314. Top Supplement Mistakes, Science & Research With Dr Tyler Panzner
01:01:49 Share

Optimize your nutrition this year with Factor, America's number one ready-to-eat meal service. Factor's fresh, never-frozen meals are dietitian-approved, ready to eat in just two minutes. Choose from 40 weekly options across eight dietary preferences like Calorie Smart, Protein Plus, and Keto. Eat smarter at factormeals.com slash listen50 and use code listen50 for 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. factormeals.com slash listen50. Code listen50.

Get glasses made from the good stuff.

Stop by a Warby Parker store near you. My husband and I recently realized that neither of us were getting the sleep we deserved. So we sat down and talked about our ideal beds. For him, soft as feathers. For me, firm as a plank. This would be a huge issue if it weren't for the Sleep Number smart bed.

Thankfully, with our new Sleep Number smart bed, we can each dial in our desired sleep number settings to our ideal comfort and finally get the sleep we deserve. Plus, the Climate Series feature makes sure our bed stays nice and cool through the warm summer months. Why choose a Sleep Number smart bed?

So you can choose your ideal comfort on either side. And now it's the Sleep Number Everything Smart Bed Sale. Every smart bed and base are on sale during our Memorial Day event. Up to 50% off, limited time, exclusively at a Sleep Number store near you. See store or sleepnumber.com for details.

The information provided in this podcast episode is for entertainment purposes and is not medical advice. If you have any questions about your health, contact a medical professional. This content is strictly the opinions of Lucas Owen and is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The references, claims, and scientific information linked to any products are

are only applicable to those listeners who are based in the US. If you are outside the US, this information does not apply to you. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice or treatment from a personal physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult with their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions.

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.

What is up, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to the Boost Your Biology podcast. Today, I'm joined in with a special guest who I've been following his work for quite some time now, who has a very similar brain to mine in some regards. We both like to be very critical about different ingredients. We love learning about pharmacology.

Joining me in the studio today, we have Dr. Tyler Panzner. Tyler, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me on. And I feel like this conversation has been a long time coming. So super excited to nerd out and dig in. Man, how did you...

find yourself doing what you're doing today? I know you've got an interesting background, but did you always foresee yourself as someone who is going to be working closely, you know, building out supplement protocols, understanding genetic analysis, and that sort of stuff? Like, how did you get into it? Yeah, so I've always, as long as I can remember, been interested in supplements. You know, I remember, you know, early college days, I was

cooking up my own pre-workout powders, selling sketchy bags of powder, you know, at the gym, this and that. Right. And it just always fascinated me, you know, oh, the reason why I had this euphoria after pre-workout, it's not the caffeine, it's the L-tyrosine, right? Or it's this thing or that thing. And that really always interested me. So, yeah,

I had a feeling I would be doing something with supplements, but my PhD training, I did a lot of neuropharmacology training. So neural stem cells, neurodegeneration, anxiety research, mood disorders. I ended up pivoting and did my thesis work on breast cancer, breast cancer metastasis. And my real interest in genetics started when I got my 23andMe done. This was ages ago when it first started becoming a thing.

And very early days, they were saying, you know, life-changing information. I got it done. And the reports were more likely to think cilantro tastes like soap or more likely for your pee to smell like asparagus when you eat it. You know, that's...

Well, they're bankrupt now, but the reports did get better over time. But I decided to look at the raw data, and that's when I figured out about some of my mutations regarding catecholamines. I'm a very slow metabolizer of them. MAO, COMT genes.

And figuring out how to support those genes, things like SAMe, lithium orotate, magnesium, really changed my life a lot. And I was able to really overcome a lot of my own health issues. And while I've never been seriously chronically ill, I had a lot of things that I like to say aren't life-threatening, but they're definitely life-impacting. I think that's a big distinction, especially in the kind of work that we both do. It's not just this, it could end your life, but it can really impact your human experience

of life. So that's what got me interested in the genetics. I started doing that with friends and family, not as a business, just on the side while I'm doing my PhD and started really helping people.

And I worked as a clinical test analyst at an oncology company for personalized medicine. After I saw how much that was helping people, I'm like, okay, I'm going to pivot from making immunotherapy drugs for cancer research. I'm going to pivot into the personalized medicine. I think it's really the future of everything. And I started seeing clients professionally as a business. And I'll be honest with you, I was a little...

Little worried, you know,

My mom will always say I make her feel better, right? Or my friends, you know, like back when I was getting started, they have a bias, right? But how much is this going to help somebody that, you know, paid me some money and has skin in the game, right? So I think I was doing literally, I think $50 starting out, just, you know, no track record, just any little transaction just to someone have skin in the game. And yeah, I mean, it really just snowballed from there, just...

piecing these things together and really focusing on the nuance can really uncover a lot for people, especially when they've tried a lot of the conventional medicine or alternative medicine, holistic medicine. Those protocols and things can help a lot of people, but a

But a lot of other people could kind of fall through the cracks. So fast forward now, it's been two and a half years now, worked with over 700 people. And yeah, it's been really life changing. And yeah, really excited to see not just where I go, but where the field of genetics goes. I think with the advent of AI and all these things, it's only going to get more dialed in.

Amazing, man. You mentioned the 23andMe. That's funny because I do remember when that first came out, I jumped onto it right away and it spat out a lot of just interesting data, but it wasn't necessarily that useful and practical. Not super actionable. Exactly. So over time, obviously there's been a lot better platforms popping up. SelfDecode has optimized theirs to a T, I think. Do you want to sort of talk about

how they've evolved in terms of what they offer people in terms of building out personalized protocols. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, so I utilize Self2Code as the testing platform that I utilize. But more on that in a second. But yeah, so the testing's really evolved a lot

utilizing more polygenic risk scoring. So poly meaning multiple, genic meaning genes. And a lot of, I'm gonna be honest, the vast majority of these genetic companies, I think are pretty much garbage. You know, they're saying they're checking a dozen genes, a hundred genes, or, you know, 50 mutations or even 200 mutations,

One gene can be mutated in tens of thousands of areas. Now, do we know what every single one of those mutations does? Not yet. But I'll give you an example. Someone can come to me with a genetic test and they say, oh my God, I'm homozygous, meaning they got one copy from mom, one copy from dad. So they have two out of two mutations. They're freaking out. This is so bad. I need so much of that supplement or nutrient.

Well, hold on a second. We do more comprehensive testing. And let's just say instead of testing two mutations, I test 20 in that same gene. Now, they only saw two out of two, right? They only tested for two on the test and they had both of them. They think it's horrible. Well, what if out of those 20 mutations, the average person has four or five? And what if it turns out you actually have two out of the 20? So you see how that perspective, two out of two, 100%,

versus two out of 20, 10% of that mutation capability, right? Or maybe you end up having 15, right? So it's not just if you have a genetic mutation, it's how many you have, because these are additive and they stack on top of each other. A lot of people talk about the MTHFR mutation, right? I'm honestly kind of sick of hearing about it because it's not all that matters, right? Everyone thinks just gobble up methylfolate, methyl vitamins, but...

Does it work 80% as well? Or does it work 20% as well? How many mutations stack up? So that's one of the main changes that I've seen. That's why I love utilizing self-decode because like I believe for their DHEA report, they look at 48,000 SNPs or mutations just for DHEA production capabilities. With all that data, it's really highly, highly accurate when you compare it to blood work or something like a Dutch test.

So mentioning going back to the methylfolate, obviously that's received a lot of spotlight and attention. The way that I understand it, man, is like, all right, methylfolate, this MTHFR polymorphism can occur in a subset of the population. It's not in everyone, but there's some people who struggle to convert folic acid into folate.

Therefore, if somebody gets that information, they've determined through a genetic analysis that they have an issue with that enzyme, ultimately, the next step following on from that is, okay, let's just determine the dosage of the methylfolate that you should be taking. What have you seen there in terms of like,

prescribing like the dosages, is it range dramatically or we're talking like only a few hundred micrograms? Yeah. You know, it's really wild. I mean, most of these supplements I see are crazy.

crazy overdosed. I know Deplin is a prescription methylfolate. In the US, they use for depression. It's 15 milligrams of methylfolate. Like mind-blowing. That's like a month's supply. Exactly. And usually, I'm used to seeing... If people do use methylfolate, I'll usually start...

you know, maybe around 300 micrograms, rarely ever more than one milligram. And we also need to look at too, how much are you consuming through food too, right? If you're not getting the dark leafy greens, right? The greens have the methylfolate, right? So if you're not consuming a lot of those, that could also affect how much you need. So I really like utilizing folinic acid. So that is a methyl-free form of folate, right?

that does, our body does naturally create. There've actually been some studies that say people with the MTHFR mutation, the 677 mutation, their homocysteine goes down more

from folinic acid versus methylfolate. So a lot of people- That folinic acid is not what they fortify foods with, right? No. So that's the folic acid. Yeah. So you have- Yeah. You have- Exactly. You have the folic acid that you really want to steer clear of because the body can have a harder time converting that. It could cause certain issues. The folinic acid-

can be really awesome because another thing to take into account for people, what does methylation do? It helps us make neurotransmitters. It also helps us break them down, histamine, glutathione production, a lot of great aspects, but it also helps us turn dopamine into adrenaline. So that methylation that occurs. So for people like me, I'm really sensitive, slow catecholamine breakdown.

I see so many people, they touch any methylfolate. They go anywhere near it. They're way overstimulated, irritable, not sleeping as well. And the crazy part is whether it's a naturopath or a health coach or even an MD or a DO, right? They just say, oh, take more. You're detoxing.

You're not detoxing. You're over-methylating. And that's where I see that phalenic acid. That's what I take each day. I have two MTHFR mutations. And that's what I take each day. I think around 300 micrograms, so pretty low dose. You also got to remember, are you chronically ill? Are you really burdening the methylation system or not? I have clean water. I have air filters, all these things. So there's less burden on that enzyme.

What about if somebody's consuming a lot of like organ meats, like liver, beef liver, chicken liver, I'd imagine that's rich in which form? The fault, the activated form? Yeah. So that's really rich in the methyl B12 specifically. So usually the meats will have more of the B12, the folates more of the vegetables. And yeah, that's something you could see as well. And

I mean, you know, between liver King, Paul Saladino liver is like, everyone thinks it's the best thing ever. And it is, I mean, I'm sure you'll agree an amazing nutrient powerhouse, but you're right. I see people have issues where they can over-methylate from it. They can have a sulfite overload. Liver's very rich in sulfur, right? That's where we have all the glutathione and all these things. Um, copper issues I've seen in some people, um,

And it just depends on the individual, right? But yeah, the methylfolate, methyl B12, you know, I think that it's,

It's sad that this sensationalized information is what spreads like wildfire. You know, on one end, I'm glad certain people have brought genetics, MTHFR to the limelight. But at the same point, you know, they're not real experts in these things. They don't add that level of nuance. And I see a lot of people say methyl B vitamins are the one thing everyone should take. And I'm like, there's a lot of people that have sensitive nervous systems. You want to be very mindful. Yeah.

That's me, man. When I first tried a methyl, I just went down the route. I'm like, you know what? Get my hands on it. Give it a shot. Five years ago, had little knowledge about supplements. I was like, give it a shot. And I felt over-methylated within two days. And I was like, no, I can't handle it. It's too stimulating. I felt just sleep was disrupted. And that's when I knew I'm like, okay, maybe I do gobble it up pretty strongly. But then when I tried...

I had this weird experiment that I've sort of shared, which I did trimethylglycine before bedtime, and it would create this insane, like amazing snapback energy effect when I wake up.

And I was trying to sort of understand why that was the case. I couldn't quite figure it out. So you're saying you would go to bed fine, sleep okay, but then wake up out of bed ready to crush it. Crushing it, like amazing. I felt so good. I might have had high homocysteine at the time. I didn't do blood work, but I probably, it might have been just that factor or it could be something else. It could be, you know. Exactly.

That brings up a good point too. There's a lot of these methyl donors, right? It's not just methyl folate or methyl B12. I mean, trimethylglycine is great or I'm sensitive to these methyl groups. Even glycine helps lower homocysteine, not as strongly as a trimethylglycine, right? There's not three methyl groups on it, but I'm a huge fan of glycine. I take probably

six to eight grams a day each evening. I respond really, really well to that. I don't absorb it as well genetically and really do really well on that one there. But, you know, it's all about trying to figure out which methyl groups you actually need because all of these methylation products, they're made by genes and

I don't think MTHFR is more important than any other methylation gene. It's just by far the most studied. And people that don't really know scientific literature, they think just because it's the most studied, it's the most important. But you know this, how slow research can be with things. And there is data coming out about these other genes, like these MAT1A, MAT1B genes, some of these other methyltransferase enzymes that they're mutated.

you see a lot of the same clinical effects, drawbacks as MTHFR, except they don't require methylfolate. They require more S-adenosylmethionine, more SAMe. So which one do you need to plug in for yourself, right? But hey, everyone wants to just load up on the prenatal with three milligrams of methylfolate or the Deplin, or they're getting IVs of methyl B12. And it's just crazy where the space has gone.

Yeah. The IV, the IV methyl B12, I get annoyed because whenever I go in to get like IV, sometimes I just want pure IV vitamin C. Don't give me anything else. Sometimes they'll just whack in some like methyl B vitamins. And I'm like, no, I don't want these. I know what they can do. You've probably seen that as well. Like they, they, they just want to throw in the B vitamins. You're like, no, that's fine. You know, it's not going to impact you, but man, it, it does. It does for me. Um,

And if you're sensitive, it can. Well, and that's the thing I'm wondering too, you know, when I hear from clients, you know, or even people get a, you know, like glutathione IVs, right? Or NAC IVs and...

Again, coming back to the sulfur sensitivity, right? Certain people have a very hard time dealing with the sulfites. Me personally, if I go near any B12, NAC or glutathione or alpha lipoic acid, I'll feel my nervous system get activated. I may get a bit of brain fog or a headache. Those sulfites, if you can't process them,

they activate histamine signaling. They activate glutamate signaling. So revving up the brain had some clients, their skin is like peeling off from these glutathione IVs. And they always say, Oh, the phlebotomist or whoever administered it says, Oh, we've never seen that before. And I can't help but think,

that has to be a lie. Like there's no way that every time I hear about someone having a horrible effect, you were always the first one, right? And this is where that hyper-personalization comes into play, but you got to balance that in the real life as well, right? Because not everyone's going to do genetic tests to figure these things out, but I think educating, you know, or throw some molybdenum or molybdenum, however you want to say it in with some of that, some of these sulfur compounds to help you process them better. Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Let's go back to, I mean, glutathione. A lot of my audience is probably using glutathione. They've probably got it in their pantry. You've probably got it. I don't know. You might have it as like a backup thing just in case. I have some that someone sent me. I haven't touched it in a while, but yeah. Yeah. Happy to elaborate on that more, you know.

So we're told to eat these green vegetables, these cruciferous vegetables because they're rich in sulfur, right? And glutathione, we need sulfur to make glutathione, the cysteine amino acids that we ingest, the taurine, they have this sulfur. Now, the sulfur itself isn't bad. We need to convert it into sulfites. Sulfites are highly reactive and toxic for the body, right?

But then ironically enough, we have to make sulfites to then make sulfate. Sulfate is what is required for sulfation in the liver. Phase two detoxification, we need that sulfate. So what I mentioned before is personally, I take a lot of people off of glutathione and off of NAC and they end up feeling a lot better because you're having all this sulfur. If you can't break down the sulfites, it can overwhelm the system.

But imagine someone's eating a bunch of cruciferous vegetables. They're having a lot of broccoli, a lot of garlic, a lot of onions. That's a lot of sulfur. Then they have a pure glutathione supplement every morning. It can really overwhelm the system, especially if you're someone with mutations in that sulfite breakdown. So if any of you guys are listening here and

you feel maybe not anxious, but a little activated overstimulated. You don't know why you get weird feelings of brain fog or, and they can be minor headaches. These may not be major, major symptoms, but,

and you're taking NAC or glutathione for an extended period of time, I would try removing it to see how you feel. I see a lot of people end up feeling better, at least the people that I work with. I like to call it functional medicine candy. People love just throwing that stuff at everything. Not that it's not beneficial, right? But we just need to be mindful of the potential risks of these things as well.

What would you say are the common supplement mistakes that you see people making when you're working with clients? Is it that they're throwing too much all at once? They're not taking an objective approach. What are some of the common mistakes you see people making? Yeah, one of the most common mistakes I see are leading to overstimulation for people. So a couple of different ways. Some of it could be that sulfur overload, as I mentioned.

Um, another one is usage of MAO or COMT inhibitors. So for you guys listening, these are the two genes that break down neurotransmitters in our brains. I have mutations in both of those, so I break them down a lot slower. So that's more excitable. It's protective against depression, but more prone to overthinking anxiety for better or worse. I can't shut the brain off, right? It's, it's hard to dial that back at times, but, um,

a lot of supplements, quercetin, rutin. Actually, every polyphenol actually is an MAO inhibitor and a COMT inhibitor. People aren't aware of this, and it doesn't mean that I don't avoid polyphenols in my diet, right? They're very good for us, but taking these concentrated extracts, you're taking a quercetin for your histamine, methylene blue, rhodiola rosea, berberine, fenugreek,

I'm trying to think of some skullcap resveratrol. Yeah, resveratrol as well. Trying to get on the top of my head. There's like dozens and dozens and dozens of them. And this is the issue I see people make. They think they're taking resveratrol for mitochondrial health, which it is helping with. Oh, curcumin as well. They're taking curcumin for their inflammation. The curcumin is formulated with piperine to help with absorption.

Piperine is another MAOI. And then they're taking rhodiola rosea for an adaptogen. And then they're taking methylene blue for their cognitive health. They're taking five MAOIs all together. And then they're like, oh, I got to go on Xanax. I'm so anxious. And I'm like, you're on five things that raise adrenaline. But the problem is people don't know this. And I think a big problem with this is, I mean, think about this.

When we read supplement studies, it's one supplement, one variable, right? And we see how it affects things. So I'll make content around curcumin is also an iron chelator. I'll make content about how I've seen – I think you share this as well. You mentioned that as well. It can cause anemia, but then sometimes I'll get pushback from people. Where does it say that in the literature? Well, it depends on the person that's taking it.

It depends on the form that you're taking. Have you ever experimented with any of like the other, like the long Vita curcumin or like the curcumin green, some of those modified forms? Yeah. So these particular forms, I've got a lot of clients come to me and they're oftentimes they've either used it for a long period of time. It's usually like two to three months. And their iron, like many, many times I've seen their iron panel look really pretty, pretty bad, man. I'm like...

I'm asking them like how often are you eating red meat? Some of them are like, yeah, I eat red meat four or five times a week. And then I'm asking them like, okay, so how long have you been on the curcumin? They're like, I've been on it for months. And they're wondering why they're so fatigued. Like they've literally chelated like a lot of iron from their body. They wouldn't have known that when they started. Copper too. Yeah, copper too. Copper too. I didn't even know it had that effect on copper either. Yeah. And you know, it's like...

I tried the long Vita curcumin. I've, I've done a curcumin pipe brain before and I felt good on that. I tried the long Vita curcumin. They say it's, I don't know, whatever mumbo jumbo percent better to the brain, right? We think more bioavailability, the better. So I tried it and I had like probably a 17 hour like panic attack. Like I was so overstimulated because here's the thing. You're going to get more into the brain.

But you don't get to choose which mechanism of that supplement or nutrient you boost the absorption of, right? Yes, I'm going to get 5,000% more anti-inflammatory effects. I'm also going to get 5,000% more MAO inhibiting effects, right? So I was...

just losing my marble. I was like chugging CBD, do whatever I could just to try and like quiet myself down. And I was like, okay, never again. And when you, when you get in that, like the panic, it's, would you say it's like, um, your environment is the exact same, right? But it's like internally you're, you've got like this impending doom. Exactly. On edge feeling like you just scattered. Yeah.

Yeah, I would say depending doom is a good way to put it. And I can nowadays I'm so in tune with myself. And now that I've learned about more about the supplement pharmacology, I can feel that within an hour or so. So like if I could tell I have to call it something else is lurking in the waters, right? Like we're very in tune with our baseline brain chemistry. And I could tell very quickly that.

I don't know whether I took something from someone else or whatever it may be, or I, you know, like, like today I took 2.5 milligrams of piperine, quarter of a tablet, low dose, because a little bit of MAO inhibition, I feel good on it. Right. We're also raising serotonin alongside it. So it could feel good, but yeah,

Being mindful of that, I kind of felt that I'm like, okay, I was doing what, like one or so milligram. I did two and a half, didn't sleep too great last night. And I ended up taking some lithium orotate an hour or so ago to kind of help speed up the MAO to kind of bring it down a little bit. So I could feel these things very, very quickly and quickly.

A lot of people can feel it, but they don't know what it is. So imagine if you didn't know what we know. You think you might be dying. You're like, why am I so anxious? You start reading too far into it, right? In reality, it's just the pill you took this morning. And also with black pepper, it does have the property of inhibiting FAAH. Oh, the cannabinoid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that actually.

Interesting. It also inhibits the breakdown of anandamide as well. So that's why a lot of those CBD companies are now using

piperine as part of their like their formulation that's interesting i didn't know it blocked fah i do i do know it blocks the sip enzymes the cytochrome enzymes that are responsible for um thc breakdown so like you know when i first figured that out many many years ago i'm like oh all right let me try an edible with piperine and i'm like oh boy i am like

absolutely on Mars right now and learn that real quick. You don't necessarily want to mess with that because then the edible lasts even longer into the next day or whatever, right? So that was a mistake I didn't make twice. Did you ever get the, when you first tried psilocybin, did you get that coming up effect of like the impending doom at all? Like you felt a bit on edge or did you ever? I didn't get impending doom from it. I do yawn a bit from it. Yeah.

Honestly, psilocybin for me, it's, it really shuts off my brain, which, you know, some people that know me will say, good Tyler, you need that sometimes. Right. But like, I'm sitting there and I'm like, you know, you know, I've had a lot of these experiences and, you know,

A lot of the thoughts that'll come up are thoughts I've already worked through, if that makes sense. But like, it's like that John Travolta meme. You're like looking around like, okay, there's nothing going on here. Like, I'm just kind of like, I like thinking about stuff, right? That's interesting. So you're saying you got that just on the come up, not throughout the active duration. Well, it's probably a little bit different sort of feeling. For me, it was like sensory inputs, external environment was overwhelming. So it was like,

Were you in like a loud area, like a concert or something? Man, I was so dumb. The first time I tried it. Let me hear it. I actually was in my lounge room and sometimes I put on TV like natural disasters and I like to watch videos of like tornadoes and like tsunamis.

And it was not the right thing to put on because I was like really overwhelmed by, I felt like I was there and I was watching it and I was just, it just wasn't the right thing. Throw on some like David Attenborough nature stuff, right? Like you went the other extreme there. Yeah, exactly. So now I wonder for you, so I wonder, was it,

the pharmacology or was it the environment with that? Or have you had that multiple times, that experience? Well, then also during that, I had a friend call me to sort of just be there with me on the phone. But even what he was explaining to me on the phone about what somebody else was going through, it wasn't a great experience. It was just talking about something negative that was happening with her job or something. I was also absorbing it and I was really feeling it. I'm like, damn. Yeah.

Like this is overwhelming. Yeah. You're not helping me, bro. I called you as a lifeline, right? I know. But I think that whole space of like you mentioned the lithium. That's the one supplement that I've heard nothing but good things about. But I personally have never... Do you remember the first time you tried lithium? Yeah. Very vivid because it was truly life-changing for me. So this was...

I would say under two years ago, maybe a little over a year ago, a year, year and a half ago, maybe. This was a period of time I was, you know, launching my first, you know, 12 week, you know, course program, life course, you know, a lot of that pressure. I was waking up each morning,

like right out of bed, heart pounding, just like overwhelmed. Like I have so much to do. What if I don't get it all done today? Like that was, it was probably around a week or so straight of that. Now I'm prone to stress and overthinking, but for me, I don't wake up in a panic like that, right? It's usually triggers throughout the day, which is a lot more normal, right? More so of a exaggerated stress response, but there's an actual true trigger, not just waking up in a panic.

So I remember I tried five milligrams before bed. Of the Orotate? Yeah, of the lithium Orotate. And I slept like a rock and my sleep's usually pretty good. I wasn't sleeping too great then, but it did help a bit. But I woke up like...

Like imagine like, you know, like the heaven, like the, just like, I could just like, I was so calm waking up in the morning. Like I felt so much more just present in the, in the immediate moment. And, and,

I actually didn't get that much... And this is different to what you'd experience with like magnesium. It was a different... Oh, it is completely, like not even remotely. It is by far the... It's my personal favorite supplement as of right now, but it is the most effective...

mind quieting, you know, fear erasing supplement that I've personally ever tried. Now, I actually, I realized the potential downside of taking too much. I was so chill and happy. I didn't get that much work done that day. I was just like dancing around my house, just like vibing out, which I

isn't the worst side effect in the world, right? But that's the one thing with lithium orotate I see if I recommend people start out at one milligram. Some people are sensitive and the main mechanism that I benefit from, it speeds up MAO and COMT. So there's no other nutrient I've ever come across. Sure, you could take a lemon balm or a taurine to boost GABA, right? But I'd like to give the example of

imagine if you have a canvas of your brain chemistry you paint it red you're anxious right there's a lot of adrenaline you could take lemon balm or gaba or these things to paint it over right so you paint it over with blue now you're calm but the lithium doesn't paint over it blue it just removes the red paint yeah right so you see how you're getting rid of the adrenaline in the first place there and for people that have chronically high cortisol they're

How do we raise cortisol? We raise cortisol by spiking adrenaline. So rather than going after the cortisol with all these herbs, which I'm not against them, they could help. They definitely help people go after the immediate adrenaline spikes in the first place. So I recommend people start with one milligram. And the main side effect I see in people, it can lower adrenaline. And if you're someone that struggles with energy issues,

It can sometimes make people feel more fatigued. But what's interesting is it's also been studied for chronic fatigue. It also is a transport cofactor for folate and B12 inside of your cells.

So if you're lacking lithium in your body, then all those B vitamins you're taking, they're going to float around in the blood. And even though we check blood work, we really want to get it into the cell because that's where methylation occurs. That's where all these things, all the magic happens in our bodies. So for people that already have really low energy, sometimes they could feel more fatigued, sometimes a little spacey. That's why I tell people I started...

After my amazing experience on five milligrams, I was recommending that to start. Then add a few clients say like, I was wiped out for a whole day. I'm like, all right, back to the drawing board. Start with one milligram, see how you feel. And I'll kind of, I have a one milligram bottle and a five milligram bottle. Some days I'll do, you know, I told you I did one milligram last night. I did two midday today. So I'll kind of use it. I think it was like nature Xanax almost, right? It's, it can kind of ease things out.

the upper limit, like toxicity thresholds super high, right? Yeah. And even with the toxicity threshold, you know,

They sell up to 20 milligram capsules over the counter. I personally don't recommend people go over five milligrams per day. At the end of the day, it is a metal. Doesn't mean that you can never. There's been a few days I've done seven milligrams, but I like lowest effective dose. So I'll go through a more stressful period. I'll go from five milligrams to three to two, and I'll go on none for a few weeks, right? Because I want to make sure I have that emergency button whenever I need it.

because it's truly that life-changing, especially if you're someone with that high adrenaline. That's where a lot of that fear can come from, right? The fearful thoughts, the rumination stemming from that adrenaline. You got to try it, man. I'm really curious to hear how you respond to it. I'm really curious, man, because I mean, you've seen... From what I can understand about my biology with the data that I've accumulated is that

anything that lowers cortisol too far for me is just it'll it'll you know wipe me out pretty much like i mean you've heard me talk about the the ashwagandha thing oh yeah yeah um so and like ginkgo ginkgo biloba can do that to me too sometimes as well i noticed as well yeah i get a bit bit bit um spacey from ginkgo because it's like you know lowering blood pressure um but

You're saying lithium could potentially offset the baseline angst and anxiety and just the panicky sort of feeling without nuking or causing anhedonia. You haven't heard anyone say it's aggravated the...

: I've had, you know, one thing it also stimulates the serotonin 1A receptor. And this is really interesting. It does the opposite of what ashwagandha does on that receptor. Right? So it's one of those things that, you know, when I see people with mutations in that serotonin 1A receptor,

You really don't want ashwagandha, right? And the lithium orotate or CBD or CBDA, these have high affinity for that receptor to help stimulate that. But there has been – the only times I've really seen people get weird anhedonia from it is when they'll combine it with something like a tryptophan or some other serotonergic agent. So –

And I won't recommend them together, but they may say, oh, I was taking, I'm like, did you change anything? Oh, I took some tryptophan or 5-HTP. I'm like, okay, well, you're flooding your brain with precursors to serotonin. And you're also binding that HT1A, the serotonin 1A receptors. So, I mean, you know, there's that excess serotonin. It can really drive a lot of those anhedonic type things as well. But that's only been on

I think one or two clients. So I haven't seen anhedonia. It's more so a day or two. They feel spacey and they may just feel, I guess, apathetic is like the precursor to anhedonia, right? They'll feel apathetic for a day or so, but then the plasma levels come down. I've never seen anyone have any lasting effects, but yeah, man, the ashwagandha stuff, that is like crazy. And again, I only see,

People come to me with issues. I just really, all I've seen are negatives, but also my client's a little biased, right? You're not going to come to me. I feel amazing on my supplements, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, because the other aspect there is the inositol. I've actually been-

Yeah, taking like 8,000 milligrams of inositol. So I just literally have like two grams with like each main meal because I'm trying to obviously stabilize blood sugar. I'm not going low carb. I'm pretty high carb actually. So inositol is pretty good in that regard. That's one that I've prescribed and even like my brother, when he first started using inositol, he –

He noted like a really strong antidepressant action, antidepressant effect from it. I don't know, because you probably, have you prescribed inositol in that setting or more so for sleep? I mean, I'll use the D and chiro inositol for, you know, fertility related things. And, you know, I'm not aware, there's not a lot of literature around genetics affecting the inositol, right? So the way I work, I'm usually utilizing the genetics first. I have used it sometimes for sleep.

But I don't use it too, too regularly. Again, for the fertility related things, I will. Now, what made you decide on inositol versus like, I don't know, like a bitter melon or berberine or those types of things for the blood sugar? Well, I spoke to someone who mentioned the sort of outlining the pharmacology around the ciproheptadine. Have you seen me post about ciproheptadine?

Yeah, and basically he uncovered that if you combine the ciproheptadine with the inositol, you get that rebound snapback effect from the ciproheptadine wearing off in a shorter duration, which is what I want. Because at this point in time, ciproheptadine is like,

the only like good tool that I have at my disposal that can undo the ashwagandha blunting. And so that's where when I introduce inositol, all of a sudden instead of waiting four days for the ciproeptidine to like work its magic or do whatever it's doing, with the inclusion of the inositol on top, I could cut that back by two days. So there's some crazy interaction between inositol and –

The ciproheptadine. Remind me, what's the mechanism of the ciproheptadine? Man, it is a blocker of the 2A receptor, the 1A receptor, histamine receptors, dopamine receptors, serotonin. It blocks everything, basically. Yeah, because I'm trying to... Yeah, so you wouldn't want to agonize that 1A receptor then. Well, the CBD, it's funny you mentioned the CBD because...

The CBDA specifically is like a lot more potent for that. I've utilized that along with some HDAC inhibitors. So like butyrate could be a good one there. And I've seen that help some individuals with that ashwagandha. Have you ever tried CBDA before? I have never tried CBDA. I've tried CBG and CBD. But CBDA –

I'd love to try that. I'm going to have to look into how that affects the 1A receptor. Yeah, I know it has a higher affinity, but I guess it also depends. Are we talking the pre or post synaptic too, right? That's another thing to keep in mind as well. I know. Rabbit holes on rabbit holes, right? I know, I know. It's why I try not to like, because if I spent, I mean, I've already spent hours and hours and hours and hours just like looking into it. Sometimes I'm just like, I do find a bit,

It's consuming because it's like, fuck, it's just sucking me into this rabbit hole where I'm just constantly spiraling into it. But it's interesting to note though, the lithium, I'm really eager to explore that.

um, it has no at low dosages. I'd imagine it's not affecting testosterone or thyroid hormones or prolactin. Probably not. I haven't seen that at all. Another thing it does too, it binds allosterically to the DRD2 dopamine two receptor. So you're also getting a little bit more dopamine synthesization as well. Um, so it's cool that, you know, you're,

getting a little bit more serotonin signaling, a little more dopamine signaling, yet you're also processing your adrenaline quicker. So if you think about that really unique molecule, because you're raising two of these neurotransmitters that can, you know, improve mood, and while simultaneously lowering the neurotransmitter that drives fear and angst all at the same time. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Well, I'll go ahead and

I'll get my hands on 1,000 micrograms. Not milligrams. That's the lithium bicarbonate for the bipolar depression and stuff. I'm going to start with one milligram on the Orotate and I'll report back.

I notice I feel better when I have it with food. Some people say they notice it better fasted. But yeah, keep me posted. Really hope you get some value out of it. Yeah. What about creatine is a hot topic at the moment. Let's sort of hear your take on – I mean you've probably studied creatine extensively as well, how it affects the brain. Yep. Are there any things you think people should be cautious of when utilizing creatine? You know, I think that –

I think creatine is one of the safest supplements for people. I don't do a lot of sweeping supplement recommendations, but that is one of the few that I will recommend. I think everyone should try experimenting with. Some people do to some methylation things because we use methylation to make creatine. That's how we make it through a methyl transferase enzyme.

Some people I've seen can sometimes get a little restless or sleep issues from it. That's very, very rare from what I've seen. And then there's sometimes just that GI upset, right? There's poor solubility. But beyond that, I, you know, I've been on the creatine wave. I've been doing seven to nine grams for, I don't even know how long and trying to put everyone onto it. I'm glad to hear everyone's, you know, hopping on the bandwagon now, especially of late. I think it's,

really, really amazing, especially for women, especially if you're not eating a lot of red meat. Our body can make its own creatine, but especially if you have even just a little bit of muscle mass, that's not really going to be able to cut it for you. So if you're not getting a lot of it, the content of creatine in red meat is

After red meat, it drops off pretty drastically. So like people think, oh, I'm getting creatine from my chicken. It's not nearly as rich of a source. It's almost like saying I get my omega threes from beef. Yeah, there's omega threes, but not even close to the amount you'd be getting through something like a fatty fish.

And have you found any like really nice complementary ingredients alongside creatine that you've seen like really work well for the ATP? Yeah, ribose can be great. D-ribose can be great for that. But I did see the one, what's the GAA that you mentioned? I've been meaning to give that a shot. Yeah, the GAA, man, keep a lookout for the new research because in 2024, there was a couple of papers published about

The combination of GAA plus creatine outperforms creatine alone in terms of brain tissue permeability or brain tissue creatine content and also offsetting some of the... They're saying some of the water retention aspects of high dose of creatine, but I think people need to see what GAA with creatine feels like. And I think the combination is pretty...

pretty outstanding uh in terms of like you know you see pre-workouts they combine creatine with like citrulline they combine creatine with like agmatine which is another cool ingredient i love agmatine one of my faves well yeah let's talk about that because that's real quick let's back up i want you to tell me a little bit more so these studies with the ga creatine so it's assessing uh

absorption, but is there any data on like outcomes like, you know, exercise performance or mood related things, or it's more so it's more absorbed, more data to be found down the road, you know, about those actual human physiological outcomes. Well, the way they describe it is that they're saying that creatine by itself saturates muscle stores, but the body down regulates its transporters over time. Whereas GAA, uh,

stimulates the body's endogenous creatine synthesis. What is GAA? I've literally only seen your post about it. It's one of my save things to look more into. Give me the quick rundown. It's actually considered to be a natural amino acid derivative. It's also known as glycoamine. It's not found in nature, I don't think. I don't think you can find it in chicken or fruits and vegetables.

But it's a natural amino acid derivative that's – I'm pretty sure it's got grass status as well like in terms of safety profile. Interesting. Yeah. But yeah, the agmatine, you know, agmatine, I have mutations in the gene that helps convert arginine into agmatine. So, you know, it's a metabolite of arginine. We all know arginine is really, really great for nitric oxide synthesis. But I've been doing a gram of agmatine pre-workout for –

I don't even know how long. I also have some mutations in my BDNF gene. So also lithium raises BDNF too. So I got lithium. I got my agmatine. I got my magnesium and,

I used to do CBD pretty daily. Now I do it here or there, a little more BDNF induction there. But yeah, have you tried agmatine before? Yeah, I might have to revisit it. This is what happens to me, man, is I'll, because I've got so many experiments on the go, what happens is I picture the brain as like,

Have you heard of, you've heard of like Play-Doh? It's like where you can mold, you can mold. I literally picture my brain as Play-Doh where if I take a substance for like, let's say six weeks, all of a sudden I've shaped that Play-Doh and I'm molded it slightly in that direction. Then I want to revisit, let's say, agmatine,

you know, three months off after I've changed the shape of my brain in that way. And I want to see now how does agmatine affect the shape of my, like, that's how I picture it. Cause I'm like, I'm always, I'm always leaving my brain in a different like mold. You know what I mean? Well, I, yeah, our brains are very similar. Yeah. So like I, I always say, you know, people talk about drug, you know, tolerances, withdrawals, but

any nutrient that moves you from baseline, it is changing the brain, right? So you're totally right. It's like, I call them these micro-withdrawals and stuff, right? You have to take these things into account, right? Like, if I take piperine for a few days and it improves my mood, more energy in these things from higher neurotransmitters, if I stop taking it,

There's gonna be a little bit of a withdrawal, right? Because the brain does... So that's kind of what you're saying there, right? Like, as you take certain things for a while, the brain gets used to that. And, you know, like...

Yeah, like if I were to do piperine for a day, a good dose of piperine, you know, I feel great. If that next day I try some modafinil, I'm not going to feel it as much, right? Because you're already kind of – I call it you kind of blew out the tolerance, right? Like the receptors, the down – remodeling, you know, those things. So yeah, I've had –

It's also as part of that is like, let's say you've had caffeine running in the background, you know, let's say you've had caffeine running in your system for a month. You try, let's say, I don't know, St. John's wort with that, you know, on top of that, and you get a really explosive, like anxiety, strong response, or you feel really energetic from it.

Then you try the St. John's wort six months later. And all of a sudden that six months later, you haven't been on caffeine with no caffeine. Yep. Yep. And now all of a sudden, okay, how has your response to St. John's wort? Completely different. I love it. Well, and that's the thing too. These, these, any of these MAO inhibitor, I'm pretty sure it's an MAO inhibitor too, as well as an SSRI. They, they magnify anything you do. Right. Like, so what I mean is,

any change in brain chemistry, they magnify, right? So it's like, I could take a rhodiola rosea and if there are no disturbances in my day and I have the perfect day, the day will be even better. Because if I'm having a good time, I'm not releasing adrenaline. I'm releasing dopamine and all these other things. They're all going to be magnified. But at the same point,

I notice for rhodiola or some of these other MAOIs, the moment there's a hiccup in my day, I start squirting out a little bit of adrenaline, right? I'm a little frazzled. That also gets trapped and magnified. So I like to give people the analogy of when I work with people that are more on the performance optimization, the more biohacking cognitive enhancement, MAOIs can be very useful. I like to think of it as like trying to steer a massive ship. Like if you steer a ship one way,

It can be very hard to steer it the other way very quickly. You can't turn on a dime like that. When you release that adrenaline, it's going to linger around for a lot longer. There's another compound that I'm seeing a lot of high-performance individuals or CEOs that are leveraging. I think that's a little bit dirty. I call it a dirty drug because it's – have you heard of tesofenzen?

I've heard of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's like a... What's the mechanism? S-D-N-R-I. Yeah. Oh, it's a triple. It's a triple. Serotonin, dopamine, nor... See, now I'm just wondering, huh? I wonder how...

you would think that would feel somewhat similar to an MAOI because instead of preventing the breakdown, you're preventing the reuptake, right? No? Have you tried it? I haven't tried it because, dude, the half-life, if I remind myself, test of fencing, the half-life is like how many days? Eight days. Oh, shit. Yeah. If that's not working out for you, you are – Oh, no. That's what I mean. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, wow. You've got more than just a big ship. You've got like cargo as well. Oh, geez. It's heavy duty. It reminds me of a Quercetin. You know, I forgot the Quercetin. I think Quercetin's half-life is like two days or something like that. So the first time I took that, I had a similar experience to my long Vita curcumin. And-

The whole next day I was anxious too, you know, because it's like the half-life can, you know, I love to talk more about too, you know, just how we modify so many of these things now, right? Like there's a lot of these, you know, dihydro derivatives or the long vita curcumins, right? And it's,

At what point are these natural supplements natural? Because is it really natural for me to be able to take a handful of highly concentrated, chemically modified natural supplements that are from plants all over the world, like evolutionarily

I'll quote Kanye, no one man should have all that power, right? Not that I'm against it. I utilize them all the time, right? But when you think about it that way, it's like, at what point is something no longer considered natural? And I'm sure you'll agree the natural versus synthetic doesn't matter. It's just the molecular structure is what matters, right? But at the end of the day, we're really trying to maximize all these absorption of all these things. And again, you can amplify the good as well as the bad.

Yeah, well, it's competition. Who's got the best, you know, who's got the most potent ashwagandha? KSM-66, you know, the highest concentration of withanolides. And now all of a sudden this ashwagandha is acting like an SSRI. And it's like, is it? You know, like, yeah, I fully get it, man. I mean, I had the choice of going down the route of, you know, becoming a pharmacist like my dad. I chose to study... Is your dad a pharmacist?

Yeah, yes. So instead, I went down the route of becoming a naturopath. So I'm sort of, I'm in the middle and I'm not against pharma, like obviously not completely. Time and place, time and place. Time and place, yeah, time and place. But you made a good point around, yeah, what point do these natural extracts, I mean, look at L-theanine found in green tea, would you consider L-theanine, if you're isolating that from green tea,

Would you call that a drug? I personally would still call it – I would call it a drug. I mean, to me – well, if you look up, the definition of a drug is anything that alters physiology. So with that definition, they're all drugs, right? Because to me, for every pharmaceutical drug target, more or less, there's something natural that could target it. Now, will it be as potent? Probably not, right? But at the same point, I think all – to me –

I don't think supplement, drug, vitamin, mineral. I just think pharmacological tools, right? That's the way I look at it because, you know, I got a graduate degree in pharmacology. I was never trained on supplements, but I understand the targets, the receptors, the pathways. And it's, it doesn't, it directly translated into my hop over to the holistic side because it's all the same cellular machine. Once you know the cellular machinery, you're,

The thing you're putting into the cell, you know, doesn't really make that much of a difference. But back to what you said before about just the how we modify these things and stuff. I forgot to mention this earlier. You know, think about the safety of these supplements. You know, we we test one supplement. I think I mentioned this briefly about the curcumin stuff. It's like, OK, people will say, oh, where's the study that curcumin lowers iron? But how many people just take one supplement?

So it's like, okay, like, like imagine when people take, you know, they're taking multiple iron chelating supplements or they're taking multiple MAOIs. Like I made a post today about MAOIs, COMT inhibitors and greens powders. And someone asked, you know, oh, well, where's the clinical data for this? No one's going to study this stuff, right? There's no incentive to even do it. But as I mentioned, when we test if a supplement's safe, we test it on its own.

But if you're taking supplements, most people pop many of them. And that's one of the biggest issues I see

People are unknowingly stacking multiple mechanisms without knowing because we know all these supplements have multiple mechanisms. I see people taking multiple 5-alpha reductase inhibitors all the time, curcumin being one of them as well, right? You're taking curcumin, drinking some spearmint tea, maybe having some lion's mane, reishi mushroom and a blend there. And no wonder why you feel like a shell of yourself.

Yeah, that's a really good point. I think with the rise of AI, it's going to help us uncover more of those interactions. But I think an important point for people listening in is just be really careful how you're designing or developing your supplement protocols and just make sure that

you at least understand how you respond to each of those ingredients respectively by themselves first. Get an understanding of how you respond from one ingredient first and then you can start to build, you know, DIY like, you know,

combine, let's say you want to add in cat's wabba on top of tyrosine because you know tyrosine feels great. Then you're like, all right, let's add in some cat's wabba to potentiate the dopamine effects. There's a lot of guys that are now doing that. They've figured out if they combine the tyrosine with the cat's wabba, they feel great. I'd like to finish off by asking you one final question. If you had to

If there's one aspect of health that you would love to see more research on, or like there might be a particular area or a particular topic that you would just love to see more data on, what would that be? I think you could probably guess. I'm biased here. This is going to come no surprise to anybody, but genetics. Kind of how I mentioned with the supplements, right? We only look for one supplement and the risks, right?

When we're doing studies to figure out, you know, oh, this vitamin D receptor, how do we know if it actually affects human health or not, right? Is it actually having an effect? They get a bunch of people with the mutation, a bunch of people without the mutation, and then they run the study and see, is it linked to different vitamin D levels? Is it linked to different rates of diseases, right? But what if someone has 10 mutations in that gene?

Right. Or what if somebody has a mutation that makes their vitamin D better and one that makes it worse? So my point being, we're running these studies, these GWAS, these genome wide association studies with one single mutation. So plus or minus that one single mutation. That's an important point. I think there's, yeah, a lot my audience can take away from that. But I want to sort of finish up by asking yourself, Tyler, I mean,

If people want to connect with you, work with you, where can they find you?

Yeah. So, uh, at Dr. Tyler, Dr. Tyler Panzer on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, um, www.drtylerpanzer.com. Um, and I do want to give your audience, you know, some free resources to kind of sink their teeth into. So I'll have Lucas share some links to, um, a genetics 101 course, um, a cell signaling 101 course. These are very, very ground level, but

No matter what your background is, scientific or not, it's a different way of looking at things from pathways. So if this interests you about thinking in terms of pathways, instead of thinking of your label, your headache, your anxiety, your brain fog, your insomnia,

All of those can be linked to excess histamine or excess glutamate. So rather than trying to fix four different issues, they all could be stemming from the same dysregulated pathway. So we'll put some links in there. And I'd love to give a discount code for your listeners for the one-on-one work with me. What would you want the code to be?

We can make it maybe just BYB. Okay. Yeah. Okay. BYB. Yeah. BYB. So yeah. Any of you guys listening, you know, if you're, whether you feel great, want to go to the next level or not doing too great, confused about supplements, yeah.

And you may respond uniquely to certain supplements. Genetics may be playing a role in that. So I take people's data and really build these personalized protocols. So BYB will save $150 on working with me one-on-one. That being said, Lucas, thank you so much for having me on. Hopefully I make the cut to come on again. I mean, this was really, really great.

And yeah, hope all you guys listening got a lot of value out of this. Yeah, awesome. That was great, great podcast. And if you guys did enjoy this episode, please do leave it a five-star review as it does help with the algorithms. That's it for me today, guys. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

Optimize your nutrition this year with Factor, America's number one ready-to-eat meal service. Factor's fresh, never-frozen meals are dietitian-approved, ready to eat in just two minutes. Choose from 40 weekly options across eight dietary preferences like Calorie Smart, Protein Plus, and Keto. Eat smarter at factormeals.com slash listen50 and use code listen50 for 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. factormeals.com slash listen50. Code listen50.

Get glasses made from the good stuff.

Stop by a Warby Parker store near you. This goes out to all you finance folks. There's a lot of pressure these days to save money, and it's important. But the best finance leaders focus on more than that. Brex knows you want to drive growth, change the game, and ultimately win. And that's exactly what Brex will help you do. They offer the world's smartest corporate card, banking, expense management, and travel.

All on one AI-powered platform. Brex unlocks your peak performance at every stage of growth. Startups love that Brex's high card limits and high-yield banking extend their runway. And larger companies love that Brex allows them to control spend before it happens, get every dollar to the right place, and automate finance busywork.

More than 30,000 companies use Brex to make every dollar count toward their mission. Get the modern finance platform that works as hard as you do at brex.com slash grow.