Behind The Scenes Of How A Supplement Is Made: An Insider Interview.
Ben Greenfield Life
Ben Greenfield
4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2015
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A few weeks ago, I hopped in my car and drove for an hour over to Dover, Idaho, where the Thorne Research facilities are located. While there, I embarked on a fascinating behind-the-scenes tour of a supplements factory, getting to witness first hand how a capsule is made - from the raw ingredients analysis to the mixing and the blending to the encapsulation process and much more.
My guide on that tour was Dr. Alan Miller, who is the executive director of medical education at Thorne, and a wealth of knowledge on exactly how supplements are made. In this podcast, I interview Alan about the entire supplement manufacturing process from start to finish, and you'll discover: -What a special machine that costs over a hundred thousand dollars actually does to a supplement... -Why employees at a supplements factory have to wear special moon-suits so their skin doesn't get eaten away... -Clear warning signs that your supplement may be tainted or have the wrong stuff in it... -Why some fish oil tastes horrible, and what you can do about it.. -The difference between arginine, L-carnitine and the other "ines"... -Why some probiotics don't even make it into your digestive tract at all... -What you can do about iron making you constipated... -How to absorb curcumin better... -And much more!
Resources and links from this episode: -My original quest to discover the ultimate multi-vitamin -The new EXOS fuel supplement line -The LabDoor website for researching supplements -FDA.gov adverse event reporting system (FAERS)
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about how a supplement is made? Leave your thoughts at BenGreenfieldFitness.com!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | in this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | The time of flight mass spectrometer. |
| 0:04.6 | It's kind of a whiz-bang machine, |
| 0:06.0 | and we happen to get ahold of one of them. |
| 0:07.8 | It tests for a variety of substances |
| 0:10.8 | down to very, very minute amounts. |
| 0:12.7 | Parts per million or parts per billion, |
| 0:14.4 | sometimes parts per trillion, |
| 0:15.5 | really depends on the substance. |
| 0:17.6 | They're digestive enzymes, they will eat proteins, |
| 0:19.6 | so you don't want to have them come in contact with skin |
| 0:21.9 | or your mucus membranes. |
| 0:24.0 | And magnesium stearate is magic. |
| 0:25.6 | It's a 18 carbon saturated fat |
| 0:27.9 | that's reacted with magnesium, |
| 0:29.0 | so it's this powder that you can use a very tiny amount of, |
| 0:31.8 | and it will change the physical characteristics |
| 0:33.9 | of the rest of the powder that you mix it in with. |
| 0:36.6 | Any area where we are handling any of the materials |
| 0:39.4 | or finished product has to have filtered air going into it, |
| 0:42.4 | and that air needs to come out of that room |
| 0:44.6 | and be filtered again. |
... |
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