Frequently Asked Questions
Answer all of your questions
Product Questions
Morning
1. Plant-Based Vitamin D3+K2 – This one is fat soluble, so it's best to take with the first meal of the day. Some studies suggest D3 can disrupt sleep if taken with dinner, so I take it with my first meal.
2. Multivitamin+ – In the morning with or without food.
Evening
1. Probiotics+ – at night, right before bed, on an empty stomach. Dr. Todd's thinking here: let the probiotics colonize while you sleep, and go to bed with an empty stomach.
We pride ourselves in being a small-batch supplement company. What that means is; while we have access to the same fermentation technology and innovative processes that industry leaders like Garden of Life and New Chapter use, we are not owned and controlled by massive corporations and their shareholders like Nestle and Procter & Gamble. We also create more thoughtfully designed and less generic whole-food blends specifically designed for modern problems such as immunity fortification and digestive health.
Our multivitamin is a raw, fermented wholefood multivitamin. What that means is we develop our multivitamin by growing and fortifying cultures (organic fermented foods) with the nutrients. For instance, if we wanted to make an A, B, C vitamin, we would grow host foods – for instance yeast – in respected nutrient rich environments. So we would grow yeast rich in an A environment; then we would grow yeast rich in a B environment; then we would grow yeast rich in a C environment. We would take those three yeasts and add them together to make the A, B, C vitamin. We encapsulate these cultures – as opposed to pressing them into tablets – to avoid high-heat processes. This protects the enzymes that occurred in the fermentation process from being killed. The enzymes created in fermentation help make the nutrients more bioavailable a.k.a. more efficient for your body to process and use. We are one of the only companies with this process as far as we know. I can't speak to Centrum Men's Multivitamin process, but I highly doubt this is their approach. Generic multivitamins are made by extracting vitamins and minerals from the most cost-effective source. These sources could be foods and herbs, but they can also be more unusual sources like industrial chemicals – petroleum extracts, coal tar derivatives, and chemically processed sugar. These are foreign sources to the body, so they aren't as bioavailable.
Multivitamin+
All the vitamins and minerals in our products are organic. There is one vegan ingredient found in the capsule - vegetable cellulose - that is not yet registered on the USDA organic list. We chose to sacrifice the much politized “USDA Organic” symbol because we wanted to keep the living fermented ingredients alive. Other vitamins may use tablets to attain this USDA Organic certification, but tablets are created through a pressure and heating process that kills all the beneficial microbes found in Multivitamin+.
We intentionally lowered the Vitamin D and Vitamin K because we don't want them to interfere with taking our incredibly cool new D3+K2+Omega-3 DHA. Since Vitamin D and K are fat-soluble vitamins, they can accumulate more in the body than water-soluble vitamins. Vitamin D is a seasonal vitamin for a lot of people. We lowered that dose to 50% the DV so that in the warmer months, when people are out in the sun and taking our Multivitamin+ and the D3+K2+Omega 3, their Vitamin D levels don't go crazy. It helps let people control their Vitamin D doses.
Whole plants provide a diverse array of phytonutrients that make raw plants the optimal source of nutrients. We chose a specific blend of fermented whole foods to capture the goodness of raw plants found in nature.
Yes indeed. 🙂
We boosted the B12 in the multi to 240 mcg – which at 10,000% DV seems like a lot, but if you look at the studies on methylcobalamin, it's not that crazy. When it comes to micronutrients, the FDA's daily values (DV) are based on the minimum amounts necessary to avoid vitamin deficiencies. They're more the floor than the ceiling. For folks truly at risk of B12 deficiency, the standard recommendation is 1,000 mcg (more than double ours). A lot of the Vitamin B12 research on humans with positive outcomes used doses between 500 mcg and 1,500 mcg. One study even used doses as high as 50,000 mcg!
To address your question specifically, it's hard to say how much each person will absorb. We're all so magically unique and different. Generally, oral B12 isn't very well absorbed, which is why you can take higher doses without issues. B12 deficiencies usually occur either because of a lack of dietary B12 (plant-based people) or because absorption is disrupted from GI issues (surgical resection, autoimmune anaemia, pancreatitis, celiac/crohn's disease).
Plant-Based Vitamin D3+K2
Vitamin K2 that works in tandem with vitamin D3 to promote correct calcium absorption and prevent arterial calcification.
While research on algal oil supplementation is limited, studies so far have suggested that its bioavailability and health benefits are comparable to that of fish or krill based Omega-3 sources.
Omega-3 is commonly recognized in the form of fish or krill oil, but the original source these sea creatures get it from is marine algae. We use 100% vegan algal Omega-3, which is easier metabolized by the body, and much more sustainably harvested.
Smaller is more sustainable. Fewer pills because we're tired of taking so many, but we are also embracing the environmental opportunities of few capsules. By making the serving size one capsule we were able to switch to the smallest packaging option available. As a result, we are using 19% less plastic, and by reducing the weight of each bottle by 25%, we will reduce the carbon emissions from shipping by 30%.
While vitamin D toxicity is possible, it is rare. For this to occur, you would need either a sudden massive increase in Vitamin D (Approximately 300,000 IU in the last 24 hours) or you would need to take a high dose of it for a prolonged time (10,000 IU a day for three months or longer). We recommend managing your vitamin D3 levels under the care of a healthcare professional.
All fat-soluble vitamins can be stored in the fatty tissues of your body when you receive more than you need, different from water-soluble vitamins which leave our body in urine. Excess vitamin D can accumulate in the fat and liver, providing you with a vitamin D source to draw on when you are running low. However, it is possible too much vitamin D could cause health problems over time.
Probiotics+
Probiotics have 3 enemies: moisture, heat, and time. We encapsulate Probiotics+ in a trademarked delayed release capsule that protects it from moisture and contrary to popular belief, probiotic cultures can tolerate temperatures up to about 115°F. Our Probiotics+ are guaranteed shelf stable for 3 years from the date of manufacture.
When it comes to choosing the right probiotic for you, don’t be fooled by massive CFU doses. That is a marketing gimmick to trick us into more is best. There are several more important questions to consider when picking a probiotic. Were prebiotics included? How sensitive is your digestive system? Does this probiotic offer a diverse array of strains. High CFU doses of minimal strains compete with each other and can often prove to be ineffective.
Psychobiotics are a special classification of live probiotic cultures that have been shown to deliver mental health benefits by affecting microbiota of the host organism. They work with our gut-brain axis via the vagus nerve to affect and stabilize neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and GABA in our brain.
Soil-based organisms are microbes that naturally occur in soil. Much like probiotics do for our microbiome, SBOs enrich the soil and protect the beneficial bacteria that plants use to grow thus helping to provide key nutrients (postbiotics) to plants. Our ancestors used to consume multiple strains of SBOs, but as we have progressed (or regressed?) our food has become sterile and we are not consuming these beneficial bacteria that our microbiomes evolved to rely on.
Prebiotics are complex carbohydrates that microbes feed off of. Prebiotics can help boost a probiotic supplement’s effectiveness when taken at the same time, so we added a prebiotic blend to Probiotics+. Prebiotics basically act as food to help the probiotic cultures grow, survive, and colonize quickly and efficiently.
The organic ingredients are sourced from USDA-certified organic farms around the world, but mostly in the United States. The digestive enzymes are from one of the biggest producers of digestive enzymes in the country. The soil-based strains are isolated from soil, and the other probiotics are cultured from various ferments. The probiotics are isolated and then put through a specific freeze-drying process to essentially pause them in their lifecycle without damaging their cellular structure. When they are reexposed to moisture, the probiotics resume their lifecycle. This is why we go to great lengths to protect the blend inside the capsule. Previously, we used the moisture-barrier bottles, but we've moved towards the delayed-release capsules to do even a better job protecting the probiotics until they reach the large intestine.