312. Why Your Supplements Could Be TOXIC - With Matt O’Connor
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Thank you for listening to the Boost Your Biology podcast. My name is Lucas Owen. I uncover the most cutting edge health information on the planet, ranging from hormones, nutrition, supplementation, fat loss, biohacking, longevity, wellness, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Boost Your Biology podcast.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Boost Your Biology podcast. Today, I have a very special guest joining me in the studio. We have Matt O'Connor from Honor Health. Matty, how's it going, man? I am good, brother. Long time overdue. Long time overdue. I know. I've been following you in the background for quite a while, so I'm keen to talk. Thank you, man. Thank you.

Well, first of all, Matt, I mean, you've had a pretty interesting story. We're sort of just chatting offline before that. But maybe for my audience, just sort of break down how you got into the health optimization space yourself. Yeah. So Honor was my kind of second foray into health myself. Many years ago in a different life, I went down the personal training pathway before social media.

um had my own little personal training studio at the back of the western suburbs in a small town in in australia or small city in australia um and then that quite frankly didn't work but mostly because i realized then i was working like one to one and i started to you know get exposure to some social media and see what i could do from a more one to many point of view i think similar to yourself um

But then I went off and started in a few different businesses way outside of health. But I was always curious on using business as a vehicle to...

do good just by simply the product that you offer. Um, so that led me down a path of, I was in like it recycling, uh, for a while, very different industry, but we were buying back like all old handsets of like mobile phones, iPhones, computers from major corporations in Australia, like Coles and didn't do anything with boys, but Coles as an example. Um,

And then we'd refurbish it, we'd tidy it up, we'd either recycle some or we'd put it back in the market. And that whole kind of second life. And it was my first taste to go, oh, this is a cool business model by simply doing what we're doing. We're actually having a broader impact. But I learned pretty quick that I didn't actually really love it too much. It wasn't in my sandpit where health, I knew I wanted to go back into something there.

And then so I exited that business. And then for about almost the better part of two years, I was exploring in and around this supplementation space. Again, I like the principles of the business, simply the product itself could serve a lot of people and do a lot of good just by being in business. But I didn't really know where I wanted to go there. I was kind of flirting with

I was looking into the mushroom space with a friend of mine for a bit. But the key moment was when I actually opened up my cupboard door and I saw I had like six different brands and I was taking everything. I had no brand affinity to any of them. So I was like, oh, okay, well, what's the core ones I'm taking, which are the essential vitamins and minerals, vitamin D, magnesium, zinc.

And then so I was like, okay, I'm going to start exploring within this space, mostly just to scratch my own itch than anything because I wasn't doing anything else. Once I started that process, I began to learn a lot more about quality in the supplement space, particularly in Australia.

Not just in like the active ingredient, but more towards the additives going into a lot of the supplements. And what was frustrating was I stumbled upon the point that even though we're so heavily regulated here in Australia, which is great because it gives us a pretty good gold standard, but for whatever reason,

Any ingredient that's not the active ingredient, so magnesium being the active ingredient, but any of the, they're called excipients, but they're additives like flowing agents that go into support and are necessary to make a product aren't required to be disclosed to customers. So when I learned that,

It really frustrated me. It's like, well, what am I taking? And luckily, there is actually on the TGA's website, you can search it like Google, where brands have to disclose all of the ingredients going into products. And I just remember going through all of my supplements, my vitamin D, my zinc, my magnesium from the big name brands. And on the label would be one ingredient, vitamin D,

And then there'll be 16 other additives in there and stuff that I just wouldn't personally take. Soil oils, vegetable oils, titanium dioxide and tablets. Like, yeah, they're in there in small quantities, but I just wouldn't, if it doesn't need to be in there, why would I want it in there? So that was like the key moment where I went, okay, if I actually want to keep taking supplements myself,

I don't trust any local brands now. I'm going to go explore this for myself. So that was the core reason of starting Honor Health and we have definitely evolved the mission from there, just building great quality products because I think that's just a fundamental. That was like the initial, why am I doing it? I'm passionate about this space. I want to create a great product but mostly even just for myself and I feel that people will share that same view that I have.

Yeah, it's incredible just to witness it from the outside. I mean, your Instagram content, your reels, the way that you articulate yourself and the way that you present content, you've simplified things like you've toned it down a notch, but you've made it extremely easy for people to digest. And hats off to you for that because it's not easy to explain concepts. And I'm sure you probably had a

you went through different periods where you're testing out different approaches. But going back to what you said before around the additives, let's dive into that because let's just highlight to my audience some of those additives that are actually what you would say problematic. One that sticks out to mind would be titanium dioxide. Probably good to preface this a little bit by to say

Additives, excipients, they are actually necessary to make supplements, but like any additive, you can have, if we call them good quality, and in my view, that's ones made from natural sources, ideally food-based sources or supplements

You know, highly synthetic. And they're in there, they're in a supplement mostly to ensure that the ingredients don't like stick and clump together during, if it's going into a capsule in the encapsulation process or if it's a tablet, you know, there's binders, there's tablet coatings. And what I've learned is that

And this is not a general rule. It's a general rule of thumb that may not apply in all circumstances, but one of the reasons additives are in there is to speed up the production process. So if you've got a big supplement company that are working, they have one product that are working with many manufacturers to make that product in bulk,

That recipe needs to be on point across all and they need to pump out billions and billions of capsules or tablets in one hit. So the more additives you add, the kind of quicker you can go. So it's a bit of a general rule I look for when I'm looking at any supplement. If it's not ourselves, it's like, okay, the least amount of additives possible is a no-brainer. But the reason why it's like they're slowing things down. So in my mind, like a good piece on quality. So going back to titanium dioxide,

Titanium dioxide is a whitening agent that's used in many different industries, but pharmaceuticals and supplements are one of the main, but it's also in like sunscreens, I think toothpaste. In supplements, it's mostly used in hard tablet supplements. So they're the supplements with this kind of smooth, shiny surface.

And it's used to help improve the appearance as its main reason for being in that product. So it might be added to, you know, if it's a magnesium supplement, I've seen brands that the magnesium will be red or it's blue. Magnesium is not red or blue. It's white. Where to improve that appearance for the end consumer, you

They'll add in a titanium dioxide and because it's in there for a small quantity, it doesn't have to be disclosed to customers. Reason I don't like that is as one example in Europe, they banned its use in all as a food additive, including supplements, I think in 2022, early 2022.

as an additive in food and supplements because they couldn't rule out potential damage to cell DNA with long-term use. The Australian TGA does a lot of good work in this space because we are so heavily regulated and it's important to kind of preface this that it's still an ingredient that is

available for use in Australian supplements. So at the moment, it still ticks all boxes in terms of efficacy and no ingredient is without risk but low risk. However, me personally, if it doesn't need to be in there and if there are groups of countries coming together to say we don't want to include it, I'd just rather not have it in there personally. So that's one example. Okay.

What about in terms of another really popular one that I see popping up a lot is magnesium stearate. Now, from my understanding, stearic acid itself, which can be found in like cacao butter, some other food sources, stearic acid isn't necessarily –

a bad like fatty acid per se but is is magnesium stearate something different or problematic in your opinion if i don't need to have it in there i'd rather it not be like

There's a great quote that I've heard. I think it was from Tony Robbins back in the day. No matter how thin you slice it, there's always going to be two sides. So I'm not aware of specific evidence that shows a harmful impact of magnesium stearate, which is magnesium bound to stearic acid. However, just because no evidence exists shows

doesn't mean that it couldn't cause issues. So it's more comes back to this point of like, if it just doesn't need to be in there, why would we put it in there? Especially when there's no long-term evidence based around efficacy or quality. It's like, well, why do we need it? Yeah. Yeah. What about, let's sort of transition over into common supplement mistakes that you see people making on a daily basis. Yeah.

I had my own points for this when I was presenting in Dubai. I had to present on this topic. But I'm curious to hear about what you would say, like the common mistakes that you see people making when it comes to supplements. I'd say number one is magnesium. Most people, well, not most people, a lot of people can take the wrong type of magnesium and most people probably aren't aware that there are so many different types. I think the last I've heard is 11 to 12 different types of magnesium.

So the common mistake I see is somebody going to a chemist, a chemist warehouse and not having understanding of what to take and they'll grab probably the cheapest because it's what we do as humans, grabbing the cheapest and then going home and not finding much of a benefit. So those forms to me are like the magnesium oxide or magnesium citrate and

kind of two low quality forms citrate does have a pretty good bioavailability but almost too high where it can actually be used as a laxative if you ever go on for a colonoscopy you'll know that you've got to take a pretty gross high amount of magnesium citrate so if you're taking a low quality form and experiencing to have all these miraculous changes while

you're probably not going to get it whereas if you start looking to a better quality form magnesium glycinate magnesium l3 and eight it's one of the they may seem more expensive but the difference is incomparable um so yeah different choosing the wrong quality magnesium then it would probably mostly be around not actually optimizing how people take certain supplements for maximum benefit

Vitamin D, as an example, is a fat-soluble vitamin. To optimize its absorption, it should ideally always be taken with a meal. Ideally, that meal includes good quality fats, avocados, eggs. I know a lot of people who've come into our world didn't actually know that before and they're just taking vitamin D with their coffee or coffee.

you know, on an empty stomach. So it's those kind of little tweaks of actually how you take it. I could go into so many of that. Yeah, how you take it is almost as important as the supplement you do take in the first place.

Yeah, they're critical points like the timing. I've had a lot of people ask me whether or not it's okay to take vitamin D at nighttime. Have you had people ask you that question as well? I have and I saw you do a post on this. Yeah. What were you saying there? Basically, I was outlining like from a logical standpoint, the sun rises in the morning and then the sun sets at nighttime. So vitamin D is a suppressor of melatonin.

So it makes sense to not take your vitamin D at nighttime. You'd rather take it in the morning with your first meal, your eggs, avocados, olive oil, you know, that sort of stuff. But in terms of, yeah, like let's look at,

dietary models like i'd imagine over the years you've probably explored many different approaches to nutrition or maybe you've stayed the same on the same sort of dietary model jumped around a bit yeah talk to us about that oh man i've gone

But my first forays into nutrition were probably like many 14, 15-year-olds who I went to an all-boys school in Australia, played rugby. It was all about getting big, lifting weights and getting big. And this was at like prime Ronnie Coleman days, Jay Cutler days. I had an older brother who he was a beast in himself. So I kind of looked to him and others for inspiration, go, how can I just get big and

And I was a little scrawny kid for many, many years. So with that, that took me down macros, carbs, fats, proteins, and stayed in that world for many years even when I was doing my personal training side. And then it wasn't until maybe probably a similar time when you started exploring things, but

I was trying to think of some of the creators like came across like Ben Greenfield, Dave Asprey, the whole Bulletproof Coffee just got my mind really. It kind of blew my mind back then because I come from this world of six meals a day, 30 grams of protein in every meal, protein shake before gym, protein shake after gym. And then these guys came onto the scene. Mark Sisson was a great example of like,

you don't actually need to eat and you can do this thing called fasting and you can have higher fat diets. It's just like a whole paradigm shift. That was probably in like 2015 or so. So I just started experimenting with that world of like dropping down the high carb to more fat-based, experimented with intermittent fasting and still kind of do off and on now and then.

That kind of shifted my whole view. It's like, okay, it's not a one-size-fits-all approach to here to nutrition. But as I've gone further along, like I've dabbled with keto, I've dabbled with carnivore,

I've just never felt good on any of those diets and I didn't see them as long-term sustainable options for me, particularly if I want to be a human that likes to live and still go out and have fun. I found it really challenging to stick to those and I got really curious on like if I'm having a really high-fat diet Monday to Friday but then if I'm going out and I'm having –

a much higher carbohydrate. Actually, what's that doing to my metabolic efficiency for carbohydrates and fats? And it just kind of got me a bit like, oh, this is interesting. So from there, I'd say over the last three years, I've moved my approach much more to everything,

in balance and focusing on nutrient density versus kind of fad diets. And maybe that's a case of like you kind of grow with age and you become maybe it's just the level of maturity around food. But I just started to notice that like I'm 34 now and

Especially like my 31, I just started to feel like if I wasn't getting, if I wasn't eating my vegetables, if I wasn't getting those right nutrients, those micronutrients, which I didn't really know them at the time, what, just how deep micros go to actually optimizing our health. I just didn't feel good. So that's led me to this point now where I'm happy with it. It's like, okay, eat everything.

So it's carbs, it's fats, it's proteins, good quality nutrient-dense foods, minimal processed foods, the 80-20 rule, and optimizing my micros. And that's what I'm finding has been most helpful for me. Yeah, yeah. I can relate a lot to what you said there. Yeah, what about you? I reckon you've done a bit. Yeah.

I'm extreme, but I wouldn't say I'm like as extreme as like Brian Johnson, for example. Oh, man. Yes. Another podcast. Yeah. Separate, separate interview. Look, I've tried my fair share of like different macronutrient adjustments, like let's say I'll go on high fat, low carb, high carb, low fat, that sort of stuff. And to be fair, man, I've arrived into a pretty happy balance of like

I eat plenty of carbs. I have like probably 300 grams, 350 grams a day. I'm probably having like at least 80 grams of fats and I'm probably getting like 220 grams of protein. So I'm not under eating. I'm definitely eating a mixed, pretty balanced diet.

Look, people will say bad things about some of the foods that I eat. For example, I eat lots of oats, right? So you'll hear people say rich in phytic acid, problematic, you know, alarm bells. But I'm like, you know what? Well, I feel great on oats. Yeah.

Yeah, and that's like the key, isn't it? What do you feel you perform best on? Like I personally don't eat oats because I'd feel gluggy, but my wife, like she's French, she can eat all the carbs in the world and oats is her go-to. You give her a fatty piece of meat, like she slows right down, but she has more of like the probably easily digested foods. It just works. I'm not sure if you've been the same, mate, but I've just noticed with –

The popularity of particularly TikTok, I'd say over the last couple of years, I think the diet trends have just gone to a whole other level. It's so noisy. A lot of it is there's a lot of good out there, but it's been interesting to see people even within two years go in this circle of I'm so into this space and

And that's the only way to live. And then kind of coming back around within two years, you go, oh, no, now I'm back over here. So it's been fascinating to watch. And I won't necessarily name names, but it's just like I think we just have to keep coming back to, in my view, it's like eat real whole foods and then you play with the macros based on how you feel. That's my view. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's like you shift and manipulate macros depending upon physical activity output, right? Like on days where you train hard, you just need more carbs, very simply. Like you've just got to up your carbs if you can train legs. Like you're going to want to –

But even like there's a bit of a trend at the moment which I don't encourage or endorse but it's the raw meat sort of approach where they're just having like, have you seen that? Raw mincemeat. I've seen one girl on TikTok. Here's my day in the life as a raw meat-eating. Oh, man. Yeah, not a fan for the – yeah, I think –

A lot of my diet is actually probably based around the Mediterranean diet. Like there's a lot of foods in that diet that I think is undoubtedly beneficial for human health. And I mean, if you look up extra virgin olive oil, you'll see thousands, like literally thousands of studies looking at the beneficial nutrients and or like phytochemical compounds. But yeah,

So your diet, so pretty much in terms of physical activity, like what does that look like for you now? I've dropped my volume of work. Let me start again. It's all my go-to diet.

I enjoy is strength is focused and walking a lot. I probably average anywhere from 12 to 20,000 steps a day. I live down in Byron Bay on the beach to take the dog for a walk. I've got a walking treadmill that I work on. I just like to move as much as possible. But then in terms of workout, I like to do strength based exercises. So that's

a little bit from like a typical gym bro, you know, split days, but still enjoy that modality of training. Now, the last eight months I've been experimenting with a lower volume, higher intensity training and trying to work within that kind of peak strength output level and like

You know, when you're at the end of that, say if you're doing 10 reps, like that last eight to 10 reps, that's where you're at your most. Trying to do most of the session within that range and following, yeah, shifting the body to kind of get to that point. So whether it be like one-legged single pistol squats or so and like changing the weight and the movement for that. So yeah, mine is more,

higher intensity and high intensity on the days I do train and then have at least one, if not two to three days of rest in between. And that was quite different for me. I've always trained, yeah, most days, but I've just found that my stress levels are

And when I say stress, it wasn't like, oh my God, my life is so stressed. But I just felt I was putting a bit of extra stress in my body where I was fasting. I'd have coffee on an empty stomach. Then I'd train. I'd be walking 20,000 steps a day.

i just found like i just been trying to run the business i was on i was on fumes without kind of realizing so shifting back to like i'm going to put some space in between my workouts i'm going to not fast every day but maybe use it as more of a tool every second or third or fourth day i think that's been working really well for me really well

And what differences have you noticed in like body composition since doing that? Fascinatingly enough, it actually hasn't been much difference in body composition, but that's been really interesting for me because I've dropped my training volume down by like at least half. Like I've gone from training every day to every second, third day. And when I do train, instead of doing four sets of an exercise, it's one exercise.

all-out set, you know, following principles of, oh, who was that old school bodybuilder? Yes, and he used to clash with Arnold a lot back in the day. Dorian Yates was the more recent version, but he modeled his training off, anyway, I can't remember. But yeah, that one all-out set to max effort, and then that's it. Yeah.

per muscle group. So like a Monday, let's say if it was a Monday, it'd be chest and back, but that would be one or two warmup sets on chest and doing a bench, like a dumbbell bench. And then it would just be one all out set to failure. And that's it. And then that's it. And then back would be a couple of sets on chins, just warmup. And then one all out set to

and that's it and then maybe a row similar thing like one set so really much the time in the gym has gone down to 20 30 minutes per training session um yeah it's been fascinating so back to your point around like any body composition changes well not directly but i'm happy that i've managed to maintain body composition by dropping everything right back i just i just feel better

So you've been able to maintain body composition, having a sparing effect on the nervous system, which means you've got more mental capacity to then devote towards other things in life because life's not just all about training. You've hit the nail on the head. It's been amazing to get all that time back to go, oh, I can now, yeah, I'm busy with work or I can, yeah, go for a longer walk with the dog or go for the walk with the wife or whatever.

Yeah, it's been fascinating. Really fascinating. Again, kind of one of those moments so much like I went to with nutrition of, wow, this other world exists. That's kind of happened again, yeah, for training. I think I'm probably going to be following in your footsteps in probably the next year or so because I've

Like I know exactly what you're talking about. You get, it's very young, you know, yin and yang energy output. So that's a very, like, I'm also trying to, you know, build two companies at the same time doing consulting, you know, managing employees, like, and then I'm also trying to train every single day.

And then I'm also on my walking treadmill desk as well. So the output, the output's a shitload. And my, my girlfriend's like, you eat so much. And I'm like, because look how much I'm burning. Yeah. You need to, I'll be really curious to see, to see how you go with it. Cause what are you doing now with training?

Well, at the moment, I'm probably at the gym at least five to six days a week. And I'm doing... When I say volume, I'm talking like... When you said like one working set, I'm doing probably like eight to ten working sets per muscle group. And it's just... I think it's like... It is very lactate inducing. And it's like, you know, it gets...

It's CNS depleting. Particularly, I've been really enjoying training legs really, really hard because I do feel like I get a pretty amazing growth hormone, testosterone boost from that. I feel awesome. I don't know. There's a particular feeling I get from hitting legs. I think you can probably relate in the past when you've hit legs real hard.

But I think you're right, man. It's probably time for me to like just dial down the volume a little bit or reduce the frequency of sessions. Yeah. It'd be interesting to see how you go with it. It was definitely a transition for like I had to break through some paradigms and thinking I'm going to shrivel away to nothing. But this one, like my principles, it was mostly around like

Every session was trying to increase strength, whether it be in weight or rep range. So I actually started for the first time ever keeping a journal of my training so I could go back every session, which if it was chest one day, it wouldn't be for another seven to 10 days. So it actually was really helpful to go back and look at what was there. But then it gave me that, wow,

okay i'm gonna push it here because i'm not training chest again for another 10 days so this is this is it well this is this guy yeah that's that's been cool to have very interesting um matt what about in terms of like i mean you've been posting great content on social media what what what are you trying to create with with honor health like what what's how are you looking to evolve that incredible business that you built thanks man um when we first started it was

a lot more focused on let's create the best quality supplements we can with the minimal amount of additives the best quality active ingredients and find people who want to share that that position so it was mostly around like here's how to take a supplement here's the right type of supplement to take and a lot of the content if you go back in the early days was really around like supplement optimization for the people who probably were already in the market um

As we've gone and we've kind of matured as a business, we're in our third year now. So we're kind of past that like boggy startup phase of working out who we are and we're still figuring things out. But our mission is definitely jumped up to that other layer and is to come from the experiences of our customers to go, there's a real issue in our view of micronutrient deficiencies and

across the planet. And that's coming from not only the food we eat, whether it be more processed foods, whether it be nutrient depleted soils, our food isn't grown as nutritiously, or it's our lifestyle is actually draining and depleting our bodies of micronutrients, which that is a point that I never really understood until I started to go deep into the research and kind of looking at my training to go, wow,

Every time I contract a muscle, I'm using calcium. Every time I relax, I'm using magnesium. Every time I'm stressed, if I'm at work or anything, like my body is burning, it uses these nutrients.

So those two factors of like poor food quality or poor food choices and just our way of living, and I'll kind of wrap that into like, I don't know, I call it like this industrialized way of living, is depleting our bodies of key vitamins and minerals. And that is holding us back from being the best version of ourselves. So our mission is more evolving and growing to be like our goal is to help our customers and the broader public grow

start to hit 100% of their nutrient needs or as close to every single day. And our promise off the back of that is you can actually start to feel and function at your best. And that's come, again, from our customers where a simple magnesium supplement is bringing people off sleeping tablets, bringing people off antidepressants, their words, not my words, you've changed my life by taking magnesium.

That blew my mind, which I didn't expect when we first started the business. And that learning more about that, it was like, okay, we started to speak to some customers. Well, what did their diets look like? And you began to learn it wasn't very good. And I'm not putting fault on them because it can be hard to eat good, nutritious food all the time. But it was just like I got...

I've always been one of those guys where I like to see people, including myself, you live up to your potential. And to me, it was a bit heartbreaking where you can see someone, and I've got family members, have gone through this where they're just kind of ticking along. And you look at their diet choices and their lifestyle choices, and they're just like here. And to me, that's a bit tragic because it's wasted potential. So I like the idea of

How can we help people start to live to their potential? I know that's way out there words, but optimize that through nutrition. Matt, what about in terms of iron deficiency? This is something I want to bring up because you've studied, you understand nutrition very well, you understand vitamins very well.

I mean, from what I understand, iron deficiency, I think it affects over a billion people worldwide. It's actually the number one deficiency worldwide, I believe. Yeah, because obviously they're factoring in countries that have limited availability of food and things like that.

But are you seeing it as a problem in Western world, like even in Australia, even in individuals who are eating meat? Like what's happening there, do you think? I'm not seeing anything out of the ordinary. I can't say we've been looking for anything out of the ordinary, but based on...

whether it be customers coming to us for our... We have an iron bisglycinate supplement or iron glycinate. It's actually generally probably one of our lower selling products. I'm not hearing much, but that's not to say it isn't an issue and going back to the products a bit where in Australia, you've got over-the-counter iron supplements than you have behind the counter. So I think...

There is definitely a big market of the behind the counter to specifically treat iron deficiency, which we can't say those words as a TGA regulated supplement brand. What are you hearing out there with it?

Well, the thing is I'm seeing a number of clients who will like, obviously the first thing I get them to do is blood work and we get them to do a full iron studies panel. So it's like iron transfer and transfer and saturation and ferritin. And even in guys that are like, they're eating a lot of red meat, they're still like, I'm seeing their iron panel on there. Their iron level is like maybe like 10, like 11, 12 and their ferritin is like less than 100. Yeah.

And I'm like, what's going on here? And it's like obviously it's not a matter of they're not eating these iron-rich foods because they clearly are, but it's like an absorption, you know, a stomach acid issue, like low stomach acid. They've got like parasites or they're lacking the cofactors, maybe they're low in vitamin C or even copper. Are you seeing any correlations with saying –

I don't want to use the word patient, but the person you're working with having a high other mineral level

I have seen, yeah, those that are overdoing zinc can end up with low iron. I've seen that in some cases. And then I've also seen guys who, I mean, I did this to myself, man. I accidentally got myself anemic by donating too much blood. The downsides of optimization. Yeah. Or being a good human. I know. Yeah. And how did you treat that?

Well, if I knew about another nutrient, lactoferrin, are you familiar with lactoferrin? I've heard a little bit, but not much. Yeah. If I knew about lactoferrin earlier on, I would have definitely taken that and just loaded up on lactoferrin because it helps with iron absorption and utilization, which is found in colostrum. It's like one of the active ingredients. Well, it's an immune boosting like glycoprotein that's found in colostrum. Okay.

Like if I knew about that, I would have used that. But at the time, I actually, I was using an iron supplement to replenish pretty rapidly. It was just your Moltofer. You might be familiar with that brand. Iron polydextrose or something like that. You might know the form. It got me back to where I needed to be. But now it's like I just literally got my blood work back yesterday. I was actually kind of shocked to see how high my ferritin was.

My ferritin was sitting at like 290, which is the highest I've ever seen it from probably using lactoferrin. Yeah. And have you been doing anything else in your protocol to support? Not really. I mean, I do take regular liver supplements like Tutka, big fan of Tutka. I pulled back on the artichoke extract. I was really big on the artichoke extract bandwagon for a while. Interesting.

I felt like it gave me really good mental clarity, surprisingly, even though it's not really marketed as like a nootropic. But that's probably because it's unlocking. Bile flow and liver health can influence brain health. And I'm sure you can understand that. Like the more toxic your liver, you're just not going to be as sharp mentally as well. Yeah. Everything's connected, right? Everything's connected. I think this is where it can get a bit tricky sometimes with

particularly with like vitamins and mineral supplements or any herbs, it's like often they'll be positioned as if you're deficient in this, it will have this direct impact. But it could go way beyond like,

Just because you're deficient in magnesium and you start taking magnesium doesn't mean your sleep is going to miraculously improve. Like B6 can, well, the range of B vitamins can impact sleep. Zinc can impact sleep. It's really going to, you've got to kind of go on a journey to understand, well, what does your body need and then start optimizing to that rather than just like I've heard someone take this and I'll do the same because we're all just so individual, so individual. Yeah.

What do you think is the future of supplementation? Like what direction do you think that's going to be heading in? Personalised optimisation I think is going to be probably the underpinning to it. In terms of the delivery mechanisms, like I could definitely imagine that space will open up even more. Personally, I would like to probably wait and see if

to at least there's some evidence to support efficacy of different ways of taking supplements. But I think that personalization piece, yeah, that's an important piece. We're finding that a lot with our customer base of trying to really support people of, yeah, if you're not going to go to a blood test, which I understand most people don't do, and to be honest, blood tests for vitamin and mineral levels are not always the best because they're

or calcium is mostly stored in the tissues or cells. So ideally doing like a red blood cell test, which is harder to do versus a simple blood test. Anything around like understanding what you're putting in your body through the food you're eating or blood tests or just going more specific, I think is probably where we'll all start. Like maybe there's a future where

I don't know, you wake up in the day and you've got a continual vitamin and mineral monitor in you and then you take exactly what you need. I'm not sure. You know, I'm so glad you brought that up because I was literally yesterday recorded a podcast with another guy who's all about hormone optimization. And we're talking about, you know, the CGM, continuous glucose monitor, which is a groundbreaking revolutionary health tech device that I'm a big believer in. And I think it's incredible that we even have that.

And I was like, man, why is there not a continuous testosterone monitor? 100%. How good would that be? Honestly. So guys can like run so many different experiments. They can see what happens if they, you know, do a long run versus doing a weight session versus if they have poor night's sleep, if they take zinc, if they take magnesium. Yeah.

Like how cool would that be? That would be so cool. And that's, I was going to ask you about that because you're, from what I see you put out online, like you're going after that space pretty heavily. Yeah, that's like majority of the guys that I work with are guys that are wanting to optimize testosterone without going onto TRT. So they're guys that are, they don't want to have to inject every single week. They want to optimize naturally. So I've basically been,

Built out, I would say one of the most comprehensive natural testosterone optimization courses on the internet. That's like trtfree.com. I'll have to send it over to you. I'll be buying that. But yeah, there's definitely, it's an exciting space. I think you're right. The personalization route where like people are tracking things all the time now, right? People are tracking sleep, they're tracking heart rate,

They're doing Strava runs. They're doing all sorts of things. I think the ability to track hormones, that's going to be awesome, man. Yeah, I could definitely see that being the next frontier. How that would be done would be interesting. I still also get very curious on like what we're talking about here is the small part of the market that I have a lot of curiosity of this and like that's great, but it's also there are a lot of people who just –

They're not even at the starting line yet. And I think there's definitely still places to support that part of the market as well. And that's going to come through the basics, good quality whole foods, supplement when necessary, train, get outside, move, just the basics. But yeah, I do get...

As much as I love that whole space of future human optimization, I do kind of keep coming, bring myself back every now and then and go, okay, we'll come back here because, yeah, that's cool. But what about the people who actually just need a start?

Yeah, I would say it's probably a pretty big difference between like the audiences that we've both built. Like I'm very – I've niched down into like a hyper-analytical audience. Brian Johnson. Yeah, like just inquisitive, curious, but they're also like they're sick of the mainstream thing and they want to like dive a bit deeper. But yeah, I fully get you, man. I fully –

see how there's like the benefit for both. Yeah. Both. And yeah, like if you could, like if those two worlds could get closer together, because I think if we can, I know when I've bought the aura ring or the Garmin or just started getting some simple data points, um,

made me very quickly go huh that's why i'm feeling the way i am or maybe i should not train as much today because my heart rate variability was off like it's those little things that yeah i think that can definitely help you know not only the people want to be the elite and the top of the top but also there's people who just kind of what's going on with me why aren't i feeling as good as i could hmm

In terms of your product catalog, you've got about how many, like maybe 12? No, I think we've got seven, I believe. What was the very first one that you released? It started with a magnesium glycinate and a vitamin D paired with MCT. And then we grew just one by one after that. So it was zinc next. Then it was a vitamin K2 next.

natural vitamin C from acerola cherry, calcium with K2, and then we're working on a whole food B complex, which I'm really excited for.

and then likely have a prebiotic, probiotic, symbiotic to support gut health. Mostly like our sandpit where we're playing is the essential nutrients, so vitamins and minerals, but that gut health piece plays such a key role in optimizing nutrient absorption, so like some type of baseline gut health product.

um and then we'll probably stop we'll stop there for a bit in terms of the products we are working on a tool we're calling it the deficiency tracker at the moment which will be a food based input where you would describe your day of eating and using some ai capabilities we'll be able to deliver what the nutrient content of those foods you're eating with some lifestyle factors again it's not like

going to be as accurate as going and getting a red blood cell test, but at least starts to give some direction as to, okay, what might I need to supplement for that gap that I'm not hitting through food? So that's where we're kind of staying at the moment. How did you go in terms of like the product pipeline, the development phase? Like were you the guy that basically was just like,

mapping it all out saying this is going to be the second one, this is going to be the third product. Yeah, correct, correct. Again, I kind of started doing it just to scratch my own itch and as more, as the business grew and we could get some bit more cash flow, then you do the next product because we're all, I funded it myself so there's no outside capital. So we could only grow as quickly as we could start to, yeah,

bring on new customers. Yeah, so I just kept building the products that I wanted mostly for myself and that may seem a bit selfish, but it was more like if I'm number one customer, I think it's really authentic and I can share that story to the broader marketplace, particularly on content. So yeah, it's just kind of keep adding on based on what we needed.

Yeah, I'm thinking about it. The reason why I ask you is because like I was saying before, I only just released my own product like four or five months ago. Can you tell me again, how do you say that active ingredient because it's new? Oh, catwaba. Catwaba. Yeah. I'll just tell people to spell it like C-A-T and then W-A. Catwaba. Catwaba. Yeah.

But that like, when I think about that, I'm like, all right, so I was sort of saying to you before that it satisfies and solves many of the problems that people are complaining about, which is like lack of motivation, the typical low dopamine symptoms, or like, you know, low mood, sort of low libido, that sort of front. But I'm thinking like the evolution of my brand, it's, I want my, I do want my audience to also tell me what they want.

Like, what do they want as the second product? But also I want to be unique and innovative as well. Like I want to release something unique or something cool. That's like, so I'm sort of at that point now where I'm like, I'm not sure how to pivot. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And something that's still within that makes sense for the brand that you're building. Exactly. Yeah. It,

it most certainly won't be a generic like simple, you know, magnesium or a vitamin because, yeah, I mean, there's great brands like yourself that are already doing that, you know. I'll put you up there with like Thorne, you know, like Now Foods. Kind words, man. I appreciate that. Yeah. So I think it's an exciting space to be in and, yeah, I'm looking forward to –

to seeing more of your content, man, we'll have to like do some sort of collaboration. Definitely. Reels in the future. Definitely. But what's, is Instagram the main platform where my audience can connect with you? Instagram would be the main. It's most, it's most of the content is directly at Honor Health, H-O-N-O-U-R, Health. We, across TikTok. TikTok's actually our main, we have the most followers on TikTok, but as you know, on that game, it's wild, wild west, TikTok. Yeah.

Yes, Instagram, TikTok. I do a little bit on my personal brand on LinkedIn, but it's just the same content. Like as you guys will see, Honor Health, it's my face on every single piece of content because I'm just trying to educate the market in terms of how to optimize their essential nutrients and the supplements they're taking. So, yeah, we're not kind of following a traditional path of here's a photo of our product. It's more let's educate as much as possible. So, yeah, Honor Health is the main.

Yeah, I'll make sure to leave that linked in the podcast show notes for those listening in. But otherwise, yeah, Matty, thank you so much for featuring and coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. It's been an awesome pleasure. Appreciate it.

Awesome. Awesome. And that wraps up another episode of the Boost Your Biology podcast. If you did enjoy this episode, please leave a five-star review. It does help to increase its search in the algorithm. That's it for me today, guys. I look forward to seeing you in the next podcast.

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