Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com and today I've got special repeat guest and good friend Barton Scott on the line. He is the man, the myth, the legend behind upgraded formulas, which is one of my preferred supplements that I use. I use that just daily throughout
my competition prep. I use it daily anyways, but it is a great supplement for getting the electrolytes styled in. We talk quite extensively about proper electrolyte manipulation, making sure you're taking in the right ratio of sodium to potassium. We talk about iron and calcium. We talk about how a lot of people are under the assumption that they are deficient in iron, whereas in reality they may be taking in too much iron and need to deplete those levels a little bit.
As we talked kind of just really in depth about proper mineral loads, elemental loads, how to test for these different minerals to figure out where you're deficient. Testing and not guessing is key as we dive quite deep into all of that. I've got no doubt that you'll take something from this so that for the delay, sit back, relax, enjoy the conversation with my good friend Barton. Scott and we are live Barton. Scott, how are you, brother? Hey, so great to be back on with you. It is, man.
I feel like the last time we had you on a podcast, I mean, I think it's been like two, maybe three years now, I think. I think something like three, yeah. Yeah, that's Wildman. That is wild. Well, how, how is the world treating you? We, we saw each other at you were at Ketocon last year, right? Yeah, I guess it would have been year before last now I was out of the country then. But the yeah, things are, are really good.
I've got the just doing a lot of really impressive things with the company things I'm, I'm, I've wanted to do for a long time and like clinical trials and things like that. And, and then like just constantly learning, you know,
continuing to learn. Even though we've made such great strides and like really innovative, it's still just, you know, it's the reason why I got into this, right is, is finding, you know, what are the, the newest principles, techniques, concepts, What are some of the old forgotten wisdom as well? I love that stuff just as much. Well, I'm a huge. Fan of all things upgraded formulas, man.
Like I, I, I was giving y'all some serious business throughout my last competition prep because I've I'd figured out my electrolytes got got it dialed into the tea and I was doing 1 teaspoon of your upgraded potassium with every 1000 milligrams of sodium I would consume. And I was consuming 10 to 15,000 milligrams of sodium a day at
the time. So I was doing a whole bunch of your upgraded potassium, but I had that stuff on, you know, speed ship automated delivery because that was that was super, super important for me at that time. That's phenomenal. I I love that Yeah and yeah, looking ripped as ever. Love it so, so good that that's a great amount of sodium too. I, I know you know what you're doing there and, and you're also, you know, doing hair tests and doing other tests and to check in.
But yeah, I'd love to hear. I'd love to hear what what you're, what you learn by doing that, what, what you learned in order to do that and what results you saw. Well, for me, whenever I'm in a prep and I'm I'm dying down, the calories are dropping, the body fat's dropping like once I get to about, I don't know, probably sub 2000 calories. And once I get down below, you know, double digit body fat. So I'm starting in like 7-8, nine percent body fat, my craving for salt just intensifies.
And I've noticed that I just kind of lean into that. So I'll consume, you know, ten 12,000 milligrams of sodium a day sprinkled throughout the day. And if I don't have my electrolytes perfectly in equilibrium with the right ratio, I'll retain a ton of extra fluid in my subcutaneous layer of skin.
But by kind of going about that protocol with, you know, one teaspoon of your upgraded formulas, potassium with every 1000 milligrams of sodium, I would consume that pretty well worked Florida State from a ratio standpoint. I didn't really retain any excess fluid. So anytime I didn't have my potassium I definitely noticed the difference. Yeah, I, I love that it makes sense, right? Because that sodium, potassium pump that the cells have and yeah, yeah, that's, that's
really cool. I haven't done a hair test, though. I have, I have, I've done one, you know, way back when I actually got a hair test from you, but I have not taken the sample yet to send back to. I had hoped to do that before this podcast so we can go over the results live on air, but I've been dragging my feet on that and I have have dropped the ball, so to speak. That's all right. Well, we can do another and then
go over things you've learned. And I I like doing that with with people like you that are pushing the limits so much with bodybuilding and, you know, just any, any sort of pushing the limits. I reviewed Ben Greenfield's for and Tara Garrison and a few other people and that we know. And yeah, so that's, no, that's phenomenal. The, you know, one of the things I've learned recently was around iron and it this is, I feel like really important.
And we can talk about sodium too, and how, man, so many people don't have enough sodium and then doctors don't really understand this. So this is a couple things that could save a couple lives, many I would say, and certainly improve people's general quality of life. So we can go into that if you want. Yeah, man, for sure. I think there's a lot of confusion around sodium for sure, but there's there's much
less talk around iron. So I'd love to peel the curtain back on both of those and see kind of what, what you've learned in the in the not too distant past here. Mm hmm. Well, if we take sodium first, you know, to to tell a story. We had someone sort of like an aunt in the family and she'd worked for my dad wasn't actually blood related, but was so close to the family. It was, it was really painful. And then had someone that was almost like a grandfather to me and the same thing happened
there. And what it was, is both these people had low sodium levels even coming into the hospital. And the what the doctors did is, you know, because they had swelling, they looked at the swelling as, oh, well, that's sodium. We got to, we have to cut salt from the diet and they were already swelling, right. So the the problem is, is like not only getting it wrong, but being completely opposite and understanding of literally just how the elements work in the body.
So, you know, definitely share this with someone. You could absolutely save on someone's life and whoever is going to be there helping you when you're in the hospital, you know, whenever that is, hopefully a long time from now, if you're helping someone else, they need to know this information. So the what happens is, is let's say someone's swelling just like they both were, then what they often do in the hospital is they go, oh, well, let's cut sodium
completely out of the diet. Well, sodium is needed for a lot of things, as you know, and it puts a person just even beyond that emotionally. And something we see in the hair test, a ratio of sodium to potassium, which is really the most important ratio in the entire body in terms of physical energy and emotional health. Like that drives everything that's low enough, like someone's considered dead, even
if they have a pulse. Like it's just, it's, it really drives quality of life and, and you can actually see personality in this. And this is what I'm, I'm writing a lot about in a book that'll come out later this year. It's, it's this idea that, you know, with this ratio, if we don't respect it, if we don't understand it then and if we're not testing for it, we have no idea, of course, that you know, but also if we're just doing a blood draw, we're not getting accurate data.
We're getting serum, right, which is not what's making it into the tissue. So and it and yes, of course, it's also a snapshot, but it's worse than that. It's really just not that accurate. And you know, unless you're looking at hormones, but hormones are downstream. And this is also just kind of generally about hair testing, which we do, which was the big eye opener for me. If you haven't heard any of the podcasts Robert and I have done before this and I really opened
my eyes. It was something I was using to save my mom's health. And the test didn't really work, but we realized the supplements didn't. And so then I went on this path as a chemical engineer of developing supplements that did work that we could verify worked. And now we've done some clinical trials actually on on the magnesium to prove, you know, sleep results and like massive results, which we could, we could talk about later if you want. But the yeah. So with sodium, imagine this is
you. And you, you have the unfortunate nature to be in the hospital. You're having a lot of fluid retention. And they go, all right, take off, let's cut all sodium from the diet. And the person only gets worse and then worse and then worse. And you see this person after person after person. You would think that at least, and maybe some, some people have figured this out, but you'd think that doing the opposite might be when people are
literally dying soon thereafter. Because I, I said I was like, if we can't get them to get someone to change it in person, this whole strategy and actually give them a sodium IB and electrolytes, magnesium, potassium, etcetera, chloride, then, well, you can set your watch to it.
I, I give it 72 hours at this stage and sure enough, they're going like 60. It's really, it's really tough because I'm sure at least at least several thousand, but probably way more than that die each year just in the US from this, from this just utter lack of understanding. And it's, it's completely I, I mean, someone might die of something else, but they don't die of that. So simple. Yeah. And it's it's. Unfortunate.
I mean, like on a in, in my wheelhouse in the bodybuilding realm of things, you know, obviously not near the life and death situation there. But I mean people get that wrong all the time too with regards to sodium manipulations. They'll cut sodium drastically and they'll try and like super constant compensate and load sodium or low potassium to try and you know, play that sodium potassium pump game.
But then their body correspondingly, you know, hypercompensates, you know, via additional aldosterone excretion and then fluid retention. And it's just like if you, if you play that game incorrectly, you're going to look significantly worse on stage. And if you never manipulated anything and, and people just that there's the sodium potassium equilibrium is a pretty profound physiological
effect. It's going to impact how you feel, how you're able to contract your muscles in training and on stage, how vascular you're going to look, how much subcutaneous fluid you're going to be holding in your skin. Like it totally can make or break you on stage if you get it wrong, especially if you're manipulating carbohydrates as well 'cause it's gonna cause additional fluid retention. But like, from a hospital setting, Yeah. I mean, this could be a life or death situation. Right.
So and I'll just add one, one last thing. So when you're looking at, you know, looking to help someone in that position, the the thing you actually have the reason why it's happening, right? We could just talk about that. Why is it happening? What's happening? Simply because the body views sodium as so precious, especially when it's in a low amount that it's doing everything it can to retain it. So it's, you know, that's the
whole idea. Now what was happening in both their cases is they're having experiencing a lot of pain due to the swelling where they had so much fluid with fluids from engineering, you know, they always taught us, which took a little while to understand that fluid, water or any liquid is actually incompressible like you know it, which is, which is
interesting. So whenever it's in the body and it's building up, if it's building up in your around your joints, it's literally stretching your joints and your tendons and your ligaments and literally like tearing you apart. Fluid, water is that powerful. So it's interesting. So what's happening then is that people are then being administered pain medicine and they're doing injections, they're giving pain meds and then at some point like the body just gives up.
And it, I mean, because water like killed by water and killed by a lack of salt, really killed by a lack of understanding, however you want to think of it. So that's, that's huge. And how can you test for that? I recommend, you know, doing a hair test, like what we offer, you can find someone else, but you need to have someone, not just anyone that's a health professional of some sort, but someone that's trained in that. So we offer that. Other people, I'm sure offer
that too. It's kind of hard to find, frankly, but it's the best, I would say. I mean, if you do it four times a year, it's, you know, maybe $1000. That's the best money you can spend in in actually knowing your numbers. I looked at my methylation age actually too, Robert and I know we haven't talked about this yet and you know, looking at Brian Johnson and Ben Greenfield in a podcast a friend sent me their, their methylation age, their rate of aging was like .71 point
6-7, both great, right? That's for that meaning for every 100 years that passed their aging respectively .71 for Ben, .67 for for Brian. I thought my number was really good until I saw that. And I know Brian is in the top 1% or so and he's also spending 2 million a year myself, both early 40s. So I'm in, you know, late 30s. So that, I mean, that plays some role. But I was at .62 and the main test I've done for the last 10 years since I've had the company is this hair analysis.
Because if you know the elements, everything is built including hormones, right from elements. And I know that's why you, you've been, you know, a big fan of this for a long time, just like I've been a big fan of your products for a long time. And it's it's easy to get away from the quote UN quote basics by or to do the basics wrong or
to not absorb the basics. But when you get the basics right, the building blocks of everything, it's like having a incredibly well built foundation and sort of structure, overall structure of a home. You know, it's like you you can weather a lot of storms that way. And if that's not there, but you have great interior decorating, it doesn't really matter, unfortunately. So that I would just, that's one just angle that I never hear people talk about, which is just, you know, elements build
everything. And we, you know, the human body, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry is built, is made of 59 elements. It's actually probably a few more, but six elements make up 99% of us and then everything else is trace, right? Doesn't mean those aren't incredibly important because they are, because they run little snippets of code called enzymes or the they power enzymes which run these, you know, blocks of code just like in computer science and, you know, loading web pages and
things. And yeah, so that's this is. I just find that really fascinating. No, I totally, totally agree, man. As far as the the ratio between sodium and potassium go as that is one of the more important ones. What I've always tried to subscribe to is kind of targeting a 2 to one ratio of supplemental sodium to potassium. So obviously there's some potassium in like like certain types of red meat, for instance, like pork loins pretty high in potassium.
But if I'm targeting a 2 to one ratio of supplemental sodium to potassium, that tends to to be a pretty good sweet spot for me. Is that a general, you know, threshold that most people are gonna find benefit in? So that's a great question. So on our hair test we look at 2.4 being the the ideal. So if you wanted to aim for something round, you could say 2.5. Easy math, right? So. 2.5 times as much sodium to 1:00 to.
Potassium, yeah, yeah. So if you're doing 1000 milligrams of potassium, you're doing 2500 milligrams of sodium, Yeah. So that I mean to a certain point, right. So you know, all the way up to say 4 thousand, 4500 milligrams or so of of potassium, right.
So yeah, you could go all the way up to I see where you're getting right there, right, because you've actually get enough potassium like 4300 milligrams, you're doing that times 2.5 in terms of that to your sodium at that ratio, right, which is which is incredible that I mean the ideal being 2.4. So yeah, I mean these are big numbers. So yeah, as as extreme as say 12,015 thousand sounded. And granted, extreme exertion, you know, excessive tates, extreme resources, right?
Totally. In the same way that if you're going to fly around the world, you need a lot more fuel than if you're just going, yeah, one state over or something. Yeah, 100%. So, and, and one thing I I've noticed in just not trying so many different electrolyte blends over the years is that the nice thing about your liquid nanopotassium specifically is that since it is nano sized, the actual particle size is smaller than that the red blood cells.
So you have 100% absorption. Whereas with a lot of these electrolyte salts for instance, you, you're not getting near the absorption, you're gonna hit AGI threshold with it and you're often times just gonna be excreting a lot of what you're supplementing, which isn't really the case with what you're offering. Yeah, thank you. I'm so glad you've seen that. And that's, that's what I see too. And that's true for our magnesium too. A lot of people will ask, it's
like, well, what form is it? And I always tell people, you know, with our supplements, it's unlike anything you've ever heard of or used because I literally trained as a chemical engineer. What we're able to do, what we're trained on is to create industrial processes. So an actual process, physical process that produces a different end product. So every other manufacturer out there is just creating products based on the end product that they could get that they could buy somewhere.
And we're just we're changing the game by. Just creating something different so you have a different outcome. So the form really doesn't matter. We take pure magnesium, I bind it. We really create a plasma out of all of our minerals and that allows us to change the particle size using nanotechnology equipment and then ultimately deliver a product to you that you, you don't have to do any work to absorb. You just absorb it.
And it's just, it's in your red blood cells and also distributed
throughout the body. And you see things like if you were to do like ARBC test for magnesium, you see that that does bump up and bump up and bump up when you know when the particle size is, if someone's watching this video, then it's, but I'll just describe it. You know, if you're, if you, the size of your red blood cell is the size of a golf ball and then the size of the particles that you're trying to absorb from those supplements is much larger, let's say 8 times larger
or the size of a basketball. Think of that. So what we're doing is we're creating something the size of like a needle, right? So 1000 times smaller. That's about what we're doing. And it also has just the, it has nature still intact, right? Still has the electron driving force. So you're getting into the cells. So all you have to remember if that seems, you know, technical is bringing on listening is that we're just making it a lot smaller.
So it absorbs a lot better. And that's the reason why you're not getting as hydrated using something else. So people will say about about great potassium that it quote. It feels like electricity entering my body it especially if they do it straight, which I don't recommend. It's pretty salty. It's fine for like hard hardcore people like us, but you know, it's also fine to just add it to
your water. Yeah, I'll do it straight if I'm in a pinch, but sometimes I'll just add it to whatever electrolyte drink I'm drinking that has the high sodium content. But yeah, man, I, I, I love it. And then when it comes to like just supplement, like electrolyte supplements in general, I feel like they're popping up everywhere, man. I think they're a dime a dozen right now. There's so many of them. And most of them are using like a citrate form of, you know,
like a magnesium or potassium. And that's more so used from like a like that that's gonna cause a lot more fluid retention inter intratestinally. So you're gonna have a lot more GI, you know, adverse effects, I would think than some of the other forms. But that's the cheapest form. So I'm sure that's probably why most companies are using it. Right, right, yeah. And I mean, ultimately we have
to put something on our label. So our, for example, our magnesium will say, you know, nano magnesium chloride and what I'm doing, it's not at all. So what's a completely different product to say magnesium chloride that you would buy? And that's, but we have to call it something, right? And the problem with, you know, creating and, or inventing something, you know, new from a product standpoint is that, you know, you still have to follow old regulations on what to say.
So we're binding with, I'm binding it with chloride after white chloride. Well, the body needs chloride, you know, for stomach acid. Most people have, I mean, if you're listening to this, you probably have low stomach acid. Like congratulations, just because in today's world, it's hard not to now, you know, Robert, you probably don't. You're super on top of your health, but most people, even I would say 95% of people have low stomach acid.
Unfortunately, in today's world in America, in part because of the stress, in part because of a lot of other things. And then you have other like just things that Jack up the the pH, like H pylori. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of issues there with upgraded charge. That's one I really love and that actually has you know, juice from limes, like actual lime peel and we do that. I really like that because it instantly hydrates you as well and it and it has some magnesium in it.
It has a little bit of zinc, which also helps with hydration, has some trace minerals and has some potassium, has less potassium obviously, but still has some, has quite a bit of sodium too. And yeah, I mean, people just love that one as as well for the same thing. I had a a couple friends, one that qualified for Kona, the World Iron Man Championship. And he was, I wouldn't recommend this, but he was, Eric was eating magnesium capsules during
the race. It was 104° in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. And and everyone else was like passing out with cramps and they had charge in his water upgraded charge and that's a sample. Of that I think. Is that the one that tastes like soup or sour but pretty tasty? Yeah, exactly yeah straight from lime peel.
So yeah, if you do it directly in the mouth again, I I don't recommend except for the most hardcore, you can just add it to your water, you know, and it just, it's kind of flavor it then yeah, you do like 4 droppers and like 10 oz You're you're not really going to taste anything except a mild lime flavor. Yeah and.
That's what he was using. He was using that and he was using a great magnesium throughout the race and he passed the number 2 and #10 guys in the world as he ran his 13th, ran, swam, biked his 13th Iron Man, qualified for Kona. Probably would have done really well. Unfortunately, you know, got kicked in the face in the swim and, you know, kind of messed up his day, almost broke his nose, kind of swam a couple miles after that.
But I think he still managed to, you know, finish and and everything, but which was a life goal for him. And he had tried literally 12 other times and we had to dial in his electrolytes, much like you just figured out for your competition. So yeah, just really key stuff because it it, you know, magnesium, we used to do think it it like 300 things in the body.
It's like 1950s research. We now know it does over 3000 things in the body, including make energy in every cell that has mitochondria, which is almost all. So yeah, I mean, it's very important. The other thing that's been a real revelation and we can get back to iron later too, is in the myth there, it's copper because it goes with this this iron myth. So I, I notice a lot of people that are low energy, so probably not you, but just thought everyone could benefit from
having some copper. And one reason why we're drawn to eat dark chocolate is because, well, maybe because there's some sugar in there too, but everyone knows magnesium, I would think if they're listening to this show, but also copper. And now the problem with with chocolate, unfortunately, and I'm definitely a chocolate lover, is that you have plenty of heavy metals of different types in there, Lead, arsenic,
you know, cadmium especially. And these are also things that we look at in the hair test, by the way, again, if you haven't heard one of our previous shows together. So yeah, that's that's fascinating. Now, the cool thing is that copper balances iron. And amongst this myth of of iron being low for so many people, there's this other issue with COVID. So what COVID did, the way it acted on the body.
And this is true whether you got the shot or if you got, you just didn't get the shot and you got infected. And, you know, I, I didn't, I because I, I just kind of knew it was, it was most likely, you know, a hoax from the early beginning because I had testing ready in like 2 weeks. And it's like, well, we run a testing company in part along with this nutrition company. And it you, you know, it takes years to figure out testing for things.
So, yeah, so that was that was a different topic, but the. That's a whole podcast in itself right there. That is that is for sure. But you know, just so people know I said it then. So, you know, it's just like good to see that that it tracks some things you wish you were wrong about. But with copper and iron, the way that that virus worked, and this is important because this is how also how to protect yourself. People were supplementing a lot of zinc, which zinc is
antiviral. Unfortunately, zinc pushes out copper and that is a ratio we look at, as you know in the hair test we look at zinc to copper, which is actually a balance of those two elements, control progesterone and testosterone, the case of zinc and then estrogen, the case of copper. So you know, you obviously you want the right amounts of those
for you know, men and women. And then we also have iron to copper and that's another ratio we look at in the hair test and we look at about 63 elements, like I said, you know, 59 of them. We know, you know, significant part in building the body, probably focus on about 15 and then also some heavy metals. And then we look at key ratios. So because again, only six do the majority in terms of making
up the body. But with iron, the, the crazy thing is, is I'm sure if you know, if you, if we went to the, the doctor, we might have, you know, well, maybe not us, but someone goes to the doctor and they, they have low, they have low iron, right? And they, you can measure that a few different ways in blood. And here's the thing, the, there's a recycling system of iron that almost no one knows about. And do you know how much iron it recycles in terms of percentage that you take in?
So let's say you eat 100 milligrams of iron in the course of a week. It literally, it literally recycles 96% of that. So you see people that are that, that have gone carnivore for a long time. They're, you know, hey, I'm a fan of eating meat too. But when you, the soil is is so depleted now of copper, you can end up in a lot with a huge amount of iron and iron in terms of personality, iron leads to anger. The overload of iron leads to anger. And they've known this for so long.
So, you know, can people buffer that? Can they, you know, take a pause? Yes. But will you be more easily agitated even if you don't say anything to anyone? Yes. So a less enjoyable internal environment than life experience really, which I'm always trying to optimize for. I think we worked. All right, So, you know, so that's a thought right there.
So one, you can be giving blood to acknowledging that, well, you're probably low in copper if you're eating, if for no other reason that you're eating a ton of red meat. Yeah, I know a lot of people are on on this show and this and this audience. Yeah, we're all over the spectrum. I'm sure there's people that are vegan. There are people that are, you know, carnivore, everything between. This is not a conversation about diets really.
It's just about elements, which this is part of the reason why I believe that diet variation has to happen and that all diets eventually fail us is because if we're not testing, we're guessing, which is something I've. I've thought about for a long time. And we trademarked that test on gas and upgrade formulas because it's like it's key. Yeah, we sell amazing
supplements. I think anyone who would say that's tried it, but it's, it's really about knowing where you're at first and then knowing, you know, because some people can be as fastidious as you and really figure it out. But even then it takes time versus like, hey, here are my numbers. Here's how it fits in with other
things. So with iron, if you're recycling a question for, you know, the entire audience, if you're recycling 96% of the iron you take in through this, this system in the body that you can, you know, you can look up iron recycling system in the body. Would it be likely, even if someone is a menstruating woman, you know, and they're, you know, assuming they're they're eating some red meat, would it be likely that they're going to be low?
Like they're, it's, I mean, how much blood is a woman actually losing her period most, most times, most often on average. And even then, you know, a few days a month. So you know, when you think about it, it's really unlikely being that your body is always recycled so much iron. No, why does it? Well, it does because it's the only element that carries oxygen. And you know, how do you really know your numbers if you're
looking at your blood? Because again, if you guys haven't heard one of our previous shows, you could check that one out too to search our names or But the when you're looking at your results and it's just blood results, what you're actually seeing is, is you at your best and the body's making you at your best because in your blood, because it knows that it has to keep the blood just about perfect. Otherwise the organs start to shut down if that pH is off too
much. So it actually will pull from your tissues, which are kind of like your savings account to put into the checking account. And if it does that long enough, it'll pull from even your bone marrow, unfortunately. And that's how literally every bone disease gets created to some extent, to really to the largest extent, if not entirely is, is literally nutrient deficiency, especially primarily
mineral deficiency. Things like not calcium you pretty much everyone has too much calcium, but magnesium and boron primarily. Yeah, I mean, when Crystal, when we knew that we were trying to get pregnant, like Crystal went through the whole battery of tests, she got the hair test done and she was using your mineral supplements to make sure everything was in check prior to the pregnancy.
So that as she was forming another being, there was no risk of being deficient in any minerals, any elements. And I mean the pregnancy went super smooth in all regards there. So I think that is, that is key 'cause I mean, we, we know people that got pregnant at the same time. And when you're, when you're in that state and your body is just, you know, demand for nutrition is elevated to a whole another degree.
Like we knew so many people that were just deteriorating their, their, their bone health was going downhill crazy losing a ton of lean tissue, just not good at all. You can kind of hedge against that by making sure your minerals are in check, which is a relatively easy thing to do. If you just put in the legwork. I mean that that's going to save so much, so much heartache. Yeah, we, we, I love that testimonial. It's absolutely incredible.
Yeah, my fiance and I are, are looking at that, doing that later, you know, in a couple of years. But the I, I, I love that, you know, in terms of women also having postpartum depression, totally preventable when your elements are there, especially things like magnesium and lithium and sodium. When you have those in the right amounts, like the body's also gonna have a easier time with delivery. Sure. She had a pretty smooth delivery in terms of like, she wasn't too
long. Like what was her delivery time? Well, ours was a little bit, our delivery was a little bit of a, a chaos. The pregnancy went super smooth, but delivery was not smooth. Totally unrelated to, you know, nutrition, but he Rigel, our son was in. I'm gonna, I'm gonna butcher it. But he was in face presentation. I forget the rotation, but it was one that you had to have an
emergency C-section. We were like, we were gonna try to go the natural route and do a home birth, but that all got derailed due to his presentation there at birth. Yeah, that was no good. And how? How old is he now? He's almost two. He's about to turn 2 next month. That's very cool. So one thing that that I also always tell people is iodine for IQ. And that's that's key all through. I mean, we have people putting in baby bottles, mothers taking it and then it's coming out in
the breast milk. But if the mom has a deficiency, like you're saying, then the child's going to have that deficiency. Or if the mom has way too much, you know, could be iron, way too much copper, way too much heavy metals, you know, whatever it is, you know, even good things, way too much calcium can also cause a lot of problems,
especially for the mother. But also, you know, these, these things get passed on. It's just, you know, it's, it's all, like you said, reversible, fixable and really creative, a pretty cool process for people. So, you know, with, with iron, just to cap off a little more than that, it, it's, you know, the, the reason why we get fooled by that is because the body can store up to 10 times more iron in our tissues.
So then we, when we look at, you know, this woman's, especially women, but also men, and they're, they're low in their blood. It's easy for a doctor to tell a woman that's having a cycle and menstruating often that, oh, hey, you're low because of that. And I mean, it's, it just goes, oh, OK, well, that's makes sense. And it, you know, it does, except it's not accurate.
It's what's often happening is if you're low in the blood, the body's actually artificially keeping it low and storing it because it's, it's literally pushing it into tissue and then it's temporarily low. So you know, that said, you still want to test. You don't want to guess, but you can do a full blood panel on iron and then also compare it with a hair analysis and look at iron.
And then also look at iron to copper ratio, zinc to copper ratio and all the other ratios that we talked about including like thyroid ratio, which is, you know, calcium to potassium, adrenal ratios, there's yeah, we look, we see a lot there because again, elements make the body, right.
Yeah, totally. Can you kind of compare the, the, the blood test that people are probably gonna be getting on average versus that of a hair analysis test to kind of walk us through, walk us through the pros and cons of each? I mean, I would say what I've said so far mainly covers it.
Think if there's anything else. I mean, you can look at things like TIBC total iron binding capacity, you know, put it this way, if you're high in iron on your hair test, you could just skip to all right, oh, I need to go donate blood, which we probably all need to anyway. The thing I was going to say with COVID with iron is that and you know, and also your other normal iron markers like ferritin and yeah.
So the the thing that with COVID, the the way this this was from a a study published in Nature. Nature.com is one of the most legitimate resources out there for actual hard science. And they showed that at least 33 point something percent of deaths over 30, you know, over a third came from high iron like that they could directly detect. And that led to, you know, heart related events.
And interestingly enough, I mean, you know, my, my dad lives in a different state and, you know, he's tried to do his best, but he, you know, just kind of blindly listened to the news and got a vaccine a long time ago before we ever talked and, you know, didn't get anymore. But he, he had a heart attack and, and I'd been telling him, hey, go give blood. I just kept having this intuition go give blood, go give blood even before I knew some of what I just told you.
And yeah, yeah, we looked at his blood and they tried to put him on statins and you know, the all sorts of things, right? And that's, that's another no, no, statins are less than 50% effective, according to a Ted talk that was like really well reviewed. I would say just do, you know, do your own research. Of course, it's not medical advice, but you know, it's, it's really important to, to
understand that. I think that's it's one of the hardest things to get off of after you've been on it for a bit. Totally. So in, in regards to the iron, I feel like there's this massive population in the, in the carnivore space right now that is all about their, their liver consumption. And I like liver too. Like I'm, I'm, I'm not anti liver by any means. I, I enjoy beef liver, chicken
liver, all kinds of liver. But if you're consuming liver on a daily basis and you're not giving blood, I would imagine that your iron levels are through the roof. I would imagine, yeah, because yes, liver does have copper. It's one of the better sources of copper, at least historically, right. And that's completely dependent on the what on the soil and the soil around the world has has just had a lot of copper out of it.
One thing I didn't mention on the COVID vaccine, the way it worked with both the COVID vaccine and the virus is that it's hijacking the metabolism. It doesn't have a metabolism. The virus doesn't, but it jacks, you know, whenever you raise iron, you push out copper, you become more susceptible to viruses, first of all. So that's one one way. But then it also gobbles up the copper in the cells because it doesn't have a metabolism it uses, it hijacks the metabolism
cells. And then in that process, this is all from the Nature article, by the way, that, you know, in that process, you're left with so little copper in the body, you're just regulated sort of like what you're talking about in this case where, you know, someone's eating a ton of liver and their iron's through the roof. That iron actually, you know, it's little metal fragments. If that's tumbling through your, your arteries, it causes Nicks,
which cause what inflammation? That inflammation causes the body to what add cholesterol. Cholesterol's a protection mechanism. And if it's short term, if it weren't in inflammation all the time, which ultimately gets prevented by magnesium. And that's a different flow chart and I could talk about that, but you, you want to prevent it from multiple standpoints.
Obviously, when when you're having those Nicks, you get inflammation, you get cholesterol build up, you get, you get fibrin on top of that, which is like a little net that keeps cholesterol in place. And then there's a hardening of the arteries that happen too. And you get plenty of calcium build up that way if you have excess calcium, which is ultimately what what it, you know, my mom passed of too.
And so mineral imbalance ultimately she had heel spurs, she had bone spurs, you know, stiff joints and was otherwise like, you know, really healthy. And then, you know, drugs, medication and, you know, she was gone. So we were able to find in her case that, you know what was wrong, just the supplements weren't absorbing to fix those deficiencies and to correct those imbalances. When you have a extreme amount of calcium, calcium's up here at like 600 and needs to be at like yeah, 75.
So, you know, you start balancing with the things like magnesium and potassium and you know, that's where you want to have a consultation with someone that knows what they're doing. But the, and we, you know, we offer that too. But the, the thing with, with iron, it's so interesting because you know, yes, on one hand, the body needs it, but it's also literally killing us all the time if we, if it gets
out of hand. So it's something to think about and be on top of because it also affects your mood. Like we talked about too much iron is anger. And, and I've, I've seen that in friends of like even carnivore for 70 days straight and they've been really mellow before and then now they're like pretty on edge, pretty aggressive. You know, I can, it seems like their blood pressure's up like not in a good way. That's.
Interesting, how often would you recommend somebody do this hair analysis test to kind of see how things are changing over time? Yeah. My, my thought from everything we've we've learned from the labs we've worked with is that three months is the best window. If someone's a extreme athlete, they could do even two months, but three months is enough. And, you know, yeah, we offer subscription options and I'll think all sorts of things like that to make it easy and
affordable. Yeah. It's just, I mean, it ships to your house. It doesn't get much easier than that. And you don't have to get blood for people that, you know, some of us don't mind that. Some of us are definitely afraid of that. That's OK. I need to. I need to do, I need to send my hair sample in and, and get that because I'm curious to see what kind of impact the prep had on things.
You know, if I'm depleted in any, any minerals, any elements, what I need to do to change my supplementation accordingly to kind of make up for that void and just get things dialed in Because I can absolutely feel a difference if my electrolytes and just overall mineral levels are out of whack. And I would imagine that putting nobody through the prep is probably not the most conducive thing to getting those dialed in
optimally. Yeah. So one, one last stop for you on the energy and the electrolytes. So there's the there's the really interesting flow chart that that I discovered from some research and that's that. And I've always known this, but it's interesting to put it in these exact terms. So when you have magnesium loss or low levels of magnesium, which was, you know, my, my problem in my 20s because I've been a wrestler for 10 years and
did other sports too. But you know, just like you with bodybuilding had to make weight and then go, you know, go through extreme exertion, wrestle sometimes five matches in a day in a two week, a 2 day tournament over a weekend, all at like, you know, low calories. And you know, you barely even have time to eat between matches. And then you have a match coming up soon so you can eat and then it's time to go to bed. You don't want to eat too late.
You won't sleep as well. You know, all these different things and food deserts, you know, it's really self induced hypothyroidism if you're not careful. And we didn't know nearly as much back then, late 90s, early thousands. And you know what we're talking about now. So yeah, it's doable if you have the, you know, the right plan. But so I, I came into, you know, college and, you know, I started really working on my health probably around 20, just pure health.
I had all these deficiencies, one of which was magnesium. When you have magnesium loss, the flow chart is magnesium loss leads to all other electrolyte loss. And then when you have that, you have energy loss. So that's really what you're speaking to and feeling there. And then when you have energy loss, you actually get to cell death. Cell death leads to inflammation. So that clearing the body goes, oh, we need to clear those dead cells, which is a good response
ultimately. And that that's prone, you know, it's inflammatory. And then, you know, inflammation, of course, is the the root cause of nearly all disease. I would say probably all disease to some extent at least. So yeah, yeah.
So it's it's key. It makes no. Sense man there there are some people that have taken a very hard nosed stance on not supplementing with anything because they just wanted to simply get all their nutrition from their food and have the the most optimal diet they possibly can, which I can totally appreciate and respect that
mindset. I think however, because of the soil, like you've alluded to in the in the earlier parts of this conversation, even if you were eating an optimally formulated ketogenic diet or whatever that that may be by default at this day and age in our society, the animals like due to the soil depletion over time, over generations, it would be impossible to get that necessary level of minerals from the meat exclusively because they simply aren't getting it from the soil, correct. Right.
Yeah, that's true for animals, for plants, no matter what diet you're eating. And even if you were eating a diet and let's say, yeah, that was really good. And let's say you look, you're still going to have imbalances. So let's say you need to bring your magnesium up and you don't want to supplement. And you read you're like, all right, well, almonds are high in magnesium. And you just start munching away on almonds.
And you're meanwhile your calcium and magnesium levels, which is pretty important in the body in terms of blood sugar balance, actually. And well, yeah, so you do that. It turns out that, well, yeah, they're high in magnesium, these almonds, but they're also, they also have six times more calcium than they have magnesium. So it's really hard to be precise with food to fix deficiencies.
Part of the reason why I say every diet fails eventually if we're not testing, if we're not making adjustments, right? And I mean, it's just, it's kind of like being in a ship at sea and you turn the wheel a little bit and then pretty soon you've gone. And if you don't turn it back the other way, no matter where you're going, you go in a
complete circle, right? So over time, right, if you just turn a little bit to correct course and then you don't correct course again, it's a circle eventually. So, so we want to avoid that. And then we avoid that simply by doing as regular testing as you can. We recommend three months, do whatever you can I would say. And you know, some is going to be better than none, but that's that's yeah, I mean, it's, it's a key, key understanding.
No, it makes total sense, man. Talking about some of these clinical trials you've been having underway. I'm keen to learn more about that. Yeah. So we have a fertility clinical trial that is wrapping up right now and that's on something called upgraded T as in Tom and that that is like T as in testosterone. And that's really something I've wanted to create a long for a long time that just for myself even, you know, being in being 37 this year.
So that's something that women can take that that men can take. A lot of people don't know this, but a healthy woman should have at least 10 times more, but up to 30 or more times testosterone than estrogen if she's healthy. And that's going to give her a lot better recovery, ability to build muscle, obviously sex drive, but also like mental function, resilience, stamina, things like that, right? And obviously the same for men.
So more hormonally, obviously, despite the cycle part, we're still closer, especially the rest of the month, men and women, than we think, than we acknowledge really, because we both have more testosterone than nitrogen and most women as well as men by 25 or so, again, because of soil. But also because, and I was going to say this earlier too, to your point about, you know, do we need a supplement? The world is, it's a real #1000 times more toxic than any other
point in recorded history. And I can tell you as a former chemical engineer, there's a universal sheet where they published chemicals that are new that are produced, and then we're producing about 20 new chemicals a day. So we're looking at 600 new chemicals a month roughly that your body has to deal with and protect itself against.
And if it can detox and make energy, IE if it has all the elements it needs, it can do those things, then you're going to have a lot better ability to defend against toxins. So yeah, key stuff. So upgraded tea is really good at well, for, for women and men increasing testosterone. We've just seen that in, in the, the early results of the trial. We're still waiting on the completion of that. But I wanted to do something, you know, around fertility.
And yeah, turns out a lot of people are having problems with that. So our whole process helps with that is that, you know, if you're more vital, just like you and your, your wife were, then you're, it's going to be easier to get to get pregnant, to stay pregnant, which is a huge emotional thing to go through if someone's ever lost a child and then, you know, have a healthy child after, right.
So, yeah, they're really key. And then so we, we did the test on testosterone and then on the male side, both sperm count and motility of the sperm. So yeah, really interesting stuff there. And then upgraded magnesium. We did a clinical trial there taking four capsules a night. This was placebo-controlled as well. We're completely excluded from these trials except for providing supplements. Everything's blinded.
Even the doctors don't know what they're giving the, you know, patients, so to speak, don't know what they're getting. And then there's a washout period. And then they, they do say the placebo first. Now they're doing, you know, in this case, upgraded magnesium. And again, the form doesn't matter unlike you know, other supplements, it's really about the delivery system.
It's kind of like saying, well, instead of talking about which car we want to take on a long road trip, we're going to take a plane and we're going to get in to sell a lot higher absorption rate like you're talking about earlier. And that make it really makes all the difference. So what we did is we focused for upgrade magnesium on sleep.
And we did that because people were sending us our their ordering scores, their sleep tracker scores of any sort without us even asking and going like, wow, this is amazing. You know, and we literally saw people go from things like 15 minutes of deep sleep and a lot of R.E.M.
To in five nights, like my friend Natalie, Jill went from 16 minutes to an hour and 51 minutes and five nights with four capsules of magnesium at night, just literally needed the raw material to make melatonin so she could sleep deeply. And then, you know, she started to age a lot more slowly. She was already really fit, really beautiful. This was this just helped amplify that like, hey, now you're not aging faster than you should. You know, now you're also like you're more creative.
You're not. I mean, it's hard to really focus and it really impossible to do deep work when you're when you got no deep sleep. So 100. Percent, ma'am. So the, the trial, the trial showed up to the high point in the trial was a 250% increase in deep sleep. So going from like an hour to 2 1/2 hours and then REM sleep, the high was 160%, which is really, you know, frankly life changing because it also just like in Natalie's case outside of the trial, you know, the time
in bed drops. So the time you actually have to spend in bed or, or asleep and unconscious goes down too. So you get more of your life back. For her she was literally saving 3.7 hours a night. And then because she was otherwise healthy, she was missing this one piece. And then so we calculated over the next year, she would say 57 days of not being asleep, which added up to over three years of her life back.
She got by the time she turned, she's 50 by the time she turned 70 and over six years by the time she turned 90, literally of her life back. So and she was taking other magnesium supplements. I mean, she takes a lot of supplements, including magnesium. So, yeah, those are, we just wanted to prove that for people because we've also see seen people get off sleep medication and anxiety medication with that product, blood sugar stuff too as well. So yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's,
it's great to see people. I mean, that's my favorite part of what we do is, is seeing the change and the sort of solutions that I needed, my mom needed, other people I knew needed, that just didn't really exist back then. No 100. Percent, man. I mean changing. Changing lives for sure.
When it comes. To the the supplement side of things, like how did you all approach the like the like third party testing just from like an athlete's standpoint, trying to ensure that they're not gonna pop for anything on a banned substance list. Like do you have any type of third party testing that y'all send everything through? Yeah, we, we do. We, we actually third party test
every single batch. And then when we're looking at minerals, which you're not required to by the, by the way, like at all, but we do because heck, I, I take literally all my product, not all, but many of my products literally every day. And yeah, because you, I mean, you feel different if, if you don't, it's doesn't mean you have to take as many, but there's some that you're just like, well, I know I sleep a lot better when I have magnesium at night.
And yeah, I might also take some tryptophan, I might take some theanine or whatever it is, right. So, so yeah, there's, there's that on the testing side also for for upgraded tea, which probably the product in question, because everything else we do is minerals and you know, different blends and forms or different blends and single products too, like upgraded potassium with upgraded tea.
We're actually using part of the reason why that product is expensive to make is and why it's so we wanted to do the clinical trial and fertility for it is because it's so nutrient rich and it's using the trademark forms of things like Tonkat, you know, instead of Tonkat Ali, just regular long Jack regular, we're using the clinically studied version and the right amount of that. And we're doing that across five different nutrients that are all just just, you know, nutrients
from the earth. So yeah, I mean it. It's just if someone already has really high testosterone. It's probably not going to make it higher. So it's also it's but it's providing your body the nutrients to build testosterone and also, you know, reduce over excess estrogen and also improve nitric oxide. So I think you would absolutely love that. Yeah, you said it once. Third. Party tested as well, right? Yeah, third party tested too.
Exactly. So every single batch and that, that product those, those manufacturers because they're trademarked that they test they're each product before they ship it too. And then we're combining those five ingredients and shipping that. By the way, we have a the only purified form of Sheila Jit. So a lot of people are and Sheila doing Sheila Jit because that alone will boost testosterone. But it's dirty often, it's full of heavy metals typically.
So. So that's something you won't be mindful because the last thing you want to do is put heavy metals in your body. I mean, we have a binder product that has a bunch of different binding surfaces and we recommend that to a lot of people if they need a consultation. Yeah. So really, really cool stuff there. It's that that supplements awesome. I take it daily. So it is my fiance and she is so otherwise, you know, super healthy too.
But we notice, you know, when we like when we're taking it because you notice you have more nitric oxide. So you have an endogenous production of at least 230% just from 1 ingredient. That was from a clinical trial they did just showing that over 90 days you're seeing that 230% boost, but then you're also amplifying it with four other ingredients. So, yeah, so you're a lot of
people talk about pump also. Yeah, just arousal weight, you know, for men, erections easier to maintain and get erection. Maintain erection is what what we saw in the clinical trial because we did, you know, sperm count. We had people answer questionnaires, take before and after photos of weight and fat loss too. So it's also good for heart health. That's endothelial function improving. So the interior, yeah, of, of blood vessels. So I mean, it's really what we would hope for in a
multivitamin. But a lot of multivitamins will have, you know, a lot of calcium, which you don't need, you know, iron a lot of things. So and then like poor forms. And it's a scattershot approach, right? So you're, if you're taking a multivitamin, I would suggest stopping and doing precise nutrition so that you're not paying to make your health worse because it's you're most likely keeping it where it is or holding it back. So. Yeah, no, 100% man makes total
sense. And that that's a that upgraded T that's, that's a new part. I don't think I've seen that one. On your website before now. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can can send you some of that to try out. It's it's really great. Very cool, man. Well, I'm excited for all you got in the in the works, man. I mean, every time I talk to you, every time I meet with you at a conference, you've got
something in the pipeline. You're always on the cutting edge of the research and you, you're just genuinely passionate about learning more, which is very evident in talking with you, which I really appreciate as well. And you're, you're, you're giving back to like last time we talked, I think we talked about. I forgot the name of. The charity. Charity. Is it Charity Water? Yeah. Charity Water so we donate to charity water too.
My portion of every sale goes to them and I think that's amazing because you know, they solve the root cause problem just like we do, You know, for us it's identifying and solving mineral deficiency, which supports people really in all areas of their life, no matter what their goals are.
And then when you give, when not just gifting someone like bottled water, but when you're drilling a well in a a poor community that where people literally don't have clean water, it's more important really than even housing, which they can usually figure out, you know, especially if they have water, they have enough time to figure it out. If they have water, they can start to grow some at least
small crops. You know, they can start to have animals and and, you know, have water for the animals. But, you know, if you showed up and gave them a cell phone and a goat and they had no water and, you know, it doesn't really. Yeah. And you gave them a toilet. It's like none of it works really for very long. So to me it, it's one of the root cause. I mean, I'm glad we all have things that we're passionate about, but that's one of the ones.
And then just mental health too, I think we're looking to, to work more and more with mental health outlets and yeah, because part of what we do, we have the tagline now mental health hygiene. So just helping people. We have something called upgraded mood as well. It has some lithium in it because we found that there's a study, really popular study on lithium and groundwater linked
directly to suicide depression. So that the areas and they, they did it across the US, areas that have the lowest amount of lithium in their groundwater, like drinking water, for example, have the highest rates of both depression and suicide. And I mean, you don't need a lot of it. And at a super high dose, yeah, it's a it's considered a drug, but not having any of it is, is bad as well.
So we combine that with a few other things and that's a that's a cool product as well for people that need it. I've heard, and this is not advice, but that, you know, you know, people have been able to slowly, you know, work with their doctor and get off of SSRIs with that. So that would be pretty good for sure if. That became. More prevalent for sure. Yeah, yeah. I love, man. I'm I'm always intrigued by what you're working. I'm always excited about what you've got cooking.
What am I? What am I gonna see next? You gonna be any of the comrades this year? I was going to go speak in London at my friend Tim's event. You might know Tim Gray in London and he's a good friend, Always stays with me when he's here stateside. And yeah, I'm not going to make that this year. Really just focus on the other areas, you know, working with a lot of practitioners and and stuff, but as well and yeah, you know, kind of going other avenues.
But certainly let me know. I'm sure we'll talk, but let me know how you like some of these things and then also what what events you're going to because you know, it's been been a while and would love to see you brother. Yeah, for sure, man. I'm going to hack your health later this summer for sure. I've got a few others, smaller venues that'll be going to. But yeah, I, I, I need to get
back to Florida again anyway. So if you're there in Florida, I can, I can just swing by in person, man. Yeah, swing by in person. We've got some beach time. It's very easy being here on the beach and it's easy. I get plenty of vitamin D, so yeah, 100. Percent, man, you gotta get that. Well sweet Barton, where do people go to find out more about you and get some of the upgraded formulas supplementation? Yeah, we just head over to the website upgradedformulas.com.
Yeah, you can follow the same thing on Instagram and upgrade Formulas me ask Barton. On Instagram. We have a YouTube channel, but I would say if you're going to pick one, just the website. And we have a quiz too, for people on the website. Just a free quiz that's about 18 or 20 questions, and it just helps you identify, you know, what your likely deficiencies are.
So you can get started. Then you can always do a hair test, you know, you know, whenever you're ready, whenever that is. So, yeah, it's another thought. So I would say upgrade formulas.com is probably the main place. Very cool. Well, I'll definitely get to that. Make it easy for people to find you, Barton. If there's everything I can do to help in any way man, you just let me know brother. Oh, thank you.
Yeah. And if if you guys are listening and just as an incentive, so you try things on your first time, use code Barton 10 check out and you guys save 10% and just for listening to the show. And yeah, thank you for your time. I I really appreciate it. And Robert, thank you as always for having me on. It's great. You know, we would hang out all the time. I feel like if we're even in the same state. So no. My my. Pleasure, man.
I remember the first time we met, I guess at like the first keto con, I was like super intrigued by what you were doing. And I've been using your stuff ever since, man. So it's, it's quality stuff. I can absolutely feel the difference when I'm using it. So you're, you're, you're doing the right thing, man. And I appreciate that it. It definitely speaks volumes. Yeah. Thank you brother. Well this is, it's about time for me to grab something to eat.
But I do wish I had a keto brick, so I'll I'll ask Sandra to order something. I'll hook you up man. Till next time brother, take care. OK, take care.