Introduction
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Well, hello my friends, and welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show about the possibly best whole food supplement on the market today. We’re talking to this guy, Steven Abbey, who is really onto something here.
Steven has a scheduler that sent stuff over. The sheet itself was all about micronutrients and eating good foods and all this kind of stuff. When I saw this, I was so ignorant, to be honest. Because a lot of the sheets that get sent to you in the functional space are about nutrition and stuff like that, and it just seems generic. But again, I’m the one that’s being ignorant here because even though I’m like, oh, I “know this” quote/unquote, so also a little bit arrogant with this, I’m like, ah, okay. I just have a good feeling about this guy; we’ll bring him on.
He takes the nutrition side to such a deep level. There were at least five or six different things that I learned from this podcast alone. It might be even more than that, but I can think of those off the top of my head just from listening to this guy.
One, it goes to show don’t judge by stupid media sheets because just because you think you know that stuff doesn’t mean you actually do. And two, you guys are going to love the episode. I am just going to read his bio and then we’re going to get right into it today.
About Steven Abbey
Steven Abbey has taken a novel approach to the health and wellness industry with the establishment of SOS Nutrients, a Santa Barbara based smoothie company. Steven’s interdisciplinary background featuring degrees in economics and psychology from the University of Colorado has allowed him to develop comprehensive understandings of economy, politics, and healthcare.
His diverse career encompasses significant roles such as co-owner of Neighborhood Power Incorporated, a solar development company that achieved 40 million in back orders in 2016, as well as owner and co-founder of Allied Logistics, a Ventura-based aerospace manufacturing and exporting firm that was awarded Small Business Exporter of the year in 2003. In addition to his entrepreneurial pursuits, Steven has demonstrated a commitment to philanthropy by co-founding the nonprofit organization Adopt-A-Pet in 1996. The initiative has since facilitated homes for over 2 million pets and increased its annual operating budget to over $2 million.
His innovative approach to the health and wellness industry exemplified by SOS Nutrients showcases the potential for further advancements in the field driven by sustainable and wholesome product development. I didn’t know all this stuff prior to having him on the podcast. I only saw all of this afterwards.
You guys are going to love this. I am glad to be wrong that this is not just some generic nutrition advice. Without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode.
All right. Hello Steven and welcome to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?
Steven Abbey: Good. How are you doing?
Detective Ev: I’m doing very well. Thank you for asking. Little jealous that you’re out in California, but that’s okay. I’m jealous of a lot of our practitioners out in California. I think I’m only a few more people away from telling me that they’re out there for me to get out there myself.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Psoriasis Treatment
But with that said, we’re not here to talk about the wonderful weather in California. What we are here to talk about is something kind of interesting.
I’m fascinated by what we were just talking about off air with the label side and how there’s synthetic versus the naturals in terms of the supplements, vitamins, ingredients that are being thrown in. Cause I think this is something that, admittedly, I have some stuff to learn about; and I’m sure it tricks many other practitioners out there as well.
But before we even get there, everyone that listens regularly knows, I’d love to figure out how the guest got into this space because very few people do it by accident. It normally, becomes intentional based on experiences that they had, whether it’s health wise or just things that they learned. So how did you get into this space? What was going on? Did you have health issues, or did you see something that was just a huge gap in the supplement space?
[00:04:03] Steven Abbey: Well, I started out with health issues and then I saw the gap later. I had really serious psoriasis along with reactive hypoglycemia, along with chronic fatigue. I was just not doing well.
When I would go to a doctor, they might have a type of treatment that’s very short term, but it wasn’t any long term for psoriasis, if any of your listeners know. It is not an easy thing and there are drugs that work, but it required a liver biopsy because it can destroy your liver and that’s a legitimate possibility. Even if it doesn’t show on the liver biopsy to be destroying it, it’s still doing damage.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Nothing on the Market
After the first liver biopsy, I was like, okay, I’ll never do that again. But I just started looking into and really seeing what could be done for all of my conditions. I ended up becoming fascinated with what was available in terms of all these studies that nobody seems to be paying attention to or a lot of people don’t.
Then I started going outside of my own health issues and going into cancer, heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune conditions, and these fascinating studies that were just not being utilized even by a lot of practitioners, which just kind of shocked me.
The thing that put me over the edge was several years ago. A couple of really close friends had what I would say are preventable diseases where I helped them go through the last months of their life. I was part of their team of people supporting them. It just decimated me and to the point where I could not see an easy way to get them really good nutrition in a simple form that they could take.
In the end, I just decided I’m going to make one. Because one, let’s prevent these things from happening if we can in a simple way. Then two if somebody does have something, let’s give them really everything in the toolbox to support it. So, that’s the reason why I designed what I did.
[00:06:14] Detective Ev: Okay. A few things there. I actually gotta jump to this first, not that I want to get too dramatic right into the podcast. But I’m really passionate about this, I can tell that you are, pretty much anyone that listens. You know, again, we’re here for a reason with this.
Best Whole Food Supplement: No Info or Action Steps
What you just talked about with you seeing these people come to the end of their life with preventable diseases, I think that’s what ends up happening to a lot of us, whether we are consciously thinking about this every day or not. But in our space, it’s one thing
I had cystic acne, I had anxiety, depression. I’m not lessening those things, but you know, I was stable at one point. I was suffering, but I would say, stable. I was good; I wasn’t at any risk of passing away from that by any means. When you start to realize that there are people out there that actually left this earth early or they suffered for 10, 20 years needlessly because they aren’t getting the right information, they’re never told about these studies, or they’re never given the action steps that would be concluded from the studies themselves; that’s sad to me.
I want to make the most out of the time here. I want to feel good for as long as I can because it’s very short, passes very quickly it seems. So, I just really respect that. You see these people at the end of their life and like, all right, how can I do something ideally to prevent it, but at the very least to give them a nutrition that they need simply if they’re in that state.
Rewinding that even a little bit though, you had talked about, you had these health conditions. You weren’t in the health space before those conditions though, were you? Or you were in a completely different field?
Best Whole Food Supplement: Health Nuts
[00:07:38] Steven Abbey: No. I had a business manufacturing and exporting aircraft component, so totally different space. But it ended up becoming my passion.
I ended up basically training with some naturopathic doctors here in Santa Barbara where I was going in and we would be working together. I was just helping them out and then I would do the research on what they were doing. To me it ended up being a fascinating time. I had my day job of this really intense aerospace company and then I would come back and just do my passion. I would do it for free just cause I was interested.
I’d gotten my own health dialed in and now I was just like, whoa. What else is there? This was kind of interesting and that’s how I got into it and really went down that path of learning on it.
[00:08:32] Detective Ev: It’s like this space is a space stealer, like we steal people from other spaces. It doesn’t matter what the job is, obviously that is completely different than the health space. You find yourself with these issues and if you’re blessed enough to get those solutions, man, it’s all consuming in the best way, right? You become so positively obsessed with this and just wanting to share this with other people that I think that’s why we look like health nuts to half the people we talk to.
I’m like, I don’t want you to get it cause I don’t want you to go through this stuff. But man, it’s actually a really great way to live when you wake up every day and you’re excited to do what you want to do.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Simplistically Treatable
So, you have the health issues, in a completely different field, and you’re doing stuff on yourself. You’re getting better, which is amazing. Then eventually you’re deciding that you kind of want to venture into this space.
If I’m clear, this is the first time actually going into this space as a business, I suppose, or as a worker in some way with the SOS Nutrients. Is that correct? Like you weren’t doing coaching or anything before that?
[00:09:21] Steven Abbey: No, I’ve been doing coaching for years, but I didn’t set up a product. And that coaching was usually friends and family, you know, sometimes people would come out. But to me, again, it was my passion. I would literally give away my time for free. I would go and help people.
The thing is, like these diseases that are so prevalent and rampant, like diabetes, like hypertension, I’ll just say they are very treatable. It’s just almost simplistic. I shouldn’t make it that way, it’s not for every situation. But say somebody has diabetes, if they change their lifestyle and then they add some nutraceuticals to their diet and they create a really good base of nutrition, I have yet to see somebody’s blood sugar not.
I have a friend of mine, Tamara, who had a 9.5 A1c. Her numbers went down too low in terms of her 24-hour blood glucose monitor. Her numbers were going down into 55 at night. But it would never get over like 115 during the day, even after a meal. If somebody knows what 9.5 A1c is, you know, before that time she was averaging 180.
Best Whole Food Supplement: The Power to Undo
The thing is, if you take real nutrition, if somebody is motivated, you can turn that around in almost every case I’ve seen. It’s just a matter of motivation and having the information that somebody can apply. To me, I just get so excited by that because we have the power to undo that.
The reason that is causing it is the real question. Like obesity and diabetes and all these things, why are we having such massive influxes of that?
[00:11:01] Detective Ev: I appreciate the polite way of saying that because I get what you’re doing. It can almost be shocking the first time someone hears that if they’re listening and they happen to click on our show today. Maybe they don’t know anything about the space, and they listen with type two diabetes or whatever, it can almost be a shocking statement to hear that.
But yeah, for whatever it’s worth, there are many conditions that people walk around, and I ask them, is this something that can be consistently put into remission or whatever? They’ll say no. It’s like, well, we do that 95% of the time. And you’re doing it consistently too. So, it’s a paradigm shifting thing for people.
SOS Nutrients, you know, obviously, there’s a million different companies out there. But again, I was fascinated by some of the stuff that your scheduler had sent over. Cause I’m like, all right, this guy actually really seems like he’s taking it to the next level. I’ll just give you the floor with that. I mean, what makes your product different than so many of these other ones on the market, even the ones that might look healthier or more natural?
Best Whole Food Supplement: Natural Balanced Amounts
[00:11:57] Steven Abbey: Well, I spent a lot of time looking into this. I’ll just say, there are many products that are comprehensive, but I’ve never seen one that’s not synthetic, if they’re fully comprehensive. And I’ve seen a bunch of products that are natural, but none of them are comprehensive.
They might have vitamin C, or they might have vitamin E, or in some cases they’ll even have a multivitamin that’s fairly whole foods, right? But I know the source and I tested that source. Well, there’s one major one; I won’t name their name. It’s unfortunate there’s adulterations there.
But the bottom line is, what I did is I put together a product that every item is whole foods. An example, the iodine instead of potassium iodine, which is a synthetic form of iodine, which is in almost every product that has iodine, I have a blend of three organic kelps from Iceland, far away from any industrialized centers.
So, vitamin C, instead of ascorbic acid, or calcium ascorbate or liposomal vitamin C, which all have a base of ascorbic acid, which are a synthetic, I have a blend of berries, freeze-dried organic berries. It’s way more expensive, it’s 20 times more expensive than me buying ascorbic acid. It’s 45 for the iodine I just mentioned.
I have a guava leaf extract, an organic one from India for the zinc. That’s 35 times more than zinc gluconate.
So, it’s a very expensive way to do it but it’s all whole foods. It’s in natural balanced amounts that your body can assimilate or let go, but it’s in gentle whole foods ways with all the co-factors there. And as well it’s nine different components, right?
Best Whole Food Supplement: Challenge Offered
Besides, for all the RDA stuff that I just mentioned, vitamin A, vitamin B, all the B vitamins and et cetera, et cetera, you also have a blend of organic mushrooms and a full dose, two grams. If you know what that means, that’s a full dose of mushrooms for the day. And you have a full dose of greens and berries and prebiotics and probiotics and enzymes and botanicals. It’s nine major components.
The original product is without any flavorings or sweeteners, so I have people mix it into a smoothie. So, now if they make a healthy smoothie and they add this in, it’s a life-changing experience. It’s not just, you’re taking your average multivitamin. But it does take effort, takes effort to make that smoothie. If somebody does that correctly, and I have really good recipes on my website, you have major shifts.
I’m proving that now with a bunch of studies that I’m doing just here locally in Santa Barbara, just taking before and after. And if somebody on this podcast wants to do a challenge, they can get ahold of me. We’ll come up with what it is and if it doesn’t meet the numbers that we say, that, or better, it’s all free.
[00:15:01] Detective Ev: Awesome. I love that. I love the conviction with it.
What’s actually interesting, Steven, and why I had a huge appeal to your guys’ stuff and what you’re doing, I don’t think many people on this show even realize this cause I’ve been hosting it for two and a half years, the whole way that I got introduced into any form of natural medicine is I got into a sales company at 18.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Experience with An Adulterated Product
Now, I had like seven different diagnosed conditions; I felt like heck. But I wanted to get around good people. I made some bad decisions in high school; I was just trying to get that straightened out.
They were a sales company. It was like one of those network marketing, affiliate marketing type of things. So, I didn’t give a crap what the product was about at the time. I cared that they were super motivated people that weren’t going out, doing drugs, getting drunk every single weekend. I needed people who were focused to help me out.
What was interesting is the product that they sold, and looking back, I’m sure plenty of it was synthetic. This just shows you how much benefit, extra, you could get from actually good sourcing. It was a high potency multivitamin that was also mixed into like energy drinks, quote/unquote “energy drinks”. It was more just like lower dose caffeine. It was supposedly healthy; that’s what they labeled it as. Anyway, not the point.
We were doing these sales events all summer long, and so we’re drinking like two or three of these every single day. And we’re drinking the shots that they have and all this stuff. I’m not thinking twice, I just want to hang around the cool people. What happened after like a month of this, it started to feel really good. And I wasn’t thinking at that time too much, I wasn’t analyzing it that much.
Two months goes by, I still feel really good. Now, I contributed this, of course, to being around the most amazing people I’d ever met. I figured, well, yeah, the people that you surround yourself with, that’s why I feel this way.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Finding the Studies
But then the sales group kind of died out and we stopped consuming the product. All of us still remained friends. Some of these people are still my best friends to this day, nine years later. About a month after I stopped using that product, I felt the depression and the panic attacks start to creep back in.
I’m sure I did not use such a technical term at the time, but I had this thought that went something along the lines of, do nutraceuticals have something to do with my health? Like no one had ever introduced this concept to me. And I did the same thing that you did, probably less in depth than you did, I went online and just started researching this.
I’m like, there’s studies on all of this stuff. Why is no one saying to me that I don’t necessarily, not a hundred percent of the time, but I don’t necessarily need a Xanax or a SSRI? I might need these certain things to help me actually feel good.
We really get into the weeds in functional medicine. There are fancy labs, you got people on carnivore diet, on this diet, whatever, but sometimes the seemingly basic stuff with the nutrients actually really matters. So, my question for you next is outside of the obvious, because I actually don’t think many people can explain this where it’s like, why would I not want a more natural source than not? What are some of the issues with the synthetic stuff? Are there direct side effects? Is it an assimilation issue as you kind of already alluded to? Like what are some of the big problems with getting ascorbic acid versus vitamin C from a whole food source?
Best Whole Food Supplement: Synthetic Vs. Natural
[00:17:53] Steven Abbey: Well, ascorbic acid is a good one to actually go on because there’s so much information on, but there is on everything.
I’ll give you an example with ascorbic acid. So, ascorbic acid used to be manufactured in a lab in New Jersey and 90% of the world’s supply was made out there. That’s all moved over to China. Now, 95% of the world’s supply is made in China.
The way that they manufacture, they’re actually a couple different ways, but the main supplier with the patented process, the way they do it is they take high fructose corn syrup, put it under incredible pressure, incredible heat. They do an acetone wash, and then they neutralize it with hydrochloric acid.
In the end you have a molecule that is chemically identical to what you find in nature. However, by itself, it will not even cure scurvy; it has no vitamin activity on its own. It has got to have the bioflavonoids and co-factors to work. Otherwise, it doesn’t have any ability to have vitamin activity.
Now, I have on my website a study that compares dietary vitamin C and progression towards heart disease and supplemental vitamin C. Supplemental, the more people took, the faster they were moving towards heart disease. Whereas the dietary was shown to be protective, albeit a weak protective effect, but it was a protective effect as opposed to moving you faster towards heart disease.
As people took more and more, it was moving them faster and faster. In fact, the highest dose was moving them three times faster towards heart disease than if somebody didn’t take it at all. There have now been tons of studies on this.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Not Isolated to One Component
I’ll give you another one. Beta carotene. So, beta carotene can be made from a petroleum product, right? And so, beta carotene, I think for most people, at least in my mind, before I knew this, it sounds like a really healthy thing. Oh yeah, we all need beta carotene. We’ve all heard how good it is, right?
But there was a study done on smokers because beta carotene was shown to be protective of people getting lung cancer. They’re like, oh, all these smokers, we’ll test it on them because a good number of them are going to develop lung cancer. So, they did a double blind, placebo-controlled study. Once they unblinded it, cause it was going to continue on, once they unblinded it, they were like we can’t continue to do this. This is unethical. We have to stop this study.
Now if you think about it, it’s actually not hard. One, you take something, you make it totally unlike anything in nature, and you give it in these massive doses that has never happened. One, you’ve isolated it. Now it’s not part of a normal food structure, and you’re giving it in this huge amount.
You don’t ever get beta carotene like that in nature. It’s usually part of a much bigger complex that your body can gently utilize in the way that it wants to. And there are, you know, hundreds of carotinoids and you’ve chosen to take one carotenoid and take this huge amount. So, to me, natural medicine, really to a great degree, you almost always want to be using a whole food or an extract where it comes from a whole fruit, but it’s not isolated down to just the one component.
Best Whole Food Supplement: The Body Reacts Differently to Synthetics
[00:21:08] Detective Ev: First of all, phenomenal answer. That was great. I’m glad I asked you. I’m not trying to get political with it, but I don’t think we need to be supporting China in any excessive way. So just that alone, I’m like, all right, well, I’ll be a little more careful next time, with the vitamin C thing, if I was going to buy a high dose one. Because admittedly, I had been using the ascorbic acid.
I had heard some counters to some of this stuff where it didn’t seem to be as big of a deal. One, I want to stay focused on science, but I don’t even need science to know that nature obviously did not intend that to be manufactured in a lab. I do not need science to know that. And so, it’s just intuitively common sense to me that what you’re suggesting and what you offer just seems like a safer, better option.
And I don’t want to be ignorant here, but I’ll throw it out there. Obviously, a lot of the higher quality brands, they add the bioflavonoids to the product. I’m guessing now that’s to make it actually work. But is that still incomplete then for something like a whole food source?
[00:21:59] Steven Abbey: So, a couple of different things on that. One, does it work? Yes, it’s going to work way better. Is it ideal? No. In my opinion it’s a synthetic mixed with some other things that are going to make it so that it’s going to be used more like in nature. But I think the body reacts differently.
Best Whole Food Supplement: The Body Knows How to Utilize Natural
In the study I just mentioned where they were looking at heart disease and progression, people were eating things that would have all of those co-factors, and yet the people having more and more supplemental vitamin C was moving faster and faster towards it. But you know, I bet it’s better by far. It would be my guess, but I don’t know that.
In cancer treatment, they use ascorbic acid, and they inject it into your veins, you’ve probably heard about this, and up to a hundred grams a day, pretty much the top end. What they do oftentimes is they put a plasma, a high oxygen plasma, because on the site of the cancer, it actually creates hydrogen peroxide. So, it needs the extra oxygen to be able to do that. But you are doing that now like a drug. That is not daily nutrition; that is using it as a drug.
To me, as close to whole foods as I can get is always the way that I’m going to go. I won’t say that there’s never a time to take a synthetic vitamin or mineral, but for daily nutrition, I would definitely stay away from it. The more that you can stay with natural substances like a turmeric or like an amla powder or like any of these sort of things for specific treatments, the better, in my opinion, cause your body knows how to utilize those.
[00:23:37] Detective Ev: Well, that’s a great point, and I thank you for your objectivity with that. This is where I always try to ask questions to see where the audience would be going.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Learning the Labels
The first thing I’m thinking especially is with the vitamin C thing. I had a Covid protocol that I got from someone else, a PhD. It worked phenomenally for my family and stuff, but of course we would not be doing those doses every day. At the same time, I got an IV nutrient place down the road from me that for a few hundred dollars, they’re going to do the 100 grams of, I don’t think they actually offer 100 grams of vitamin C there, but it’s something extraordinarily high that cancer patients do come in and get sometimes.
But again, you use the key word, you’re using it like a drug. That is a treatment because at that time, the pros outweigh the cons. But no one wants to be doing that on a daily basis. You have cancer though; you gotta do what you gotta do. I think that’s a really fair take with it.
Now, one thing that you had said to me right before we got on, I really am interested in this. Cause I think as health professionals, especially FDNs, we want to believe that we’re so much better at reading the labels and stuff. And sure, we know when we see a vegetable oil, terrible. We are looking out for manufactured in a facility that also processes wheat if we’re dealing with a client with celiac disease, fine.
But you seemed pretty adamant in the idea that perhaps like even these natural people might not be aware of how to actually read the label in relationship to what we’re talking about today. So, how do the manufacturers kind of trick some people on those labels? Or are people just not looking for what you’re referring to at all?
Best Whole Food Supplement: Understand How Labels are Written
[00:24:58] Steven Abbey: Well, they almost always put it right on the label, but you have to know what to look for.
So, if you see zinc gluconate that gluconate, that “ate” at the end is almost always going to be a synthetic. So, whether it is potassium iodide, if it has an “ide” at the end of it, it’s almost always a synthetic. You also have the outliers, like ascorbic acid is a synthetic, but it ends in acid, right? You know beta carotene; you just need to know that can come from a natural source. It’s just much more expensive so almost always it’s going to come from a synthetic source.
The manufacturers list it right on the label in almost all cases. That’s not a hundred percent of the cases because I know people that have gone in and asked the manufacturers directly and they’re misleading them, I’ll just say that. The advertising is always talking about whole foods and the thing is all about whole foods. But then you look at the label and if you actually understand how it’s written, you can immediately see that it’s all synthetics.
Pretty much all the major brands, if you look at the nutrients when they’re all comprehensive, they’re just all synthetic, not all, maybe 95% or 90%. So, just learning how to read that. And there’s a good book that I bought years ago that really explained it, went down into each nutrient. Supplements Exposed: The Truth They Don’t Want You to Know About Vitamins, Minerals, and Their Effects on Your Health. It was a great way of reading each ingredient. And that was a big step in my learning towards always wanting to have that.
Best Whole Food Supplement: High Quality, Right Amounts, & Reasonably Priced?
[00:26:37] Detective Ev: Cool. All right. Thank you.
Going to the next level then. Some people are going to be listening, Ev, already, I knew to avoid the synthetic. I have a whole foods multivitamin, whatever, and so maybe they’re on that. But the one thing that I always thought in my head, and you kind of already touched on this, was this idea of, I know one of the reasons these companies do this is because it’s astronomically more expensive to get something from a whole food source than it is to just, again, create it in China, in that case with ascorbic acid.
So, when you are manufacturing this stuff, you also mentioned that you’re actually getting the proper amounts of ingredients in because that’s another thing I’m thinking. Even if it’s a whole food supplement, they’re probably not going to have the proper amounts, cause I’m guessing there’s a pricing issue. How do you deal with all of this? How do you make sure you’re getting that good quality?
I know you mentioned something about Iceland, but we kind of flew right through that part. So, how do we deal with the quality, keeping it reasonable price, when actually still getting all these high-quality ingredients and the right amounts?
[00:27:31] Steven Abbey: Well, my product is not inexpensive and that has been a struggle.
Best Whole Food Supplement: A Comprehensive, Perfectionistic Product
Just to give you an idea, I mean, my vitamin C blend of berries is 20 times more expensive than if I bought ascorbic acid; it’s actually more than that. The zinc that I buy is a guava leaf extract and it’s organic. I forgot if it’s 35 or 45 times more. It’s actually, in one of my presentations I do. The iodine that I mentioned, that’s 45 times more expensive. Then potassium iodine, it’s just very expensive, and pretty much across the board.
But I am going to make a multivitamin. It’ll be coming out in July. But that multivitamin will all be whole foods. It will take many capsules cause it’s whole foods, right? It will be less than my other, like smoothie products.
But the smoothie product, the thing that I like about that is I put in a full blend of mushrooms, I put in a full blend of greens, not just the stuff to get folate and things like that. There’s a cruciferous blend and it’s a lot of stuff, prebiotics, none of that’s in a multivitamin. So, it’s expensive, but it’s very comprehensive. And it’s kind of a perfectionistic product cause it’s such a passion of mine and I really wanted to do it right.
It’s not going to be for everybody, but it is unique in that there’s nothing like it on the market, at least currently. There’s a reason why there’s nothing like it cause it is expensive.
[00:28:59] Detective Ev: Well, fair enough. I mean this in the best way possible because I love what you’re doing. I would almost go as far as to correct what you’re saying cause I don’t think it is expensive. I meant that when I was talking about it before.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Expensive is Relative to What You Get
Expensive, in my opinion, maybe I’m missing the definition, but is relative to what you get. I mean, some of the lab tests that our clients use, you might literally have one client that’s utilizing $1,500 worth of labs. Now if that showed us nothing, that would be pretty expensive. What a waste of money. Right? But I can get enough insight as an FDN practitioner.
I’m not making a claim, this is a factual statement. We have had clients go through the program that spent another couple thousand on our sessions and $1,500 on the labs. They had a thyroid condition, autoimmune beforehand, and then they were in remission by the end of that program, even though they had had this for 10 years beforehand. So, if that person spent $20,000 on what we did, it’s not expensive at all. It’s great; you saved their life. You really changed the entire trajectory.
So, I’d give yourself credit for what you’re doing because it takes some guts to actually innovate and to actually do the right thing. Because, if this was in a store and you’re walking down and you see both products, you’re like, well, that’s too expensive, then you would think that. But if you can actually hear it through, it’s clear that you’re trying to do the right thing and offer people this in a way that matters.
I love that the multivitamin is coming out in July. I’m actually very interested in that part. I do, I don’t know if people would call it a smoothie, cause it’s not the most fun ingredients, but it’s an Ev shake is what I call it. I’d love to add it into that. That would be kind of interesting.
Best Whole Food Supplement: The Huge Disconnect
Where do we think Western medicine is missing the mark on this other than the obvious? I mean, how is it that you and I, seem like reasonably intelligent guys, certainly yourself with your background, how is it though that we can go online, read the books, look at the studies, and come across this stuff? Then yet, some of the best doctors in the country are still not recommending the things that someone like you is talking about.
[00:30:45] Steven Abbey: Mind boggling. I have no idea.
A friend of mine recently had a heart attack and he went to the emergency room. They actually sent him home because they didn’t see it as a heart attack yet. He went home and he was still feeling crappy, so he went back. They sent him home again and he was still not feeling well. He was like, I’m not going to go. And his girlfriend was just like, no, you’re going; something’s wrong. So, they brought him in.
They ended up, he was having a heart attack all that time. And they did all this magic that is Western medicine. Then they put in some stents, which are not a long-term solution. Sent him home with no nutritional advice, no checking into what he was doing. He was having a pint of ice cream before bed every single night. And at one time he was fully diabetic. If you understand what that means, he’s so off the rails with nutrition.
They just basically patted him on the back and sent him home and said, you’re good to go, we’ve put in stents. That is not accurate. I do not understand the disconnect. There are many different ways of dealing with what he has specifically.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Sulforaphane & Cancer
The same thing for cancer. I’ll give you an example of just one thing. A very large meta-analysis recently came out looking at cruciferous vegetables in cancer. And cruciferous vegetables, I’m sure your listeners know, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, things like that, right? Those have a substance called sulforaphane. That’s been shown to be very preventative of cancer.
In this large meta-analysis, basically the authors came out and said, those people that have three to four servings a week of cruciferous vegetables across the board of all cancers lower their cancer risk by 40%. If that is accurate, let’s just assume for a second that it is, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been involved with many people that have died of cancer. That one thing right there would be amazing to have cause even if it didn’t keep them from getting cancer, maybe it will lower the metastasis rate because it will block angiogenesis.
It’s been shown to do that along with things like turmeric, along with things like amla powder. These are all very much going to slow down that process of angiogenesis or the creating of a blood supply to any tumor that’s created. The tumor can’t get any bigger than the head of a pin by itself without a blood supply. Without a blood supply, tumors are not dangerous. It’s only when they get a blood supply.
So, if you can block that from happening, you can change the outcome drastically. To me that is a really good way to start. And all of those things are in my product because of that reason, but I don’t leave it there.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Does This Product Support Different Diets?
Every day I make a smoothie. I always put a cruciferous vegetable in it. Then if somebody were actually treating cancer, I would say, don’t put in a normal cruciferous vegetable. I would say put in broccoli sprouts because they have 10 to 100 times what broccoli, which is the highest form of a cruciferous, for sulforaphane. It has 10 to 100 times that amount, and you can actually have efficacious doses for the cancer that they currently have as opposed to just preventing it, which is a very different thing.
[00:34:04] Detective Ev: Wow. How would this mix in, because our practitioners have a variety of different dietary backgrounds. Of course, we always recommend whole foods, but we’re not particularly strict in that area.
Like some of us do really well on certain things and others don’t do as well. We have practitioners in long-term ketosis. We have practitioners that wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. So, if someone, for example though, is on a ketogenic diet or whatever, like could they add this in? Because I know that there’s the smoothie aspect.
Is this something that has some natural sugars and carbohydrates in it or is this something congruent with someone in ketosis? Because I’m thinking a lot of these people out there get into keto, not because they were bored one day and said they want to try that, no one has ever said that. They do it because they feel like heck. So, they’re removing a lot of stuff. They’re putting their body in a more anti-inflammatory state, which is wonderful.
But I do think about, unless they’re actually doing like the whole organ meat thing, which might have its own complexities, they’re actually probably missing a lot of the micronutrient side.
Best Whole Food Supplement: How to Use it With Ketogenic
So, I’m like, all right. Well, you nailed the macro side perhaps for your own body and your unique individual needs. But what about this micro side? Could someone add it in for pretty much any diet?
[00:35:07] Steven Abbey: Yeah, they’re going to have to be careful the way they make it, so they don’t throw themselves out of ketosis, right? Otherwise, you’re walking a fine line whenever you’re dealing with ketosis and staying into that level. The product itself should not throw people out but how you make the smoothie will. So, somebody with the multivitamin, they could do that.
But personally, I would be doing a very low carbohydrate version of a smoothie. It would have to be really well done. It would be with something like avocado, be some berries, and then probably water. I mean, it would be a very low carbohydrate and the berries would only be a certain amount. But they are very low in terms of glucose as well.
People on a ketogenic diet really need to be very careful that they’re doing all these good things in terms of, it’s kind of an elimination diet to a great degree. That’s why I think a lot of them are having such success with that component of it. I would say you have to do it right because otherwise the long term can be very hard, especially on women, from my perspective.
But to get those nutrients in would be really valuable because it would be hard to get comprehensive nutrition in for them on all the things. They’ll be missing some micronutrients in most cases.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Entrepreneurial Shift
[00:36:32] Detective Ev: Excellent.
So, May 2023 when we’re recording this, by July though, that multivitamin when it comes out, I mean obviously that would be good to go then, right? They could add this in pretty easily.
Steven Abbey: Absolutely.
Detective Ev: Sweet. All right, Steven. Nice. I think you just hit a huge thing for I think a lot of our audience. That’ll be cool.
With that all said, it’s not often that I can do this, but so often we’re talking just to the client side of things on these shows, but I know our practitioner’s ears are lighting up. Cause one, they might want to use your products with their clients, but they’re going to want to use it themselves.
So, since the practitioners are already probably pretty engaged in this conversation, if I may, I’d actually like to ask a business question. How are you finding success with the entrepreneurial side of this? Because we have some people that go through our program and they crush it, man. Like by the next year, job is quit that they didn’t want to be at, and they’re doing the FDN thing. We have others three years in, it’s rarer, thankfully, and increasingly rarer, but they’re still kind of fumbling around. I believe it’s more of a consciousness and mindset thing.
For yourself, you literally jumped into a completely different industry and you’re selling something that is at least somewhat fairly niche, even in the natural space, because you have to demand that high of a quality in your product. How have you dealt with maybe that entrepreneurial shift?
Best Whole Food Supplement: Passion Product
[00:37:44] Steven Abbey: Well, this wasn’t done as a business decision. I know this is going to sound funny, but basically, I had coaching from the former president of Balance Bar, Dick Lamb. He’s here in Santa Barbara and was kind enough to coach us. He was part of a program.
I’ve spent a small fortune on this, and I’ll be curious to see how this goes. But bottom line is, he said, make it taste good. The current version, by the time this comes out, we will have a flavored version. I did that under duress cause I’d rather just stay with the unflavored for people that are not going to mix it into a smoothie. They need to have something so that they can take it every day or five, six times a week at least. So, I’m making a flavored version. But he said, make it taste good. The current version, I wouldn’t say tastes great. You need to mix it into a smoothie.
He said, make it really inexpensive. It’s not super inexpensive; it’s expensive. But it’s really high-quality stuff. He said, make it super convenient. I’m putting it into a smoothie, that requires effort. So, I went down this path. And he said, make it have a high profit margin. It doesn’t. I mean, basically you can see I’ve put all this money into the product itself because, again, it’s a passion project.
So, I’ve gone outside of the normal business model. I have been in the business model in my aerospace company that I had, in my real estate company I’ve had, in a solar development company that I’ve had, those have been all businesses that I’ve been trying to make money. This is not that case.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Confirmation of Integrity
This is, I want to actually change people’s lives. And I think that they can. Really if they show up, I will guarantee the results. But they have to show up, that’s the key thing.
I’m doing a test right now with five more people, I’ve done it with five people. The results that we got were fantastic. It’s a clear understanding of what they just need to do. It’s just having them do it.
[00:39:39] Detective Ev: Okay. So then, because I kind of got what you meant, but then to be concise, one of your business strategies is staying with your integrity no matter what, despite the recommendations.
[00:39:48] Steven Abbey: Well, it’s either going to stay with it or it’s not going to be here because it’s not going to be filled full of synthetics.
Me making a multivitamin, that is a step down, but I want to meet people with where it is. But it stays within the integrity of the company in terms of it is all whole foods. Right? That to me is what I am. You know, that is my promise to people that are going to use this product.
But, you know, from a business perspective, I don’t know. We’ll see. I think people are going to see real results. If they spend the time to understand what this is about, I think it makes a lot of sense. It really does.
[00:40:28] Detective Ev: Well, I think you’re on the right podcast and there’s many out there like this, right?
The majority of people might not make these sacrifices, but like our practitioners, before they’ve even come to FDN, a lot of them have spent $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 plus on their health trying to figure this stuff out.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Testing a Local Influencer
Even I, and I’m a younger guy, I’ll still spend the money that I can because I’m more focused on the results and feeling good and enjoying my life to the degree that I’m able while I’m here, than I am about a few extra dollars on that. The good news is so many of our practitioners save money in other spaces cause we’re not the people going to the bar every weekend, right? We have these healthy habits, so we’re not eating out as much cause we probably eat at home more. So, it kind of all works out nicely.
With this said though, you have definitely had some pretty cool, it seems like, testimonials or transformations with people who have followed your philosophy and worked with these products so far. So, I’m just curious, is there anything that sticks out at the top of your head? Like what’s a really cool transformation that maybe someone underwent by just simply adding this stuff into their life?
[00:41:26] Steven Abbey: Well, I pitched a local influencer here in town. I said, hey, his name is Forrest Galante. He’s the host of Animal Planet and Discovery. And he’s not only just the star of that show, he’s actually the one who produces the show. He’s on like Joe Rogan all the time. He is always flying off all over.
And I said, hey Forrest, how about this? I’ll bring you a smoothie for the next three months and we’ll take your blood beforehand and take your blood afterwards. All I need from you is to actually take the smoothie. And he’s like, sign me up.
Best Whole Food Supplement: Fantastic Results
We did a whole series of blood tests. In advance, I said, I’m not sure how much this is going to make a difference to you because it’s not a huge amount of time, but let’s give it a try because you’re in great shape. He’s 34 years old, looks like a Greek god, works out six days a week, looks fantastic.
When we got his numbers back, he was pre-diabetic. His inflammation, if those listening know what a CRP is, or C-reactive protein, he was 10.9. You’re not supposed to be a 10.9, you’re supposed to be under one. He was way high in that. His oxidative stress, measured by F2-Isoprostane and 8-OHdG, lipid oxidation level and DNA damage, they were off the chart. The 8-OHdG where it gets to the red zone where you don’t want to be, was at 390. He was 1,048, to give you an example, way over.
As it turns out, he had to go to Australia and Africa and all these other things, so he left early. We only had five and a half weeks in the end, not three months. But his C-reactive protein, inflammation marker, went from 10.9 to 1.6. Still not perfect, but way better. His A1C went from 5.7, marker for blood sugar, went from the bottom end of pre-diabetic to 5.0. That’s a fantastic result, where you want to be.
And then his F2-Isoprostane went from like a thousand and something and dropped by 52%. His 8-OHdG, which again is the DNA damage usually from oxidative stress, but it can be from a bunch of things, went from 1,048 to 335. These are massive differences.
Where to Find Steven Abbey & SOS Nutrients
I didn’t know what he was dealing with when I first started doing it, but I made those smoothies very healthy. He had them, roughly, six times a week, only for five and a half weeks. But that was what the difference was. I get super excited by that.
We’re continuing on and we’re going to do another test probably in July. But the problem with it is he’s always gone, so it’s hard to get it consistent. But sometimes he’s just taking just the product by itself. Sometimes he’s taking it with a smoothie, but he’s mostly doing it. So, we’re going to have another set of results in a couple months.
[00:44:27] Detective Ev: Excellent. So cool.
One of our tests that we use in our core lab testing here has 8-OHdG on it. Those numbers are crazy. That transformation is awesome. It really stuck out that’s on our Metabolic Wellness Panel. This is great, Steven.
Where can people find you if they’d like to order the products now or get in line for the multivitamin in July? Because this will be out definitely before then. So, where can people find you?
[00:44:48] Steven Abbey: The best place is our website. It’s sosnutrients.com, it has a ton of information on there. Also, you can write in, and I will personally answer it. Everything comes to me, and I will happily jump on a phone call. There’s no obligation or anything. Again, it’s just my passion, so I’m happy to sit down and chat with anybody, show them, go over what they could expect.
Conclusion
[00:45:13] Detective Ev: Cool. I know that you’re not an FDN or anything, I get that, but you have no idea how much you relate actually to our audience. It’s just so clear that your heart’s in the right place and all that stuff.
We will have that in the show notes. I’m also just genuinely interested in what you’re doing. I’m the type of person that will pay for someone that goes to those extreme levels. That’s what I have found to be best.
I’ll also keep you guys, as the audience, updated what happens with me. I’m already in a pretty good state of health, but I’ve been known to work a little excessively, I love what we do. And if it can even help me with that, man, I’m good to go.
Thank you so much for coming on today. This was, honestly, way more than I expected, fantastic. Thank you.
[00:45:48] Steven Abbey: Well, fantastic. I really appreciate you having me on. And here’s a discount code that you can have, that you can give out to your audience: Discount code: HD20.
And for anybody that’s interested, feel free to reach out. I would love to chat.
Detective Ev: Thanks, Steven.
Steven Abbey: All right. Take care.
You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.
For more informational and functional health-oriented podcasts like this one, go to functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/health-detective-podcast/.
To learn more about us, go to functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/about-fdn-functional-testing/.
