What They Don’t Want You to Know Decoding the Supplement Industry


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Jul 07 2023 49 mins   5

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Dr. Joel Rosen: Hello, everyone and welcome back to another edition of your adrenal fix where we teach exhausted and burnt-out adults the truth about their health so that they can get their health back quickly. And what a pleasure it is to be joined with Mike Casey. He is a multi-dimensional entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of Formula IQ, a Health Solutions leader and accelerator with a focus on expanding the boundaries of health through aligning partnered brands and products.


Mike rose to become a prominent leader in the integrative health space, through his early years in the Health Solutions, supplement manufacturing, and disruptive marketing and technology industries. After assisting several health solutions, and disruptive tech companies accelerating from early stages to millions in sales, and after realizing the fundamental need for specialized attention and creativity in unifying brands, marketing, and product creations to the health solution front, Mike created what is now Formula IQ in 2013.


Mike, we could go on, but I want to get to the meat and potatoes today. So thank you so much for joining me.


 


Mike Casey: It’s my pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: Yes, absolutely. So what we always like to get insight with our guests, Mike is how they got into the area that they got into in the health and wellness space. And being a disrupter and having this supplement company, tell me a little bit about your journey, and maybe your health background or any challenges that you might have been dealing with for you to ultimately get to the position that you’re in today.


 


Mike Casey: Sure, absolutely. You know, it’s funny, I used to tell this story in a different way of how I got into this space, we all have our own unique way of what prompted us to be in this industry. You know, I used to tell people that I have an athletic background, and I do I’m still a competitive athlete now. And that led me to supplements and wanting to work in the industry in the space.


But, you know, as I’ve dug deeper over the years, I’ve gotten older and more perspective on things, I actually realized that you know, it was more of my upbringing, it was more of my, my teenage years as a child, you know, we were fed extremely unhealthy stuff. We had no idea at the time, you know, you know, I’m like I said, a competitive athlete now. But I was an extremely overweight child.


And as I was coming up, my father had heart problems. He had a heart attack at a very early age. My mom also struggled with many different disorders and things as we were coming up. And the real answer to the question is, have we had all the money in the world as a family, but we had no answers? My dad had all the top procedures done and still had no answers, you know, being in his early 40s, and having to have a triple bypass on his heart, and not knowing why failed solutions for health for my mother, you know, it just led me to, to know that there had to be a different way, there had to be a better way.


So I set out in my late teens actually knowing that I wanted to do something in the integrative health space, which is rare for people to know that his young age, but I was certain and so I dove in headfirst and began studying human nutrition food sciences and supplements just caught my interest because, to me, they created a bridge of health that was there for people who didn’t currently have it before.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: Awesome, awesome story. So yeah, not to not to discount the fact that you knew at such an early age, and that was as a response to just what your family members had been going through?


 


Mike Casey: Yeah, no, it was, it was realizing that you know, my father was one of the earliest people, he was one of the first patients to ever have robotic bypass surgery done. So you know, we had access to some of the greatest techniques, some of the greatest advancements out there. But, you know, looking back, I realized that the one thing that we never got, right was the nutrition, we never got the diet, right?


And ironically enough, I tell this, this story, you know, here and there now, but my parents, my family were anti supplements, for some reason, they, they just, they classified them as bad they classified them as something that you shouldn’t do is dangerous. You know, I remember in my early teenage years, I got grounded for having protein powder. So if that tells you how anti-supplement they were, and it was, it was just a fact that they didn’t understand what they were utilized for.


So it forced me to want to know why I needed answers. And the traditional medical system didn’t have them. So, you know, I knew that there was validity in the traditional medical system. But something was missing. There was something that was missing, that was keeping them from getting better because it was always one trip after the other to the doctor or to the hospital. And so there had to be another way. And it turns out, there weren’t other ways. So that’s kind of really what I set my life out to pursue what’s the complete path to health.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: That’s awesome. So take So maybe through those early years, what was the first venture that you did in pursuing that dream or goal?


 


Mike Casey: Sure, absolutely. So, you know, it’s funny, I started off with my earliest time, you know, I don’t talk about it too much. But I started off personal training, and then working in a nutrition store actually, that was, you know, I was like, how am I going to experience in this as I work my way through school and get educated? And so I did, I did that I was, you know, literally working around the clock, two jobs.


And it taught me some stuff about supplements and the other and it taught me about the human body and how it worked and responded to exercise. You know, I had the great opportunity after that to go work with another company that had a really great piece of technology.


And they had supplements paired with it. And it gave me an opportunity in my early 20s, to help them be a part of a company that was scaling and growing, and to really worked with the formulation of the supplements to work with how that paired with the technology and to work with integrative practitioners while at this company.


So that was really, I would say, my first leap into the industry was doing that, because it gave me a chance to realize that I loved more than just supplements, I love more than just health, I loved the full picture of health. And more importantly, I learned and started understanding what it took to put together a formulation and what it took to make a supplement. But not just a supplement, but one that worked and understanding the quality of what goes into it because I think often that is really overlooked in today’s market.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: For sure, especially with the toxic Tagalongs and the excipients. And ultimately, we’ll get into who’s behind that, and who owns the companies as well, which I think it’s a great question to get into. So was PF IQ, the was the second company that you started, or?


 


Mike Casey: Yeah, F IQ was the second cobalt was the first company that I fully took ownership of and was the first full owner of so, you know, I’ve been part of creating and growing many other brands in the industry that are well known now today, you know, which I’m very proud of, and was very happy to be a part of, but FAQ was the first thing that was really mine, it was my first chance in 2013, to start something, and to do it on my own.


And to really do it because there was a missing gap in the industry, there was nobody who was really looking at all factors, you know, you had people who were making supplements that were just great, and had really high standards of quality control. Or you had supplements who were companies over here who were making stuff, you know, in their basement or back room somewhere that had no quality control whatsoever.


There was really no bridge between these two companies in the industry at the time, as well as the third tier to that I would say is that you know, there was a fad for many years. And you know, this is a practice where there were only companies that were there professional grade companies who offered good supplements that work that you could find combinations of things to maybe focus on one’s health specific topic, like anxiety or something. And then you had the lower-end retail products.


But most practitioners were using singular ingredients. I mean, it wasn’t uncommon to walk into a doctor’s office, and to leave with, you know, 10 to 20 supplements of singular ingredients. And so you could walk in with anxiety and they could say, Okay, you need to take these five to seven singular products of individual ingredients to get the job done. And it was becoming really cost-prohibitive.


And it was just becoming a huge headache for patients. And so I saw an opportunity in the market, I was like, There’s got to be a better way they wait, we need to create something that has helped specific, it’s simple. And that levels, the playing field that brings professional quality to everybody that doesn’t cost $60 A bottle like they just as someone who had had experience making products and understanding the cost of it.


I knew that was just it was just absurd margins that were taking place and the industry is starting to get out of control. So our goal was to kind of come in and level the playing field, which is you know, we’ve done successfully over the years.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, it’s great as an entrepreneurial mind seeing the opportunity gap and that’s what you saw on why not come up with an intelligent product and actually call it F IQ. Is that how the name was born? Or is


 


Mike Casey: Yeah, no, absolutely you know, F IQ formula IQ. It’s all about smart formulations. You know, smarter formulations, faster results. That was our tagline at first.


And you know, I used to say all the time as well that health is formulated not supplemented. So the entire idea is a smarter way a better way to reach people to reach health. That’s absolutely the whole entire basis behind the F IQ and the creation of the name.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: Excellent. And so you obviously I have interviewed Morley Robbins. several times on our podcast and you have somewhat aligned ships with Morley, but you’ve also been in existence through to 13. Till then. So what were you primarily focused on formula IQ-wise prior to him, and then we’ll sort of piggyback from there.


 


Mike Casey: So up until 2018, when I met Morley and the root cause protocol, you know, our main focus has been and continues to be still working with practitioners, you know, it’s, and that’s not to say that we haven’t sold to the general public into retail we have but my background has always been working with an integrative practitioner, whether it be a natural path, a chiropractor, we’ve got a handful of medical doctors who are in the integrative space. And so, you know, we made formulations that were health specific, and we sold them into, the health professional market space, so it was a resale. So most people found our products on the shelves of doctors’ offices.


And so you know, the cool thing about our products is, they’re very easy to sell themselves. And they’re very easy to understand as a better way to put it. Everything that we make in our line has been helped specifically. So you look at our line, and we have roughly 25 skews now, and everything is exactly what it says it’s four. So you know, anxiety IQ, which is our flagship product, it’s very, it’s a smarter solution for anxiety, simple as that. So you know, info IQ for inflammation, sleep IQs, for sleep, I mean, it’s very simple.


I mean, you like our doctors tell us all the time. And like, we don’t have to do any work, your products sell themselves like you just look at it, you know what it is, you know what it’s for. And when you take it, for the first time, it works, I think that’s the biggest disappointment that I’ve found over the years. And the one thing that we constantly are working on what the formulating of our products, is, we’re up against the pharmaceutical model here. So while there is a very vast difference between a pharmaceutical drug and a dietary supplement, people expect a result when they open a bottle, and take something.


And I think that’s something that a lot of supplement companies forget, it’s not enough to make a good product, your product has to work, it has to work the first time that you take it from a patient or from a customer. And so that’s one of the things that we pride ourselves on, excuse me with our products everything that goes into it is about the effectiveness of it. So that’s something really unique and that comes from the sourcing process to how we formulate and how we put it together. You know, no, no two ingredients are the same. So there’s definitely a very stringent process when it comes to our products.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: Excellent. Yeah, there are a couple of questions I have about that. But going back into the formulation of it all, how active of a role do you play in that might be? Are you doing the research on your own and figuring out what are the best nutrients that will yield those results kind of take me through the genesis of how a formulation happens.


 


Mike Casey: Sure. So obviously there has to be a demand for it. And as much as I like to take all the credit and say that I’m the smartest guy in the room, I’m not you know, I’m good at what I’m good at. So I’ve generally created the foundation for the formula. I love formulating stuff. I love understanding that each part of a plan plays a different role and can have a different effect on the body. That’s That’s true. That’s understanding the ingredients and the science behind everything.


We do have third-party chemists. So we do once we put together a formula, we run it by them. So let’s take the recuperate IQ for example. I know that’s something we’ll get into with the RCP and work with Morley. So when I put together the recruit right products, it’s all about creating bioavailable copper for somebody. So we looked at the formula. We looked at the ingredients we said, okay, so what food sources are going to be the highest and copper? Well, we know there’s been a flipper well undefended, beef liver, primarily the source, where should it come from New Zealand or Argentina have the highest concentrations of minerals still active within them?


Then we looked at a vegan source, which is spirulina we understand that spirulina can only come from one or two suppliers in the world, if not, they can contain contamination in the harsh on the body. So Hawaiian Bay, spirulina is what we use. So understanding where that comes from is very important. That’s going to that was the highest copper from a vegan source.


So along with oxygenating, the blood, and many other benefits, then we said it’s still enough. This is where we sat down, we’re like it’s still not enough copper, it’s still not enough to move you know, to move the needle. So working with Morley, he, you know, his, his response was more copper the better. And so, that’s great. You know, but how much copper how much we can do much of a good thing that comes a bad day. There’s also digestibility so we had to look at how much copper is glycinate we add to it.


Do we use copper bisglycinate you know, there’s copper, or take copper? glycinate copper hydrosol copper, there are many different forms. So, you know, we had to look at which type do we want to use copper one copper two, we landed on copper because glycinate because it’s copper neutral, meaning the body can digest it and utilize it in whatever form it needs to. Whereas like copper too is, it’s, it’s tin, well, copper one is 10 to one absorbable compared to copper to. So looking at supplements, you know, copper sulfate is a copper two product, which is typically for vegan sources. It’s just not as absorbable. So we landed on copper bis-glycinate. But then we had to ask the question, how much can a patient tolerate at one time?


And the answer is, most people can handle about two milligrams or less roughly per serving. While we want to get more into them, we have to obviously put it with things that can allow them to do that. And of course, a lot of times the inflammatory response of the gut can be an issue. So we added a little bit of curcumin to it to help with the inflammatory response to the gut, which then creates a whole formula product. So hopefully that kind of gives you an idea of just an abridged version of what goes into putting together a formula.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: That’s awesome. I appreciate that taking me through the whole conceptual idea. I don’t want to go down this rabbit hole. But I know that there are camps that get into the Hatfields and the McCoys sort of speak in terms of copper to is no good. And there’s no such thing as copper neutral, and it’s only got to be copper one. Maybe you can just give us a little idea on if that’s true if it’s not true.


 


Mike Casey: So there’s copper one, there’s copper two, and then there’s copper neutral copper zero, which that comes from Earth sources. So elemental form that comes from the earth, which means typically, copper based glycinate means that it’s being pulled from the glycine Salts of the Earth. So I think that’s where people get confused. That’s where they don’t understand that there is no such thing as copper zero, well, like my response would be, well, how does the Earth exist with it, then? So that’s really understanding the difference. So copper two is going to be primarily found in plant sources.


There is a study that shows the difference between copper one and two I said, copper one is 10, to one in terms of absorption in the gut, to copper to that now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t use either one of those is that either one of those are bad forms, you know, if you’re deficient in copper, I would prefer you get it, you know, from a good source or a good product than not at all.


So I think we can all live in the world of what’s better, what’s purer what, what, what’s out there, but at the end of the day, we just need to get it because our soil and our food is depleted in it, therefore we are as well. So, you know, but for us, you know, the copper, the answer to your question, you know, copper neutral is usually the earth form of copper beans. So that’s extracted from Earth sources?


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: No, absolutely. I agree. I agree with you. And it would make sense that our body would be endowed with enzymes and systems to be able to take whatever form we’re getting and repackage it into the cell, some easier than others. As far as that’s the importance of the intelligence of the body and the formulation, right? So this is a good intro into, it’s not just about getting copper in there. It’s about all of these other supporting nutrients that will help, I guess, along the assembly line to make the widget that you’re looking to do, whether that’s energy or helping with anxiety or sleep, or whatever it is.


Quick question, just from an aside from what you talked about, before, some companies are, are owned by pharmaceutical companies, and we’ll talk about that now. What what’s the difference with their particular product? Is it is is it not considered in terms of the intelligence of the product? Is there? Like what would be well, let’s get into that maybe you can just kind of take the conversation and I’m with it.


 


Mike Casey: No, I think that’s great, let’s just say, let’s just dive into it. You know, it’s a, it’s a fun topic where, you know, sometimes people are surprised by it, and sometimes people are not, but, you know, I think first and foremost, well, a lot of people don’t know, when they walk into a health food store, they walk into, they see, you know, a product on the shelf. Well, that could be Metagenics even something that you find at your doctor’s office, you know, Metagenics is they are in partnership with Ulta Corp, which is Amway, so the MLM if you’re familiar with them, so they’re all the same ownership.


Nothing wrong with that. You know, you get into Nestle. Nestle is a big player in the supplement space, you know, they own pure encapsulations woven Zyme Garden of Life. They have a handful of supplements in their arsenal, Procter and Gamble, bought a new chapter so they all new Chapter A Um, you know, the one that I have a lot of fun with is Clorox as in the bleaching company, Clorox owns Renu life, which is the cleansing company. So, you know, no pun intended, they clean your sinks, they clean you out, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a weird combination, along with rainbow light meal sellers who they own as well, then, you know, you get down to, you know, schwa bones, in somatic therapy, all the way down to Atsuko ohms innate and mega food, which are common names as well.


So I mean, we could go on and on and on. I’ll Suka is a pharmaceutical Chinese pharmaceutical company that makes a lot of drugs that we see here in America, too. So what does that mean? I usually say this, and people are like, Oh, my gosh, the pharma companies are involved in the products, that’s a terrible thing. That means that they’re no longer good and that we should not take them. That is not necessarily the case. On one hand, I look at it. And I say, imagine where these supplements are being made. Now, the clean rooms and the level of equipment that these guys have to be able to bruise produce these supplements are top-notch.


So on the one hand, we have a much higher quality control environment for these products. So I think that’s the Pro. That’s we’ve got some consistency. You know, if the FDA goes in there, these guys are doing things by the book. I think that’s the Pro. That’s good, we’ve put some we’ve taken the wild wild west out of the equation, you know, we know what they’re doing. Now, what’s the con?


I can tell you that the negative is that, you know, I could be wrong. But the negative in my opinion, is I guarantee you that there is nobody as passionate as myself that is sitting at Procter and Gamble, or sitting over at Schwab, or any of these companies sourcing the ingredients. They’re not sitting here third party testing them or testing them as they come in from the raw material suppliers and validating. Do they still have copper in their beef liver? You know, are they looking at whether are we using undefended beef liver versus, you know, you know, beef liver with fat in it? They’re not looking at the source.


You know, in our whole food, vitamin C, we use omelet foods. People commonly asked me where does our food come from? Well, it’s also known as Indian gooseberry. So if that answers your question, it comes from Asia, that’s where it should come from. Now, you can also get it from China, just like you can most ingredients. So I would say the downfall is that the pharmaceutical companies are generally aimed more at profitability than then effectiveness and quality control determines the quality of the actual end products.


So it goes back to my statement of it’s not enough that we make a good product. It’s not enough that our products third party tests excellence, our products have to work and they have to work the first time our customers take them. And I think that’s the difference that we look at is these companies, when they buy them out, they’re profiting on they’re trying to increase their profit margins.


So they’re going to buy from raw material sourcing that is cheaper. Now that may shave a few pennies off and cents here and there which add up over time. But those ingredients are going to be void of the active alkaloids and the active minerals and sources and stuff that you really need to heal people with. So, in my opinion, that’s the trade-off. And I think that’s the downfall of it.


I see good and I see bad, but, you know, if you’re going to take a supplement, you have to make sure it works. If not, why are we taking it because I tell people all the time, it’s not how much you take, it’s what you absorb. It’s what your body utilizes. So that’s why companies such as ourselves, or premier research labs, even you know, they they can get away with using a little bit and getting a lot out of it. Because the quality is there. They’re really looking at their sourcing.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, no, I appreciate that insight. It’s really great information. You know, you get what you pay for it really right? And I’ve actually done a tour through PRs labs, and I was really impressed with the quality control. And the mass spectrometry, when you say that, when you test it yourself is that what you’re doing is 100%.


 


Mike Casey: So, you know, a lot of companies so the FDA does not require you to if when you bring in an ingredient from a raw material supplier, when you order it, the raw material supplier will say here’s the here’s the testing, here’s the spec sheet. Now, nothing says that you have to test it before you use it to formulate again, you can blindly trust them because you have testing to use that ingredient. But companies like us and me research Bob Marshall out there, you know, he is retesting stuff.


He’s validating that what is in the raw materials is actually in them when he receives them as an additional layer of testing prior to making the batch of products and so yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And I think I think everyone should do that. But they don’t and that’s why no two ingredients are the same. I mean, we could have curcumin that is exactly the same as 95% curcuminoids.


And that is exactly the same as sitting on two different pills. And one could be from, a source that has been sitting in a raw material warehouse that’s been preserved. The other one is going to be fresh, it’s going to be freshly ground. And it’s going to come from a live supplier that has a rich soil base and everything else that is aligned with the, you know, the specs that we demand. And one’s going to be felt when you take it. One is going to give relief and the other one not. If anything, it’s probably going to stress your digestive system because your body’s got to work extra now to get rid of this ingredient because they can’t pull anything out of it. It can’t properly align with you like it’s meant to in nature.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, no, excellent. And so for both. So basically, my understanding is the mass spectrometer gets to the idea of, are there any impurities? What’s the potency? And anything else that I’m missing that the letter does?


 


Mike Casey: Yes, correct. That’s, so that’s their method of testing was HPLC. Testing. There are many different forms. But the goal is just to break it down to test for, like you said, to make sure it is what it says it is. And then to see what is actively in it. I mean, I can’t tell you how many companies laced their ingredients.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: You had to turn away stuff that was contaminated.


 


Mike Casey: Absolutely. I had, I had a supplier one time send us beef liver that was fortified with copper. I mean, I didn’t even think we were there yet. I mean, it’s common to do that with you know, vitamin C products, I get that it’s common to do that with cod liver products. But you know, the fact that it was a beef liver and a fortified it with copper orotate.


And it’s like you didn’t think you’d find this one. So it’s extremely, it’s common. And that’s, that’s the wild wild west. That’s the part that people you know, are always afraid of, you know, the supplement space is like, you never know what’s going into your products. And there is some truth to that, you know, there absolutely is there should be a healthy level of skepticism with this stuff. So, you know, there’s a little bit of truth to everything.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: So as far as you know, that Bob passed, though, right? Or did you know that?


 


Mike Casey: I know that I should know that, but I did not know that. Wow, he did.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: Yes. been like four or five years now. I’m one of those artists guys I’ve ever been privy to give a lecture or hear a lecture from and I’ve been in a lot of lectures, he’s still sort of a luminary in my mind. But anyways, as far as one of the big things that he touted was, they don’t put toxic Tagalongs and excipients in their small batches. What does the FAQ do? Do you? Can you tell me a little bit about that?


 


Mike Casey: Yeah, same thing. So we did for a period of time use vegetable, magnesium steroid, or rice flour, or silica, because a lot of times, so I guess I should explain why people do that. First of all, so when you flow a product, when you make a product and you mix multiple ingredients together, if it’s a single ingredient, it should not be as big of a concern. But what happens is, it’s not necessarily about anything more than using something to keep the ingredients from taking or sticking together during the manufacturing process.


So in our case, it was the vegetable magnesium and the silica because what that allowed for was the oils actually from the vegetable magnesium story, allowed the acted as a lubricant so that the ingredients would not cake together. So they could flow through the equipment to be then encapsulated without any problems, we have worked to remove those, which just creates more of a manual process for where the products now there are some supplement companies that will debate you and tell you that your body will digest the products better, there are articles out there that will state this with vegetable, magnesium salt, or magnesium stearic. synthetically, and I disagree with the synthetic version.


I also disagree that our body needs those things to digest and utilize ingredients. I mean, our body’s very smart, if it needs something in the digestive system, it will pull it there and you know, break down the ingredients. So we’ve removed all of those things. I mean, there are companies out there who still use titanium dioxide, all kinds of you know, fillers and things in their products. And at the end of the day, those are just a shade cost down that allows them to get cost down.


A lot of times they have to use them because they’re using a lower-quality ingredient in their product. That’s another trade-off for that. But, you know, I’m in agreement with Bob, you know, it’s funny because he was using it as an early inspiration for me. I interviewed with him actually, many, many, many years ago. And he gave me some great advice at that time. But he was the inspiration for a lot of stuff that we do. So we share a lot of the same viewpoints in terms of products.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: That’s awesome. I had no idea. So it’s a pleasure to have mutual respect for someone and the concepts that they pioneered or at least embraced and I know that he gave out little binders I actually have one over there about it. The study’s on too much. I mean, you’re taking it daily, day in and day out silicone dioxide and talcum powder and all of these magnesium steroids and whether so anyways, that’s awesome.


But as far as moving over into sounds like you saw an opportunity when Morley and the root cause protocol came up with the stops and starts and understood that there’s utility here, so maybe kind of take us through the genesis of working with him and what products you offer now with the skews of that formula of those formulas?


 


Mike Casey: Sure, no, I think it was, it was a great synergy. When Morley and I met, you know, I met, I had a call with morling, an introduction through a good friend of ours. She’s very talented. As a practitioner, I talked with Morley on the phone, we spoke for about 20 minutes, and I hung up the phone him just to give you some context, and I said, I’m going to work with this guy, we’re going to do something together, I had no idea what it was going to be at the time we hadn’t. And, you know, talking to him, he felt the same way.


We had no idea what we were going to do together, we just knew that we were going to do something. So fast forward. Morley came to me a little bit, and a couple of months later, we went to dinner. And he’s like, I want to create a copper supplement. And I gotta be honest with you, nobody talks about copper and the medical industry, you know that I know that.


I knew it was a great anti-fungal product. I knew copper was great for anti-inflammatory stuff. But, you know, there was the lingering fear of copper toxicity. You know, you typically don’t look at Copper unless you have something wrong with the liver. But then you look at those markers. So it was new. And we kind of pioneered this space of creating a copper supplement and understanding that people are deficient in copper. And there’s a reason for that, you know, and I think the RCEP I think a lot of people, they probably get this conception that the RCEP is only about copper.


The RCEP is not only about copper, and this is why we’ve partnered with Morley, the RCEP is about restoring balance to essential vitamins and minerals, mainly the minerals and that mean that you know, iron is not something that is not important. I think, you know, we we we talk about, you know, anemic and people taking iron is not to say that iron isn’t important, we just have too much of it. We have too much of it in our body, we have fortified our foods with it to the point of fortifying foods with it, we are getting enough of it, and we are getting plenty of it. We do not need more.


But the one thing the one mineral the two minerals, I would say which are the core pieces of the RCP is that everyone is deficient and and this is tracks on blood work is copper and magnesium. And that is because we live in a very stressful world. You know, we can’t eliminate stress. You know, who are we kidding? You know, if we could that’s that would be the secret you know that the topic of what you do. We can’t limit it. We can’t get rid of stress, emotional stress, lifestyle stress.


And we’re not probably going to get rid of oxidation either which is internal stress and toxic and toxic and you know, pieces. So when I met Morley in the RCP root cause protocol, to date, I had never offered a multivitamin. I had never offered foundational nutritional supplements and people thought I was crazy. And I always knew and it went against my teachings.


And they went against my beliefs that people should not be taking synthetic vitamin and mineral supplements there, they were the wrong ratios, and they were causing more harm than good. Like there just wasn’t a foundational platform out there of something that I could really wrap my mind around to say this is right. And I worked with a lot of doctors, and we today I had not found a solution that I could say is something that you know, 80% of the population could benefit from doing every day as a foundational piece. And so when I went through Morley’s work, and we started talking it put the pieces, we put the pieces together, it was all of the different pieces I’ve learned over the years.


You know, I’ve always thought that people should not be taking mega doses of vitamin D. I do not think people should be taking tons of zinc supplements. And I think people are deficient in magnesium and core minerals. And so it really just tied it all together, even though it challenges everything you’re taught in, you know, to traditional education. But it really just brought everything together. And so we worked with him to create products that were aligned with his research to say this is the foundation.


These are the things that you can do to restore energy in your body into clear oxidation or exhaust or whatever you want to call it. These are the foundational things that you should take every day. They’re the core root of health issues.


Use for just about everything and everyone, if the body can create enough energy, it can heal itself. And that is that one principle that every medical model has at the basis of it is if we can, our body has enough energy you can heal. And that is really what the root cause protocol is about that which is through restoring ancestral principles in essential minerals and vitamins and their correct forms and ratios.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: Awesome. Yeah, I agree. 100% I gotta admit, I got caught with my pants down for this interview, because I was familiar with recuperate. And I know that you’re adding new new new lines, or new skews and new products that were consistent, but I don’t know the specific ones and or the doses. So maybe tell us though, getting into you guys have made live the the new quickstart guide that maybe has built upon the stops and starts. So let’s talk a little bit about that, and why you felt the need to do that. And then how does the line of products that you have fit into that?


 


Mike Casey: Yeah, absolutely. So you know, one of the things, as someone who’s worked in the supplement space for this many years now that I’ve, I’ve really understood, and you will appreciate this as a practitioner, and doctors, they tell me this all the time, is practitioners and doctors are great at telling people what to start taking, but they are terrible at telling people what to stop taking. Right.


And for the life of me. I mean, I see it, I hear about it every day, people walk into their doctor’s offices with grocery bags of just, you know, sometimes 20 and 30, plus different supplements. And I’ve seen people taking three different B vitamins, three different brands of vitamin C, and they don’t even realize it. And it’s all because someone put them on it at this period of time. And they just never told them to stop. So, you know, why is a need for is? I think that has to stop.


I think someone needs to say, Okay, enough is enough. Why do we need to stop doing this? More importantly, then is, you know, these items that we should not be taking, you know, high amounts of synthetic vitamin D we should be getting sunshine instead. You know, too many zinc supplements because they can disrupt copper in our body. You know, we should stop taking synthetic multivitamins Is that the wrong ratio? So, these are the things we stop. And then what do we start taking? Like what are the essential things that we need?


Well, we know we’re deficient in copper. So we created, a protocol to recuperate, we know that people need magnesium. So we created different magnesium products, we know that you need retinol to activate copper. So we created cod liver oil. So the goal was to really create a turnkey line that, excuse me, that really helps people. That really helps people just know what to start knowing and what to start doing. And I think that’s missing in the industry today. It’s like, you walk into a health food store. And you have a whole slew of options. But what do you take? And why do you take it? That’s the question that everybody really needs to know.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: Absolutely, sorry that you got choked up there. You are about your line, you know, so as far as Okay, so, the other things that I was curious to know about are that you mentioned that you had two areas of focus with your supplement company. So tell me a little bit about that.


 


Mike Casey: Yeah, so two years of focus, which I think we’ve covered. This point is health-specific formulas, which is you know, you somebody has anxiety, our line is really simple. Even recuperate the copper products, you know, it’s what is it doing its recuperate, the name implies itself, it’s, it’s restoring copper, it’s restoring bioavailable copper and I think that’s another thing that needs to be mentioned with the RCEP Quixtar or even more or less work is I think the whole entire basis of it is understanding that it’s not just about minerals, it’s about in vitamins, it’s about bioavailable nutrients, minerals and vitamins so you know too much of you know, copper unchecked can be a bad thing too much of iron unchecked is a bad thing.


Too many synthetic vitamins unchecked is a bad thing. We need bioavailable nutrients. So that’s really the two focuses of our company and really overall with our formulas is that everything that we have, we want to be bioavailable. And I think that you know, we talked about with Bob Marshall and his line that was his whole basis to like what you take should work it should be available for utilization to be in its right form the right amount and you may not need a ton of it for sure.


You know, I think that’s that’s a lot of things time some people as well with supplements as they die. into heavy, they dive in, they think, you know, more of this is good and too much of a good thing can become a bad thing, you take too much magnesium out the gate, you could have, you know, regulation issues, knowing the bathroom too much, you know, you take too much whole food vitamin C, you could have, you know, overactive adrenals because most of the vitamin C in our body is stored in our adrenal glands and in the brain. So, you know, we have to be mindful of these things. So, for us, you know, it’s held specific formulas, and then foundational formulas were the two areas which, you know, is always served us very well.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: Gotcha. No, I appreciate that. I thought about where you were gonna go because when we were talking a little bit earlier, one of your big demos has always been educating the provider and reaching out to the provider. And then the other side was the retail side, but awesome information. I mean, I learned a lot here, Mike, and I appreciate your diligence and your your your mission. Is there a mission that you initially adopted to kind of guide your principles of all the things that you do?


 


Mike Casey: We want to shift health? You know, I think that’s a very big statement. But if we can shift health, and we can level the playing field, by bringing the knowledge that integrative health professionals have to everyone, I think we can shift health. And I think shifting health means bringing truth, bringing the truth about health to people. And I say that as someone who’s obviously extremely successful, but over the years, in my early years, I found that a lot of the best information in the top information with the top practitioners was unobtainable, it was unaffordable, you couldn’t get to it, you couldn’t reach it, you couldn’t, you just couldn’t access it. And to me, it was what what’s the use of that, you know, we want the truth. And we want to shift health, and we want everyone to be healthy.


You know, I tell people all the time, you have no idea how bad you feel until you feel good again, and I’m sure you see that with your patients as we get used to the fact that we’re supposed to live with anxiety. We’re supposed to live with these aches and pains. We’re supposed to live with fatigue, as soon as you teach a lot in the answer, you know, the comeback to the No, you’re not. Like that’s not supposed to be part of everyday life.


And so my mission is to shift that to change that. And I believe that supplements are the bridge, you know, they’re not the magic bullet. The name supplement implies itself, you know, what, what are supplements there, there’s something that you’re having to take, because you’re not willing to do something else, you know, if, if I don’t want to eat this, I don’t want to do this lifestyle change?


Well, you’re gonna have to supplement it, it’s a buffer because you don’t want to make another decision. So I believe food first should always be the approach. But if you’re not going to do certain things, the supplements and so that really ties it all together. It’s just reaching people through supplements to give them that bridge to help. Because if I can help you see how good you can really feel, and it’s affordable, and it works. I can change the rest of your life. I think that’s really our mission. That’s what we set out to do in a smarter way.


Dr. Joel Rosen: No, that’s awesome. And I would just add on that, even if you are willing to do whatever it takes a lot of the time, just the food supply, the mineral concentration, the glyphosate, the high fructose corn syrup, the iron enriched foods, the fear-based media, all of the above is just not enough to to get the amounts that you need. That’s going to help improve your overall health.


So awesome, awesome information. Mike, I appreciate it. One of the things we always ask our guests in parting is what do you wish you would have known then that you know now that might have accelerated your journey or helped you overcome any challenges are just giving you a little bit of a quicker User Guide to get to where you want it to go quicker?


 


Mike Casey: Sure not? That’s a great question. You know, there’s so many things, I think in terms of health, in terms of just overall health and this particular topic and what we’re discussing here today, I wish that I would have realized the importance of prevention earlier. And I say that you know, I’m in my mid-30s. Now, still young, but so many people, wait with their health until they’re on the brink of death. They wait until tragedy strikes, they wait until something happens. So let’s go back to you know, my father when what motivated me in the beginning with all this with the heart problems?


What if he had changed his diet? You know, what if he had done a CT calcification score test earlier? What if he had done all of these different things? And I think that’s the biggest thing I wish I had told my younger self and I think that anybody should really understand is don’t wait until something happens to get healthy. Like that is that will be the downfall for The rest of your life because people make their health a future self problem. And unfortunately, once you have something like that happen to you, you’ll never be the same. And so get ahead of it. And I think you’ll have a much richer life for it and doing so.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: Gotcha. Well, I don’t think you have to worry too much. I mean, if you were thinking of a supplement line or supplement industry in your teens then really should have started when you were five, and you’re regretting that you didn’t think about preventative health until you were in your teenage years. So I agree with you on this, it’s never too late.


You know, the best time is to start before but the next best time is now. So I appreciate your all your insights and information. I definitely will post links to these to the site to your websites and to the product lines. I don’t know if we were able to give sort of a discount for listening to this podcast is that possible?


 


Mike Casey: Like, I can now give us a like and get a small discount code. We’ll set something up for you guys underneath BROZEN, we can make that the coupon code. That way, listeners and followers can use that. So use Rosen at the time of checkout. And of course, the website is activated F iq.com. If you want to do the Quickstart program, act activate F iq.com forward slash RCEP. So we try and keep it really simple for you guys.


 


Dr. Joel Rosen: Awesome. Well, listen, I appreciate your time. And I wish you future success. And I’d love to be able to keep the door open for another interview when you’re telling me about all these other amazing stuff that you got online and we can share those insights as well. So thank you so much for your time today, Mike. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.


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