live. I mean there’s so many variables, but, in the end, I think the broad answer to the question is yes, even if you’re eating healthy, supplementation’s probably still a good idea.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I also think it, you know, plays into like, you know, if you have symptoms or not to like if you have symptoms you can look at supplements as a therapeutic modality. And then also looking at genetic predispositions, right? If you have certain genetic predispositions that can help kind of compensate for the possible, yeah predispositions that you have for disease. So, yeah.

Dr. Gentempo: Both extraordinarily important points. And you know, you bring to mind, really what I see as the two divisions of supplementation. One is nutrition as a therapeutic approach towards dealing with something. And another one is a lifestyle wellness approach. And they’re different things, therapeutic amounts of supplements to try to deal with a certain symptomatic or, or pathological picture. You’re saying, Hey, I don’t want to take medications and go down the, you know, kind of the toxic medical route. I want to help myself through this and have my body recover and now I’m going to do what, for lack of a better term, therapeutic doses of vitamins and supplements to help me get through whatever it is I’m challenged with, which is very different than, you know, saying I do daily amounts of certain vitamins just as a part of my lifestyle, which is me right now. Like I don’t have a particular condition or particular problem that I’m taking specific supplements for. I just supplement with, you know, I probably take five a day right now, five different supplements a day that I take as a part of just a lifestyle strategy for me.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I agree. And certainly when you’re looking at more of a therapeutic or clinical nutrition, you’re treating a health condition, then I think it’s really important to work with a functional medicine or naturopathic doctor that can help do testing and really help you because you know, there, I’m sure you talked about there are some downsides to supplements too, and some safety concerns. You can know, you can go overboard with certain nutrients and there can be safety concerns. So that’s one of the reasons why working with a practitioner is important.

Dr. Gentempo: Yeah, there are safety concerns. As a matter of fact. Yeah. I’m laughing at the irony because we went out to say, okay, we’re going to take this very complicated world, bring it all together and simplify it. And I think to a degree we did, but as Einstein said, the goal is to make everything as simple as possible but not simpler. And so there still requires a certain amount of thinking and complexity. You have to be able to do this. Right. But, I just want to echo number one what you said is very important that if you really have a health challenge, don’t get on the internet, read about some things and start trying to treat it yourself. You should be seeing a good functional medicine person that can navigate these waters and knows how to do this stuff. Who can do the proper blood testing and other types of testing to make sure you’re getting the right things.

Dr. Gentempo: And getting the right results. Uh, secondly, uh, as far as you know, key. So can you take toxic amounts of supplements or herbs, you know, which are also thrown in there, you know, uh, other such things. The answer’s absolutely yes. Secondly, you know, not only can you take things that could be toxic, but one of the more rebutting interviews I did was with a PhD researcher in biochemistry who’s really expert in his areas. And he said that many times we’re combining supplements that individually are really good for you, but when you put them together and take them at the same time, they are, they literally cancel each other out. Not necessarily that they hurt you. That can happen in rare occasions, especially if you’re taking medications, you gotta watch out for contraindications and supplements. But sometimes you say, well, I’m going to take this and I’m going to take this.

Dr. Gentempo: And those are both really good things And you might need both those things, but if you do the, at the same time, they nullified each other’s effects and you have to figure out how to time these things. So I wish I could tell you that it was, you know, so easy, just do AB and C and you’re done. There’s a little bit more to know. It’s good to know what supplements should not be taken together, which is one of the things we review. You should, you should understand which things can become of toxic if you’re taking too much of them. And if you’re going to be a, you know, a health consumer, you just have to get some basic understanding of these things.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. I think it’s, they’re like, you know, how many people did you interview for this and how many hours of interviews?

Dr. Gentempo: I think we interviewed roughly, I’m going to say it’s 50 to 60 people. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a lot of people and it goes everything from the manufacturers to the researchers and academicians to practitioners who are, you know, functional medicine practitioners, to you know, product developers who are very important is that people figure out the formulation. So, you know, we really talk to all the varying dimensions of the industry and it was pretty eye opening.

Dr. Cates: Very, very interesting. And it’s not like you’re pitching a supplement or something like you have your own supplement that you’re pitching or you really just wanted to reveal all this information because there are so many myths out there and so many questions that you and I get all the time. Right?

Dr. Gentempo: Yeah. There’s no doubt. I think, you know, and I, I try not to steer people too much because as you said, it’s not like, Hey, we’re Schilling for particular something and company here as an infomercial. You know, we talked to dozens of them, different product providers, all over the map from people who do your product provide for, you know, practitioners or that practitioner lines to consumer lines and everything in between. Some people sell online, some people have retail space. So we, we really looked at it all, but you’ll see when you watch pretty quickly, you’re going to decide who you trust, who you feel good about, you know, like, Oh, that person, you know, as they described their process, how they think, how they formulate and what they put out there in the world. Yeah. That’s, that’s the guy or the gal that I wanna, you know, that, that feels right to me. And they were for me and I, and I don’t want to bias other people necessarily. But there were, you know, three or four of those providers or people who provide product and marketplace that I said, you know, with everything I’ve seen, you know, I’m buying their products. So and it doesn’t mean other people were bad. I just felt like these are the ones that it spoke to my values most.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. So, I know we covered a lot so far. Were there any, interviews that were the answers surprised you? I’m sure there were, but anything that you want to share with us and I want people to go actually watch Supplements Revealed because I mean, I can’t wait to watch it. So, I know that I, you know, I haven’t watched all the interviews yet, so I want to finish watching them. But anything in particular you’re like, wow, I didn’t know that, that’s fascinating?

Dr. Gentempo: Well, so a couple of things. First of all Supplements Revealed, is it’s a free viewing period we’re in right now. I think at the time of the release of this, you know, it’s already started. So I’d recommend going to, you know, there’s a link probably in the email that you send out that they can click on and then they can go register. It’s free, it’s free to register. You can watch the content as we release it. We’ll be releasing it day by day over a period of time. And, you know, hopefully you’ll catch enough of it to make it make a difference in your life. And I think even one episode could be pretty life changing. So, so check that out. As far as the ahas, yeah, I think some of them I sort of alluded to already but I can tell you that some of them were shocking things.

Dr. Gentempo: Well, the thing that kind of shook me most was how source components to supplements, that the source materials can vary widely and how often sometimes, especially the stuff coming from China. And please don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying all things that come from China are bad. As a matter of fact, so much of what’s going out in all the varying supplements is coming from China right now. But how, there’s large swings of inconsistency in what’s really there and that, and this is where I’m saying you need a supplement manufacturer that’s truly testing this stuff and getting third party validation for what they’re doing. Because even somebody with good intentions, let’s say I’m somebody that, Hey, I’m an honest person, I want to provide you the right stuff. I want to, I want to make sure that what I’m selling you is valid.

Dr. Gentempo: You know, and since that, you know, I believe that what I’m telling you this is, and what I’m telling you will do is real. But if I’m not validating this through lab testing and everything else, I might even believe it and it might not be true. So I think that that’s one of the, the really important things, you know, to understand. And one of the things that my eyes, you know, I, you know, we toured, you’ll see in series, you know, we’re, we’re there, you know, with the masks and everything on walking through manufacturing facilities and looking at how they do their stuff and the good manufacturers, I’ll tell you, they’re spending a lot of money on how they’re processing from the time this stuff comes in, how they quarantine it for awhile, how they test it then how they move it through the process of manufacturing.

Dr. Gentempo: To make sure that everything is safeguarded to do that right is no small task. So that’s one of the things. The second thing is that, a lot of times, and I mentioned this already, and this is, I don’t want to say necessarily disheartening, but it makes me, you know, it’s a reason for concern is that I see, you know, marketers, people who don’t really care about nutrition, people who don’t really know or understand nutrition, but they’re very good at marketing and what they do is, especially online marketing. And what they do is they will go to a contract manufacturer and say, Hey, can you formulate something for me? And they, and it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad product, but the thing that attracted me is the people I liked is that, Hey, this is their purpose. This is their life.

Dr. Gentempo: Their heart is in it. They care about it in a different way. So I think that, that it’s important to really find those people who have a longer history, who really care about this stuff that you’re going to end up with a much better result. You know, as a consequence of that. The other thing I mentioned, which really shifted some of what I do is, and even the shakes that I make is starting to understand what things should not be taken together. And a big, big caution is that there are definitely supplements that do not go with certain medications. And most often your medical doctors don’t understand that. So if you’re asking what’s the biggest risk, it’s going to be taking supplements while you’re taking prescription medication and never, validating it to this is okay or never going and looking at adverse reactions if you put these two things together.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And I think a lot of times conventional medical doctors will just say don’t take supplements because they don’t, they’re not educated in the interactions and they’re concerned about that for valid reasons. It’s unfortunate that they’re not trained in nutritional supplements, herbal supplements because they can actually, you know, be taken together but it has to be done carefully. And it certainly a naturopathic physician something we were taught in naturopathic medical school and that we’re taught at all of our continuing medical education and then we have pharmacy hours that we have to have in order to keep our license active. And a lot of those pharmacy hours are talking about interactions and how to use natural therapies in conjunction with pharmaceutical medications or you know, how they might interact together.

Dr. Gentempo: Yeah. I’m really glad you said that because, it is a ever unfolding thing. Meaning as you say, you have to get continuing education, credit and pharmacology and knowing these drug interactions with supplements, et cetera. Very, very important. And if you’ve got any kind of a, you know, a health issue that you’re taking prescription drugs for, you want to make sure that every single supplement you’re taking is okay to mix with that drug.

Dr. Cates: Yeah absolutely. And what you to talked about as far as the quality of supplements and manufacturers and learning along the way. I think that’s so fascinating. And I, I remember years ago when I was, um, I was trying to order some supplements from a particular provider that I’ve been recommending for many, many years for my patients. And they put a and they have put a, out of stock on their supplements and I was so upset cause I sold so much. It was, was a protein powder. I know I sold so much of this and so I contacted, I knew the owner of the company and I contacted him and I said, what’s going on? I, you know, I’m missing out on sales of my customers are there, my patients are wanting this product and they’re upset. And he said, believe me, there’s a reason why we are of out-of-stock on this. And we did testing on the product and found contamination. So we don’t want you to be selling this to your patients. And they didn’t make a big fuss about it and they didn’t, you know, I just happened to know him so he told me about this, but he said, you know, Trevor, the, the sad thing is, is that I know that, that supplier is going to take everything that we’ve returned and sell it to someone else.

Dr. Gentempo: Yeah. And that, and that’s really where you have the nightmares where, and I’ll give you just another example off of that. And this is, this is a great little thing. So if you’re into bone broth and especially, the bone broth proteins, I wouldn’t even think about any bone broth or bone broth protein that was not organic. I can get you. So one of the things that we came across is that there’s a company who created a bone broth protein, very well marketed, very popularized. You can find it in the shelves of a lot of, you know, trusted store brands and it was found that, and it doesn’t say organic on it. Okay. So it’s not making a representation that it’s organic bone broth protein. But it turns out they’re, getting they were sourcing it from China and in the lab tests that they were finding these toxins that were, I think fertilizers and other such things that are illegal in the U S are only used in China, which is how they figured out the stuff was coming from China.

Dr. Gentempo: So there are times when you really want to make sure. So there are times when organic really matters. I always only do organic as a rule, but especially when it comes to powders and protein powders and collagen powders and so on. You know, I want breast fed sources. If it’s coming from a cow, I want it organic, you’re going to pay more money for that stuff. But I could tell you, you know, getting, you know, you’re looking at bone broth, you’re looking at something that is distilled and concentrated, and if you’re going to take really sick chickens full of all kinds of toxins and then concentrate all that down into a bone broth protein that comes from them you’re literally gonna make yourself sick on that stuff. So it’s really, those are the kinds of things you want to be kind of careful of.

Dr. Gentempo: And, and listen, it happens sometimes. Maybe, you know, like you said to the guy who just said, Hey, we were contaminated. It’s not like nobody has zero defect. Nobody has got it where there’s never a defect. That’s why you test. And by testing you can say, Oh, we’ve got a problem here. Let’s make sure that either we shut it down before it goes out or presented it back. We have to do the recall and bring it all back. Nobody likes that. But at least you have the courage to say, this is a temporary problem. We have values about what we put into the marketplace and we’ll just get past this. And I would trust someone who’s willing to do that as compared to what you were talking about, saying they’re going to resell it through somebody else, you know?

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, you know, when I learned that, I realized when I went to go make my own supplements, I wanted to work with a manufacturer, like you said, that had been around for a long time, that have these practices in place that actually test the raw materials and do those kinds of things that helped me feel comfortable about selling supplements because I can’t be in the lab and the supplement watching everything all the time. So going with the manufacturer that I really trust and I know that that’s going to do that work. And of course, you know, selling supplements, there’s a certain amount of responsibility that comes with that. And I definitely take ownership of that. We always want purity and clean ingredients for our people.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Well, that’s your brand, right? So and I’m sure that, you know, your supplements are not the cheapest on the market, but the quality’s there, you’re getting, you know, and to me, it’s again, you get what you pay for. And, you know, I know, especially my wife uses your products and loves them and, you know, with all we know and the amount of, you know, resources, we have to be able to know what’s out there. You know, she looks at your stuff and really loves it. So, you know, that’s, that’s saying a lot because of what we know and understand and the contacts we have to a lot of experts that are out there. And that’s where, you know, the due diligence through the practitioner provided supplement, you know, every practitioner says, Hey, I spent eight years of my life getting into, you know, an education, getting a degree, building a trust in the brand. I’m not going to blow it on distributing supplements that are really good quality. I’d have to make sure I’m doing the right things. So they’ve got motivation, make sure that they’re delivering the right thing.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Well Patrick it’s been so fascinating. I know we went longer than I thought we would because it’s so much to talk about and there’s so much more in this series. So if people are watching this podcast live, the Supplements Revealed is going on right now. Right. You’re right in the middle of the interviews and then people could still, if they are watching catching this podcast later on, you still have it available, it’s just not live and people have to pay to get it right.

Dr. Gentempo: Yeah. Yeah. We have varying packages. So basically, we have a free viewing period, so we basically invite the world and you know, we expect there will be hundreds of thousands of peoples that are going to tune in from around the world who are gonna watch this. It’s typical you know we’ve done many, we’ve explored many health topics in our series, and so we’d like people to come and say, Hey, check this out. See if you like it. I know it’s a lot of hours of content, and you can’t maybe watch it all during the free viewing period, but we give a good amount of time in that preview period at that point, if you really liked what you saw and you want to have a library, a resource library to go back to, we have very packages, they’re very affordable where people can gain permanent access to, we have bonuses, all kinds of things. So we’re thrilled when people just sign up to watch it for free. And then if people like what we did and they feel like they want to make a small investment to own it, then they can do that too.

Dr. Cates: All right, great. Again, thanks Patrick for coming on. I really appreciate the interview.

Dr. Gentempo: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I just love the work that you’re doing and I want to encourage you to keep doing it. It’s very necessary in the world.

Dr. Cates: Thank you. Thank so much.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Patrick Gentempo and got some great takeaways around supplements and I’m sure you still have a lot of questions and that’s why they put together this entire docu-series around Supplements Revealed and you can still catch that if you’re watching this podcast when it goes live, then you can go to thespadr.com go to the podcast page with Dr. Gentempo’s interview and in the show notes you’ll find the link directly to the docu-series and you’ll be able to find out what’s still live, what’s still available and hopefully catch my interview and the docu-series as it goes live. So again, just go to thespadr.com and go to the podcast page with his interview and you’ll find it in the show notes. And also while you’re on thespadr.com, I encourage you to join our community so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows. You can also join our community by taking The Skin quiz. Just go to theskinquiz.com find out what messages your skin is trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com I also invite you to join us on social media. The Spa Dr. is on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. So join us there and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.