Ask Dr. Mike: DNA Barcoding & Are Vegan Supplements Available?

Additional Info

• Segment Number: 5
• Audio File: healthy_talk/1510ht2e.mp3
• Organization: Life Extension
• Guest Website: Healthy Talk MD
• Transcription: RadioMD Presents: Healthy Talk | Original Air Date: March 11, 2015
  Host: Michael Smith, MD
  
  You're listening to RadioMD. It's time to Ask Dr. Mike on Healthy Talk. Call or email to ask your questions now. Email: AskDrMikeSmith@RadioMD.com or call: 877-711-5211. The lines are open.
  
  Alright. As you may know, I receive email questions and I just print them out, right? By the way, if you want to ask me a question and you'd like to hear your question read on the air live, send it to me. AskDrMikeSmith@RadioMD.com. It's pretty simple.
  
  I've noticed over the past couple weeks that I'm getting more and more questions about product safety and product quality and I think that those are always legitimate questions. I always encourage those types of questions but I think a lot of it is coming from the fact that the New York Attorney General recently did some testing of herbal supplements at some major chains and found that the active ingredients weren't in there. There were ones that shouldn't be in there. So, I think that's where a lot of that's coming from.
  
  Here is another question that said, "Can you comment further on the New York Attorney General debate about DNA supplement testing? Who's kidding who?" is the question.
  
  Well, okay. I'm not going to speak—and I need to be careful about this—I'm not going to speak to the motivation of what's driving the New York Attorney General's thought process here or what's driving him to test this. I'm just not going to speak to that, but what I can speak to is the testing method that's been used and I've mentioned this before so I don't want to spend too much time on this, but I think it's worth saying again. It's an opportunity to teach and this is awesome.
  
  So, there is a really cool and awesome way to test raw ingredients before it becomes a product. Okay? So, let's go back to pomegranate. Why not? I love it. If you're a listener of Healthy Talk and whether you listen live or you do the on-demand at RadioMD, you know that I talk about pomegranate a lot because I love it. I've told you my story as a child living with pomegranate trees. They were in the back yard in California. Anyway, so let's say I want to make a pomegranate extract. Obviously, I'm starting with what? Pomegranates. So, that's the raw material—pomegranates.
  
  Well, there is an awesome way to test that raw material. So, let's say there's a pomegranate extract provider who I'm interested in using to make my capsules. I call them up and I say, "You know, you've got a pretty good price on your pomegranate raw material. I'd like to make a product out of it, but I want to test it first. I want to make sure that the powdered pomegranate stuff—the extract you send me—is really potent pomegranate. I want to make sure it's all pomegranate." So, a good way to test that is what is called "DNA barcoding". It's basically just looking for pomegranate DNA. I mean, in the simplest terms.
  
  There's this large database of all the plants—not all, but many of the plants—on earth and their DNA signatures. So, I can do this DNA test where I look at this raw material—this raw pomegranate—and I can do a DNA test and I can compare that to this database and say, "Oh, yeah. Good. There's pomegranate in there. There's a lot of pomegranate in there. That's good raw material." So, it's just looking at the DNA and comparing it to this database that's been started and preserved of all the plants and all the extracts. So, it's easy. Nice. DNA barcoding. Works great. But it only works great for raw materials because now I've got to take that raw pomegranate and turn it into a capsule that can be absorbed; that can have a shelf-life. I mean, everything has to be processed a little. The least amount of processing we do, the better, but everything has to be processed. I've got to get that raw bucket of extract and turn it into a capsule. When I do that, when I take that raw material that tested high for pomegranate on the DNA barcoding, and then I run it through my machine to produce this capsule, that processing part will degrade a lot of the pomegranate DNA. Not the phytochemicals and stuff, but the DNA itself.
  
  DNA is a molecule that does not withstand processing very well at all. That's well-known, by the way. So, DNA barcoding is great for the raw material testing. It's not the appropriate test for the final product because I'm going to go to that final product and I'm going to look for the pomegranate DNA, but it's not in there. It got degraded. That doesn't mean there aren't pomegranate antioxidants in there. It just means the DNA was degraded, so if you're only using DNA barcoding to test the final product, your final result will be, "Dr. Mike, your pomegranate has no pomegranate." And, that's not true because you're doing the wrong test. DNA barcoding is not appropriate for final testing.
  
  Why the New York Attorney General decided to do DNA barcode testing for a final product, I don't know. I can't answer that, but I know it was the wrong test and I'm going to leave it at that.
  
  Okay. Let's go on to the next question and I know where this next question came from.
  
  "Are there vegan supplements available?"
  
  I'm pretty sure this came from Sheldon Baker. He's my producer and he's a vegan. He's always asking me questions about vegan products. Interesting story. Sheldon's my producer. He's also the PR director at Life Extension and does a great job. Good friend of mine. He went vegan for some health issues--cholesterol, basically--and is doing well on it. Loves it. We go to New York a lot, L.A., Chicago. We go to restaurants and I always make fun of him because I order in about 1 second because I'm really easy. I mean, I eat anything. And it takes him like 20 minutes to order something. But, hey, the restaurants are doing better about producing vegan food, vegan menus, so it's getting easier.
  
  But, I'm pretty sure this is Sheldon's question, "What about vegan supplements? Are they available?" Yes. You know, most of your whole food based companies—companies that produce products like capsules and soft gels that preserve the whole plant--like taking pomegranate and trying to preserve as much of the pomegranate as they can. So in a sense, you're almost taking pomegranate in a capsule form. It's whole food based.
  
  I work for a company, by the way, Life Extension, that doesn't do that. We're an extraction based company. We take the pomegranate—that raw material—and we pull out those best antioxidants and concentrate them in the final capsule which is another reason why DNA barcoding wouldn't work for us, right? Because we're pulling out the antioxidants. But, there are companies that focus on whole food based products. Nature's Made has a line. NOW is a company. Garden of Life is a company and most of those whole food based type manufacturers or companies have vegan lines. I would stick with those companies because they're awesome companies. So, there are vegan products out. You've got to do just a little bit more research.
  
  One of the other common questions I get with vegan products is, "I want to take Omega-3s, but I obviously don't want to do fish. What are some other ways I can, if I'm a vegan, get Omega-3s?" Obviously, there are plant-based Omega-3s like flax. Chia seed is a more popular one today, but more and more we're seeing companies produce vegan Omega-3s with algae which is really awesome because it's the algae that produce the Omega-3s in the first place, right? Algae produce oils. They produce polyunsaturated Omega-3s. The fish eat the algae and then, eventually, if you want, you eat the fish. That's how you get the Omega-3s. So, more and more companies are going back to the source of the Omega-3, the algae.
  
  So, there are more and more algae-based Omega-3 products for vegans. Check out those whole food based companies, Sheldon, because I know that's who sent this question in. Nature's Made, NOW, Garden of Life. They have great vegan lines.
  
  This is Healthy Talk on RadioMD. I'm Dr. Mike. Stay well.
• Length (mins): 10
• Waiver Received: No
• Internal Notes: NO GUEST
• Host: Mike Smith, MD