Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to this week's episode of Untapped, the extra mile with me, Spencer Matthews. And me, Oli Patrick. I will never guess. I love it. I just love it. Oli Patrick, what a legend. I just genuinely, I love spending time with you. You are like a human version of ChatGPT. And I just think it's awesome.
It is a joy to be with you. I love talking about this stuff. We would talk about this stuff, whether there's microphones or cameras here or not. And I think there's more and more people who want to talk about the stuff that we love. So I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to discuss with you and everyone out there.
And this week we're going to be talking about supplements. Supplementation, do we need it? Is it a fad? Is it a phase? What does the human body actually require in order to function at a high level? Just to build on your previous point, whenever I'm in a black cab, which is quite often, I have an urge to call you and talk about weird health stuff. And we do, quite regularly.
And we say, save it for the studio. Save it. Let's not have this discussion today. Let's wait until we're in the studio. Supplementation. What do you think about it? Do we need it? How useful is it?
Do we need it? The word itself, you get your Sunday newspaper, you get the supplement. By definition, it is in addition to. So I think the great challenge is the word itself doesn't mean anything, right? It's in addition to. And of course, what we're looking at here is the human machine does require nutrients for our existence.
You and I, we are operating a very complicated machine, and some of the activities that go on require elements from our diet. I require certain amino acids from the proteins I eat. I require, again, sunlight to help me make vitamin D. And the great question is, can I get all those nutrients that my body needs to work effectively through diet alone?
And you've got to start with that first hypothesis. Can a human be nourished before we conceive of a supplement, an additional product or pill that's going to top up some of those nutrients? And I think my personal journey on that is, I think the science is you can be nourished without a supplement. but you would have to work bloody hard.
But you would have to be so diligent with your intake of the different food groups at the right dosages without overcooking them, making sure your gut health was in great nick to absorb them all, making sure that you weren't burning through too many.
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Chapter 2: What are the basics of supplementation and do we really need them?
And I think basically we've got this sort of you and I live in the real world, can you theoretically eat a diet that nourishes all the requirements of the body from all the essential nutrients that we need to work? Yes. Does anyone do that? Not in my clinical experience.
It's also even more complicated than that because we're all different. This is the killer.
Chapter 3: What nutrients do our bodies actually require for optimal function?
So it's not like there's a blueprint that says, we all need this much magnesium, this much vitamin C, this much vitamin D, this much protein, this many carbs. Some people operate better on fats than carbs. Some people need more of this than that.
The old adage, one person's medicine is another person's poison is relevant here. What does that individual need? And anyone speaking about this will be going, maybe, and this could lead to, and this, if we, you know, under certain conditions might. Anyone who goes, everybody needs vitamin D, As convincing as it says, they probably haven't recognised that that will be wrong to some people.
What is the new science of longevity supplements? So let's strip it back to just bare kind of essentials, if you will. As we've already said, probably not essential to everyone. But, you know, what are the three most commonly used, scientifically proven beneficial supplements that people should take?
Good question. And we sometimes have to separate...
nutrients or essential you know vitamins and minerals that are critical to our existence from um from athletic supplements so you and i live in a world where creatine will be part of every conversation electrolytes you know potential other elements so i think if we think of just where is the safest ground it's probably probably in creatine which is the most sort of researched supplement in the world vitamin d for people who don't live on the sort of aquatic um equator aquatic
What's the right word for equator?
Well, equator is just the line that goes around the center of the world.
Yeah, that's what I mean. We don't live on the equator. Basically, anyone who isn't getting bombarded with natural light, vitamin D is well-researched and probably critically important for most people. And then probably omega-3 would be propping that up. So fish oils. Fish oils, absolutely. So that omega-3 EPA, DHA that you'd find in your cold water fish predominantly.
You would say, look, the research is pretty compelling for folic acid and avoiding some development challenges in pregnant females. So, you know, when developing a child, there's a certain increased nutrient need. There's going to be certain nutrients for certain health conditions that have been proven to alleviate symptoms, etc.
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Chapter 4: How does individual dietary need affect supplement requirements?
But I think the majority of our listeners are interested in that at least. It's kind of what the show is about. Totally agree. It's exciting and interesting, but there's just so much varying opinions and it's hard to understand what to spend your money on nowadays and what to buy and what to have and how much to have of it. And I'm just hoping that you can shed some light on a kind of
good mix of credible things that people should do, you know, that won't break the bank potentially as well.
I'm on it. We're going to do that. And again, Christine, your point there again is, let's imagine I was with someone last week who weighs 175 kilograms, right? Is he a powerlifter? Very much in that world. Yeah, so strong man. Oh, wow, of course. Okay, right. Alarmingly heavy. How tall is he? Six foot eight. Fucking hell. Yeah, incredible.
Six, eight, and 175 kilos.
Yeah, yeah. It's incredible. Can you imagine? I can imagine. I was there. I know, but I mean, imagine being the guy. Yeah, well, you know, the guy is a globally renowned strongman, so someone that you and I both know, actually. So, yeah, it's Tom Stoltman.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
But I mean, that's it. And again, it was sort of well documented as up with him and his brother in Scotland.
Can he like run on a treadmill?
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Chapter 5: What are the most commonly used and scientifically proven supplements?
I'll caveat that. So dosages, when we think of a supplement, first thing is, how big am I compared to the dosages that were evidenced in trial? Then I've got the next question. If I take it in, how much of the actual ingredient was in there, right? There's a great debate. It was triggered enormously by James Smith.
the broadcaster who went to town on creatine gummies, because there was no creatine in the gummies he was buying. So we got this question about efficacy, which is, A, what's the recommended dosage? B, how should that be for my size? C, was there any of the active ingredient in that product? If there isn't five grams in the gummy, then the whole thing's a mute process anyway.
Then I've got D, how much did I absorb? If I've got a dodgy gut, it doesn't get in. So if I don't absorb it properly, if I just crap it all out or pee it all out, it doesn't work. Then I've got E, which is what was my genetic requirement for it? I might be a genetic beast, I might be a genetic flower. Newt. Newt or beast. So I've got a component that says some people need more than others.
Then I've got F, how much did I use? So I need more creatine if I'm doing reps and sets of training or if I'm sitting in bed all day. So here's the variables that goes, right, I'm not going to go out and go, you need 13 grams of creatine because the variables in play are so multifactorial. Who doesn't care about this?
Supplement companies because they'll go, our product is going to solve your problem without recognizing the nuance into this scenario. And all of those things won't be as effective, unfortunately, as actual food because my body was never designed to encounter these nutrients individually. in isolated forms.
We have something called the food matrix, which means if I eat vitamin C, it's in a format that my body recognising goes, I know vitamin C, I'll go and put it over there. If I take ascorbic acid, my body's like, what's this? I've never met ascorbic acid in nature. How do I know what to do with it, where to store it? So we have...
Yeah, and we're going to try and rattle through this in a meaningful way. The principle here again is we have to start. It's just like, honestly, it's a headache. I'm going to lift this up.
I'm not saying that you are boring. I'm saying that it's almost impossible, right? It's just like, I'm a supplement guy. Because we're about to talk about it. It's like, where do you draw the line between just commerce and a brand, a big shiny brand, like stuff that you'd buy in Holland and Barrett, right? That says, this is great for you and you should trust us for this reason, right?
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Chapter 6: How do modern diets contribute to nutrient deficiencies?
And it costs this and we've been around for 50 years. And the thing doesn't even kind of get to your gut in the end, right? Or like, it's a pill that... The casing isn't right, so it decomposes quickly in your gut and it doesn't get the whole way to your colon. That's how Heights was created.
Our friend Dan, who made Heights, realized that all of the many supplements he was buying because he was an insomniac and wanted to get proper nutrition, proper supplementation, couldn't because the pills that he was paying 220 quid a month for in Holland and Barrett didn't work at all. And to your point, the supplementation point, where can we find just... great, clean stuff that works.
And I'm not looking for an answer from a company perspective, but I do find it frustrating. Because we get sent stuff, I buy stuff, and you look at it and it's kind of... It's almost like the problem with ultra-processed food, right? It's like, you know, you know that if it's a big, shiny, glistening brand that it's just gone through hell to get there, right?
That it's not clean, like organic stuff. And... I don't know. Supplementation I see as being potentially quite dangerous if people get it wrong.
Well, that was... People thought it might just be an expensive piss, you know, in terms of what's the worst case scenario, a waste of money. And then a few studies that were quite important came out that showed actually there's one with beta-carotene, which is a form of antioxidant. So you get it in... orange and sort of bright red food. So carrots got loads of it in and red peppers be in there.
And it's an antioxidant that's quite involved in going to the skin and protecting from sun damage. So people supplemented it, but found that actually people who are smoking and supplemented it had a higher risk of cancer. than those who didn't supplement with it.
We found a similar thing with vitamin E that certain populations, when they took these vitamins, and some vitamins are what we call fat-soluble, which means they can, in excess, be stored in human tissues. Others are water-soluble, which means you're likely to pee them out if there's too much of them.
And what we had is a few studies, you know, well over a decade ago that showed, actually, this isn't just a risk of an expensive pee. If you put a super high dose of a nutrient in without considering where you started and where you're ending up, you could harm yourself. And I don't think that was... as widely understood or popularized as it should have been.
And it certainly hasn't put a dent in the scale of the supplement industry globally. And, you know, it rises and rises. But you can make a case for every supplement. You can say, oh, L-arginine, that helps make nitric oxide, which dilates your blood vessels. So avoid blood pressure. Oh, I'll take that. Or rhodiola could be good for depression and mood. I'll have a bit of that.
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