Longevity and the Supplement Industry with Ron Beckenfeld: Rational Wellness Podcast 390

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Ron Beckenfeld discusses Longevity and the Supplement Industry with Dr. Ben Weitz.

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Podcast Highlights

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Ron Beckenfeld is the CEO of Continental Vitamin Company that poduces the Superior Source product line of vitamins, minerals, and herbal supplements with instant-release tablets that utilize a MicroLingual delivery system for quicker and more direct absorption.  His website is SuperiorSourceVitamins.com.

Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure.  Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.

 

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Podcast Transcript

Dr. Weitz:  Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates. And to learn more, check out my website, drweitz.com. Thanks for joining me and let’s jump into the podcast.

Hello, Rational Wellness Podcasters. Today, we will be having a conversation with Ron Beckenfeld. He’s the CEO of Continental Vitamin Company, a leader in the health and fitness industry, and they specialize in producing high quality dietary supplements.  Ron has a passion for health and fitness, and Ron and I have known each other for Too long! Too long!

Ron: Probably at least 40 years, Ben. I thought it was 60. 60. [00:01:00] I thought it was 50 years. Yeah. Well, I knew you before you were a chiropractor. So that several years prior, so about 40 years I’ve known you. Yeah.

Dr. Weitz: Wow. You know, so that just sort of gives away how old both of us are. So how did you first get involved with the vitamin business?

Ron: Uh, back at Gold’s Gym, before I met you, I started my business out of the trunk of my car.

Dr. Weitz: Okay.

Ron: And Joe Gold and all those people used to crucify me in there, you know, I’d be hustling vitamins all the time.  And, uh, that’s how I started. I started going around the health food stores. Uh, there, there were like not much of a healthy, you’re not talking to sprouts type of business. 

Dr. Weitz: Now, at the time, were you making your own vitamins or you were repping for another company?

Ron: No, I went to a small lab and they made it up.  Okay. I put my label on it. So I would put the label on the product or they did, and I would put the. Go around, I’d put the vitamins in the trunk of the car, and I’d go around. And some of the bodybuilders we know, like, Frank Zane, I used to sell him 10,000 liver tablets at a time.

Dr. Weitz: I remember those desiccated liver tablets.  Those things were nasty smelling and tasty.

Ron: Nasty, but I used to sell a hell of a lot of it in Louie Ferrigno and all these guys, man.

Dr. Weitz:  Yeah, I know Louie real well.

Ron: Oh yeah, he’s great. But then from there I was kicking around the business for a long time then my dad, to be honest with you which suffered from he had heart problems.  He couldn’t swallow tablets and he’s, one day he was taking this very small tablet and he had, I asked him, it was for his heart. It was a nitroglycerin tablet.

Dr. Weitz: Right.

Ron: He said, you know, and he had trouble swallowing big tablets, he says, can you make something like this son? That kind of sent me on the mission, and these special machines that make these, I was able to acquire these, and that was about 25 years ago.  So I started making the Superior Source microlingual, which we have about a hundred items. And the real trick to this product is, it’s clean, and it’s very, very, very, very, very, very, very tiny. If you can even see, you could probably put 10 of them on a dime.  That’s, that’s been our flagship with the clean with no uh, you know, the heavy binders and excipients you use in hard tablets, this and that. So we don’t use that. And it’s been,

Dr. Weitz: And you’re supposed to hold these under your tongue to be absorbed?

Ron: You can, or you can just keep in your mouth and let it dissolve, or you can just swallow them.  I mean, they’re so small. So like I say, we have about a hundred items from just the vitamin D’s melatonin to B12 to pretty much. Quite a few products and recently if

Dr. Weitz: you hold it under your tongue potentially you may have a better route of absorption and through the Digestive system, right? Don’t we have a direct route through under the tongue sublingually into the bloodstream, right?

Ron:  We don’t call it a sublingual. We call it a microlingual It’s our own right that and then we started expanding recently like this keto powder We do a lot of business. Yeah, with the MCT fats and coconut and got you 10 grams of a collagen, which is, it’s only 80 calories.  There’s nothing in it. Right. We moved into other products like this, uh, beet, beetroot powder with apple cider vinegar. It does very well for us.

Dr. Weitz: Okay. Yeah. Beets are a great way to stimulate nitric oxide production.

Ron: Correct. And our newest product is this right here, this creatine and HMB. Okay. Which is 10 grams of creatine and 5 grams of HMB, which is substantial.  This is doing well.

Dr. Weitz: Right. Yeah, creatine is actually good for brain health as well as for pre workout to give you more energy in your workouts. [00:05:00]

Ron: Correct.

Dr. Weitz: HMB is another supplement that’s shown some benefit in helping build muscle.

Ron: Keep you from sarcopenia.

Dr. Weitz: Sarcopenia.

Ron: Yeah. Muscle loss. Loss of

Dr. Weitz: muscle as you

Ron: age.

Critical. That’s some of the things I like to talk about is basically, I’m 80 years old. I’ve known you for Almost half my life. Yeah. And I, I’d like just to spread the word about health in general. As you, especially over 40, I related to basically, if you get a car, let’s say you get a brand new car, you know, you can go a while and not take care of it.

But I think after a while, 40, 50, 000 miles, and I related to being 40 or 50 as an adult, you’ve got to really step back and really start paying attention to yourself. And especially the women, they’re so busy with the soccer and taking the kids here and doing this. And I mean, they’re really taking the heavy lifting.

They need some [00:06:00] time for the self or some exercise, 20, 30, 40 minutes would be ideally, and eating properly staying away from packaged goods as much as possible. And especially on packaged goods, you got to learn how to read labels. A lot of people don’t know how to read serving sizes and so on and so forth.

Dr. Weitz: Right.

Ron: It’s confusing. The packaging is meant to be confusing. So many calories for this, but there’s, they, and it’s four servings. They give it to you for one serving, but you end up eating a whole four, you know? Of course. Yeah. 

Dr. Weitz: And there’s hundreds of ingredients that are not popular. They’ll disguise, they’ll call it different names.  As I’m sure you know, there’s, 30 different names for gluten and for sugar and some of these other things.

Ron: Well, basically what’s happened in this country, I mean, you go back 50 years ago, childhood obesity was rare. Some pediatricians maybe didn’t even see it in their whole career. Now, I mean, 70%.  So it becomes a vicious [00:07:00] cycle. The food gets you, they come after the pharmaceuticals, and then insurance companies hammer the death out of you. And it’s a vicious cycle with this thing, and it’s mainly the packaged, factory foods, let’s call it.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah, it’s, there’s a a bizarre cycle that’s happening right now in this country where we have so many people eating these, what you’re calling package foods, factory foods, ultra processed foods.  Junk food, we have various terms for it, but they’re foods that are made with added sugar, salt, fat, and they hit the bliss point, and people overeat them and they jack up your blood sugar, and this is, we’re actually promoting, we’re allowing these companies to spend millions and billions of dollars promoting these foods.

Ron: Absolutely.

Dr. Weitz: Helping to make people overweight, and then the compensate [00:08:00] for it. We now have to spend thousands of dollars a month having people take drugs like Ozembic to counter the effects of the ultra processed foods. And the whole thing is just costly. 

Ron: And then you got the insurance companies, Ben.  They raise the rates because you’re sick and using more medicine. Exactly. I mean, they’re hammering you to death.

Dr. Weitz: It’s insane that we’re doing this. It’s completely irrational.

Ron: Well, here’s the way a lot of people look at it, Ben, and I don’t look at it this way. Everybody’s going to live about the same.  If you’re going to be limping along or be sick with medication, you’ll still live the same. It’s the quality of your life going to be there. That’s where the big come.

Dr. Weitz: Of course, it’s what we call the biological aging versus chronological aging. You know, it’s the quality of your life.

Ron: Well, the drugs will keep you alive, Ben.  It doesn’t mean you’ll have a quality life.

Dr. Weitz: Absolutely. The average person’s health and vitality goes downhill starting [00:09:00] at age 40. And even if they’re being kept alive, they have no quality of life.

Ron: And then, you know, what’s happening too, people would rather have things instead of, like, you can get cheap food, and they can buy things, computers, TV, clothing, stuff like that.  Sure. They don’t care. They just don’t care.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. People say, I don’t want to spend the money on organic but I’m going to Europe next week and that trip might cost them 15, 000, but they don’t want to spend the extra money to buy some quality nutritional supplements or to get organic foods.

Ron: Yeah. It just, they don’t want to bother. And it just, That’s it, they can get the, take the little pill and everything’s fixed from the pharmaceuticals. And that’s the message I’m trying to put out. Basically, you don’t have to have a herculean effort to [00:10:00] stay healthy. Basically, if you limit the packaging foods you have, but learn how to read the labels, where the sneaky ones are like the salad dressings are rammed full of that godly amount of calories, where they’re, learn to serve it, read the label, you’ve got, it’s almost impossible to live without packaged foods, but there are some that are okay.  You know, they can make cardboard taste good these days and 

Dr. Weitz: Sure, but in many cases, you don’t have to use packaged foods. It might just take you a few minutes of food prep. So get a quality, extra virgin, organic olive oil. Right. And some balsamic vinegar. Mix it up with some salt and pepper and maybe another seasoning in there.  And that’s a great salad dressing without all the crap. You go to the store And you try to buy a quality salad dressing and it’s very hard. You even buy one that says olive oil and the first ingredient is soybean oil or some other low quality oil and then they have added sugars and [00:11:00] chemicals and preservatives.

Ron: And that’s basically the message I’m trying to put out. I’m in the vitamin, the supplement business has been good to me. I want to make money, but I want to put the message out. The guy I really look up to the most, and you probably heard of him, is Jack LaLanne. The guy who’s put out the message.  Never stopped for a hundred years, basically.

Dr. Weitz: By the way, you know, he was a chiropractor?

Ron: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah, he never practiced, but he went to chiropractic college.

Ron: He’s one of the great, we’re in the bodybuilding, you and I, of his era, might have been the best one, number one, of his era in the 30s.

Dr. Weitz: Right.

Ron: And then, His strengths of feet were beyond incredible. Oh yeah. Anybody in this day and age, I don’t think could even do a lot of his stuff.

Dr. Weitz: No, I know age 70, he pulled 70 boats across the San Francisco Harbor.

Ron: Yeah. But guys think in an hour and a half, he could do like a thousand pushups or something.  Yeah. And he could do one arm planges and climb a rope with no legs and like a [00:12:00] monkey, instantly. Nobody gives him any credit, but he was never into making the bucks. He was just putting the word out. The Health. And that’s what I want to be.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah, no, Jack McLean was, was great. And there’s all these great sayings that he had a lot of great sayings that

Ron: Well, not only that, I don’t know if he invented the leg extension.

Dr. Weitz: Is that right?

Ron: And the selector pin. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah, nobody talks about that. Huh, I didn’t know. Yeah, he invented those two things. Wow. So, I mean, he’s more and more of my hero because of the message he was putting out to don’t eat the junk food, stay away from the sugar, and a lot of that, all that stuff.

Dr. Weitz: What are some of the other keys to longevity? Obviously, exercise, making sure you’re doing so. 

Ron:  Most important when you exercise, especially weight training, do not overtrain. That, then you end up then you end up at over your place, getting work done. Yeah. Don’t over train. That probably. I didn’t wake up to that.  I was about 50 ish, [00:13:00] but the damage was done. Rest is very important. Excuse me. Rest is extremely important, and we could step on some other things for male. I think testosterone with a, done properly with a TRP, testosterone replacement, I think is good. I call it the four legs of the table.

Rest, eating, training, and the testosterone. All those. Yeah, moderation, all of it. You need to get sleep. I think you need eight hours. You can break it up with a nap or something, or especially you with the weight training, don’t over train. That’s very, it gets it very addictive.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah, I, you and I live in a, have lived in a unusual world, but for the average person out there, just getting to the gym and doing anything is more of the challenge than overtraining.

Ron: Well, that’s a challenge because it’s very time [00:14:00] consuming, but I, I, you know, they have such great, with bands, resistance training, you don’t have to, resistance, you could do it at home. They’ve got great videos or YouTube. Uh, some kind of resistance training try to hold your body mass, you know, your bones, I think collagen is important for your bones.  As you get older, the bones go, the muscle goes, everything goes. Yeah, it

Dr. Weitz: turns out that in order to maintain bone density, you actually have to do some heavy weight training. That’s really one of the few things that’s been shown to be beneficial.

Ron: Well, I would disagree with you, but at least got to start somewhere with, especially the females.

Bands, you just get you moving in the right direction. And if you want to take it to the next step, they do have gyms and the gym’s a good thing. I mean, you and me have been involved with the gyms for basically our whole lifetime. And there’s some wonderful people. Let’s say you go to the gym at 12 o’clock in the afternoon.

The same people are usually there and you’re, it’s a smile, glad to know you, maybe you don’t hang with them. They’re [00:15:00] your, or your best friend, but it’s a welcoming atmosphere. That’s what I thought. And I belonged to, besides goals in Venice, I belonged to a couple other gyms and I get that.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah. I’ve always felt that too.

Ron: Yeah. And you get, there’s a lot of learning. Things have changed a lot. A lot of stuff like, Oh, if you lift weights, you’d be muscle bound. You can’t even be a bass fisherman while lifting weights. I mean, you really can’t do much of anything. Yeah. I mean, every sport, whatever, I don’t care what it is.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah, especially when it comes to longevity, we know that the loss of muscle mass, as, and you also mentioned the loss of bone, are keys to maintaining your longevity because that’s what supports your joints, your skeletal structure, and there are some people who are stuck in beds in nursing homes, and the only reason they can’t get out of bed is because they’ve lost so much muscle.

Ron: And it doesn’t have to be a [00:16:00] Herculean effort, just for the women especially, because they’re so busy, to just start even 20 minutes, even if you know, you do yoga, Pilates, whatever you enjoy, but try to get a little resistant training in there. It’ll go a long, long, long way, and you don’t have to be a fanatic about it like we are.

Dr. Weitz: Right.  And what part do you think supplements play in a healthy Jeopardy lifestyle?

Ron: I think just what you just said, they’re called supplement. Nothing beats real food, Ben. Of course. That’s exactly what they are. They’re supplementation.  Period. and so they do have a, there is a need for good quality supplements as being a manufacturer and knowing the business fairly well.

If I was gonna buy a product, I generally would try to buy from the manufacturer. ’cause they have a plant, they probably have, they, I’m sure they have a lab or they have a third party testing then versus somebody who’s going to a contract manufacturer. I’m not [00:17:00] poo-pooing on the contract manufacturer, but.  I think a guy that manufactures itself got a lot of skin in the game, man. Yeah. It’s extremely expensive. A good packaging line is a couple million dollars. Everything is very, very expensive.

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Dr. Weitz:  So let’s talk about the supplement industry for a few minutes.  What do you see as some of the trends in the nutritional supplement industry?

Ron: As far as the brick and mortar stores go, a guy that has a small health store can make it. The real generally, I call it a vitamin store, that would be like GNC or a vitamin shop. I don’t see that as a future. I see the sprouts, the whole foods, the guys that you walk in there, you can do your whole shopping for a day.  You pick up your supplements, you pick up everything, but the real trend in supplements is of course the internet, Amazon and Walmart and these type of places.

Dr. Weitz: But then there’s some risk. You might not be getting the real stuff and

Ron: Well, that’s what I went back to the manufacturer. Right. That’s what I went back to the manufacturer.

Now there’s some of these, like Amazon, they’re getting very strict who they’re putting on. They want, they don’t want no, they don’t want, they want the customer to be happy. And like I said, if you have a manufacturing pant, I mean, the building and everything, you’re in a maybe 10 million, 5 to 10 million, I mean, to kick up something like that.

So you’re not going to go cheat [00:20:00] anybody for a few pennies. Most of the supplements aren’t that expensive to make. It’s just the cost of doing business, especially in California or anywhere else, advertising, promoting. And for the future of the health food stores, if you want to call it, it would be a market.

And these guys do the business of a regular supermarket. One stop shopping, you buy whatever you want there. And generally the people are knowledgeable in the vitamin area. And with our products, what we do is we hold what is called a map price. So, anybody wants to buy our product at retail, they can sell at what we have a map price on the internet, and they can make a profit.  That’s how to control it so everybody gets a fair shake.

Dr. Weitz: So what are some of the hottest trends in supplements? You mentioned Collagen, I know that

Ron: you’ve [00:21:00] created as far, if I’m not wrong, as a number one selling product on Amazon. Is that right? Number one supplement, period. Ungodly amount is being sold.  And it’s gone from the bodybuilding into the mainstream. A lot of this has gone into the mainstream. What I think is the bugaboo about the business and a lot of wasted money are those energy drinks. Either the low calorie with the artificials or sugar. And you know, if you want caffeine, you can go buy some caffeine tablets, 200 milligrams for five bucks for a hundred.

Right. Those things are I don’t buy ’em myself, but I imagine they’re five, $6 a shot, for a drink and they put a little Tyre tyrosine in there with some caffeine and Right. Some other stuff, but they’re really not, nothing’s better, in my opinion, than water. Right.

Dr. Weitz: Well, they also have the pre-workout supplements which contain a bunch of caffeine as well.

That’s

Ron: another . I personally, before I train. And I train with weights four days a week. I will have a cup of coffee.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah.

Ron: What I use it is with this keto right [00:22:00] here, the keto collagen, and it’s absolutely delicious. Only 80 calories. And I have my caffeine and I have, at least I’m getting a little something, you know.

Right.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah. Well, when you have a cup of coffee, that’s actually a food that has specific phytonutrients that help promoting properties. That’s different than putting some, Caffeine in a pre workout drink and a lot of these companies make these drinks and they put artificial sweeteners and artificial coloring agents and other preservatives.

Ron: Correct. I just don’t believe in that. I never, I never drink those. I see, I mean, They’re in business, people are buying it. They, usually people are misinformed. They need people like you and I to inform them. And I really don’t got a, I have a little skin in the game, but when it comes to health and stuff, I mean, I’m against the artificial sweeteners, like in the protein powders, they put a lot of super lows and all that stuff in there, but you can get [00:23:00] it with a riboside stevia, which is good.  And if you handle it right, it is very good. We use a little stevia in our products here when it’s a little bitter. You know, a little nasty to help out, smooth it out.

Dr. Weitz: Right, I see. Because sometimes you wonder, why did they even put any sweetener in here? You’re just trying to get some protein.

Ron: Well, I’m going to go back years and years and years ago.  I mean, probably when you first started around, the protein was just horrible, man. You needed a cement mixer to mix it with. They use Cyclamate too, which has been banned. And now they’ve learned how to instantize the powder where you can stir it with a spoon. They can make these powders good, and especially the pea powders are excellent now, even though they use the alcohol, sugar, which is not the worst thing in the world, the rethanol.

But there’s no excuse. I mean, for me, I eat five meals a day, two drinks. The drinks are only a little over a hundred calories and I’m eating three nice [00:24:00] meals. I’m barely eating 1800 calories and I am full completely all the time. Yeah. Instead of, I’m not eating too much empty calorie.  I don’t even eat bread. I really don’t particularly like it that much. No, no fried food, no chips.

Dr. Weitz: Do you have a target for the amount of protein you’re trying to get per day?

Ron: I’m trying to get about I eat probably close to 200 grams with the drinks. Without them, I couldn’t do it. That’s just too much food to eat.  200 grams of protein is a lot. Well, that’s, they’re saying at least a I’m not 200 pounds, I’m 170, but they’re saying at least a gram or a little bit more per pound of body weight. So I’m right in there, maybe 150 to 200. If I miss a drink I do a double scoop. Sometimes it’s 40 or 50 grams of protein.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah,

Ron: I studied some calories.

Dr. Weitz: I think the only way you can get that level is gonna be with some powdered protein

Ron: Oh, no, it’s just too much eating for me. I mean you all you spend your time eating I mean in the preparation of the food know the powders on top of it. They really really owe me over for about three hours [00:25:00] Right.  I try to get something in me every few hours. Sometimes only four meals and one’s a drink. Sometimes it’s five and two drinks.

Dr. Weitz: Now, are you keeping up with some of the latest supplements that people are promoting for longevity? There’s Constantly some new product that comes out. Some of the newer products are the NED precursors, like NMN and nr.  And then we have ULI in a, and there’s sperm aine, and there’s, somebody keeps coming up with some new product that is potentially gonna help with longevity. Either they support the mitochondria or they. effect. There’s a series of mechanisms of aging that people talk about. And, one of them is things that promote autophagy, which is getting rid of the old junky parts of the cells.

And there’s [00:26:00] these different mechanisms of aging that we’re trying to Tickle to

Ron: answer your question. Yes, but in our process of manufacturing, we can’t make all of these. But one thing we haven’t touched on is very important. If you want to be healthy, you got to have a good support system around you, whether wife, girlfriend, whatever that is, you’re going to the gym again, you’re not going to look good. I mean, you got to have a positive attitude around you. I think it’s very important, a support system. If somebody loves you besides your dog, you know,

I think they don’t talk about it, but I think it’s very important, especially with the females. The gym is extremely intimidating. A lot of girls don’t even like to sweat. You know, whatever, but where they have a good support, so go on, honey, you’re looking good, you know, you dropped a dress size or whatever, a nice encouraging support.

So I think it’s very important. Nobody talks about that too much. So you’re going to the gym again with hanging out with those bums, you know, and [00:27:00] you don’t want to hear that stuff.

Dr. Weitz: Do you incorporate things like sauna or cold plunge?

Ron: I have, I got at home, I have a sauna and I was thinking of getting a cold plunge, but I get a massage regularly more for me than not deep tissue.  I’m very good with in plus. Fascia release, but a chiropractor like you is invaluable, especially when you got an injury, they’re going to give you some help, man. Right.

Dr. Weitz: So, you’re successful at business. What about some advice as to how to be successful in business?

Ron: You know, I think you and I will agree upon this and you’re a king of it.  Discipline. Yeah. Hey, Discipline is the key to everything in life. I’m, you know, I’m not the smartest guy in town, but I’m not lazy and I’m disciplined. It can be challenging and fun. It’s very important. If you just [00:28:00] put your nose to the grindstone, if you don’t have education, you might learn the hard way, but you’ll learn.  I don’t have a lot of education to be honest with you. I didn’t go to college and I wasn’t what you’d call a stellar student.

Dr. Weitz: Right.

Ron: You know, I thought F was for fine, not for failure. And I didn’t do well in school, but one thing I was a good, as a salesman, I could sell snow to Eskimo. Okay. Very good. I was really good.  And I just knew how to sell. And yeah, sales is a blood of all business. And those are the most treasured people in business. The guys that bring in the business, you can get bean counters all day long. Right.

Dr. Weitz: And getting the right people to work with you, I’m sure, is crucial. As your

Ron: company grows, you must have people in.  Delegate. I call myself a flea herder. I watch over people.  I have a lot of people that have been with me over 30 years [00:29:00] still. We have a great company, vibe in here. Every, we have every Halloween, we celebrate Halloween with our manufacturing in the back and the people we get together, we have a food brought in, music, we go into the parking lot, and everybody has a great time.

It’s really glued the company together. I’m not the biggest payer in town, but the people like working here. My girls, I see them, they say don’t hug them or none of this, that’s bunk. I do what I want to do. I have girls working me for 30 years in here. A lot of people for 30 years, right? They usually die before they leave.  I’ve had several die in here, just so, old age, and just a good atmosphere. Well, you know, we treat people real nice.

Dr. Weitz: So you like to hug people? That gives you and Joe Biden something in common.

Ron: Especially the ones that are in the manufacturing, I go back there and I [00:30:00] love, they’ve been with me for years.  Yeah. Yeah. They’re like family, right? Like a family been there for years and years and years. And the new few new ones we get here and there. You know, they kind of get into the groove and it’s really nice. I’m very proud of it, to be honest with you.

Dr. Weitz: Because most of these companies have to put these ingredients to get the products to go through the machines, Right.  Like the magnesium, stearate, and things like that. Right. How do you avoid doing that? Do you

Ron: Our process just doesn’t do it. All we use is cashew gum. We do use lactose, which is not enough to even count. Tch. Your shirt got more lactose than we use.

Dr. Weitz: And what do you use the lactose for?

Ron: To keep it to flowing and binding.  Okay. Because CIA gum.

Dr. Weitz: Because otherwise the capsules or tablets get stuck in the machine. Is that what happens?

Ron: Right. And a lot of ’em, well, they’re getting better now. I mean, you imagine the mag staring. Oh, they’re starting to do a, a vegetable with that stuff. They’re improving. They’re improving.  Uh, the capsules have really [00:31:00] gotten really clean now. with the feed capsules. You can use rice in there and there’s some natural ingredients for flowing agents. You know, I just mentioned them. The tablets are a little different story, a little different. More more binding and flowing agents are necessary.  Then you got to coat the tablets. And they used to use shellac in the old days. Now do a vegetable coating. We don’t do any of that. We just do powders and what we call our microlingual.

Dr. Weitz: Why do you

Ron: have

Dr. Weitz: to coat the tablets?

Ron: So they’re easy to swallow. Every time you coat a tablet, when a horse tablet, try to swallow that thing.

Don’t go down so easy. I see, I see. These are vegetable, they put them in pans. Candy people use the same pans in their pans. They go in there and they spin and they they’ll spray a little it’s a vegetable coating on them. It’s called a film coating.

Dr. Weitz: Okay. And what is that made out of? Is that something?

You can

Ron: get it most everybody’s using a vegetable based type of a vegetable base. The industry is really forced to go clean. [00:32:00] That’s what everybody wants. Right. You know, they might take the clean vitamins, but on the other hand, they go to the store and pick up a Snickers or whatever, the sugar is a taboo.

That’s probably the worst deal in town right there. It’s very addicting.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah,

Ron: of course it is. And you know, if you can stay away from that, if you could just, I call it the 90 10, if you could just do stuff 90 percent of the time right, you can do the 10 and do whatever the hell you want to do with it, you know, I mean, you can eat some crap.

Once you get it down a little bit, you gotta, start losing a little weight and, diets don’t work, period. They don’t work, they just don’t, you might lose some weight, but you’ll be back right where you started from. I want you to change your lifestyle. That’s

Dr. Weitz: key is changing your lifestyle.

Ron: Yeah, it’s really easy. I mean, before when I was a younger man, I would go to a little restaurant, eggs or egg whites, and they throw me a kick, get the hell out of here. Change, I’ll give you what you want now. Hey, if health foods were selling really big, McDonald’s, I’m going to use an example, would be selling them, [00:33:00] but they’ve tried many times and people just don’t want it, man.

Unfortunately.

Dr. Weitz: Well, also Cosmore.

Ron: Uh, these guys are such big players I think Ben, that they could find a way to get costs down. They’re such big players. I mean, they own the manufacturing end of everything, a lot of stuff. They make their own bread, they make their own this and that. I think they could get it in line, really can.

The volume will cure it.

Dr. Weitz: You know, unfortunately, our biology is such that we have built into us an innate desire for sugar and some of these other things. And that’s because for hundreds of thousands of years, the biggest threat to survival was starvation. So we’re out there foraging in the woods. And something tastes sweet, it’s got some carbohydrates, it’s gonna potentially give us some calories to last another day.

And even though now food is so plentiful, that that instinct is now [00:34:00] contrary to our our health it’s still with us. So we have to resist that. And the manufacturers of food products know that. If they get the food with the right amount of sweetness, the right amount of saltiness, the right amount of fat, what they call the bliss point, people just keep eating and eating it.

Ron: That’s right. Well, like you said, we mentioned 50 or 60 years, there wasn’t no, 50 or 60 years, there wasn’t no childhood obesity. Now, I think about 60%, that’s, that’s bad, you know? Oh yeah, it’s horrible. I mean, a lot, 70 percent of the young kids can’t even qualify to go in the military.

Dr. Weitz: Is that right? 

Ron: Yeah, that’s right, man.  That’s pretty bad. Yeah, they’re physically unfit. The average person can’t even do a chin up. Yeah, I’m sure. Yeah, when you can do one arm, when you can do one arm shins.

Dr. Weitz: All [00:35:00] right, Ron any final thoughts you have? 

Ron: Well, I’d like to tell everybody where they can buy our products. We’d like to make a little money here, Ben. Sure, absolutely. Almost, your products are called Superior Source, Microlingual. Okay. Our own 100, 000 square foot manufacturing, I’ve been in business 55 years great people, great company you can buy anywhere online, Amazon, Walmart wherever you buy online and a lot of healthy stores, Sprouts Vitamin Shop Vitamin Cottage, which are a big chain.  They’re not too much in California, but they’re a substantial chain. One of the biggest. Right. Independent health food stores. In Southern California, I’m almost at every health food store there is.

Dr. Weitz: So just look for a microlingual or superior. Superior source.

Ron: Microlingual.

Dr. Weitz: Right.

Ron: Amazon. No problem.  We’re not a pricey line. A lot of stuff’s nine, ten dollars, eight dollars, because we’re a manufacturer. We pass it on. And if you can’t, if you don’t like, can’t swallow big tablets, or you want a real quality, clean product, [00:36:00] which we are a clean product we’re the game for you.

Dr. Weitz: That’s great. Thank you so much, Ron.

Ron: Okay, Ben.

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Dr. Weitz: Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would very much appreciate it If you could go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five star ratings and review. As you may know, I continue to accept a limited number of new patients per month for functional medicine.  If you would like help overcoming a gut or other chronic health condition, and want to prevent chronic problems, and want to promote longevity, Please call my Santa Monica White Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at 310 395 3111 and we can set you up for a [00:37:00] consultation for functional medicine.  And I will talk to everybody next week.