Rightfully so. He is the Gandalf of supplementation, right? I really enjoy working with him because he’s truly an expert and truly a professional in that regard. A funny dude though. He’s a fun person. I have had him on my podcast. It’ll be like half weird jokes and half talking about serious stuff.
Anyways, Curtis is driving that. Also, he oversees the advisory board which includes guys like Menno Henselmans, James Krieger, our accountants, and other respected people in the [inaudible 41:56] space. We’re going through reformulating stuff right now. I would say most of it is not that much is changing.
There are some ingredients that — I’m going to give Curtis more of the credit here than me — he believed in because of what we understood at the time in terms of the mechanistic properties. Even if it was preliminary animal research, we would explain that in the copy.
We would say, “Animal research suggests that this could do this. We’re not saying this is a primary ingredient like Hordenine is in one of our fat-loss products, Fenix. That’s one example. There is an example called rutaecarpine. It’s a molecule called rutaecarpine. It’s like a little berry from a plant. It’s in our sleep supplement. It’s there to help the body reach the idea.
It’s explained why we believe, or why Curtis believes that this probably does work. It can help your body get rid of caffeine quicker by just increasing the activity of an enzyme that helps break it down. Now, he’s taking that out. The reason he’s taking it out though is not because he believes it doesn’t work.
Even though there hasn’t been more research on it, it’s a pretty obscure thing. The research that is there is rat research. It should raise a red flag for people who are reading through something, and you’re actually checking citations. It’s rat research — because we’re not just big rats — but shouldn’t also just be immediately thrown out.
You don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. It doesn’t mean that there’s something misleading about it. It depends how this is being presented. In the case with the rutaecarpine, we’re saying, “Hey, this is what we know about it. There is also some other research that is outside. It isn’t your caffeine metabolism.
“We do understand some of the mechanisms here. It would make sense because it does up-regulate this enzyme. This is the enzyme that processes caffeine, gets it out of the body by up-regulating you are going to help with that.
“He’s taking it out because now — as he has continued to research and expand his understanding of not just supplementation but biology — he’s just like, “You know, I don’t like that the research hasn’t progressed at all on this molecule and I don’t actually really like the idea of if people are going to be taking this supplement every day.
“I don’t like the idea of taking this enzyme up every day because it does have some other physiological mechanisms that come into play. I want to remove it and I’m going to replace it with something else that I think would be more beneficial.”
I would say because I started working with Curtis from the beginning, we started with a really good foundation. From there, it’s been more about just tweaking things. One other example, quickly, is ornithine. Ornithine amino acid evolved from the Krebs cycle generation of energy was in Pulse because there is some evidence that it can be good for longer endurance activities.
We took it out eventually because the effect was not all that significant. Again, this was a throw-in because it’s not very expensive. There is some evidence for people who are doing longer endurance heavy activities. It may help them a little bit, but the effect is not huge and it was a little bit redundant physiologically because of the [inaudible 45:51] .
That’s something that, OK, that came out. I can’t think of an instance, honestly, where there’s an ingredient where we’re like, “This is it.” Remember when HMB…
Actually, it probably still is being promoted, maybe not as mainstream because a lot of the big brands run the HMB train hard, as of just a few years ago, really. Saying, “This is essentially the next creatine. This is really going to boost muscle and strength gain.”
Now we know it does not, the evidence is clear it absolutely does not. We have had HMB in one of our products, not for the purpose of muscle and strength gain, but simply for anti-catabolic purposes because it’s in a product that’s meant to be taken when you’re doing fasted training.
There’s yohimbine, which drives fat loss, and then HMB is also included in the product because if you’re training in a fasted state, protein breakdown rates are going to be a bit higher, and especially after you work out depending on when you eat.
It was something that we thought was not crucial, but it was a neat inclusion and a warranted inclusion in a product that’s specifically meant for fasted training. There haven’t been any major flops that I can think of, more just incremental improvements as…
Again, I’m going to give Curtis and the Science Advisory Board the credit there, as their understanding, and very much to Curtis’ credit, as his understanding of the world of supplementation has continued to evolve, he comes and says, “Hey, what do you think about these ideas?” It’s a fun process to go through because he’s very good at it.