Amino Acids…Maximize Your Body and Mind!

Lisa : (00:01)
I’m a Hair Mineral Analysis Expert. I have a background in Functional Medicine and I educate people using HTMA testing to maximize health, erase debilitating symptoms and gain energy. I’m a multi-time Kettlebell Sport World Champion and I’m constantly searching for high performance pros from all over the world, to bring you this Human Optimization podcast. My name is Lisa Pitel-Killah. Welcome everybody to a brand new episode of the human optimisation podcast and I’m so super excited today to have these two amazing women here from Staterra. We’re going to talk all about amino acids today and how amazing they can be for you. So welcome AlysenClark. Allison is one of the co-founders of stutterer Inc. And Ottawa based research company and Health Canada licensed manufacturer of natural health products. She has an undergraduate degree in biology and her master’s degree in cellular and molecular medicine. Her research background covers topics such as spinal cord regeneration mitochondrial health and stem cell regulation for interest in natural health products arose from an inability to find sport nutrition products that she could take due to dietary restrictions. Much like myself her passion has evolved from the sport nutrition field is a supplementation for mental and cognitive performance. Alysen’s dream for Staterra is to develop research based products that help people perform their best both physically and mentally. Welcome Alysen.

Alysen : (01:24)
Thank you.

Lisa : (01:25)
And then we have Delphie. Dr. Delphie Dugal-Tessier is the head of research at Staterra. She has a bachelors in psychology and a PHD in neuroscience. She has over 10 years of experience in research ranging from human behavior path of psychology to neurogenesis and molecular and cellular biology. The research she’s currently conducting at Staterra is a means to develop nutritional supplements that promote physical and mental well-being. As a side note, she is no stranger to competitive sports. She was on the Canadian at Mogo Freestyle Ski team and now trains, teaches, and competes in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. So welcome, Delphie, it is amazing to have you both with us today, and to have so many awesome things to talk about. Are you too excited to be here?

Alysen : (02:15)
Too excited.

Alysen : (02:17)
Too excited! I love it, I love it. While you guys, I mean, there is just so much science- based research there and studies, and so many things that you’ve looked into and tried. And obviously you’re very passionate about nutrition and natural products. That’s one of the main reasons that I sell all of your products as well because I believe in them, I use them. So I want to talk about how to Staterra came about. Tell me about it.

Alysen: (02:53)
So Staterra started almost five years ago, we’re actually coming up to our five year anniversary. We are very excited about that! And truth be told I was in academic research at the time, I was a senior research technician at the University of Ottawa, and it was my father who was a serial entrepreneur, who showed up one day to take me out for lunch and said Ali works. Not knowing fully what I was getting myself into, Staterra was born. So we actually got our start in natural health product manufacturing, and we originally began in what’s called compounding, and so we were putting together customized formulas for natural health clinics in the Ottawa area. My background being primarily science- based, I really wanted to start to learn more actually about the natural health products and the research that was around. So we started to look into it, we learned that especially with youth and sports supplements, there wasn’t a whole lot of fundamental research behind why people formulated them, if that makes sense? So there was some studies out there suggesting like efficacy or if those types of things but not a full out looking at the physiology mind. And so that’s where our research program really came from and how the research side of things began.

Lisa : (04:10)
Amazing. Well you have to consider, and this is one of the things that I found very interesting when I got introduced to both earlier this year, I was using some different sports nutrition products and not even really thinking. I mean I kind of know, but not really thinking you know? I was looking for some of the best on the market but they still had products in them that weren’t natural and they were colouring and you know just all of those things you really don’t want to put in your body. So I was happy that I could switch to something that doesn’t have any of that. That made me super excited.

Alysen: (04:45)
Yeah it’s really difficult especially in sports supplements because there is such a huge emphasis on flavour and texture, right? And so it was extremely, extremely difficult, which we learned somewhat the hard way, that it’s extremely difficult to flavour a product using all natural flavors and sweeteners, and all of our products have that. I want to get something that tastes delicious and is still natural.

Lisa: (05:12)
Yeah yeah yeah for sure. So let’s talk about amino acids cause that’s what we’re here to dive into today. And I know for myself you know always being on the run, being a high achiever, being a competitive athlete, I like to use amino acids to make sure that I’m always performing at my best. And I’m a firm believer too, that anybody who is an entrepreneur you know one of those type- A personalities that’s an executive or a leader. I truly believe that those people need to support with amino acids as well. I could be wrong. That’s just my personal opinion. That constant pushing forward, right? When we’re an entrepreneur we’re constantly busy. We have tasks that have to be completed. We want to do them as efficiently as possible. But that doesn’t always happen. So we may be a little bit stressed, obviously we have stress too. So I think that depletes amino acids. So. So tell talk to me about amino acids. Let’s just have a talk about that.

Alysen : (06:19)
Sounds good. So to start off just some basics on what amino acids are and how they work in the body. Because I think a lot of people know from a supplement perspective but they don’t actually know what they do know what they do. So, amino acids are the building blocks of protein,, and oftentimes some people think protein they think like eating meat and you eat protein and it’s healthy but they don’t really know why. So essentially proteins are the little molecules inside every single one of your cells that do all of the work within your body. So, it is little proteins that actually move nutrients into your cells it’s ones that eliminate waste, they give the cell structure, its proteins that really do everything to keep you alive and keep your cells alive. And each one of these proteins is made up of amino acids, and your DNA so your genome actually codes these proteins. So once you look at the whole pathway with your genome, and proteins, and amino acids you can really see that amino acids are a very critical part to keeping your cells alive and healthy.

Lisa : (07:25)
OK excellent. And let’s dive a little bit more into you know I kind of talked about give my opinion about who I think needs them and I mean not just a basic general statement. What do you guys think? Tell me what you think.

Alysen : (07:41)
So I think, do you want to start?

Delphie: (07:42)
Yeah sure.

Lisa : (07:44)
Delphie’s like I’m ready! Let me in coach!

Delphie : (07:51)
Put me in Coach!

Delphie: (07:53)
So everybody needs amino acids but we don’t necessarily all need it the same way depending on environmental stress, or a physical stressor, emotional stressor, because they are the building blocks of the body. So our DNA codes where you’re missing something then your body’s like “Okay” we need this. So you need the amino acids to make that specific protein. So, pretty much there is 20 amino acids that make protein and nine are essential. So you hear a lot of the time of essential amino acids are very important obviously essential means your body can’t make it. So you have to get it through your diet. So if you are and you need all of them all of them are very important. They all have very specific roles. So that’s why we talk a lot of times about complete protein a complete protein has all the amino acids you need in your diet and other proteins that the non essential if you’re missing it your body can create it with other amino acids or with breakdowns your body is capable of generating that and you will ask specifically.

Alysen : (09:00)
So I think one of the things that people often do that we hear all the time is all I have a healthy diet, I’m sure I get all of my amino acids from my diet. This isn’t necessarily false because if you do have a very good diet and you’re eating small amounts of protein three to four times a day and you’re meeting your protein recommendation. There is a good chance that you’re able to get all of your amino acids. The problem is that the vast majority of people don’t do that. And so even if someone oftentimes is hitting their protein pick for the day they’re getting the vast majority of it from their dinner. And so the problem is then you’ve just gone your entire morning without any protein or amino acids entering your system. And unlike carbohydrates or fat your body doesn’t start. So it’s really whatever you take in at that time it circulates in your blood for a little while and then ends up being excreted. If your body isn’t using it to form proteins.

Delphie: (09:54)
Plus, plus! Important, because you’re ingesting your protein and your acids, your digestion can only take so much. So that is very, very important. So if you need 90 grams of protein and your body needs it right now you won’t get it because you can only really absorb about 20 to 25 grams. So the people who are Bodybuilders are doing a lot of endurance and they need a lot of proteins leading more than the average person to be taking that two scoops of protein is not doing you any good. First of all you’re going to have to excrete it. It’s not being absorbed it’s putting a lot of strain on your system which is going to impede on your performance. So you’re better to take three or four portions of twenty five grams of protein throughout the day. So it also lets your body digested what it needs excrete what it doesn’t need. So it takes a load off your body.

Alysen : (10:50)
So I think one of the other things that people don’t really consider is when you actually look at the human body and how we evolved really and the environment that we essentially from a biological perspective are designed for is extremely different than the environment that we live in nowadays.

Lisa : (11:07)
All right.

Alysen : (11:07)
When you look at it like the advent of technology it’s only been I don’t know when I was a kid. They didn’t even have the internet. I’m dating myself.

Lisa : (11:16)
I had rotary phones.

Alysen : (11:17)
Right.

Lisa: (11:18)
Like yeah.

Alysen: (11:20)
I know that crazy noise. My connect to the Internet. Yes. It’s more of a story like nowadays people are forcing themselves to multitask more than they ever have. We’re integrating our brains are integrating we’re trying to integrate information at a rate that we really just weren’t designed to do for the most part I mean our body does a pretty decent job of keeping up but it’s almost kind of funny to think that we wouldn’t need some extra help from a nutritional perspective to do that.

Lisa: (11:52)
Yeah. Makes total sense. And and so I mean. So let’s touch on one part too, because I know I have a feeling people are gonna want an answer to this question and that is, you know I eat protein obviously, you know meat, fish, and all those great things many people don’t right. They choose to have a vegetarian or vegan diet. So what position does that put them into. How do they get enough amino acids from a dietary perspective?

Alysen : (12:25)
Obviously it can be done to be sure they’re being very careful to actually match their protein sources. So for example you would want to pair like when you’re eating, you’d want to pair rice with peas because the amino acid profiles of the proteins in those foods are different and they can complement each other. Where, if you’re constantly only eating chickpeas or something like that as your primary protein starts you’re actually going to be deficient in specific amino acids because those foods don’t provide all of them. So the other piece to watch out for for vegetarians and begins as well especially if they’re working out or doing endurance training is the branch chain amino acids they can tend to be deficient. Those again especially if I’m doing a lot of training because your body burns through them at a much faster rate, and they are difficult it’s impossible you can totally get them from plant sources but it can be more difficult to get yes.

Lisa : (13:23)
OK. That’s good for people to know because again, I have always understood that the the rice and legume combination was a complete protein and that’s important for people to know because if they want to be on that kind of diet and I’m always gearing towards athletes or high performers you need to make sure that we’re getting all of those amino acids into our diet and having enough of them, right? So that’s really important. And so I mean you guys do tons of studies, and I mean if you guys want to touch on those and kind of talk about them I’d be happy to listen because I’m interested as well. But studies just what amino acids get the fastest when we’re talking about athletes, we’re talking about people who are performing at a high level. Tell us about that tell us what your research has found.

Delphie: (14:17)
We have been talking about this one for almost three years.The problem right now is you have a lot there’s a lot of things in the science community, and there’s a lot of good things in the supplement industry but there’s just there’s not a lot of communication. So right now what’s happening is people are going through the literature and then picking a couple of things, putting it together,, calling it a supplement and then giving it to people and doing one test and we get positive results and be like you see it’s proven to be better. So when we were starting our research and development department we’re looking at what would be the best supplement and there is one key question that no one asked. One asked this question: what happens to the amino acid while you do exercise?

Alysen : (15:12)
Yeah right.

Delphie: (15:13)
Yes.

Lisa : (15:14)
So I want to know.

Delphie: (15:19)
Exactly what goes up must go down. Is there a pattern, are there some pathways that are being triggered? We know globally, if you’re using oxygen as this pathway if you’re in anaerobic it’s this that’s all been studied but is there a pattern within the immuno acid? It’s never been done. And when it’s been done, it’s usually with you know athletes or men. Most research is done on the twenty five – twenty six year old, 170 pound, 5 8 male.

Lisa : (15:53)
Isn’t that interesting. OK.

Delphie: (15:56)
So but then this is being marketed; supplements to the general population. So we took one step back and we’re like Okay, let’s start from the beginning because that’s usually how you start in science. So what we did is we wanted to start with endurance sport. Ottawa is a huge running community. A lot of times you don’t know what to take what shape you had the whole like carb loading and a lot of people don’t know that they have amino acids in their gels. So that’s also being so a lot of people don’t know that they’re actually taking amino acid, they might need it, they might not. So what we did is we took a whole bunch of Ottawa people from ages 18 to 45, put them in the dome, run them on the track for 18 kilometers and took their blood. Everybody did great. So the idea was “okay” let’s see if we can find pattern. And we were pleasantly surprised that we found patterns in amino acids would be this prominent. So we had amino acids that go up and down. Obviously when you’re doing exercise you have the turnover of your muscle breaking, and your muscle rebuilt. So there’s releasing the plasma, and they call this the amino acid pool right in the blood. So we can measure this and we found these clusters of amino acid that would behave in a certain pattern and that was quite interesting. And that pattern was the ones that are mostly associated with cognition or, the brain barrier or, mostly involved in stress.

Alysen: (17:43)
What’s really neat is that where across all of our participants. So it didn’t necessarily matter if it was male or female it didn’t matter if they were running a time. We had people running between an hour and a half and two hours and a half. So it didn’t really seem to matter their level of physical fitness but everybody’s bodies were going through the same process.

Lisa : (18:08)
That is incredible. And yet that is a huge find to realize that that’s what’s happening and it’s so you know across the board.

Alysen : (18:20)
That was something that we were really surprised about.

Delphie: (18:23)
That would have gender differences in certain amino acid the ones mostly in the planning cycle and how to clear lactic acid. We had a bit of difference between male and female. But when it came to those amino acids. It didn’t matter how fast you ran. If you’re a man or woman and we had 18 to 45.

Lisa : (18:50)
That’s that’s still a big age range that’s almost 30.

Delphie: (18:54)
We’re pretty we’re pretty confident that in the general population this is a is a pattern that we could probably see consistently.

Lisa : (19:04)
That’s amazing. And so, those amino acids obviously for output you addressed cognition. Right. That that’s kind of the first thing that goes. So. So let’s talk about those ones in particular and I know that there’s some fitness gurus out there that believe that when you’re training that essential amino acids are the way to go because then you get the whole block of the building blocks right not just part but I think right now what we’re talking about that’s actually probably not quite true.

Alysen : (19:37)
So we we’re actually full disclosure we’re actually like debating about this, this morning, just a casual look to our conference.

Lisa : (19:47)
You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to.

Alysen: (19:49)
So a number of years ago the big “trendy”supplement was a branch amino acids supplement and more recently I want to see the past year two years there’s been a real push for the essential amino acids and the reasoning behind that there’s there’s kind of a probably a couple of different reasons. Personally, so I’ll just give you my opinion, you know like I’m coming out from biased perspective, I am a BCA person over an essential amino acid supplement. That’s just my opinion. It’s based on the fact that the branch chain amino acids are the ones that you burn through a lot more quickly when you are performing endurance sports or difficult exercise. It also comes from the fact that there have been some more recent studies so in a lot of them or recent literature there actually they’ve come up with a different technique to actually measure how your body is using acids. And so that’s been a really big change within the field to begin with. And so a lot of the older data they’re now kind of saying like even with protein intake there’s now some new studies that are suggesting wow like our protein intake is actually too low like the recommendations they should be a lot higher based on this technique. I digress about that anyway.

Lisa : (21:05)
Not enough info on that yet.

Alysen : (21:09)
That is a whole other podcast! But a lot of these newer studies have actually shown that it is the branch chain amino acids that are still the rate limiting factor so you can supplement with all of them. And also just for clarity branch chain amino acids we’ve seen our Susan and Billy are essential amino acids. No we’re not talking taking a central ones versus non essential ones. We’re talking about a subset of essential versus all of these. The other thing a lot of people don’t necessarily know is with some of the essential amino acids you do have to be a little bit careful because they can build up and they can cause toxicity. I’m always like this kind of her yet. No. Absolutely. You know for sure that the British amino acids are the ones that you tend to burn through more quickly. And those are the ones that tend to be the rate limiting step for muscle protein synthesis then to me right now there isn’t the data indicating that there’s enough of an advantage to take a full essential amino acid supplement as opposed to just a branch chain one specifically with regards like fitness performance and recovery.

Delphie: (22:16)
And the other thing too. The other thing, is they compete a lot of the essential amino acid compete for the same transporters.

Lisa : (22:25)
Oh isn’t that interesting, okay. Makes sense. Minerals do the same thing. Yeah.

Delphie: (22:30)
Yes the wrenching chain amino acid and for example tryptophan they will compete for the same binding receptor. So there’s a lot of talk we’re talking a lot. It’s like the mineral hair analysis. There’s a lot of ratios that you need to talk about not just the level with the essential amino acids. And there’s not a there is coming to be more data on it but of the the competition between the essential amino acids. Theoretically if you’re taking the “bad cop” not the optimal combination you can actually probably make it worse and make the BCA is not work as well as they should. So there’s a this is really coming into the larger it’s kind of still new to the proportion and the combination is safe as a state thing the BCA is you’re saying well they are pretty much more forgiving more forgiving if you go a little bit over the chances of a negative or negative effect is is quite minimal. If you have to clear all that while the essential amino acids some of them can have toxic effects for sure and the to you in the way when you take the way to get your essential because you don’t store anything in your body but you do release them when you do exercise. So a lot of these essential amino acids will be released while you do exercise and reuse and recycle. There is always a little bit lost and that’s what you get through your diet but a good way to get your your essential because also we never talked too much about the non Central isn’t really for muscle protein synthesis. There’s one study that showed that just like five or six grams of DCA with only six or seven grams of whey or ate for that case was Whey protein is what maximizes the mole so you can take a little protein with your BCA so you get your. You are right limiting factor you get those in and then you get enough of the whole protein to get what you need without hitting toxic effects because need all the proteins. Yes. Optimally but you also don’t like too much of them. So it’s like understanding.

Lisa : (24:44)
Yeah. And that’s a really good strategy actually. And so I mean think that’s somewhere somebody can use it actually into a workout especially if it’s a you know a whey protein isolates is very easily digestible and that’s definitely something you can use in your workout while you’re doing your endurance sets.

Delphie: (25:04)
Especially if you have dietary restriction or or you’re if you’re a vegan, a vegetarian adding that little extra protein is always good. And a lot of times when you talk about BCA you forget that you also need to replenish the electrolytes.

Lisa: (25:24)
Yeah. I always say I don’t have to say “good people drink your water, stay hydrated or get your minerals and sodium potassium right”. Okay. So we talked about BCA is versus E’s. That’s a big one. Definitely was a big one on my list. So tell me. OK. So now we’ve talked about athletes we’ve talked about the workouts the training and I mean there might be a little bit more you want to add to that. But I want to kind of move over a little bit over to people in stressful work environments because those put a ton of well obviously stress on the body too on the physical body. So and on the mind right to try and stay focused a lot of us lose our focus. You know we might be tired we might be two over caffeinated whatever the case might be. We’re we’re all guilty of a little of everything. So yes. So tell me tell me how you would help their focus. Tell me how amino acids would relate to that type of person and that type of environment.

Alysen: (26:37)
So one of the things that we mentioned earlier is that amino acids are the building blocks of protein but amino acids are also the precursors for your neurotransmitters in your brain and your transmitters are the little chemical messengers that your neurons use to talk to each other and essentially allow you to think and be happy and be happy. That’s important. And so one of the things that was really interesting that’s kind of what we can see it in our running research. And it’s also in the literature as well is that some of these neurotransmitter precursors are actually well all of them are used in multiple pathways. And so essentially what can happen is when you’re under stress your body goes into a stress response. You’re going to have increases in epinephrine epinephrine where I’ve got a friend that kind of cooling pathway and the same amino acid precursor that manages also that manages all of that is also the amino acid precursor for me. Adopamine is involved in motivation. It is involved in intention and attention. Yeah it’s involved in a lot of those higher cognitive processes. Mood regulation is the big one. And so one of the things that we really saw in our running research and it’s interesting because this is actually applicable to a work environment because we’re putting a physical strain on it. Right. And anybody who’s been under any amount of stress for any amount of time knows that your stress actually becomes physical. You have the same physical responses. Right. And so a lot of things that we were able to see is actually changes in those specific amino acids that are precursors to neurotransmitters. And so from there we’ve actually developed a product to provide these nutrients that your body is depleting when you’re stressed. So that way you can keep thinking and functioning at a high level.

Lisa: (28:29)
Amazing. And I’ve tried the product is awesome and I didn’t realize you know what we think about so many things when we’re training. I always feel like when we’re when people go to the gym even if they’re we can worry or whatever the case may be we’re going to cross fit whatever we’re doing we’re trying to think of OK I need to take care of this a little bit better I need to make sure I’m doing this. But when we’re operating at a high level in business in the business world we might not relate those two things together. But you’re right. You have to think of it if you’ve had a stressful eight or 10 hour day and all you’ve done is think all day long you’re multitasking you’re doing this and doing that you’re at it and trying to meet a deadline you’re exhausted. Maybe even more so than than a tough set at the gym. So thinking about replacing some of these amino acids and making sure that you’re looking past just your diet is really really important for people and it is definitely something they need to focus on.

Alysen : (29:33)
And the other thing that’s interesting is the way the product works where we’re providing essentially the free form version of the amino acid so it’s absorbed a lot more quickly. Where in your diet you’re breaking it down with you breaking it down, from protein, you’re breaking it down with a whole blend of other ones there could be competition for uptake there could be you might not be absorbing it that well when you’re stressed out maybe this is just me personally, when I’m stressed my diet is just terrible.

Lisa : (29:59)
Nobody’s digestion works as well when they’re stressed.

Alysen: (30:05)
Yes. And so it’s one of those things that this product is is really not used because it’s just an easy quick way to essentially get what your brain needs to help you continue functioning at a high level and in a natural way too.

Delphie : (30:18)
And we’re not a lot of times you’ll see some nootropics with cognitive enhancement. What they’ll do is kind of force a response. Right. Right. So you have your pathway and there’s different checklists so if you want to increase dopamine you can with a drug just to do it for me right? Then you’re forcing that response and the brain’s a lazy kind of a lazy. It doesn’t mean you don’t want to not feel that it doesn’t need to feel those living on its own because we keep giving it to them then it’s like help and I’m talking about healthy population the brain’s going to diminish it is going to be like I don’t need to take care of it so we’re not we’re not forcing or changing the chemistry of the brain. All we’re doing is the tools are what happens during stressful situation you have your chemical I means that. But I also was talking about they go up. But the thing is when they they go up there’s like there’s a turnover and then they they end up depleting. So what we’re doing is we’re giving the tools so we can keep going. So at the end of the day usually you start your day you start I’m going to do this this this and then you like lunch here you really okay. And then by the end of the day you’re just like OK what am I doing things you’re multitasking your bones going off you have to go pick up your kid there’s a whole bunch of thing I have to go Jim have to do this. Your brain keeps going, keep going, keep going. And every time it tries to refocus where it needs to go that spends energy that’s that’s time that is lost. So it were pretty much giving your brain all the nutrients it needs.

Alysen: (31:49)
You know we’re we’re pretty much just giving your brain the nutrients that it needs to function properly. We say like we’re optimizing it and we’re enhancing it but I honestly believe we’re just letting people perform how they should be able to perform. And it’s the stress in our in our life it’s our terrible diet that is making people tired all the time. And you have that brain fog and you just think right. Yeah. Too much caffeine.

Lisa: (32:12)
Yeah caffeine is a big one. It throws off circadian rhythm. I mean there’s a place for caffeine there’s a time for caffeine and I mean we can use it to our advantage in certain situations when it’s done with intelligent nutritional programming but you’re abusing it on a daily basis is not not the right way to combat stress and create energy. And I mean again it’s almost like pushing the adrenal past where they have the opportunity to go because if you’re adrenal or if you’ve been stressed for a long time if you’ve been a high performer for a long time and you haven’t been supporting yourself properly and then you’re pushing your adrenal with they’re just going to keep getting more and more depleted it’s not going to help the situation. And eventually you’re going to be worse off than you started. So that’s it that’s a slippery slope to go down for sure. One of the things that was interesting and I think a lot of people want to see may be discounted but maybe they don’t realize how important it is. And that’s not only with regards to amino acids but also with regards to vitamins and minerals. And that is when you call it the free form. So a lot of it for us in the mineral world or the Vitamin World. It’s the methylated vitamins but basically it’s the vitamins that are readily available and observable by the body. And not kind of filled with fillers and things like that so I mean it’s important to me when I’m supplementing I want to put the best of the best into my body. And so let’s talk a little bit about that just the quality of the vitamins and the minerals and the amino acids the quality of those that you’re supplementing with and why it’s so important for you to to have them in that bio available form.

Alysen: (34:06)
So I think one of the things that’s really interesting about our product is we’ve used all of the forms of the I guess the forms of vitamins for the forms of the amino acids that are the most studied. And so oftentimes someone will do a study on something and they’re like hey Vitamin C is great for this and then all these other companies come out of it you take this form and you could take that form and maybe this form is better but the problem is they’ve only studied one form. You don’t really know what the other forms work at all. And in the case of neutral products it’s different. Right. Everyone says like they did a study and it showed that you know supplementing with tires causes this. And so let’s give them this form of tires. It will be better and it will be more viable available but no one has ever actually stopped to to study if it’s still effective. Right. And so that was the big thing when we’re making our product is using the forms that have been tested and then making sure that we’re actually dosing at a level that has been tested because the other thing too that will often happen if someone sees like Oh great I’ll just take like a really tiny little bit of it. That’s not that’s not what has been shown to actually work right. Yes.

Lisa : (35:15)
Yeah. Because you want to maximize efficacy and efficiency and you want to be able to take something that’s actually going to make a difference in how you feel and how you perform and if and I feel like a lot of multi multi nutrients might be a little bit like that where it’s a little bit of everything and it’s not about support by any means. It’s just not very targeted. So yeah. So obviously I mean this particular combination you guys research that and put it together as a neuro tropic. And so I guess my question is and I know that everybody is going to be asking me is how did they get their hands on this.

Alysen : (35:54)
So, you buy we have a website: mindgame.ca . It’s online and we ship it right to your house.

Lisa : (36:05)
Perfect. So mindgame.ca, I’ll have the link in the description and on the Web site. And as for I mean all the other amazing nutritional and natural supplements that you have created. I now have those available on my Web site because I use them all and I love them. And again it’s for me it’s all about everything in it being natural including the flavoring. You know there’s no coloring in it. There’s no red dye there’s no blue dye and all those things. Right. Like. Ok. So you know before we sign off because we’ve got a few more minutes let’s talk about all those dyes and all that everything they put you know the artificial flavoring. We know that’s not good for us. So let’s give people a little synopsis about you know what it actually is and how it can affect the body.

Alysen : (37:03)
Well essentially it’s pretty difficult to flavor especially not for health products naturally. So it just has to do especially like amino acid supplements like branched amino acids. I don’t know if anybody out there has ever asked an unproven branch to amino acid stuff meant for us.

Lisa: (37:22)
Wow. I tried once I got one it was un- flavored. I’m like oh this will be fine, yeah no.

Alysen: (37:27)
You know it’s not even just like cream like flavored whey protein. For a while I couldn’t find any protein back in the day I could find any protein I can’t have any artificial sweeteners so I couldn’t find anything that didn’t have artificial sweeteners except for flavor. Anyway so we’ve been really careful that was one of the things right from the beginning because selfishly I wanted products that I could take. So all of our products are sweet stevia. Now the thing that’s difficult about that is stevia tends to have a little bit of like him and just small taste to it. A lot of companies will offset with the sugar alcohol so we’ll use like xylem tall urethra tall one of those but sugar alcohols are. It can be difficult for your body to process them correctly. Right. So if you’re like me and your body doesn’t process them that can lead to some digestive problems. So we’ve actually used for the flavoring of most of our products. We use a lot of fruit powders. So we’ll use banana fruit powder or coconut milk powder something like that to mask the off tastes where a lot of other companies they’ll use a flavor mask or so some it’s multi doctrine or some blend of sugar alcohols to cover any bad taste. We just use superpowers. So it works out well. I gather all organic. Yes. And the products taste great it works it works really well. Now that we have the system worked out well but it took a while to get the system worked out.

Lisa : (38:54)
And you know what. I think that’s why a lot of companies don’t do it because they have to invest the time to figure all that out. Right. And you guys have done that.

Alysen: (39:04)
We’ve been really careful with who our flavor suppliers are to make sure that when we are sourcing our natural flavors that they are actually 100 percent natural because you can run into a lot of interesting things within the flavor industry where you can actually from a labeling perspective have something designated a natural flavor but it contains silicon dioxide or multiple doctrine as the carrier for the natural flavor.

Lisa : (39:27)
Oh isn’t that interesting. So more research right? It’s like which one’s going to be the best one? Well I definitely obviously highly recommend all the products you guys have created and just so happy that they’re all natural organic and just so good for you and to be able to have access to that neuro- tropic. I think people are crazy if they don’t give it a try especially if they’re a high performer at any level to be able to make sure that their brains functioning optimally. So. So again that is mindgames.ca. And so Alysen, Delphie, thank you so much for joining us today again from Staterra Inc. Located right here in Ottawa so local and so thanks everybody. I hope you enjoyed this so much great information here today. I love amino acids and I think they’re so important for all of you high performers we can warriors athletes whatever your case may be. I think it’s important that you look into those and make sure that you’re getting enough and enough of the right ones. So thank you so much for watching. If you like this podcast give us a thumbs up. Subscribe to my YouTube channel so that you can see when all the brand new episodes come out and there’s a new life video every week. If you’re on your favorite podcast. Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe and we’ll see you next time. Thanks for listening to today’s show. Head on over to killah.org To gain access to some amazing resources that will help you gain energy, rid yourself of debilitating symptoms, and be the best version of you. Remember to give this podcast a like and follow me on Instagram.at coach.killah. I’m here every two weeks for the brand new episode of the human optimization podcast. Until next time.