Podcast Rewind: NSF Certified: A Contract for Product Quality

Dr. Robert Rountree INTRO:

This is The Thorne Podcast, the show that navigates the complex world of wellness, and explores the latest science behind diet, supplements, and lifestyle approaches to good health. I'm Dr. Robert Rountree, Chief Medical Advisor at Thorne, and functional medicine doctor. As a reminder, the recommendations made in this podcast are the recommendations of the individuals who express them, and not the recommendations of Thorne. Statements in this podcast have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Thorne Podcast. This week we're digging into three little letters, NSF. These are letters that you might've noticed on the label of high quality nutritional supplements. If you haven't noticed it before, we hope you notice it now. So we're going to dive into what NSF certification means, why it's so important, and the science behind the NSF for sport testing, so you can appreciate the big impact those little letters have on the health and supplement world.

So joining me this week to unpack all of that is John Travis. He's a scientist, technical manager, and spokesperson for NSF, where he's been working since 1995. 1995, so that's a long time. John, welcome to the show. How about you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, who you are, and how you got involved with this organization?

John Travis:

Thanks, Bob. I'm glad to be here. So yeah, NSF 1995, if you do that math, it's 29 years now. Hard to believe.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Wow.

John Travis:

Yeah, it's flown by. So I started at NSF doing standard water testing work back in 1999.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Testing water filters, things like that?

John Travis:

Yeah. And then actually, NSF started back in 1944, so we've been along a long time. Our genesis back then was for interstate commerce and soda fountain. Here's an example of folks from Ohio and Michigan getting along and accomplishing something, unlike in the football world. But this is what, I mean.

So these manufacturers in the Midwest were having a challenge making soda fountain machines that could meet the requirements of the different regulatory jurisdictions, whether it's Ohio, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan. So some regulators and folks from Michigan School of Public Health sat down up here just up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and hammered out the first NSF standard for quality for soda fountains. Everyone agreed to use it, and it facilitated interstate commerce. We followed that paradigm and that protocol to today developing, I think we have over 100 standards now for product quality to help facilitate commerce.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So without that, what were we seeing? I guess there were contaminations, and-

John Travis:

Yeah, just different combinations of products. Manufacturers would make a product for that would fulfill the requirements of the state of Ohio, one for the state of Michigan, one for Indiana, they'd all be slightly different variations. I mean, that's not economically viable for the long haul. So I think that really allowed the restaurant industry to blossom, because all these are used from soda fountains, to gas fryers, to gas grills, all those are within NSF certification programs.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

And then you've got from that into water filters, is that right? I mean, that's how I first heard about NSF I think many years ago, that you would see a water filter that said, "This is certified by NSF," or-

John Travis:

That's one aspect, direct and indirect water additives. So there's a little NSF mark on any of the PVC pipes that you see in your house. So for those of you that have unfinished basements like me, go down and take a look at your pipes above your head, and you'll look, especially the white plastic pipes, you'll see NSF, you should see on all those pipes. If not, probably want to connect with the plumber.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Look out. Be careful. Be careful.

John Travis:

Exactly.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

NSF is a nonprofit, correct?

John Travis:

Yeah, well, not for profit. So yeah, we do still some things. We still have revenue, but because of that status, we invest that revenue back in our company to develop more services to serve the public health.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Which means you're an independent agency, in other words. You're not a government agency, you're standalone.

John Travis:

We're not government. I mean, our whole certification scheme and how we operate is based upon our integrity and our ethics. If we don't hold those up, that mark means nothing.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

And are you just in the United States, or are you all over?

John Travis:

International, so we have offices in all over the world. We have labs just outside of Shanghai, China, we have labs in Brazil, we have a lab in Peru, we have a lab in Wales, UK and Germany, and we have offices all throughout the world as well.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So this is really a huge organization.

John Travis:

I think we have over maybe 3000 people employed worldwide across all different sectors. Retail, food, safety, water, and then why we're here today, dietary supplements.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Let's talk about that. How did we get from soda fountains, to water filters, to the PVC pipes in your house, to dietary supplements? When did that come about? And by the way, as part of that discussion, does NSF mean anything now, or what does that mean? And then what's the general meaning of NSF certification? So there's a lot of questions embedded in that.

John Travis:

Yeah, that's a great one. First, we'll go, what NSF means. It is now a TLA, three letter acronym, for nothing. It used to stand for the National Sanitation Foundation, that was our name when we were founded. But as we've grown into more human health, and public health issues, and planet health issues, and making standards for those, we decided as an organization that probably National Sanitation Foundation is not an accurate descriptor of what we do. So we just went to the three letter acronym, NSF and let our mission speak for what we do. So that's really how we ended up from this long National Sanitation Foundation to NSF.

Now, I don't know if you recall back in the, was it the 70s when the water filtrations first came out, the ugly systems? It was the Wild West back then. So there's all of these outlandish claims that the water filters could make, do this, they could do this, they could purify this water, and that. And there's just no information, there's no evidence that they could actually make those performance claims. So the industry was threatened by the EPA with government regulation. They got together and industry forums and meetings, and decided, "We would prefer to have self-regulation." So they came together, approached NSF, knowing our background in some of the other water systems in which we worked, and we hammered out the first standard for the water filtration units.

So that's very analogous to what we have done with dietary supplements. Even though there is regulation for dietary supplements, they, instead of having something so onerous that was a pre-market notification, this and that, they really wanted NSF to convene a joint committee and develop a standard for dietary supplements. So that was back in that time.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So the government came to you?

John Travis:

Yeah, yeah. Industry came to us.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Wow.

John Travis:

So we had a relationship with Amway at the time, as in Amway had water filters. So they knew of their experience with the water filtration and how that standard came to be, and they thought it'd be beneficial for the supplement industry. And they actually helped get everyone together in the room here at our Ann Arbor headquarters for the first meeting to talk about creating an American national standard.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

And when was that?

John Travis:

That was 1999.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

99?

John Travis:

Yeah.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Wow.

John Travis:

A little anecdotal story about that. It's when I started building my house. So it was a pretty stressful time for me at the time. A dietary supplement standard with all the industry members trying to create something of value to consumers, to industry, and to regulators, and then I'm trying to build a house on top of that. It was a little bit stressful.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Oh boy. Crazy. So the supplement industry has really grown by leaps and bounds since your beginnings. I mean, I had looked up some stats in 1994, there were 4,000 supplements on the US market. And so this has really grown exponentially. I mean, I don't know exactly how many there are now, but what, 100,000 or more?

John Travis:

Yeah. I often use Office of Dietary Supplements at NIH, I use their dietary supplement label database for learning what's on the market, doing background research on products for my information. And a couple weeks ago when I did a search, I saw there were over 165,000 labels on the market in the US alone.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Wow, that's huge. How many of those companies would you guess pursue certification through NSF? And I guess there really isn't any other comparable organization. I mean, you were it if a company wants some kind of certification. So what percentage of those would you guess?

John Travis:

A small percentage?

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Very small.

John Travis:

Yeah, very small percentage.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So it's the Wild West that you talked about with water filters, that's what's happening with supplements right now, is that?

John Travis:

I mean, getting into the market as a dietary supplement brand is relatively simple. It's not like going to market with a drug or pharmaceutical. It's more like going to market with a food. So it's relatively easy compared to other things that are more difficult, like drugs.

People may not have all the requisite knowledge to start a supplement company, but they'll try to do it anyway. So I'll also say that our process, our NSF certification process is voluntary. It's not mandated by the government. So it's the top brands or brands that wanted to portray to their consumers that their products that they sell are quality brands, that want to be in that realm, come to us.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

This would be a time to get really granular. What does your certification mean? And I think there's two certifications I'm familiar with. One is Content Certified, and the other one is NSF Certified for Sport. So can you talk about that in a little bit more detail?

John Travis:

Yeah, and also I add, there's the NSF GMP certification as well.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Oh, okay.

John Travis:

It's really that trifecta. So three things. We'll start with the GMP certification because in reality, everyone knows if a brand isn't following good manufacturing practices at their manufacturer, the probability of making a quality supplement is very low.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So they got to follow certain procedures and protocols that are standardized, et cetera. That's what GMP is.

John Travis:

Yeah, that's exactly, it's like have employees that are trained, that follow proper sanitation practices. They have records of how products should be made, they have records and specifications for ingredients that go into products, that's all part of GMPs. So that's part one. And every brand that comes into the NSF product certification programs, their manufacturer must have that certification first.

Part two is the NSF 173, which is the contents tested program you talked to. We'll call it, what's on the labels is what's in the bottle. So it's really verifying that the supplement fax panel's accurate. One can easily see that goes hand in hand with GMP. So GMP, that it's produced properly, the product testing for their NSF contents tested program verifies that.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Can I ask how what you're doing compares to say a paid organization like Consumer Lab, that they'll test a small number of products. What's different about the way you go about doing that and what they do?

John Travis:

Yeah, so ours is voluntary. So brands are reaching out to us, manufacturers connect to us for our program. We have annual requirements, so it's not a one and done type of scenario. So brands that become NSF certified will, for instance, like Thorne, will have annual requirements. We're in Thorne's manufacturing facilities annually to make sure that they continue to follow the procedures that they have in place to produce the products.

We test the products annually for their label claims, and to make sure they don't have pathogenic microorganisms, toxic elements like lead and mercury, things like that. No one wants those in their products either. But so we're testing those on an annual basis to verify the GMP compliance too as part of the product certification. So that's annually. So we're there as long as the brand wants to maintain certification with us, we're there being their friend.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So you're not a one-off kind of organization. In other words, you don't come in and say, "Well, let's test fish oil and see if it's good, and rate it, or let's test olive oil." You're more say, co-partner?

John Travis:

Yeah, I like to call us the relationship certifier. So our relationship is with the brand, the manufacturer, and the consumer. So I like to call that, we'll call it our contract for product quality.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Great. And then there's NSF for Sport, which I think is a whole different level, that's my understanding.

John Travis:

You're correct. I'm old enough to remember when the A's had the Bash Brothers, McGuire and Canseco. So remember when they were chasing the home run records?

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Yep.

John Travis:

And I remember watching interviews with Mark McGuire, and that bottle of Andro sitting back behind his head in his locker. I remember that. And that was back then. And baseball had an issue with performance-enhancing substances being used by their players at the time. And NFL did too. And don't let me kid you, Olympic athletes. We remember watching, remember watching Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis in 1988, and Ben Johnson-

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Oh, Carl Lewis, yeah.

John Travis:

... poking at the line? It wasn't even a contest. And then afterwards find out he tests positive for stanozolol. So all of these activities, and incidents, and occurrences led to the sporting world wanting some kind of certification program to demonstrate to athletes that these products are clean from substances prohibited in sport. And we can take them and not use this excuse, "Oh, I took a contaminated supplement, so that's what maybe test positive." So it gives the athletes a chance to come clean and say, Hey, I'm a clean athlete because I take clean supplements.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

I know what I'm taking.

John Travis:

Yeah, exactly. And that was in 2004.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Oh, oh so this is 20 years later that the certification's been out there.

John Travis:

Yeah, we started, our first customers, our list of substances was, I think it was only 63 substances. Now we're up to over 290, and it's growing every day.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So the things that you're testing for, are you mostly testing for unintentional contaminants, or intentional?

John Travis:

It's both. It's both. I mean, to be frank, sometimes we know of brands that operate in the gray area of the regulations and intentionally will adulterate a supplement with an active pharmaceutical. But also there can be times where they're caught out and don't realize that, and they want to be able to protect themselves and those kinds of incidents as well.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

I've got to say, I was talking with this guy who was a lawyer for the US Anti-Doping Association, and he said, "I could take you into a health food store, and point fingers at things that you do not want to buy." And I was kind of shocked by that, because he said, "These are big brands sometimes with big names, that have things in there that you don't want to be putting in your body." And I guess I was really taken aback by that, because you'd think, here's a popular brand, it's out there, you can trust it.

John Travis:

Yeah, sometimes unfortunate things like that happen. I'll just say it like that in that, one of the greatest boons of the industry is having this regulatory environment that allows for innovation, and innovation that can happen quickly. Now sometimes innovation gets ahead of health and safety, and when that happens, that's why NSFs here.

So I was listening to a podcast by a gentleman, and he was talking about friction. So friction as far as friction to prevent things from going awry in businesses, and then lack of friction to let things move through when they needed to. So we look at ourselves in these cases like this is, yeah, a little bit of friction is good to slow things down, to let the research catch up, let the regulators and public health officials have some comments to know how these new ingredients are impacting human health.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So how often do you see new ingredients that are problematic? I mean, is most of the problem that people adulterate, that they're trying to stick in an androgen or something like that? Or is more of a problem unexpected?

John Travis:

I mean, there's a combination of both. I think there are some folks that intentionally do what you said, they're sticking androgens or I mean, the newest thing is the selective androgen receptor modulators, otherwise known as a SARMs. A class of compounds that have been developed as drugs, and many of them, they're trying to solve a medical issue. So all of us have aging... Well, I would hope all of us have aging parents. I would hope that none of them are in the hospital.

But I mean with my family, we had this where a parent was bedridden. But if you know how atrophy occurs with muscles and sarcopenia for older adults that are bedridden, it really is debilitating, and it causes a severe decline in health. So a lot of these drugs are being developed for that. Now be clear that none of them have passed a higher hurdle of FDA approval, but they're in development. They're in phase two, phase three clinical trials, so they're going to the larger groups.

But all the information out there on these drugs is in the patent literature. So people who don't want to follow the law have all the tools and information to actually figure out how to make these, contract a manufacturer that will synthesize these drugs, and then find somebody that will make them into a product.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So who do you work with? You mentioned the National Football League and-

John Travis:

And Major League baseball are two of our, we'll call them stakeholders. So they rely on us and our Certified for Sport program to keep their athletes safe and out of trouble from the anti-doping perspective. We work with US Anti-Doping as well, I mean they recommend our program to the Olympic athletes to keep them out of the trouble of the doping control officer. We have group of outstanding relationships with NHL and NBA, PGA tour, LPGA, really all the major sports organizations within the US, they rely on our programs to keep their athletes safe.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

What does that mean they rely on your program? Does that mean if an athlete wants to take vitamin C, then they go to NSF and they say, what vitamin C have you tested? Or is there another method?

John Travis:

It's great, there's a public listing. So they can go to nsfsport.com. And even better yet, well, it depends upon the person. Some people just like that old school way of going to a website, but we have an NSF sport app, so it's available for Android and for Apple. They can go in there, they can go into the store, they can scan UPC codes, and it will call up that product and tell you whether it's certified or not.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Oh, that's slick.

John Travis:

We want to make it simple. I mean, we got to make it simple for folks because if it's complicated, people won't want to use the program, they won't know what it means. I mean, attention span of today's population, myself included, it's like you say, "Squirrel," and I'm looking off to the side. But so many distractions, if we make things simple for people to use, that's our intent here.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

But if you're a professional athlete, we're talking about things that could affect the whole course of your career. That choice to take one brand of vitamin C over another brand of vitamin C. If you pick the wrong brand, then it happened to be contaminated, it could change your life.

John Travis:

Yeah, it could. I mean, baseball has some of the most stringent penalties. Well outside the Olympic sport movement, but baseball is like that. But if you think of this though, so we talked about that class of substances called SARMs. If an athlete tests positive for one of those, and it's not found that it's through a contamination of a supplement, or if they can determine and they can present how it got in their system other than intentional means. So there's a clause in the doping code that allows for that, but it's automatic four-year suspension. So it's Olympic cycle, you miss four years of competition.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

You're out for the count.

John Travis:

You're out for the count. And think of this, I mean, for Olympics, Paris Olympics coming up, think of a 21, 22-year-old athlete that would test positive. They wouldn't be eligible to compete again until they're 26. That's a long time for a sprinter.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

And they're passed their prime.

John Travis:

It's past your prime. Yeah. I mean, endurance athletes, they hit their prime probably a little bit later in life, but still, you could make the argument a 28-year-old endurance athlete test positive, next time they can compete is when they're 32. Yeah, that's pretty tough.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So this is a big deal if you're a professional athlete.

John Travis:

It is. I mean it's career, it's reputation, it's financial, being most professional athletes have to make all their money before I would say they're probably 35, 36. That's their income potential, 21, 22 to 35, 36, where they have to make all the money for their career.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Yeah. Wow. So we repeatedly hear from mainstream medical organizations that there's no regulation whatsoever of the supplement industry. What do you say about that?

John Travis:

Yeah, I think it catches headlines. I'll say that it catches headlines. I think it's unfortunate that the supplement industry is portrayed like that, because it's not unregulated. I mean, those of us in the industry, maybe we don't do a good job of making that distinction. And I'll also say this, it's like, "Plane lands safely at 5:00" is not a headline.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Yeah.

John Travis:

So by us saying that we're regulated and our products are quality, that doesn't make headlines. What makes headlines unregulated, industry salmonella found in these products that caused all these illnesses. I mean, that makes headlines. It happens in the food industry as well, happens to the drug industry too.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

The public really needs to understand that there is a lot of regulation that goes on, and that there's certain companies that really do adhere to higher standards, and yours is probably the top of the heap when it comes to high standards, wouldn't you say?

John Travis:

Yeah. I mean, you hit the nail on the head doc. That's why we have our certification programs, is to allow for the quality brands to say, "Hey, hey customer, hey consumer. We went the extra mile to demonstrate that our product is what it says it is, and it's not contaminated." That's what our mark says on those products.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So without going into too much detail, maybe you could just say what your testing involves. Like when we say NSF has tested, and you've already mentioned microbial contaminants, but what are the machines involved in doing this? Could I go out and buy one and do it myself?

John Travis:

Depends if you have a big fat checkbook, you could. I mean, some of the instrumentation that we use is around half million dollars a unit. So we have different technologies that we use to be able to seek contaminants in a product, or to measure quantities of, let's say vitamin A or vitamin C in a product. I can throw out lots of acronyms, but I'm not going to.

So we just have different techniques that allow us to do that. And each technique has different levels of sophistication and ability to discriminate whether a minute quantity of a substance is in a product or not. I'll give a little anecdotal case here. So I was at a conference called the Partnership for Clean Competition. They do a semi-annual conference. They are the funding body for anti-doping research here in the US. Both, so National Football League, US Olympic Paralympic Committee, US Anti-Doping, Major League Baseball, PGA tour, LPGA, they all commit their research dollars for doping, anti-doping work into this organization, who then funds anti-doping research through a grant program.

But anyway, they had a conference, they were talking about measurement and detection of this SARM called ostarine in products and in humans. So there was a case that the Montreal Anti-Doping lab presented on where they could detect down to 30 picograms per milliliter of urine of this SARM called ostarine. Now picograms. For the listeners, so we'll go down the scale.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

That's a small amount.

John Travis:

It's a very small amount. So, how can I say it? So a gram of, let's look at a gram of sugar is, I don't know, maybe half a teaspoon of sugar. Take that and divide it by 1,000, so you'll probably get a couple of sugar crystals, maybe. Maybe you'll get about 20 sugar crystals, maybe 20, 50, then that'll give you a milligram. Divide it by another 1,000 is a microgram. So that's maybe half a crystal. Divide that again as a nanogram. You're not seeing that. Divide that again by 1,000 is a picogram. So we're talking minute quantities in urine that they can detect.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

These are very sophisticated machines.

John Travis:

Very sophisticated machines. Now just think of this, if they're detecting that little, what kind of dose of a contamination would an athlete consume and still test positive? So we in the supplement certification world, especially in the sport world, have to be just as sophisticated and go on that hunting expedition at these low quantities for these different substances. So those are the kinds of instruments we use.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So it takes people with advanced training, right?

John Travis:

Yeah. Yes.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Which means basically any supplement company that's going to have to have scientists on board that know what they're doing. That's really the take-home message.

John Travis:

Yeah, if they're going to do this testing, it took us years to perfect what we're doing, being through method validation, method, development, to make sure we had methods that work well for the purpose, so fit-for-purpose methods. And all of our methods that we use are validated. So our lab is ISO accredited to execute these kinds of testings.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Wow. Well, this has been a very enlightening discussion. We're going to take a short break and when we come back then, John and I are going to answer some questions from the community that will take us to the next level.

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Dr. Robert Rountree

And we're back. So now it's time to answer some questions that have come from the community. Our first question this week comes from a listener who asks, "Well, what's the difference between NSF and FDA?" Do you have any comments on that one?

John Travis:

Oh, I have to chuckle at that one. Well, so NSF, we're not a government agency, FDA is. FDA can come in and if a manufacturers not doing things right they could shut them down. Our objective is to get the manufacturer and the brand up to speed so they're actually contributing to the economy, so they can continue business, so they can operate and sell the supplement products that the consumers want. We are more of a partnership than a police agency.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So if you analyze a product and you find something that's unexpected or undesired, then you can go back to the manufacturer and say, "Hey, we found a problem here."

John Travis:

Exactly, and work through some corrective action procedures and policies, and get in place protocols to prevent that from happening in the future, and mitigate what's happening currently. And it really depends upon the nature of the issue. There are different levels. If it's just short a little bit on vitamin C, it's not a public health issue. If it has lot of mercury or lead in the product, that's a public health issue. So they're two different-

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Especially in California.

John Travis:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Or if it has salmonella in it, I mean, those are all public health issues that have to notify the authorities so it can be taken care of. Whereas yeah, okay, our product says it has 100 milligrams of vitamin C, it comes in, and oh, we tested it and it has 96 milligrams. Well, I mean, people aren't going to die. Let's work on your manufacturing process and know what's going on so you can make sure you're meeting label claim. That, there's a difference in risk.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So here's an interesting one. I coach baseball, and I see some of these protein powders kids are taking, and I roll my eyes. I'm sure they aren't certified. So if they eat these powders, how long will junk that's in them stay in their body? I know that MLB is really particular. So what do you advise coaches in general? I'm sure this is a widespread problem. The kids are taking things they bought on the internet, they don't know about it. What should they do?

John Travis:

I mean, anyone that's aspiring to be a baseball player, or any kind of athlete, or even a general consumer, look at our Certified for Sport line, but we'll go specifically for these younger baseball players. Like the question, how long will junk stay in their body? Let's address that. There's a study that was done out of Clone, so Dr. [inaudible 00:31:07] there did a study, this was on a SARM, we talked about the selective engine and receptor modulators earlier. They took one microgram of the SARM ostarine, they put it in some yogurt, they had the test subjects consume all the yogurt. They were detecting the ostarine in the subjects' urine up to 72 hours post dosing. And that's one microgram.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Oh.

John Travis:

Yes. It is very important for athletes, especially athletes that are drug tested to know what's going into their body because of strict liability. I mean, granted, little league kids aren't being going into the doping control office.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

They're not getting tested, right?

John Travis:

You're not getting tested, but I mean still as parents, as parents, do you want your children consuming these in a product? Most of these have not been approved by the FDA for use as drugs, or some of them have been withdrawn. So the developer of the drug has learned that there's some safety concerns or safety risk with the drug, but yes, somehow they make it into products. Do you want your children consuming these products if they're potentially contaminated with the... I would not want my grandkids doing so, and I tell them that every day.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Yeah, yeah. So it sounds like the first thing we need to do with coaches is to really educate them about what the risks are.

John Travis:

Yeah, it is. There's a fantastic organization that's doing that. It's called Taylor Hooton Foundation. People should look them up.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Taylor-

John Travis:

Look up their message, they're great. Their story is outstanding. I won't tell their story. I invite folks to get online, just search for that and read about it, because they are doing yeoman's work out there trying to educate the high school and middle school athletes about the dangers of performance enhancing substances.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So next person says, if I'm not an athlete, why should I care about Certified for Sport?

John Travis:

Well, we kind of answered that question a little bit already, didn't we? It's like yeah, do you want to be putting a supplement contaminated with drugs that have withdrawn from the market or have been proven unsafe into your body? I mean, that's the question. Some of these drugs haven't gone to market because of the test subjects have developed myopathy, so cancer, so let's call it cancer. There's been an increased risk of cancer. So I, for one, do not want to consume something like that.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

I mean there was, I will mention, it's been in the news, a product sold in Japan, a natural product sold to lower cholesterol, and a number of people have died from it. And you'd think, okay, well this is a big company, they sell all over Japan and China, and wouldn't they have better standards? Well, it sounds like if that company had had your analysis done, they would've found the contaminant.

John Travis:

Yeah, or just general GMPs in the production of the ingredient, from the sounds of it. I don't know, I think they're having some issues in producing the ingredient in an unsanitary environment that allowed for other pathogens to grow.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Yeah, yikes. Are there band substances that you can't test for, or so things that are under the radar? And I would add my own thing. What about things like PFAS, which has really been in the news lately? Is that coming in the future, that there'll be an ability to look for those kinds of contaminants?

John Travis:

Yeah, so I'll address the first part of the question. The testers, and we'll call us the, I mean, I don't want to use police agents. But so the anti-doping labs, labs like NSF who are trying to test for these substances, the people that are perpetrating the deeds of putting them in there are always one step ahead of us. It's just the nature of how it is. So we have to work really hard to learn what's coming up next. I try to really stay abreast of what's going on, I read the scientific literature. I look at drugs that are being patented now, because those are wealth sources of information on what we could expect next to be on the adulteration market for sports supplement.

So yes, there are things we can't test for yet. Yes, those things probably fly under the radar. We will catch up to them, and as technology improves, we'll make it much harder for the, we'll call them the perps, to be able to engage in this kind of activity.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Yeah. I'm curious, do you ever do an analysis and you see what you call a peak on the spectrometry, you go, what is that substance?

John Travis:

Oh, I'm so glad you bring that up because that's where the testing realm is moving to. So anti-doping testing and what we do has been targeted testing for a long time where we know what the molecules are, we go look for them, and we look for their detection signatures.

But now there are some new technologies that allow for un-targeted work. So sure, we can look for things we know, but let's say we have that peak on that chromatogram, we have some new technology that we can get pretty close to identifying, at least close enough to identifying what that is, to dig further to learn if it has the signature of a potential new drug.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So one last question. Is it one test that you use that tests for hundreds of substances, or does every supplement have to go through hundreds of different analysis?

John Travis:

Yeah, there are a few tests we use. So I'll portray it like this. Chemicals have... Everything's a chemical. Water's a chemical.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Everything's a chemical, yeah.

John Travis:

Everything's a chemical. Air we breathe is a chemical. So the substances that are performance enhancing have different chemistries. Some of them are more soluble in fat or oil, some of them are more soluble in water. Some of them are more acidic in nature, so like vinegar, they're more acidic. Some them are more basic in nature, so we call those proton donators and acceptors in technical lingo. But each of those has some different characteristics. So we at NSF have about eight different methods we use to cover all the chemistries of the 290+ substances.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So it's not an infinite number of tests you have to do.

John Travis:

Not a big number, no, but I mean as the list of substances grow, we have to go to these non-targeted techniques to be able to incorporate them all into our testing scheme.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

All right, folks, that's all the time we have this week. John, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. Where can listeners go if they want to follow some of your work? Now you mentioned the app for smartphones. That sounds like a pretty good way, but are there other ways to follow what you guys are up to?

John Travis:

Yeah, you can go to nsfsport.com or nsf.org. We're working on getting some more material up there that's of interest to the consumer and the athletes. Those are the best ways. And actually, you know what, I'm going to offer this up here. So my email address, my work email address, I love answering questions, that's one of my favorite parts of the day. So I'll give it out to your listeners. That's Travis, T-R-A, V as in Victor, I-S, @nsf.org. I'll answer anyone's questions if they want to get something to me, it's really a service we offer, and I love to do it, I love to educate people on this great topic.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Great. Well, that's really generous of you, I should say. So excellent. That was John Travis, the technical manager and spokesperson at NSF, who's getting us in the know about the NSF Certified for Sport Program, and Content Certified program. As always, thank you everyone for listening. Appreciate you tuning in.

Dr. Robert Rountree OUTRO

Thanks for listening to the Thorne Podcast. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app of choice. If you've got a health or wellness question you'd like answered, simply follow our Instagram and shoot a message to @thornehealth. You can also learn more about the topics we discussed by visiting thorne.com, and checking out the latest news, videos, and stories on Thorne's Take 5 daily blog. Once again, thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to join us next time for another episode of the Thorne Podcast.