Interviewer: What are the benefits of L Leucine?
Dr. Stern: I have a new formula, Resilient, which has five amazing, organic mushrooms, and it has four super-powered immune building herbs; astragalus, echinacea, olive leaf extract and oregano leaf extract.
Leucine is my last ingredient, it's my tenth ingredient, but it is there for a particular reason, it's a great story.
When I started making supplements, one of the reasons why I make supplements is because there's not a formula out there, or a company out there that I truly believe in.
That's not saying there aren’t some good things out there that people are doing, there are. But I need to know, that whatever I put in my body, that it's as healthy as can be.
Even though a supplement might have some beneficial effects for me, from other companies, I don't want to also risk that it also has negative impacts. That's why, I have no fillers, I have no inactive ingredients in my formulas, and I make sure that whatever goes in my formula, is one hundred percent beneficial for you, and I can not sign on to a product that will not, that might even have one inactive ingredient or filler that might not be good for you.
So, with my new formula - You know I do lots of samples, I'm always testing to make sure I have the best thing out there. With my new formula, my manufacturer could not make it, unless he put in this organic rice.
Now a lot of people would be like “Organic rice, that's amazing. It's fine."
Even my manufacturer said "What's the problem, its organic? I know you love organic."
And here's the thing. Organic rice still has the potential of having arsenic in there. Now, maybe, in the smallest of capsules, a little arsenic's not a big deal, right? Of course it is, but let's just say it isn't.
Here's the problem, what if I take this for the rest of my life? Now for 50 years I'm taking capsules with teeny little bits of arsenic? Now it becomes a humongous problem. I'm not gonna take a formula, or give a formula to my friends and family and patients, and people all around the country - little capsules with tiny little pieces of arsenic.
I'm just not gonna do it.
So, I said "What can we do?" And the reason why they want to put these inactive ingredients in there is it makes the ingredients move better into the capsules. It's purely to make the manufacturers' life easier.
And I said "I'm not doing it, so I need an alternative."
So we both were researching, coming up with all these ideas. One after the other failed. Finally, we came up with something called L Leucine.
L Leucine is a branched chain amino acid. It's essential for our body to function and to be healthy. A lot of athletes do branched chain amino acids. They're great for muscle repair, protein synthesis, it helps our immune system...It helps anything to do with our body, we need this amino acid.
Now, this is not an active dose. I mean you need a few grams of L Leucine a day to really have the benefits of what L Leucine provides, but it is also, because of just the way its’ texture is - it also can act as a flowing agent for the capsule, so we've put 50mg of L Leucine in there.
It's an active ingredient because it's a very valuable ingredient for a person. Not in the efficacious dose of L Leucine, but just to help support the other nutrients, and for me, to get rid of the need to use something I just will never put in a capsule.
Interviewer: That's awesome. It worked out pretty well.
Dr. Stern: It's incredible.