.png){kind=small}
The Unbottled Podcast: The art of crafting dietary supplements
Episode Summary
In Episode 6, Mark, Stephanie and Danny sit down with David, Canyonside Labs' Technical Director, to talk about the art of formulating dietary supplements. David oversees R&D, helping customers turn formula ideas into products that are safe and run well on the machines. Courtney, who works on David's team, joins from behind the camera. Runtime is about 45 minutes.
Guess the Ingredient
The hosts smell, touch and occasionally taste five raw materials Courtney prepared and write their guesses on pads. The answers were copper bisglycinate chelate (blue powder), Ceylon cinnamon (smells like Christmas; Mark got it exactly), methylcobalamin (red, sweet and earthy; Mark again), berberine HCl (yellow, oily, bitter; David nailed it) and betaine, or trimethylglycine (TMG), a crystalline, hygroscopic powder the hosts agreed smells like feet.
How a formula comes together
David explains that the starting point is the customer's goal, the target demographic and the safety limits of each active ingredient. The other half is making the blend run: the right compaction and lubrication, plus fillers when the actives don't fill a capsule. Magnesium stearate is the go-to lubricant, but clean-label demand has David and Courtney finding natural alternatives. What stays out is driven by safety limits, such as heavy metals in root herbs. When a formula won't fit in a reasonable serving (people rarely want more than two or three capsules), they raise the most beneficial actives to efficacious doses and cut the rest.
Common formulation mistakes
David names three: packing in too many ingredients, including fringe ingredients the FDA may target, and not understanding the risk they create for the brand and the manufacturer. Mark adds dosing for marketing rather than efficacy, such as 3 mg of berberine, which also drives up testing costs. He also warns against combining several hygroscopic ingredients (berberine, CoQ10, TMG), which can turn a blend into mush or a rock and even break machines.
Hard ingredients and how they're solved
TMG's crystalline structure tore capsules until the team found a mix of magnesium stearate, silicon dioxide, rice flour, sunflower oil and ascorbyl palmitate that softened its edges and gave the right compaction. Other tough ones include alpha lipoic acid, cistanche and shilajit, which reverts to tar under pressure. Multivitamins get tricky as fat-soluble vitamins and higher doses start interacting. Probiotics are usually easy, though their sugar carriers like maltodextrin can cause sticking. In the lab, a compression ("slug") tester checks whether a powder forms a pellet, and a "skid plate" made from an old machine part shows whether it will glide or grind.
Trademarked ingredients
Branded ingredients bring clinical research that lets brands make stronger claims, but often require the supplier's logo, minimum doses and sometimes tiered doses for added claims. Mark cites Ester-C as a cautionary tale: once the rights changed hands, the new owner stopped selling it to other brands. Supply can also tighten when demand spikes. David notes how hard it is for brands to convey benefits without making health claims beyond "supports" or "aids in."
Favorite tools
David loves the high-shear immersion blender for liquids; Courtney's favorite is the slug tester, which he says predicts how a powder behaves in full production about 95% of the time, scaling from a 10-gram test to a 600-kilogram batch. David also describes the magnetic stirrer with a hot plate and warns that high shear or heat will destroy methylcobalamin, so it must be mixed gently.
Hosts vs. AI: building a hair, skin and nails formula
The group set a limit of five actives (excipients excluded, and the rules were stretched to six) in no more than three capsules, with no cost limit. They dropped collagen early because an effective dose (around 20 g) would take roughly 40 capsules. Courtney then read Gemini's version for comparison.
Ingredient | Hosts' formula | Gemini's formula |
Biotin | 5 mg | 5 mg |
Keratin | 500 mg | — |
Saw palmetto | 500 mg | 320 mg |
Vitamin E | 20 mg | — |
Vitamin C | 300 mg | 100 mg |
Hyaluronic acid | 250 mg | — |
Hydrolyzed marine collagen | — | 500 mg |
Zinc picolinate | — | 15 mg |
Vitamin D3 | — | 2,000 IU |
The hosts felt Gemini underdosed vitamin C and that 500 mg of collagen is too little to matter, and the team wondered whether AI simply mirrors buzzword-driven formulas already on the market. Mark's advice: take a formula like theirs plus a scoop of collagen in a morning shake.
Next episode:
The challenges of manufacturing supplements, with Corey, Canyonside Labs CEO. Listeners can leave formulation questions in the comments or email info@canyonsidelabs.com.
Full Transcript
Introductions
Danny: Are we ready?
Mark: I think we're ready. Yeah.
Danny: Are you nervous, David?
David: A little bit.
Danny: Oh, don't be. It'll be fun.
Mark: Welcome to The Unbottled Podcast, the show where each week we go behind the label of dietary supplement manufacturing. My name is Mark Bryant, and my favorite season is summer.
Danny: It's a good season.
Stephanie: I thought you liked February.
Mark: Oh, inside joke.
Stephanie: Hi, my name is Stephanie, and my favorite season is fall.
Danny: My name is Danny, and my favorite season is the fall as well. Go, "fallers."
Mark: Today we have a special guest, David, to talk about the art of crafting dietary supplements. It is an art.
David: It is definitely an art.
Mark: So we're excited to learn more from David.
Danny: Before we do that, though, we need to get to know David. So David, we want you to tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Canyonside Labs.
David: Well, my name is David. I am the technical director here at Canyonside Labs, and I do a few things. I oversee a lot of the research and development that goes on here. So when people bring us their formulas, or if they have some ideas, we work with them to develop those, make sure that they're safe, that they're going to work on the machines. It's a really fun job. I also help with some of the other technical things at Canyonside, with quality and just some of the issues that may come up. I'm a Pisces.
Danny: Ooh.
David: I love basketball, and speaking of fish, I do love the outdoors. I love fishing. I love working here. I've done this for a number of years now, and it's a great place. I love it.
Danny: Yeah, David is probably one of the tallest members of our team.
Stephanie: Yeah, I would agree.
Mark: I think it'd be hard to disagree, because it would be a fact.
David: Yeah, it goes me, and then Corey, and then Tom.
Danny: We're glad you're here with us, David.
Guess the Ingredient
Danny: You guys, we're going to play a game real quick. This game is called "Guess the Ingredient," and over to your left is a bag. I don't know, can you reach that?
David: Yes.
Danny: Inside of that bag, there are some ingredients. Now, I want you to reach in and just pull out one for now. This is the ingredient. This is an ingredient that goes into some of our supplements. So describe what it looks like for anybody who can't see it, actually.
Mark: Like a blue powder.
Danny: What does it smell like?
David: If I tell you what it smells like, it'll give it away.
Mark: So are we supposed to say this out loud, like, now?
Danny: Go ahead and write it on the pad.
Stephanie: I have no idea what it is. I was gonna put, like, "aqua blue powder."
Danny: All right, are you guys ready?
Stephanie: I have no idea.
David: I could be wrong too.
Danny: I wouldn't know either, so.
Courtney: Should we give clues?
David: I think I know what it is. I hope, or I'm going to feel really dumb.
Danny: Courtney, by the way, is behind the camera with me. Go ahead, say hi, Courtney.
Courtney: Hi, Courtney.
Danny: Courtney is the one that put these ingredients together. He works with David on David's team. Guys, go ahead: three, two, one, and flip it around.
Mark: Oh, I should have written bigger.
Danny: So what was yours, Stephanie? I can't read that.
Stephanie: I just wrote magnesium stearate.
Danny: That's a good guess.
Stephanie: You're so kind.
David: It is not magnesium stearate.
Courtney: For future reference, magnesium stearate is white.
Stephanie: That's what I thought, but then I was like, maybe it's a trick question.
Danny: It could have been. All right, Mark.
Mark: I have ferrous fumarate.
David: That's a good guess.
Mark: Now, my other guess would have been what this dude put down. It would have been copper.
Stephanie: Oh my goodness. I don't think that's even in my vocabulary.
David: It's a copper of some kind. I'm not sure if it's gluconate.
Danny: Well, Courtney, what is it?
Courtney: It is, in fact, drum roll… copper bisglycinate chelate.
Stephanie: So close.
Mark: I knew what it was, but I was told to come in here and make our technical guy the smartest in the room.
Stephanie: Wow. I was just told to make you guys look really smart, so I just did this.
Mark: Wait, do you want to hear my next guess? What's the next ingredient?
Danny: Go ahead and hand Mark the package. He's gonna pull out the next one.
Mark: Good job, David. That was a good job.
Danny: One point, David.
David: If the next one is red, that might be iron.
Mark: Oh my goodness. This could be, like, a hundred things.
Danny: Smelling it will help.
Courtney: Dun, dun, dun. Extra points for the genus species name.
Danny: So what color is this, Mark?
Mark: It is brown.
Danny: What does that smell like to you?
Mark: Cookies.
Danny: Cookies. Okay, that's a good description.
Mark: David, don't put your finger in there.
Danny: No, you totally can. All of these are edible.
Mark: I just meant Stephanie might want to go first. Ladies first; she should put her finger in there first.
Stephanie: No, I'm not going to put my finger in that.
Mark: Just stick your tongue in it.
Stephanie: That's what my daughter would do.
Mark: You'll get that one.
Stephanie: Oh, I know what that is. Smells like Christmas.
David: There you go.
Mark: Oh, that's a good one.
Courtney: If you taste it, Steph, you may know.
Stephanie: I don't want to taste it.
Courtney: If you're not afraid of David's finger.
Mark: My eyes are burning now. I wrote too small last time, so I'm going bigger.
Stephanie: I get pine cones that smell like this.
Danny: Okay.
Stephanie: But it isn't coming to me.
David: You're on the right track. It does smell like Christmas.
Danny: That was a really, really good description.
David: That's what I would do. I love Christmas.
Stephanie: I can't think of it, so I'm just gonna do something else. I know that's not right.
Danny: She's drawing Christmas.
Mark: A picture of a snowman.
Danny: All right, are you guys ready? And three, two, one. All right. Stephanie, what did you put?
Mark: You had it right there: cinnamon, or Christmas?
David: What in the world?
Danny: Christmas pine cone.
Stephanie: Was it cinnamon?
Danny: We don't know yet. We'll find out. That's a good guess. Cinnamon or Christmas pine cone? Okay, how about you, Mark? What did you put?
Mark: Yeah, I put Ceylon cinnamon.
Danny: And David, what'd you put?
David: Cinnamon.
Danny: What was the answer, Courtney?
Courtney: Ceylon cinnamon is correct.
Danny: Two points. Two points to Mark for getting it right on.
Stephanie: I wrote it, and then I squiggled it out.
David: You get minus one for scribbling it out.
Mark: You're penalized because you had it right.
Stephanie: Should have gone with my gut instinct.
Danny: All right, Stephanie, it's your turn.
Stephanie: Oh, no. So this is a reddish powder.
Danny: Okay.
Stephanie: Give it a smell. Hopefully I don't spill it everywhere.
Danny: Very, very popular ingredient.
Mark: Are you being serious?
Danny: It's a very popular ingredient. I think?
Courtney: Yeah, very, very, very popular.
Danny: I had some this morning. There's your hint.
Courtney: Indubitably.
Mark: You had some this morning?
Stephanie: Was it in your water cup?
Danny: Yes, there was. I'm sure there was.
Mark: Okay, that smells different than I thought it would.
Danny: What does it smell like?
Mark: It smells like it actually has, like, a sweet scent to it. And it's not a flavor? Tell me you guys didn't go flavor on this.
Courtney: No, no. Single ingredient.
Mark: And you had it this morning?
Danny: I have it probably almost every… well, I definitely have it every day.
Courtney: Make sure you don't ingest more than 5 micrograms.
David: There's your hint.
Danny: Okay, you guys ready to write?
Stephanie: I'm just gonna start drawing pictures.
Mark: You're going to have to edit this out, because I'm going to have this long pause. This is how I do Jeopardy. Like, I push pause and I'm like, I've got to think about that answer for a minute. And then I get it.
Danny: David, what did you think it tasted like?
David: I was trying not to give it away, because I think I know what it is.
Danny: I bet you do, because you also probably have this every day.
David: Um, but I said it was kind of earthy and sweet.
Danny: Okay, earthy and sweet.
David: Well, I said if it was red, I would have guessed maybe iron, but I know this is not iron.
Danny: All right. And three, two, one.
David: I want to see what they do.
Danny: That is not a bad guess.
David: What'd you put, Mark?
Danny: Methylcobalamin!
David: That actually might be it.
Danny: What did you put?
David: I put beet root.
Stephanie: Oh, beet root.
Mark: I was gonna go with beet root. And I was going to say Dwight Schrute. I was going to say, oh, it smells like Schrute Farms. And then I was like, no, that's too sweet for beet.
David: Now that you wrote that down, I think it is methylcobalamin.
Mark: But the thing with methylcobalamin is that's a decent amount of methylcobalamin. If it's pure methylcobalamin, that would have been really expensive, which almost talked me out of choosing methylcobalamin.
Mark: Yeah, that's like $300 million worth of methylcobalamin.
Stephanie: This is an expensive sample.
Danny: And what is the answer, Courtney?
Courtney: Elder… just kidding. Methylcobalamin!
Stephanie: I got so excited!
Courtney: I am sorry. And you're welcome.
Stephanie: Good job.
Mark: So do you have a drink in the morning that has B12 in it?
Danny: I actually take a B12 pill. After my concussion, they said, you need to take this; it helps with concussions. So I've been taking B12. And almost every energy drink has B12 in it, and I drink a lot of energy drinks. David, you ready? There's two left, right?
David: So I've got a chance at redemption here?
Danny: Absolutely. You're not supposed to look.
David: Oh, sorry. Okay.
Danny: I don't know if looking at them would help you anyway. Some of these are just really tough.
David: Yeah, there's a couple of things this could be. This is nice and yellow. Somewhat granular.
Danny: All right, let's have a look and smell. So what color? It's nice and yellow, you say?
David: What's with the seal, dude?
Danny: That's just how Courtney rolls, man.
Courtney: We want the ASMR, you know?
David: I think I know what that is, but I'm not positive.
Mark: Okay, the granularity makes me think some things.
Danny: Helps you think it's not what would normally be bright yellow?
Mark: It's an oily smell.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm. Hmm. Oily smell?
Mark: Can I swish it around like I'm a sommelier?
Stephanie: I dare you.
David: I want you to taste it.
Stephanie: Is there a limit on how much he can have?
David: I want you to taste that.
Courtney: 500 milligrams should be fine. You can put a gram in your mouth if you want.
Stephanie: That smells terrible.
Courtney: So this is a plant-derived alkaloid salt extracted from herbs like barberry.
David: Oh, dude.
Courtney: Commonly given away by Courtney.
Danny: Okay, can you guess what this ingredient is?
Mark: No.
Stephanie: I have no idea.
Courtney: It supports blood sugar and metabolic health.
David: You might as well just write it down for him.
Danny: Natural GLP-1.
Mark: Okay, I had three that I was going for, and now you just made it number one.
David: Now my chance of redemption is gone.
Danny: No, you got this.
David: Yeah, but I would have beat Mark if you wouldn't have said all that.
Danny: And Stephanie, it is not elderberry.
Stephanie: Oh, don't you worry. I've got a better one.
Danny: And three, two, one. Let's start with Stephanie.
Stephanie: I did sunflower powder.
Danny: Dude, that's actually not a horrible guess, especially where you were saying it kind of smells oily.
Stephanie: Yeah, I just made that up.
Danny: That was a great guess. Hey, what do you think, Mark?
Mark: I had berberine.
Danny: Berberine. And what did you say?
David: Berberine HCl.
Courtney: It is, in fact, berberine hydrochloride.
Stephanie: Oh, bravo.
Mark: I didn't get the HCl.
Stephanie: Also known as sunflower powder.
David: No, no, no.
Danny: Okay, one last one. Stephanie, we're gonna let you open this one up.
Stephanie: Okay. Is it kind of crystalline-looking? Or are my eyes deceiving me?
Courtney: It could be.
David: I would taste that one. And hopefully it doesn't gag, but if it's what I think it is…
Stephanie: Ugh! That is terrible! Terrible.
David: Oh, maybe I won't taste that.
Mark: I was thinking it would be something you'd put on your movie popcorn.
Stephanie: Definitely not!
Mark: I was thinking it was salt.
Danny: Oh, wait until they get a whiff. So what would you describe that to smell like?
David: Oh, see, that gave it away for me now too.
Stephanie: Like dirty feet.
David: So I'm gonna write this one down before I even get a chance to look at it.
Courtney: This is a pretty important ingredient. It's trending and has a lot of good benefits.
Danny: Yeah, what is the consistency like? Is it a powdered-sugar consistency? Is it more salt? What is the consistency of this?
Mark: Blocky, but I'm guessing you can compress it pretty okay.
Danny: Like it would stick together pretty good?
Mark: I don't know if you sift it out if it would go back into more of a less granular form. I don't know. I don't think it smelled like feet, though.
Stephanie: Did you like how it smells?
David: Oh, it smells like feet.
Courtney: Hygroscopic, for sure.
David: Very hygroscopic. Some people describe it as having a fishy smell.
Stephanie: So I don't have to share my answer on this one?
Courtney: We're more entertained that way.
Danny: You're gonna guess feet or something.
Stephanie: Ha ha, feet oil.
Mark: I didn't think it smelled like feet.
Courtney: The fungus among us.
David: That's really gross!
Danny: All right, are we ready? Three, two, one.
Stephanie: We got the same answer.
Mark: Well, that makes me feel like I'm wrong.
Stephanie: Makes me feel like I'm right. Oh, What is it?
David: Betaine, also known as TMG, or what's the long word for that?
Mark: Trimethylglycine.
David: Yes, thank you.
Mark: You're welcome.
David: You get a point.
Stephanie: Oh, there we go.
Mark: Was that what it was? Was it TMG?
Courtney: It's, in fact, trimethylglycine.
David: Boo! I'm outta here.
Stephanie: Good job.
Danny: Dude, you guys did awesome.
Stephanie: That was the hardest game I've ever played.
How do you decide what goes into a formula?
Danny: Stephanie, I'm gonna leave it to you to ask the first question.
Stephanie: Okay. How do you decide what to put into a formula?
David: It kind of depends on the stage where it's given to us. If a customer says, hey, I really want to have something that has cellular energy, or helps me have more energy throughout the morning workout or something like that, then it's like, okay, now we're having to research what items are going to work. What's our demographic like? What kind of ingredients are gonna work with those people? What are the safety limits? So, specifically looking at active ingredients.
The other side of that coin is, once we know those things, how do we combine them in, like I said before, in a safe way, and also make it run on our machines? I don't know if Danny has shown pictures of our machines. I know on our website you can find them, or on different videos we've had, but they're very intricate. So it's the right amount of compaction, the right amount of lubrication that comes in some kind of a powdered form, and figuring out what amount we put in there.
Sometimes we have to fill some space. In order to fill up a capsule, they'll be like, well, you only need, you know, 100 milligrams of a certain ingredient. Well, in order to have it run with the correct amount, we have to have something to fill up that space, or we have to use a smaller capsule, and we can only go so far. So sometimes we'll be like, okay, what's an inert or an active-type ingredient that is either beneficial or maybe has no effect, to fill that space so we get the proper amount in there. So there are several things that go into deciding what we're going to put into it.
Magnesium stearate is kind of a go-to. A new trending thing nowadays is clean ingredients. So Courtney and I will start looking into other alternatives that are a little more natural-based, and it'll still work and function and flow through the machine without that. We have to find alternatives to doing that, and so we get really creative.
How do you decide what not to put in?
Stephanie: So along those same lines, how do you decide what not to put into a formula?
David: Here's a good example. Oftentimes we have to look at not only what's an efficacious amount, but also what's safe. Sometimes root herbs, for example, will have a little bit higher amounts of heavy metals in them. So we have to check the limits and make sure that we're not putting in too much.
Danny: One of the things I was thinking about: we did a product for somebody recently, and the amount of stuff they were putting in wasn't fitting in their capsule. So you and your team had to decide what to take out, because they wanted to keep it in a one-capsule serving. How do you decide what needs to be cut from a formula sometimes?
David: Well, weight limits can impact that, or, correction, capacity, not necessarily weight limits. For capsules in particular, depending on the size, they can only get so big before you're taking a horse pill. And so people are like, oh, I want to put these 13 or 16 ingredients in here. They're not going to fit unless you're taking a handful of 10 or 12 pills, and people don't usually want to take more than maybe two or three at a time.
So we'll be like, okay, what's gonna help you get the most out of this? What active ingredients are you going to look at? Okay, if we bump those up and they get some kind of efficacious amount, we can remove these other ones that aren't really that beneficial. So we look at the quality and what's going to be the best for the customer, and for the consumer ultimately. And then, again, we look at those inactive ingredients, and it makes it easier if there are things there that we can reduce that are not having an active impact.
Biggest formulation mistakes
Stephanie: Okay, so next question for you, David. What do you find are some of the biggest mistakes that people make when they're creating a formula?
David: I'd probably say one of the biggest ones we just mentioned already: somebody will put too much in. They're like, I've got this awesome idea. And I get it; I've done it a hundred times. Like, oh, I'll put a little bit of this in there, a little bit of that, and it's gonna be great. It's going to be the best thing on the market. And then they find out that it's just too much. You can't get it into a capsule or a serving. Or, on the flip side, if you're doing some kind of a powdered drink with that in there, it doesn't go into solution, or it just sludges and goes down to the bottom. There are lots of things. So it might have too much going into it.
Another one I have bumped up against, and I think Mark might have some input on this too, is not understanding the ramifications of putting certain ingredients in. Some things may not be allowed in the industry; they just kind of sit on the fringes, right?
Mark: Like, maybe the FDA is looking for a reason to take that ingredient off the market.
David: It might put them or us at risk. And ultimately, we've got to let the customer know: I understand where you're going with this, but this could get you in trouble, so we recommend maybe reformulating or pulling that certain thing out. I don't know, what do you think, Mark?
Mark: I get a little frustrated. Not frustrated; disappointed, maybe, is a better word, when people try to throw ingredients in for the purpose of marketing rather than for efficacy. It's kind of like, well, I know what's hot, and I want to put all these cool ingredients in there, and they throw stuff in there like 3 milligrams of berberine. And you're like, well, that's not going to do anything. But maybe somebody doesn't know, and so they take it because they just see it's on there.
You also cross a line cost-wise where now you're testing for a ton of stuff, right?
Stephanie: That's a good point.
Mark: Yeah, it drives up your price, and you don't even realize it. So stuff like that. I guess also choosing too many things that might be hygroscopic all in the same formula, instead of having just one ingredient like that. Berberine, CoQ10, TMG: all of a sudden you put all these things in there, right? And you're like, oh man, that's all gonna be a giant ball of mush, right?
David: Or a rock.
Stephanie: Break the machine.
Mark: Those are kind of things you've got to be a little aware of.
David: Those are real things. Yeah, we break machines with things.
Stephanie: We need those to work.
Mark: Isn't that wild? Those big, strong compression machines can get bound up by combining a couple of powders wrong. And it's hard to understand that if you're not dealing with it every day. For a brand, it's like, well, why won't it work? And you're like, well, because it turns into glue, and then it turns into a rock, and now we can't do that anymore. You wouldn't expect a brand to know that, and that's where someone like David comes in and says, hey, these ingredients are a bad combo. It's educating.
Stephanie: Yeah, yeah.
The hardest ingredients to work with
Stephanie: And on that same note, what are some of the ingredients that you know are the hardest to work with?
David: Courtney and I love to find solutions, and I feel like we do a really good job finding ways to get through things. But TMG was one of those. The crystalline structure in that one, it didn't necessarily bind up the machine, but it would tear the capsules. So we had to figure out a new way to get the compaction where we need it and get it lubricated the right way.
On some formulations we were able to use magnesium stearate and some silicon dioxide, which is very common also. We might use bamboo, and in the case I'm thinking of, we used some rice flour and some sunflower oil. And then we usually put some kind of antioxidant, like ascorbyl palmitate, in there to keep it nice and fresh. That will lube it and kind of soften those edges a little bit. It goes into the machine, it doesn't scratch and dent the capsule, and you get the right compaction.
When you create a capsule, we try to make what's called a little slug. Those are the winners: if we can make a little pellet in our laboratory when we're running our benchtops, we're like, oh, that means the machine will do it, and then it'll go into a capsule really nice. That's kind of our goal oftentimes with those.
Sometimes you'll get interactions between ingredients, and they can either create new compounds, or they'll combine, or they'll split. Sometimes all of a sudden it turns into a brick, because it combines with water and then it combines with the other molecules in there. Or it turns into something slushy, and then it doesn't want to behave. Some of the other stuff we work with, like alpha lipoic acid, has been a challenge, and we've had to work through some issues with that one. Courtney, what are some other ones you thought of?
Courtney: Um, cistanche. You know, that's a tough one. Shilajit is crazy because it's a tar that comes out of the earth, and they clean it and standardize it and make it into a nice, pretty powder. Well, you put a little bit of pressure on there, and it goes back to a tar.
Stephanie: What do you guys do to deal with that?
Courtney: We don't. Just kidding. The best-case scenario is to use clean ingredients and probably some sort of lubrication, preferably dry, but sometimes we're forced to do a liquid lubrication.
David: Yeah, those were good examples. Those have been challenging.
Favorite ingredients, multivitamins and probiotics
Danny: What are some of your favorite ones to work with?
David: If someone would just do rice flour. No. Amino acids have usually been pretty good to work with. TMG is good now, though.
Danny: Now that you've dialed it in.
Courtney: Now we can do it.
Mark: What about a standard multivitamin? Like your B, C, all that. Is that tricky once you start introducing, say, D and E, where you've got fat?
David: Fatty vitamins. It can start to get a little wild, because even in the powder form you start getting higher amounts of ingredients, and they start to interact and start to lock up.
When we're in the lab, we have a series of tests and things that we'll do. Among those, technically it's called a compression tester; we call it a slug tester. It helps us pack that powder into a certain size, which represents a capsule, and we'll see if it'll actually create one of those little slugs, those little pellets.
Another one is what we call a skid plate. We took an old part from one of the machines that used to be in use, and we nicked it and roughed it up a little bit. Then we run a powder on there, and we actually skid it, grind it out of there, and see. On the machine, there are plates that we're trying to see if it's going to glide on. And the reason I thought of that is sometimes with these multivitamins, we'll get those on there and they just grind, and they don't want to slide very well. Those are the ones that'll start locking up the machine. And we have to think, okay, which ingredients are doing this? What do we need to add that's gonna help it glide a little bit better?
That's a common challenge we have across ingredients: a lot of times they'll start to have that sticking or grinding that won't let that machine plate glide as it's turning, because it has all these little holes it's trying to fill with powder to fill up those capsules. And as it glides, it gets bound up or bends something. We've actually broken some pretty heavy pieces of machinery.
Stephanie: Well, what about probiotic blends? How do you deal with those, and what are things that you look out for?
David: My experience with them has usually been good. The only challenge is that probiotics often are blended with some kind of a sugar. Maltodextrin is common; there could be some other sugars. That's actually to help sustain and feed those probiotics. So even though they're in dry form, once all those things get into your digestive system, they kind of interact and have a synergistic effect. But because they do have those sugars, we have to be mindful of that sticking and grinding. It could be a challenge, but at the same time, it also helps the powder flow. The manufacturers of probiotics that we work with do a really good job of making those blends, because they're aware of those challenges.
Stephanie: Interesting.
David: And they have different carriers. They'll use maltodextrin or some kind of tapioca or something that will work with it.
Trademarked ingredients
Stephanie: What are some of the benefits or challenges of using trademarked ingredients?
David: Trademarked ingredients are really cool, because when you've got a trademarked ingredient, someone has taken the time and put the effort and money and research behind something, so you get to see all sorts of cool studies behind it. That works to the benefit of the brands we work with: if they want to use that, they can use those clinical studies. The FDA will accept those things oftentimes, so they can make a health claim about it: this particular ingredient does these things, and here's all the research to back it up. It's just known in the industry that vitamin C helps boost immunity. But there are a lot of ingredients with just not a lot of research on them, even though we know you can consume them.
Mark: Years and years ago, Ester-C was a big deal, right? You could buy the raw material from the manufacturer and make these claims about esterified C, the process that vitamin C went through that'll make it better than traditional vitamin C. But you had to do all the same stuff, right? You had to put their logo on your label, all the things. That's what most trademarked materials do.
Then they sold that brand. They sold the manufacturing rights to another company, and that other company, after a short while, decided, hey, we're not going to sell this to other brands now. Our name has enough recognition that we're going to capitalize on that ourselves. At least this is my understanding; I'm going from memory, and it's been a while. But they decided they were going to be the only ones that could offer that product, and that they would have enough of a following that anybody who wanted Ester-C needed to go through them. Ultimately, I think it's still around, but it's not like it used to be, right? You're just kind of at whatever their business decision is.
Stephanie: You're at their mercy.
Mark: Yeah, that's exactly right. They can affect your business. And that's really the only negative. With the benefits David mentioned, the brand has to determine whether those claims have enough added benefit to justify the increased price and to offer that to their customers. A lot of people bet on that, and it works out great. But all of a sudden you see a serious spike in market demand for that particular trademarked ingredient, and they can only ramp up production so fast, right? And then you're like, oh, I may not get mine like I normally do. There are a lot of business decisions, but typically they're very good.
David: Yeah, because you can make those claims. And some of them you really have to look into and research. Some of them are easier to work with than others. Some give you a lot of leeway, and some are very strict, like Mark was saying: you have to use our logo, and you have to use our amounts. You have to sign your life away before you can use it.
Mark: That's a great point, because all those clinicals are based on having used certain amounts to achieve the results they got. So now you're saying, well, I only wanted to use 300 milligrams. They're like, nope, it's got to be 500, and that's when you can make these claims. And there are some that have tiered claims. So it's like, at 500, these are the claims you can make. At 750 milligrams of our product, now you can make these additional claims. And it's enticing, right? Because the claims just keep getting better.
Danny: And their pockets get fuller.
Mark: I mean, in fairness, they took a gamble. They took a gamble on taking this process, or whatever it is they're doing, and doing the clinicals on it, so that you're able to say those things, where normally you don't get to say that in the supplement world. You can say "supports" or "aids in." But you can't say, this reduces inflammation by 20% when you take 500 milligrams; here are our studies.
David: That's one of the things, I think, going back to one of your earlier questions. It's not a stopping point, but people get really excited about their supplement coming together, and they're like, oh, here's a sample of our label. It's gonna do these things. It's gonna make you feel 10 times greater, and it's gonna fix your headaches every day, and it's gonna boost your immune system, and it's gonna make your toes grow three times bigger.
Mark: That's a side effect.
David: People send this stuff to me, and they get really excited about it, and they feel confident. And even I know this: a lot of times these herbs and probiotic things we work with, I know they do what they say they're gonna do. But if you say that, then the FDA starts to scrutinize you a lot more heavily. And that's really frustrating for people, learning how to word their language so they convey the message they want, so people understand, okay, why do I need to take this ashwagandha? Why do I need to take this other herb or supplement? Without getting so heavy into the health claims that they get themselves in trouble.
Stephanie: Got to be careful.
Mark: It's true, yeah.
Stephanie: Okay, well, that's all really great information. Thank you, guys.
Danny: Do you really feel that way, Stephanie?
Mark: That's really great now… You guys could have wrapped that up three minutes ago.
David: David, that was boring.
Favorite formulation tools
Stephanie: One final question. It's more of a fun one. What is your favorite tool to work with when you are formulating?
Mark: David.
ALL: Oh!
Mark: No you're not a tool. All right, your turn, get me.
David: So, I'm not that quick-witted. I was gonna say one of the ones I mentioned earlier, but after thinking about it for a minute: we didn't talk a lot about liquid and powder formulations, but I'll tell you something that's really satisfying for Courtney and me is when we're putting together a liquid, and we have a high-shear immersion blender. That thing is cool. We start blending stuff, and we get really excited when we're combining all these things. I feel like a mad chemist in there, something out of a movie, like Merlin. We put something together with all these flavors and mixtures, and it goes into solution and makes a pretty color, and it tastes great, and you're like, ugh. I get really excited.
Stephanie: Next time you do that, I want to come down.
David: Courtney, did you have a favorite tool you wanted to share?
Courtney: My favorite tool, my most useful tool for dialing in capsules, is the slug tester. I feel like I seriously get, like, 80%, sometimes 90%, of the story of how a powder's gonna act. I get to feel it, touch it, see how it compresses, see how it slugs, see how it groups. And then it tells the same story 95% of the time out in full production, jumping from a 10-gram batch to a 600-kilogram batch. So that's awesome. My favorite.
David: He said favorite, not the most useful.
Courtney: But that's why it's my favorite.
Stephanie: I think you should call it, like, the Slug Tester 500 or something.
Courtney: The Slugmaster.
Mark: What is that one you guys use that does liquid blends, but it's like a magnet? You know what I'm talking about? You put the magnet in the bottom of the beaker or whatever, and then you place it on a little plate, and… is there a magnet inside that starts spinning on the plate?
David: It is a magnetic stirrer. We'll have a beaker or some other container we'll put on it. Ours is cool; it's got a hot plate on it, too. We have a couple of formulas where we need to add a little heat to get it to go into solution. There's a magnet that sits under that heat plate, and we can tell it how fast to spin. Then we put a little magnetic bean into the jar, flip it on, and it just spins.
Mark: And that bean is what gets it suspended?
David: It creates a small vortex in the liquid, and it helps you determine if it's going to go into suspension relatively easily without having to use the other tool I mentioned, the high-shear immersion blender.
Mark: Yeah, it's cool. That's a cool tool.
Danny: When do you decide to use that over the other type of blender? Is it viscosity? Is it because of the heat pad?
David: Viscosity can be a factor in that. It works much better if you're in something that's not highly viscous, meaning it's not really heavy and thick; something a little looser, a little more watery. Oftentimes people put a powder in their drink or something, and they'll try to shake it up. But sometimes we want to see how long it takes to mix something, and we'll do that as a final test.
But even during our mixing instructions, we need to decide what tool we're gonna use. When we go into production, we have different tools down on the production floor. We have high-shear mixers, different types of pumps. We have a big tank that we'll drop liquid into, and we might have to create a vortex in there. So all these little things on the benchtop, the magnetic stirrer or the high-shear mixer, or another kind of little immersion blender we use, tell us, okay, when we scale this up to production, how are we going to replicate this? Even the heat: am I going to heat a 50-gallon drum of some kind to get that temperature up? So that helps us tell the story, and then we go, okay, now we've got to take it from small scale to here. That's why we have the different types.
Another one: methylcobalamin. If you use a high-shear immersion blender on that one, it will destroy the molecule.
Stephanie: Hmm.
David: So we have to use something gentle to mix that in and let it just go into solution, and then it's a little more stable. But if you use a high-shear immersion blender or add heat or something, it'll start to destroy it.
Hosts vs. AI: a hair, skin and nails formula
Danny: So, we're gonna do a quick activity. I thought it would be kind of fun for us to work as a group to come up with a formula. What I thought we'd do to start is decide on the type of supplement we would like to create.
Mark: Like the category?
Danny: Yeah, category. Let's pick a category.
Mark: I've always said that if I were to go into the supplement world, it would be a hair, skin and nail type supplement.
Danny: Who's all for that?
Stephanie: I could always use that.
Danny: I thought we could go into ChatGPT, or find something that's already on the market, and find out what would be a good starting point.
Mark: Should we do us against AI?
Danny: Let's do it.
Stephanie: There you go.
Mark: Like, what if you could only use five ingredients? We pick them, and then we'll throw that into AI and just ask the same question: if you could create a hair, skin and nail supplement using only five ingredients, what would they be, no more than a three-capsule serving size? You know, just kind of give some parameters and see how we stack up.
Danny: I love that idea.
Courtney: Does that include excipients?
David: The five ingredients would include excipients?
Mark: No, I think those would be in addition. So five active ingredients.
Danny: Yes, just five active ingredients.
Mark: All right. You're taking notes?
Stephanie: What's your wish list?
Mark: So I would just have to say biotin. Um, keratin. For some reason I want to go with collagen, but you can't get enough collagen in a capsule to really make it effective. I would probably go saw palmetto.
Danny: Is there an alternative to collagen?
Mark: Collagen is probably… well, it's not probably; it is one of the building blocks of hair, skin and nails. It's for real, but you need like 20 grams, which would be, you know, 40 capsules. Like, here's your bottle. So we probably have to eliminate that one. Saw palmetto is a good DHT blocker, which is the reason you start losing hair.
Danny: So what do we have so far? Oh, David's got a couple of others down there, right?
David: Yeah: vitamin E, vitamin D, vitamin C, some kind of peptides. I know those are kind of a popular thing in the beauty industry. There are lots of kinds, though, so I'm not sure what kind.
Mark: I kind of like copper, only because copper helps bring the natural color of your hair back. So if you're graying, copper tends to be a bit of a…
Danny: Is this a men's? A women's? Or more universal?
Mark: Universal is good.
Danny: I was just wondering, because you could change it based on who the target audience is.
Danny: This is going to be a supplement for hair, skin and nails for the general public.
Mark: Hyaluronic acid?
Stephanie: Oh, I think we should definitely keep that one in there if we're only choosing five.
Mark: If I were picking my five, I'd go hyaluronic acid, vitamin E, saw palmetto, keratin and biotin. Those would be my five. But those are just mine. So what are yours?
David: Yeah, do you have any opinions, Steph?
Stephanie: Um, I was going to say the hyaluronic acid and the keratin and biotin for me, because that's what I think of when I think of hair, skin and nails.
David: Right now we've got hyaluronic, vitamin C, vitamin E, keratin and biotin. One, two, three, four, five. I like having vitamin C in there because it's a good antioxidant, and it does help.
Mark: Can we change the rules?
Stephanie: Yeah, can you squeeze in a sixth? Do we have room?
Danny: We will improve it by adding vitamin C.
Mark: Okay, now how much of each do we put in?
Stephanie: You can do hair, skin and nails plus vitamin C.
Mark: With biotin in heavy doses, some people have a bit of a reaction to it where it can give them an acne breakout. So do we have vitamin E in there? Vitamin E counteracts that for a lot of people.
Danny: Let's throw it in there.
Mark: So on the biotin, those are typically microgram amounts, right? So I'd probably go like 5 milligrams of biotin. I've seen some products out there that are like 10,000 micrograms, or 10 milligrams, of biotin. That's a lot. I think you're safe with 5, and it's still healthy.
Courtney: Five milligrams or micro?
Mark: Milligrams, so that's 5,000 micrograms. I've seen it everywhere from like 2,000 on the low end up to 10,000. So we're sticking with 5,000, kind of a nice sweet spot.
David: Vitamin E?
Mark: You always have to go heavier than the RDIs, right? Those are always like, here's what you need to survive scurvy. And you're like, oh, scurvy's still a thing, I guess, if I'm not eating my oranges. So, what, 20 milligrams?
David: That's probably about right.
Mark: Now, I kind of went weird on the RDI thing, but vitamin C, I think vitamin C's RDI is like, is it 90 or 100?
David: Well, see, that's a good one to add last. If we figure out the other ones, the vitamin C you can adjust, because it's not very expensive and it's really good for you.
Mark: Fill it up. We can fill it up.
Stephanie: Yeah, because the rest of it comes out if you don't need it.
David: So, keratin? How much keratin do we need in there?
Mark: 500? My quick answer, not thinking of capsules yet, would be 500 milligrams of keratin, and probably 300 milligrams of saw palmetto.
David: 300 on saw palmetto?
Mark: Yeah, 300 to 500, somewhere in that range, is probably good.
David: And hyaluronic?
Mark: 100 milligrams on the low, low end, and I'd say upwards of, you know, 500. Then are you also factoring in whether this is a no-cost option?
Danny: Let's do no cost limitation at the moment. Just making the ultimate hair, skin and nails. All right, so give us our formula.
David: We've got 5 milligrams of biotin, 500 milligrams of keratin, 500 of saw palmetto, 20 of vitamin E, 300 of vitamin C and 250 of hyaluronic acid.
Danny: You guys feeling pretty good about that?
David: That's about as good as we can get.
Danny: What do you think?
Stephanie: Sounds good to me.
Mark: Are you looking it up now?
Stephanie: What does AI say?
Danny:Did you already pull it up?
Courtney: I did ask it too. This is Gemini, okay? Give credit. Whoop, whoop. So: biotin, 5 milligrams.
Mark: Is that what it said? Five milligrams?
Courtney: Hydrolyzed marine collagen at 500 milligrams.
Danny: Which, do you think that would do anything?
Mark: I mean, you look at all the stuff that's out there, right? Most of the stuff that's getting results is more than that. Like that Vital Proteins stuff, right? 20 grams per scoop, all the things.
Courtney: So the next deal is vitamin C at only 100 milligrams, which I feel like is very underdosed.
Mark: Yeah, that is crazy.
Courntey: Saw palmetto. Oh, at 320 milligrams as a DHT blocker.
Mark: Is that what it says? I swear I did not do this beforehand.
Courntey: Okay, so zinc picolinate: essential for hair tissue growth and repair, playing a crucial role in DNA and RNA production for dividing hair follicle cells.
David: How much of that's in there?
Courtney: That is at 15 milligrams.
Mark: Oh, I was going to say 10, so, okay. A little stronger than that.
Courtney: And then lastly, they put vitamin D3 at 2,000 IU. It regulates the expression of genes required for optimal hair cycling and is crucial for creating new follicles.
Danny: I'm wondering if AI is going out and looking at what's on the market already. Possibly. That's probably some of the problem with some of the current formulas out there. Kind of like you were saying, they're putting things in there that are the buzzwords, but are you getting the amount you need?
Mark: Are you specifically calling out that collagen? Because, yeah, for marketing it sounds really good.
Danny: I feel like a scoop of collagen in your shake in the morning will do you better.
Mark: Take that guy right there, and then take a scoop of collagen. You're golden.
Courtney: I really love the hyaluronic acid, and I would have taken it for hydration. We actually just made a formula where we put it in a formulation to stay hydrated, right? And so I looked it up, like, why is it good for hair? And it says that when taken internally, it increases dermal moisture in the scalp, keeping the tissue surrounding the hair follicles hydrated and structurally sound.
Steaphanie: Interesting.
Wrap-up
Danny: Well, I do want to thank everybody for tuning in. Thank you, David and Courtney, for joining us today. That was a lot of fun for us. We enjoyed that, and there was a lot of great information. We would love for you to leave your questions in the comments or email us at info@canyonsidelabs.com. There was a ton of information about formulation that we didn't cover today, and we would love for you to send it our way. We'll send it off to David and answer it in future podcasts.
Tune in next show, when we'll be talking about the challenges of manufacturing supplements. I think we're going to get Corey on, who is our big dude, our boss dude. He's a lot of fun. So that's what we're doing. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. We'll see you next time.
All: Thank you.
Comments