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Wellness + Wisdom Podcast

Shawn Wells: This Step Makes EVERY Supplement Finally Work

Wellness + Wisdom Podcast

Josh Trent

Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 913 Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2026

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Are your supplements really working, or are you just wasting your money?

Josh Trent welcomes Shawn Wells on the Wellness + Wisdom podcast, episode 807, to reveal why your nervous system determines whether your supplements work or do nothing, how chronic stress physically blocks absorption no matter the quality of what you're taking, the science of placebo and nocebo and how your mindset before you swallow the pill changes your biology, and why your body has to be ready before anything in the bottle can help.

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In This Episode, Shawn Wells Uncovers:

[01:30] Why Your Body Rejects Supplements

  • Why supplements don't work when we're in a state of fear and overwhelm.
  • How the liver blocks the benefits of supplements.
  • Why the body get into a survival state.
  • How the nervous system impacts the effects of supplements.

Resources:

[08:55] Neural System Healing

  • The importance of relaxing the neural system before a plant medicine ceremony.
  • How breathwork helped Shawn regulate his neural system.
  • Why grief is necessary in returning to a parasympathetic state.

[12:35] Why Placebo Actually Works

  • Why supplements work through the placebo and nocebo effect.
  • How the mind influences the results and efficiency.
  • Why a dysregulated body doesn't metabolize supplements.
  • How the sympathetic neural system makes the metabolization process longer.
  • The most energy-dependent cells in the body.
  • Why prayer before eating enhances the nourishment we get from food.

Resources:

[21:35] You Don't Have to Be Defined By What You Do

  • Why we don't feel worthy of feeling safe.
  • How most of us are stuck in doing too much.
  • Why people judge each other and ourselves by what we do.
  • The importance of connecting with God, nature, people, and ourselves.

Resources:

[26:50] The Key to Supplement Efficiency

  • How the body creates shortcuts when we take supplements.
  • Why we can prime our body through consistent habits.
  • How we can create an anchoring system to get ourselves into a desired state.
  • How different vitamins are stored in different parts of the body.
  • What the ideal amount of stress is for us.
  • How too much stress hijacks our adaptation capacity.

Resources:

[34:00] Why Medications Don't Work Long-Term

  • How a parasympathetic neural state positively impacts nutrient absorption.
  • Why the deepest states of meditation and zen make our brain more moldable.
  • How we can rewrite our symptoms.
  • Why medical drugs only work in acute cases, but not in long-term.

Resources:

[40:35] The Journey of Grief

  • Why we are the ones who block ourselves from the life we want.
  • What Shawn expected from going to Costa Rica.
  • How he was seeking validation from women.
  • Why being alone helped him process his grief.
  • How we lie to ourselves, and our body doesn't believe us.

Resources:

[47:35] You Don't Need Supplements

  • The importance of aligning all five sides of our wellness pentagon.
  • Why we don't truly need supplements.
  • How supplements teach us how to get to homeostasis.
  • The difference between the impact of acute and chronic stress.
  • How we can find out if we're in an acute or chronic stress state.

[54:30] Caffeine Is Toxic, Paraxanthine Heals You

  • Why paraxanthine offers different benefits than caffeine.
  • How chronic stress and overwhelm creates decision fatigue that keeps us out of integrity.
  • Why doing hard things makes the idea of doing hard things easier.
  • How we can't get more energy from a body that's overwhelmed.
  • Why caffeine is toxic to most people.
  • The short-term and long-term benefits of taking paraxanthine.

[01:03:15] The World Needs Paraxanthine Right Now

  • How paraxanthine improves physical performance.
  • Why paraxanthine is solving the societal issue of depletion.
  • How an overwhelmed neural system makes us not feel the effects of stimulants.

Resources:

Paraxanthine Supplementation Increases Muscle Mass, Strength, and Endurance in Mice

[01:09:35] What Can You Do for Yourself?

  • How over-supplementation is connected to a lack of self-love.
  • Why we need to start thinking of supplements as teachers.
  • How Shawn changed his identity.
  • Why we're always projecting ourselves onto others.
  • The reason why happiness is not a sustainable state of being.

Resources:

[01:16:00] Freedom Comes From Truth

  • Why the inner work and relationships improve each other.
  • How Shawn's strong work ethic comes from insecurity.
  • Why the ultimate marker for success is freedom and truth.
  • How Shawn had a realization that he can be loved for who he is, not just what he does.

"You don't need supplements. The supplements are the training wheels. They're showing your body how to do the things. If you were a Zen master, you could just drop in. But you need to take L-theanine, do the breathwork, take your kava shot, dim the lights, you need all of that. Those are training wheels to teach yourself how to do it on command." — Shawn Wells

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Ask not what your supplement can do for you, but what you can do for your supplement.

0:04.1

I'm the supplement guy, and I'm going to tell you that you don't need supplements.

0:07.6

The supplements are the training wheels.

0:10.8

They're showing your body how to do the things.

0:13.6

If the supplement industry had a consciousness, it would say, sell more, take more, and just keep going.

0:19.9

You're kind of going against the grain.

0:22.7

Sean Wells has formulated more than 1,200 supplements, patented 40 plus ingredients, and is the author

0:27.9

of the energy formula. If we're taking the highest quality supplements on planet Earth,

0:33.0

but if we're shifted over to this constant fight and the shields are up, then on a biological level,

0:39.1

cellular absorption is not going to happen in the way it was designed.

0:42.7

I was in that state for years of my life.

0:45.8

I was truly in like fight, flight, or freeze.

0:48.7

I was hypervigilant.

0:50.1

I was traumatized.

0:51.5

And I didn't know how to relax.

0:53.5

I just never felt it. and so I would like double

0:55.5

dose, triple dose, quadruple dose. Ask yourself why. Something that other people can feel is because

1:02.6

their nervous system is different. Do you sense how relaxed they are? How do they deal with stress?

1:08.9

I bet they're very resilient. When you're hypervigilant

1:11.8

consistently, there's almost no resilience. You're right on the edge all the time. You're maxed out.

1:17.7

There's a fallacy there. I think it's tied to identity. How much of dis-ease or over-supplementation

1:24.6

is tied to someone's lack of identity, lack of love for themselves.

...

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