In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ (founder of http://www.lawayra.com) speaks with Taron Fletcher, a biochemist and research specialist at Hardy Nutritionals, known for science-led mental health supplements. We explore:
- [00:01:00] Taron’s journey into nutritional research and the origins of Hardy Nutritionals
- [00:05:00] Lessons from animal nutrition applied to human mental health
- [00:07:00] Key factors in creating effective supplements: completeness, balance, ratios, chelation, and research-backed efficacy
- [00:12:00] How supplements can support safe tapering from SSRIs and other psychiatric medications
- [00:20:00] Typical taper timelines and indicators for dose reduction
- [00:24:00] Specific nutrients and adjuncts for mood, anxiety, and withdrawal symptoms
- [00:42:00] Challenges of tapering from different drug classes, including SNRIs and benzodiazepines
- [00:50:00] Understanding RDA, upper limits, and why higher balanced doses can be beneficial
- [00:53:00] Nutritional deficiencies and the impact of processed diets on mental health
- [01:00:00] Cost, support, and process for starting Hardy Nutritionals’ program
If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats go to http://www.lawayra.com
Find more about Taron Fletcher at http://www.hardynutritionals.com
Transcript
Sam Believ: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com.
Taron Fletcher: If you look at a can of dog food and a can of baby formula, nine times outta 10, the dog food is better fortified than the baby formula is. Additional vitamins and minerals added to the protein and carbohydrate content. And it’s a bit of a paradigm change too.
I think. We’ve studied individual nutrients for 80 plus years and there’s really not a huge effect with all of them singly. But when you put them all together, that starts to change the picture. And I think that’s part of what we’re trying to say, or trying to demonstrate as well, is that full spectrum, that a little bit higher than usual dose is what has an impact on physiology.
The most recent study that was done in this trial, they took 88 medication free women who were pregnant and who had significant depression scores starting. They divided those into two groups, active and placebo, and the active, of course, were the vitamins and minerals, and then let them come to term. And then they examined the moms and they examined the babies and they found that the prenatal depression went away for the.
Majority of the mob.
Sam Believ: Hi guys, and welcome to Ayahuasca podcast, as always, really the whole Sam Leaf. And today I’m having a conversation with TN Fletcher. Tn Fletcher is a biochemist. He’s an expert in dietary reference intakes and a research specialist at Heart Nutrition, known for their science led mental health supplements.
This episode is sponsored by Lara Ayahuasca Retreat. At Lera, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity, Laira connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you, first of all. Tara, welcome to the show.
Taron Fletcher: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me here today.
Sam Believ: It was great to have you here.
We are coming to you from MAPS Conference, which is a psychedelic science conference, and Terran and I just happened to be, we’re just two booths apart. Yeah. But we have connected and I’ve learned a little bit about what they do, and I’m seeing a lot of potential because as you probably know, you cannot drink ayahuasca if you own certain psychiatric medications like SSRIs and antianxiety medications, et cetera.
And what what their supplement company does is they create supplements together with a program that allows you to taper off those medications slowly and very safely. So this is what the topic is gonna be about. Supplementation for your brain and for your mental health. But before we get into that, Taryn tell us a little bit about yourself.
How did you get into this line of work? Yeah, what brought you where you’re now?
Taron Fletcher: I as I was going through university, I, and I I earned my degree in biochemistry, like you said. While I was going through my degree David Hardy, who happens to be my uncle, was also at the same time starting this this business this venture if you will.
He he had a degree in biology, was a school teacher a biology school teacher, but he also had an entrepreneurial spirit. He lived on a farm or grew up on a farm and. Enjoyed agriculture. So he’d started a side business developing feed for animals, animal feed.
And after a few years of that he came across another individual.
They both volunteered together at different things. And this other individual’s wife had committed suicide. She had bipolar disorder and had committed suicide. And they had two children that were very severely bipolar as well. He was very afraid they were gonna commit suicide as well. And he just happened to mention this to David and David said I’m not familiar with this, but in the animal world, in pigs we have an e they have an ear and tail biting syndrome.
They get stressed, they become very aggressive, and they attack each other. But if we increase the minerals in their diet, that’s one of the things we can do to help calm them down. And the light bulb went off in his head and said, could this possibly be a parallel in humans that we see in pig? So together, they made a human supplement.
They gave that to his kids and it started to calm his children down. They started to even out. So that was really intriguing. And so I’m in school at the same time and I had a couple of little conversations with him very surface level about this, but not very deep. But they started testing this with other people.
They went to the local university. They had some of the researchers there, helped them to design a way that they could collect data to get actual, measurements on what they were seeing. And then they took that back and said, okay, here’s what we’re seeing in people. And they said, okay, this needs to be studied a little bit more.
And that’s about the time that I graduated and David came to me and said, would you like to come and work with us? And so I said, sure, let’s do that. And I, we’ve never, I’ve never lived back after that. So that’s my story. So
Sam Believ: you’ve been with comparable your entire life? My,
Taron Fletcher: my
Sam Believ: entire per, yeah.
I respect that. I’ve done so many different things, but there are some people that are just stable. This is very fascinating. The topic you touch about animal feed, it’s like we know exactly, there’s dog food producers and they know exactly what nutrients dogs need and they just do it.
And, you have a dog eating same thing every day, and they’re all shiny, healthy, and amazing if it’s a good feed. But with humans, we have there’s constant battles between this that, and it’s yeah we seem to not be able to come to a conclusion because there’s just so much interest involved.
What do you think about that?
Taron Fletcher: One thing, if you look at a can of dog food and a can of baby formula, nine times outta 10, the dog food is better fortified. Than the baby formula is fortified as in additional vitamins and minerals added to that, to the protein and carbohydrate content.
Yeah.
Sam Believ: But yeah we figured out with the animals and yeah, we are fancy and we’re humans and we’re spiritual, but a physical body is still pretty much an animal. There’s that’s right. There’s a lot of similarity between peg and a human, that’s why they do so much studies on it.
That’s the, it’s just a paradoxical, it’s like there, there’s certain fields where, because there’s so much interest, all like economics or politics where people will be fighting over cannot find the truth because there’s just too much self-interest. And I think that’s right. Psychedelics is becoming one of those things where, yeah here in Maps they did this MDMA study and there was like obvious success and it’s just gonna change the world.
It’s no, but know. Big pharma or whatever, like somebody intervened and they changed the rules and that’s it. So I don’t wanna be like a conspiracy theorist, but I don’t think it’s a conspiracy because people just, when the money is involved, people act a certain way. And so are we all? Yes, certainly.
Yes. Anyways, so you I believe supplement company is like one of the best research supplement company, and I think that’s very respectable because there’s right now there’s so much supplementation and it’s so not controlled that people just, don, they buy stuff and they’re basically taking placebo most of the time.
So you’re right. There’s let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about topic of, like real, real good supplements. Like what? Yeah. Bioavailability and all that stuff. What makes what makes your supplement special?
Taron Fletcher: And I’ll point out, there are a lot of good quality supplements out in the market and many of them can do.
And there’s been studies using different formulas that show behavioral changes with supplementation. So we’re not the only ones to show that. But I, I guess if we’re looking at what would you look for in a good supplement? What we’ve learned is that the more complete the product is, the better off.
The better off it is. And if you look at a lot of supplements today, some of ’em, they don’t have calcium. Or they may not have magnesium or there’s no iron or there’s, they, there’s just a few nutrients. The body needs all of those. And if you have a well balanced diet, you’re getting all of them and you’re not getting less calcium, you’re not getting.
The concept is very complete is a better, that’s a better choice, right? The next thing is balance. Another something I’ve noticed with some products is the percent daily value that’s listed on the label says a hundred percent. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if you look at our label, you’ll see those ratios aren’t just 100%.
It’s not a nice clean label that way. David spent quite a few years working on the ratios between the nutrients with those, with the product that he developed. So that’s an important factor. And some of those ratios may have better, may produce better outcomes for certain things than ours will, and vice versa, right?
But that’s a factor to watch for is that, is the ratios and not just 100% daily value. The fourth thing we do chelate our minerals. Many people are familiar with chelation therapy but chelation is a chemical term and it just means that that there’s two binding points, right?
So if you think of something like a horseshoe magnet, right? There’s two binding points and that little bar that snaps between, that’s the mineral. So a chelator is something that attaches a two points. It protects that mineral from being dissociated too quickly and maybe not absorbed.
Right?
Initially, right? And so that, that’s the chelation process, and it protects it, it helps to be a little more water soluble, and a little more bioavailable that way. And so that’s the idea behind chelation. So those are four factors that make our product a little different physically. The fifth thing that makes our product a little different is that we’ve had it we call it performance monitoring, or it’s been studied.
It’s been evaluated. Third party. And that’s probably the thing that makes us very different is that now we, today, as of today, we’ve got 65 independent medical journal publications on the formula that document or demonstrate or evaluate some aspect of efficacy. And, we don’t measure our food that way, right?
So it’s, a good quality supplement, you may not need to have that every step of the way, but because of the impact the product’s had we’ve been very committed to making sure that it gets studied. It’s not one little study and done, or, this nutrient has this effect. And it’s a part of the formula.
It’s looking at that whole grouping. And it’s a bit of a paradigm change too, I think where, we’ve studied individual nutrients for 80 plus years and there’s really not a huge effect with all of them singly. When you put them all together, that starts to change the picture.
And I think that’s part of what we’re trying to say, or trying to demonstrate as well, is that it’s that full spectrum, that little bit higher than usual dose is what is, what has an impact on, on, on physiology, on function.
Sam Believ: So most people that are listening to that, they might not be as interested in just supplementation or Yeah, ation and science.
So let’s talk about what they would care for. I know it’s a lot of people really want to work with ayahuasca and they want to have this experience And I’ve even talked to some people in your booth, they want to come to the wire now, which is great. Yeah. But a lot of them, like one guy that I sent your with today, he is I would love to do it.
I’m on SSRIs and I can’t quit. So what is what is the role of supplements in helping someone to get off antidepressants? And talk to us a little bit about that, that ’cause you don’t just give people the bottle of supplements, you provide them with guidance and it’s all seems, that’s why I wanted to have you on the show.
Yeah. So it all seems very responsible, very gradual, very slow. But, and there’s a lot of desperate people that, some people that take antidepressants, but then another will work anymore. So anyways, what’s the protocol? What can you talk to us about in that direction?
Taron Fletcher: So with our product and I guess we think of it in two ways.
If a person is unmedicated we see a really good stabilizing experience, right? It, the mood issues improve the product basically has four, four effects. There’s a cognitive benefit and that’s usually clear thinking, less brain fog the individuals report and improved sense of wellbeing.
In the clinical trials that’s captured by the global assessment of function scale or the CGII, the clinical global impression scale, either self-reported or clinician rated. They just function better, right? And it’s obvious. The third thing and the most significant thing is improvement of mood.
So we see that anger, aggression mood swings, that tends to normalize. It settles down, balances out. And then the fourth thing is reduced anxiety and stress. The nutrients tend to make us more resilient. We’re more resilient to the stresses that we experience. So in an unmedicated person, we’re seeing those four effects in their overall experience and function with a medicated individual.
They’re seeing those same four effects as well. But we have. A compounding factor here or a limiting factor, if you wanna call it that, where we have the medication that’s trying to do that same thing, but it’s a foreign chemical, whereas the vitamins and the minerals are a natural natural chemicals, they’re natural elements.
And so you get a duplicative effect, right? And so we tend to see that duplicate of effect as an increase in medication side effects. So we get the stability that starts to develop, but we also see the development of these side effects, which are almost without fail drug side effects. Some of the researchers who have studied the suspect speculate maybe that people are under responding to psychiatric medications because their physiology’s not optimized, takes, it takes more drug to get the antidepressant effect per se, or something like that.
So as their system is optimized they’re become far more responsive to the. The drug needs to be lowered to minimize those side effects. And that’s where, that’s kinda how it fits together. So we’ve had a lot of experience watching people in this experience, watching how they taper, watching how they do things.
And we’ve watched we’ve watched, seen some patterns develop, and that’s what we try to teach people.
Sam Believ: So as you increase the quantity of the supplement, you decrease the quantity of the of the medicine in that case on ssri. And this helps you slow to slowly taper and and get off them.
So for an average person then, let’s say been on antidepressants for two years, unnecessary specifically, and they’re like, I’m sick and tired of this. I don’t want the side effects. I’m, my mood is not amazing. My sexual drive is low. And you know what my. Cousin Aya, and he’s not depressed anymore, so I wanna do that.
They wanna do that too. So they wanna be, okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna quit antidepressants. And they know about your supplements. What is the process for them?
Taron Fletcher: So they would, they’d create an account with us. We would reach out and do some education with them. How help them understand to set some expectations what to watch for, what to look for, what to expect.
I’ll put it this way the longer a person has been on psychiatric medications, expect that the taper process is going to be an equally long period of time. Maybe not equally, but it’s not gonna be done in a month. It’s not gonna be done in two months. It may take a year to taper off without a lot of significant withdrawal.
And we can come back a little to that if you want, but it’s important to understand that, that the drug induces some changes in the physiology. Most N-S-S-R-I, for example, increases the amount of serotonin that, that’s in the synaptic gap. It increases the signal pressure or the intensity of signal of serotonin in, in a short period of time, your body starts to respond to that.
It says the signal’s too high signal, it signals more than what we’re usually having. So what it does is it reduces the number of receptors on the receiving side
In order to balance that signal again. And that to me is an interesting thing. It’s not absolute proof, but it’s a piece of evidence that to personally suggests that the drug was never the right answer in the first place.
Nevertheless if you try to take away, I
Sam Believ: totally agree with you, first of all. Yeah. Drug is never an answer. That’s the whole philosophy of psychedelics where you take them and you go to the source and then you figure out what, what is causing the issue and not just trying to sweep it under the rug.
Of course, we cannot tell that, and we cannot say none of it is medical advice, but yes, you sometimes you need them because you know you’re gonna kill yourself. Yes. But then they have their plate. The problem with the, with medical system, especially here in US and that I’ve heard that from numerous patients is, oh, my knee hurts.
Here’s antidepressants whatever. I have sniffles. It is it’s so easily overprescribed, but then there is no moment when they say and by the way, I’ve been on it for six months. Let’s quit now. Yeah. It’s like they never quit. They never quit. It’s they always give them to you, but they never take away.
So anyways, we
Taron Fletcher: continue. Yeah. And an interesting pattern that we see there, it’s reported to us often, and when the person tries to reduce the medication, they get withdrawal and they go to the doctor, say, I’ve got all these more symptoms, these additional symptoms now. And that’s usually interpreted it, see, that’s why you need to be on them.
Sam Believ: Or, okay, here’s another one. We have people of three, four different
Taron Fletcher: things. Or they’ll add another medication. Yeah. Multiple medications, polypharmacy. Yeah.
Sam Believ: Yeah. I’ve seen people that feel like pharmacological robots, like they need a drug for every bodily process. They need caffeine to wake up.
They need antidepressants not to be depressed. They need Viagra to have sex. They need sleeping pills to sleep. They need some kind of pills to, to digest their food. Anti, that’s kinda his great way to live. There’s so many people like this and it all starts with one thing and then you take one medication, then you get more side effects of this cascading effect of, yes, I don’t know.
Of course the eye it
Taron Fletcher: is not unusual to have an individual come to us and say, okay, here’s all the medications that I’m on and we’ll start. What was the first one you took and then when was the next one and what was it that, that and come to find out they’re medicating a side effect and then this one’s a side effect.
And when you start to, to teach them how to recognize that pattern, they realize I, I’ve just been medicating side effects.
Sam Believ: Yeah. ’cause a lot of time this first medication might have caused l lack of certain nutrient. Yes. And that caused another side effect and that more medication. But you’re a very good politician because you haven’t asked, answered my first question.
Yes. Let’s go back to your first question. A simple example. A person has been auto, the antidepressants for one year doesn’t mean they’ll have to take the supper route for one year. Or what’s the, let’s say, what’s the minimum and what’s the maximum amount of time? Because you know those people, they’re feeling bad, they’re desperate, they want help, so some, give me a reasonable example.
Some
Taron Fletcher: individuals have an episode of depression. They’ll use the nutrients for a few months and they won’t eat them ever again.
Or if they have another episode a few years later, they’ll just use them short term. We have others in other individuals that taking the nutrients every day, long term keeps ’em stable.
Now, I could use myself as an example. I don’t have a psychiatric diagnosis, but I’ve been using the nutrients now for 20 years. I take them every day, and I take a high dose every day. I find for me, that keeps my energy, the, and as I’ve gotten older, it, it keeps my energy levels more consistent on a day-to-day basis. I initially, my initial experience I had brain fog and never knew the difference. But within three weeks of taking that product the brain fog was gone. And so I did the experiment when I finished the bottle, I stopped taking it, but I wanna know people, and the brain fog came back.
But I wanna know people that are quitting antidepressants that, yeah, let’s make it the, so the pattern we see there. So we’ll have someone start the nutrients work up to the full dose, and then typically in, in three to four weeks three, three weeks on average is when they notice the clearer thinking.
Less brain fog. That’s usually the first sign. People notice four weeks of approximately, they start to notice an increase in the drug side effects. That becomes the indicator that their body’s ready for a slight reduction. So a small portion is reduced.
Sam Believ: Sorry, what was the indicator again?
Taron Fletcher: This, the increase of side effect.
Okay. And that’s been very consistent, a very consistent indicator that we’ve seen for years and years. So they see that increase in side effects. So let’s use a headache as an example to be even more specific. So they start the nutrients four weeks out they notice, okay, I got more of a headache than usual.
So a small re a small percentage of the medication is reduced. They describe relief from the headache. The headache goes away. And then anywhere from one week to two weeks to three weeks there’s individual variability in the length of time in between. But the headache will come back again.
And when that comes back again, that’s an indicator. Okay. That’s. Then your body’s now ready for the next stage and a small reduction is made. And again, they describe relief from that. And so that pattern repeats typically until the medication’s completely reduced.
Sam Believ: So
Taron Fletcher: both of that can take anywhere from a couple of months to six months and in some cases, we’ve had some individuals that on cocktails. And so more than one medication and for long periods of time up to 18 months, that’s great. On can I put an average on it? It’s hard to put an average on it, but expect to expect, three to six months at least. And if you’ve been on a medication for longer than a year, expect a year at least it may not actually take that long, but at least in your minds the more gradual that’s done, the less pain of withdrawal there is.
And the water, if I could put it that way.
Sam Believ: Yeah. Thank you. That’s a good answer. So what is the, what is, what are the nutrients specifically that would be prescribed in case of antidepressants and depression?
Taron Fletcher: You mean what’s in the, what’s in the formula?
Sam Believ: Yeah. Because you have different formulas for different situations.
I know for example, Omega-3 is really good for your brain, right? Yeah. So it probably would be a part of it. Maybe magnesium. So what are
Taron Fletcher: the different so our main product is that broad spectrum vitamin mineral, and then we have adjunct products that we can add to that if the need arises.
If we start at the beginning again of that of that process, we’ll ask some questions. We’ll ask people about how their gut function is. We’ll ask do you have comorbid anxiety? Do you have anxiety along with your diagnosis? Those kinds of things. We’ll get it, we’ll get it.
Medical history, if you will about what the person’s experience is like. So if they’ve got a lot of racing thoughts or things like that, we say, okay, so maybe we can start with some greens or probiotics. Just some things to balance the gut a little better.
And then we’ll start the nutrients.
And if they’ve got racing thoughts, we might add some choline. So choline is one of the products that we find stuff that’s in the eggs, right? Yes. Yes. And co choline seems to either help residual mania or racing foxs. And again, these are things that, feedback that we’ve gotten from individuals and their experience and we’ve tried to put together a grouping of products that generally helps.
So we still have a lot to learn. But some of these products are helpful. But we have a product we call balanced freeform amino acids. That product we use as a titration aid. So some people experience a little withdrawal no matter how small the reduction step is, and the amino acids can sometimes soften that experience.
That kind of thing. In acetol we use an acetol for residual anxiety. So these products can be used adjunctively. And we also have different versions of the daily essential nutrients because some people are sensitive to be certain B vitamins. So we have a formula with some different forms of vitamins.
We have a version that has no B vitamins at, at all for some that are really sensitive to B vitamins. So our experience has taught us that, that, that there’s some very general responses, but there’s also some nuanced responses. Yeah. Yeah. So those are some of the things that, that we might use in conjunction.
With those nutrients
Sam Believ: and in your guidance to people. You also tell them more or less when they’re ready to lower the amount of antidepressants, or you can only talk about the supplement side. ’cause I can imagine yeah, we need to talk to
Taron Fletcher: one of the things Yeah. We do really like to engage with the prescriber.
If we can teach the prescriber how this works then they can use it not only with that individual, but with other individuals as well. That we try to focus on working with a doctor. We recognize that some people lost faith in the system. They don’t wanna work with a doctor.
Some are very capable and competent. Yeah. And so there’s a bit of a variety there. But we do try initially to make that contact with the doctor so that we can give them that education that makes ’em a better physician. Yeah. And so that’s, we try to do that every step.
Sam Believ: Something that you talked about where with the way brain reacts to all those medications and it just lowers the number of receptors. Yeah. It’s it’s very fascinating because it makes me realize like how our body’s so complex and by adjusting one thing, everything gets adjusted. Yes. And it’s extremely complex, complicated to
Taron Fletcher: understand we are an ecosystem.
And our ecosystem is responsive to inputs into that system. We can change it. And that’s a reality I had never considered even in university. But as I’ve grown and it through the things that I studied, research that becomes more obvious. So we’re an ecosystem within an ecosystem.
Within an ecosystem, if you want,
Sam Believ: and within us you mentioned microbiome and probiotics. Exactly.
Taron Fletcher: That’s another ecosystem.
Sam Believ: And like our, inside our cells, there’s this mitochondria, there’s like bacteria. It’s yes.
Taron Fletcher: And there’s, so the cycle, there’s Cycles within cycles, and systems within systems. And it’s enormously complex, but it’s, there’s a simple beauty in it as well, right? At least I think so.
Sam Believ: So if you get, if you feed yourself an SSR antidepressant, your body, your brain starts to have less available receptors. And then that’s why it takes so long for you to get off them, because now you need to treat more receptors.
It’s the good example I’ve heard of is guys that take testosterone and then they’re, they ball shrink because they’re, they don’t produce anymore to steal. So when they stopped. They have even less testosterone. And so the body says there’s plenty there I don’t need to make anymore.
Absolutely. It’s it’s very, it’s a very lic system. But I’ve heard from people talking about brain. I’ve heard from people that take antidepressants in their process of quitting antidepressants. They experience something they describe as brain zaps. Yes. Do you understand the mechanism of it? What are those brain zap?
I don’t know the mechanism
Taron Fletcher: for that. I’ve read a lot about it. And it’s just, it’s the way that the individual is interpreting the withdrawal.
And I and so they perceive it as a, as an electrical shock in the brain.
But it’s not an actual electrical strike.
It’s not an actual electrical shock, but it’s the way you’re interpreting it. For instance, I had years ago I had a herniated disc. And the material in the disc came out, pushed on, on, on the nerve root. And my body perceived that, like there’s no physical damage other than a little tear in the disc.
But my body perceived that as intense burning pain all the way down to my heel. There was no physical damage anywhere in the body, but just that little pressure on the nerve created that sensation. Yeah. And that’s think of it the same way, right? That, that, that physiologic change, you remove the drug
And your body perceives that, that now that lack of signal as a pain. Or as a discomfort. Or. And so
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There are no hidden fees. Visit lara.com to book your retreat or learn more. Lara Connect, heal. Grow. L-A-W-A-Y-R a.com. That’s, yeah. When it comes to nerves, it’s not always easy to understand or locate. And then brain is basically, the brain is all nerve, it’s just the big nerve. This might be outside of your scope of understanding, but we have seen people getting help overcoming addiction to SSRIs with some microdosing.
Yes. Have you heard anything observed? Anything? Are you planning to, maybe in the future, if it’s legal, maybe adding a little bit to your supplements?
Taron Fletcher: I don’t know that we’ll ever add that type of a botanical Yeah. To the product. Our focus has really been on the vitamins and minerals right. Now.
That doesn’t mean that they can’t be used in combination. Separately, or take taken separately. ’cause I think we can make the case that they can be used and our anecdotal experience thus far. With individuals using psychedelics has been, it’s very complimentary. So I think there’s a place for it for those that want to do that.
But I don’t think we’ll ever add them to the product. And I do remember some criticisms early on thinking, oh yeah, they probably have some psychedelic in the product. That’s why it’s having this anti antidepressant effect. And I think the idea of fundamental nutrition it we try and keep that idea clean.
Keep that Yeah. Focused that way.
Sam Believ: I’ll never say never true. Yeah. But it’s good that there’s definitely a possibility for them to working in in Synchrony potentially if legal and whenever allowed, et cetera. Yeah. Have you observed anything about ’cause we definitely, there’s definitely a connection between.
Diet for proper nutritions and the kind of experience a person has on psychedelics. For example, we work with big doses of ayahuasca in a very traditional setting. And people that are, that eat clean, that’s why they have this diet before you come to the retreat. And people who are already relatively healthy and people that have mindfulness practice and they, they’re calm, they’ll connect to medicine quickly, they’re better prepared as opposed to someone who is smoking weed and they have those receptors all well bundled up and not so open, they might not even feel much for a first few ceremonies.
So is there a connection and can you see maybe some kind of mechanism you had of this?
Taron Fletcher: My personal experience with psych adults is limited, right? But what you’ve already said makes a lot of sense to me. And I think maybe it goes back to what the researcher said about under responding to the psychiatric medic issues, right? The better optimized your system is the better you’ll respond to other inputs. And that might mean you won’t need as high a dose to get the same kind of an effect.
You, you’re much more responsive to that. It’ll have a, it’ll have a better effect at a lower dose. That’s, and so that’s what we see with the psychiatric medications. That may be true for psychedelics as well. So there’s definitely that possibility.
Sam Believ: Yeah, it would make sense. I I’ve met few really cool people at this conference and we’re probably gonna do some science at as well, so Yeah.
That’s something we can test. Yeah. So what is the difference if, your nutritional profile as such, and then your experience as such. So it is, I have so many ideas. I just don’t have I don’t have time and money Yes. And ideas. That plenty there. Speaking of studies what is the, and then you’re a researcher, so what’s the most exciting one study that you’re like, wow.
Oh my God,
Taron Fletcher: I think it’s gonna have, it’s, you have to be the most recent study that was done. So it was done by Dr. Julia Rutledge in New Zealand for University of Christchurch. She called it the NUTRIUM trial. And in this trial they took 88 medication free women who were pregnant and we had significant depression scores starting.
They divided those into two groups, active and placebo. And the active, of course, were the vitamins and minerals. And then let them come to term and and then they examined the moms and they examined the babies and they found that, so basically they, they found that the prenatal depression went away for the majority of the moss.
The the infants, the, so there’s a series of scale called the Brazelton Scales, that, that test those initial behavioral responses and babies, they performed very well compared to the control. And the other the other thing about that study is that in the recruitment phase, there were a group of moms that came that were on antidepressants while pregnant.
So they were not included in the study, but she followed the baby outcomes and compared them in a second publication. And the both the controls and the active group outperformed the the baby’s responses after birth. Compared to the antidepressant babies as we all call them the nutrient group outperformed everybody, but the two together outperformed.
So the babies didn’t, they weren’t as settled. They were easily upset and those kinds of things. And so they clearly if mom is well traded she’ll have a better birth experience, she’ll have a lower chance of prenatal depression a lower chance of postnatal depression or postpartum depression.
And the babies will be healthier. And so that’s the picture that’s emerging from that study. So that’s probably one of the more significant, I think. I mean we’ve seen some pretty incredible things in those studies, but that’s probably the one I think is most significant.
Sam Believ: Yeah. I think studies are important, but if you think about it logically, just without knowing much, you would assume that as well.
It’s that’s what David observed nutrition only more of
Taron Fletcher: than the breasts. Yeah. When he entered the field in pigs with standard feed, things like that, you’d get five to seven piglets and a run.
When he left the field after participating in and being a part of the, the feed is supplementing feed and stuff like that, it was not uncommon to see 12 to 14 piglets, no run.
And the sow would have, let’s say run. So a is a piglet that’s born really small. Oh, okay. So that was typical or not unusual when he first entered the field back in the late I’d call it late eighties. Where in, in the eighties. By the time he left the nutritional sciences advanced so far.
They were getting twice, twice the births with no runt and keeping the animal selfie.
Sam Believ: Yeah. I have young kids so we watch a lot of kid movies, and there’s a movie about this piglet I don’t remember the name, but they basically, in the movie, the father takes the runt and wants to kill it.
Taron Fletcher: Yes.
Sam Believ: And then Charlotte’s
Taron Fletcher: Web.
Sam Believ: Yeah. And then the girl takes it and there’s whole movie. I didn’t watch all of it, but my kids like it, so now I know their, I know name for it. That’s where that comes from. Yeah. See the unexpected things you learn at on the Oscar podcast. Yeah. I’m big into nutrition.
It’s another reason I’m interviewing you. Before becoming a Ayahuasca enthusiast, I was somewhat of a biohacker. I really learned a lot about nutrition and different diets and this and that. And so that’s why my wife, when she’s pregnant, I try and give her Omega-3 and yeah. And iodine because they’ve said the iodine, the lack of iodine and the pregnant woman can result in 10, 10, 10 IQ points lower baby.
It’s it’s a very big difference for the entire life of average child. Yeah. Yeah. But I have a problem though. My wife, she forgets to take her supple. Do you have any system for it? ’cause obviously that’s your main thing.
Taron Fletcher: The only system that I found effective is the one I use myself.
I can’t impose that on somebody else. But you can recommend, I can recommend it. And my wife is no different. Her wife’s it’s there, it’s available. She takes it sometimes, doesn’t always remember to take it. It comes down if for me, the difference, so I think for me is that I recognized that I got a benefit from it.
And that’s what the, that’s what that’s what drives my commitment to take it every day. There was a time after a couple of years, I’ll put capsules in your hand and I think, oh my goodness. Pills. But it’s no, I understand the science behind this.
I understand what it does for me. This is a part of what I eat every day. It’s it compliments it, but it adds to my food quality. That’s why I take it. And then I’ve never had a problem again with that. But if someone hasn’t recognized the benefit yet, you can encourage them, but if they haven’t recognized the benefit, it’s sometimes harder for them to be committed to that daily practice of, putting a few capsules in your mouth.
But
Sam Believ: so is it a similar protocol for different psychoactive medication that people are tapering off, for example? Yeah. How different would it be for SSRI, anti anxiolytics, benzodiazepines et cetera?
Taron Fletcher: Yes.
There’s not a scientific term for what I’m gonna talk about. But some medications are easier to taper from than others, and there’s no medical term for it yet, shit. Great hole, taper ability, let’s call it we taper ability. I like that. Actually, that’s a good term, so in internally we call the easier ones. We call those standard medications, and the harder ones, we call those red flag medications. So just terminology to differentiate. But there’s a grouping that are very clearly more difficult, more challenging.
They create how ones, yeah. Yeah. There’s some antidepressants like Effexor, Cymbalta that, and those are, those in fact are the SNRIs. So most of the SNRIs fall into that category. They have that character that people have to taper them even more gradually. All of the benzodiazepines have that character.
Ativan though Ativan is interesting. It has a much longer half-life. Than most of the other benzodiazepines. And so we’ve seen individuals able to switch from the shorter acting benzodiazepines to the Ativan, which is a longer acting one. And that it takes longer for that, for the body to metabolize it.
And so it doesn’t go away as quickly. Some of the shorter ones, people can be in withdrawal before they take their next scheduled dose. So those are harder to discontinue from. So sometimes swapping to an equivalent dose makes that process easier. It still takes time because the benzodiazepines, again, are they cause a lot of dependence.
Some of the, many of the sleep aids fall into that same category they’re hard to taper from. And then some of the antipsychotics are also in that same group. Seroquel is one. Seroquel is low dose. It’s, it can be used for sleep, higher dose. It’s used as an antipsychotic. But it’s one of those ones has that character that.
More challenging, it takes longer to come off of her. If you’re looking at a a way to differentiate, there’s a few factors that help us understand whether it may be on the shorter side or maybe on the longer side. And the, so the first one is, what’s the character of the drug you’re taking?
The second is how long have you been taking it? The third is have you tried to discontinue before? Yeah. Bless you. Thanks. If you’ve tried to discontinue before, what’s your experience been like? If you’ve been able to do it reasonably easy, then that’s more than likely gonna be your experience.
Again, if it’s been hard, if it was very difficult, that’s more than likely gonna be your experience again. So those three factors together add up to saying, okay, yeah, let’s plan. Think about long term here before we start. Even if it’s been a little easier, it maybe a little shorter.
In the setting of expectation for the timeframe.
Sam Believ: So if SSRI is selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, then SNRI is
Taron Fletcher: the selective serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. So they, they affect serotonin and the dopamine outcome. So they’re modulating two systems, not just one. And I think that’s what makes those a little more challenging.
Sam Believ: Regarding the supplementation, like you’re still working with a regular dose of like you said, not hundred percent, but 97 or 95, whatever, or is any aspect of your work in megadosing supplements, because I’ve heard something about that as well,
Taron Fletcher: right? Yeah we let me say a couple of things about that.
First of all we do have a dose range, less severe symptoms may not need. The study dose of 12 a day, right? More severe symptoms might need more. We’ve seen in some cases better stability is managed with a higher dose. But generally we’re not megadosing. So when it comes to a dosing concept, we have the dietary reference intakes, which kind of gives us some reference values.
So we have the RDA, which is your daily target, right? There’s some other values around that. And then on the higher end of conception, we have a value called the tolerable upper intake level. So it’s not a limit, it’s a level. And that level is defined as the highest. That’s, that can be consumed chronically or daily for a lifetime.
Right? And for vitamins the average percent difference there, if we average them all together, that gap is about 2300%. So it’s 23 times the RDA on average for vitamins and for minerals it’s about 870%. So you can approximately, for most minerals on average, you can consume 8.7 times the RDA before you get to that upper level.
Then the interesting thing comes in the definitions of these terms. So the RDA aside from being designated as the daily target it’s expected to be adequate for 97 to 98% of apparently healthy people. That means two to 3% of the populations need that level won’t meet two to 3% of the populations.
It also says that it’s not expected to replete individuals or top people up if they’ve been previously undernourished need. You need to consume higher than that to at least get you back up to quote unquote normal. And then the third one is, it’s not expected to be adequate for individuals with disease states marked by higher requirements, but the higher requirement is not discussed anywhere in the dietary reference intake.
So that already gives us a significant group of people for which the RDA is not enough. So just on paper, clearly there’s a group of people that are going to need more than just that that RDA value. Then when we come to the upper level, definitions of the upper level include, okay it’s safe for chronic consumption for most people, right?
It’s the level that’s likely to produce no adverse effect, and that’s based on a single nutrient. So if you take a single nutrient at that level, most people could tolerate that fine. It doesn’t put too much stress on the balance systems on, on homeostasis, right? And therefore there’s no adverse effect to that level.
But. It cautions doctors not to not to be stricted about consuming above it because there may be some of these things that are mentioned at the RDA level disease states, marked by higher requirements. There may be benefits that can be, that could be given by higher amounts. And then it cautions that if you consume one nutrient above that level it may put others out of balance.
And that’s really what produces the adverse effect. So the better your balance of nutrients, which goes back to that our balance concept there. The better your balance of nutrients at a higher level, the less likely you’re to see an adverse effect because it’s in physiologic balance. So there’s some, when you dive deep and read the text, there’s some really clear things there that make it very safe to realize.
Okay. Yeah. Can consumption out to the upper level. This is actually safe. Now there’s additional values beyond that. There’s the no observed adverse event level. So it’s the highest level that we’ve seen where there’s no adverse events. And then there’s a one beyond that, it’s the lowest observed adverse event level.
So there’s even a higher amount where actually start to see adverse events. But then very conservatively, they come back with factors that say, okay, here’s where this safe level is or not safe. Here’s where the tolerable upper level is. So well beyond that’s mega dosing.
So even though we’re giving high doses, we really aren’t giving mega doses.
But it’s a very balanced, again, we’re bringing that balanced concept in, which is supportive of your homeostatic mechanisms, but we’re giving a dose high enough that it’s actually gonna have an effect. Does that answer your question?
Sam Believ: Yeah. Yeah. So the RDA is recommended daily allowance.
Recommended daily allowance. Yeah. Do you think that RDAs. Take in account the bioavailability because some supplements you they say they hold
Taron Fletcher: them and they come out the other way. They say they do. And I think to some extent they do because you don’t actually absorb everything you eat either.
There’s some material that will completely pass through Unabsorbed. Yeah. Some nutrients. So actually poop. Exactly right. And and they, you, when you read deeply into the text, they talk about, X percent is absorbed approximately. And this is why we average this is your recommended intake level.
’cause it accounts for some of that type of thing. To me, the most interesting factor is that although there are, there, there’s values for children, there’s zero data for children.
And it’s adult intake. They extrapolated downward for body size. And I’ve looked at the formula that they use.
They, the formula is published in the preface to the main body of the text. And it’s a complex, it’s a complex formula where they, put in body size, weight, all those type of things. And therefore your need is only this. But I really don’t think that adequate reflects metabolic demand.
Adults are maintaining, we’re not growing. Children are actively growing and adding mass. And I think that’s the one in my head, that’s the one flaw in the paradigm of the dietary efforts intakes, is that you, you take an adult with a different physiologic endpoint and you try and say, oh, this applies equally to children.
And I think that just doesn’t line up for me.
Sam Believ: So obviously we talked about food even food, all the nutrients that not being absorbed, so I live in Columbia. I’m not Columbia, but I live in Columbia. Almost most of the food there is organic and I feel pretty good. Yes. Ever since I’ve been here, my gut has been crazy.
I don’t feel that people keep complaining to me about sad, which is a standard of American diet. Yeah. Even though we try to eat healthy, like here with Yes. But I’ve noticed like butter is like really white. Like in Columbia it’s yellow because it has keratin and no cre. Yeah. The thing that makes carrots orange.
Taron Fletcher: Yes. Yeah. Keratin.
Sam Believ: Yeah. Yeah. Beta keratin. But here it’s like something is something is missing and I definitely feel it myself. So
Taron Fletcher: my opinion is your volume of carbohydrates to mineral, to vitamin mineral intake. It’s out of proportion in North America.
Sam Believ: So the carbohydrates don’t have sugar.
Nutrition. Yeah. Yeah. Empty. Empty calories. Empty calories. What do you think about can a person in America eat well enough that they don’t need supplements and they can still get some more results to Yes,
Taron Fletcher: yes, they can. We think that there’s a percentage that may not be able to for genetic reasons.
And to illustrate that Felice Jacka in 2017 published a paper on women in depression. And they just looked at diet. They just used diet. They got 30% response rate. With that, with diet alone. With a diet alone study, 70% didn’t though. So that suggests that there may be some factors in that 70%, where just a better quality diet wasn’t quite enough.
There, there’s multiple things there. Obviously. But if it’s the concentration of items and minerals. That’s where we come in because we find that we get a pretty good response rate to just increasing the vitamins and mineral content. So yes, there are people that will definitely benefit from a healthier diet.
That’s good for the gut, right? It’s good for the body. If you only get a partial response, then maybe consider supplementing with a good quality, very broad spectrum vitamin mineral. Those cofactors. And let’s talk about that for a second too. That all of the enzymes in our body that, that, they’re little machines.
They do work. Half of them at least to the best of our understanding today, half of those need of vitamin or a mineral co-factor in order to work.
And we think the reason that, you know, even though someone’s eating a healthy diet, they still have bipolar symptoms or they still have a, mood dysregulation is because, they another researcher, Dr. Bruce Ames, published a whole series of papers on this little polymorphisms, little changes in the d in the DNA code means that if a protein has a substitution for different amino acid and it, and the cofactor doesn’t stick as well, and it, so it doesn’t perform as well, but he showed that if you increase that concentration of cofactor, it seems to overcome that deficit and the enzyme functions more normally.
So that might be one, one explanation for why our product works is that, people need a higher amount of some of these nutrients in order to make the, in, it makes us work, even though we’re a little broken, makes us work a little better, even though we’re, that little broken, so
Sam Believ: yeah, enzyme is, enzymes is another kinda of worms. It’s very complicated, but, so let’s not go there. But, i’ve heard that most doctors in us, they, they don’t really have much education about nutrition, so it’s
Taron Fletcher: We, yeah. When we speak with doctors, they, they say that too. Yeah. I only get, I don’t take one nutrition course in all the years of medical schooling or, things like that.
So it’s not an unusual thing that, that the nutrition side isn’t on the radar hasn’t been taught. Many of the integrative and holistic practitioners have begun to embrace that, and that becomes a regular part of treatment is to teach the person how, and why to eat better. And they’re making we are making some progress there.
Sam Believ: Yeah. What is the most missing nutrients in, in you, let’s say people that you meet, or American society, like what are the ones that like, are criminally low?
Taron Fletcher: That’s a great question. I wish I had my slides with me. We have a couple of presentations that we’ve done on that topic, but I’ll make two comments on that.
We found when we the US Department of Agriculture did a website where they did a Q click, they call it the Community Nutrition Mapping Project. And in there they, they go state by state and they compare average nutrient intakes to the dietary reference intakes. And then they do a national comparison to a national average. And we found there’s about five or six nutrients, and I can’t remember ’em right off the top of my head, but I can, vitamin E was one, if I’m not mistaken. Vitamin D was one, or one of the BS was low magnesium was it Mag Magnesium?
Might’ve been one. Oh, that was low mag. But they were significantly lower, like less than half of the RDA value low. So those are probably, that, that big grouping. But more recently a couple of researchers did an examination of NHANES data. So NHANES is a, it’s a national nutritional survey that’s done every few years.
And what they found was when they put that together, that what is it? Is it 60, 67%? So almost 70% of children and adolescents are getting less than, or what is it? Basically they’re eating. They’re eating, highly processed foods in packages, right? They’re mineral content. They’re eating empty calories. So 60% of kids are getting more than half their calories from that food source. And it was almost 60% of adults were in the same. We’re, in her words, we’re setting ourselves up for a mental health catastrophe.
Every kind of health catastrophe, every kind of health catastrophe, right? And it’s just that empty calorie, right? We feed what tastes good, not what we really need. That’s right. And so those are my, the it’s, some of those nutrients are the key. But again, you fortify everything and you’ve got a, you’ve got a better than fighting chance if you fortify everything.
’cause that compensates for any little holes, any little gaps in the diet. Again that’s my opinion.
Sam Believ: So let’s say somebody who listen they’re sold. They wanna take a, they wanna take supplements to yeah. Get off antidepressants. They want to take a supplement to have better mood, better wellbeing.
What’s the process? How much are we talking?
Taron Fletcher: So the retail price for our product is $130, and that’s a month’s supply. It’s four weeks of consuming the product at that clinically studied level, which is and that support, and that includes, yeah, complimentary support. So we will we will have a bit of an education session an expectation session where we talk about some of these things that people need to be aware of will help the individual identify any factors that might limit their experience with the nutrients.
And that includes maybe the presence of medications, maybe the presence system, gut health issues, those types of things. And we do our best to set the person up so that they have the best chance of knowing. And then the other thing we can do is we call them side effect audits, right?
So we help the person if they’re, if they are taking medication, so we help them identify where they’re running into those increase in medication side effects. And that helps to let them know, okay, yeah I’m ready for a small percentage to be reduced, that kind of thing. So that’s our, that’s our process.
So in a perfect world we’re, they go see their doctor, they come to us, we do the side effect audits, they go back to the doctor. Yeah. Here’s what I’m experiencing. The doctor recognizes that because they’ve done our training too, and they help the person taper and that kind of thing.
So that’s a perfect and ideal situation.
Sam Believ: Perfect. Yeah, if you guys are interested in the supplements, and I think that’s a reasonable price given, the results you’re getting and also the support. ’cause it’s not just like you’re not gonna charge extra five bucks for support, whatever the website is hardy nutritionals.com.
And they were kind enough to give our listeners a discount of 15%. And the discount called is Lara all caps, L-A-W-A-Y-R-A. So yeah, if you’re interested, check it out. I haven’t tried it myself yet. I will pro, I probably will, but it seemed interesting enough and hope that conversation helps you understand it.
Taryn, thank you so much for coming on you. Really, it’s a very unique angle of looking at. Mental health supplementation. I think it’s not talked about enough. That’s right. So I hope you guys enjoyed the episode and I will see you in the next one. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’d like to support us and psychedelic Renaissance at large, please follow us and leave us a like wherever it is you’re listening.
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