5 Types of Magnesium and 2 types of muscle cramps with Patrick Sullivan of Jigsaw Health

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I am joined by Patrick Sullivan, co-founder of one of my favorite supplement companies, Jigsaw Health. In this episode, we talk about how and why Jigsaw Health was created, different forms of magnesium, muscle cramps, supplement sourcing, pickleball and more! This was such a fun episode packed with great info!

Get a discount on Jigsaw Health's products, including my favorite, Pickleball Cocktail. Use the code lessstressed10

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• What are the different forms of magnesium?
• What are common food sources for magnesium?
• Topical magnesium (spray or lotions)
• How did we mineralize before supplements?
• There are 2 types of muscle cramps
• How did you make a time-released magnesium?
• How Pickleball cocktail got its name 

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ABOUT GUEST:
Patrick Sullivan Jr. is the Co-Founder & CEO (Chief Entertainment Officer) of Jigsaw Health, which he started with his father, Pat Sullivan, in 2005. Jigsaw's tagline is "It's FUN to feel good."  And the in-house video team produces a weekly video series called #FunnyFriday using comedic skits and song parodies to "edu-tain" customers about new products and health topics.  (Patrick has an extensive blooper reel...)Patrick lives in Arizona with his wife (and business partner), Ashley. They are diehard Pickleball Addicts.

Check out the Breaking Pickleball documentary here: https://www.jigsawhealth.com/pages/breaking-pickleball/

WHERE TO FIND:
Website:  https://www.jigsawhealth.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jigsaw_health/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JigsawHealth/

***WORK WITH CHRISTA***: https://www.christabiegler.com/fss

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY OF LESS STRESSED LIFE: 

• Over restriction is dead; if your practitioner is recommending this, they are stuck in 2010 and not evolving
• Whole food is soul food and fed is best
• Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
• You don’t have to figure it out alone
• Do your best and leave the rest

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Patrick Sullivan: And when you're under stress, crank it up more because when you're under stress, your body burns magnesium. That is the mineral that it burns the most. And that stress could be emotional, physical, all the above.

[00:00:17] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Beigler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On this show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

[00:00:47] Christa Biegler, RD: One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together. All right, today on the Less Stressed Life, I have Patrick Sullivan, Jr., who is co founder and chief entertainment officer at Jigsaw Health, which he started with his father, Patrick Sullivan in 2005, who was quite the serial entrepreneur. I'd love to hear a little bit more about how a guy who created like a software system and other things.

[00:01:23] Christa Biegler, RD: And I'd like to hear about why he created a supplement company. We're going to talk about muscle cramps today and magnesiums, but I love the, how it's made. So Patrick, welcome. 

[00:01:33] Patrick Sullivan: Thank you so much, Christa, for having me here. And let's just say that we're all trying to live a less stressed life.

[00:01:41] Patrick Sullivan: Amen to that. 

[00:01:42] Christa Biegler, RD: In pursuit of I'm changing the name in pursuit of we're all in pursuit of this. 

[00:01:46] Patrick Sullivan: That's right. That's all we're promised, right? The pursuit of happiness. So my dad is a serial entrepreneur. As you mentioned, he's a scratch your own itch guy. And you could say that's actually where all of the best inventions in the world have ever come from the need to scratch your own itch.

[00:02:04] Patrick Sullivan: So in the software world, when he, in 1980 was a young software and computer salesman, he realized, you know what, if I could keep track of people better. Then I could probably sell more. So he created a product called act, which was the first contact manager gave birth to the category of contact management and had a great sort of successful career in the high tech world.

[00:02:31] Patrick Sullivan: But what a lot of people didn't know is that behind the scenes, he was really struggling with his health and every sort of hint. Health book. He could get his hands on. He would find things in there and be like, yeah, this all applies to me.

[00:02:45] Patrick Sullivan: I like, I need help. So 1 of those things in particular was, a magnesium deficiency checklist. And every time he went through 1 of those, it'd be like, yep, I need that. I need that. I need that. So go to the drug store and say, okay, give me your best magnesium. But he would go right through him because one of the myriad of symptoms that he was struggling with along with low energy and trouble sleeping was gastrointestinal difficulties.

[00:03:10] Patrick Sullivan: So typical drugstore magnesium is going to be a less absorbable form of magnesium and magnesium has this interesting side effect that it is hydrophilic, which is a fancy word that means it draws water to it like a magnet. So when you put magnesium into your bowels and it draws water you get what happens.

[00:03:34] Patrick Sullivan: So it's why magnesium is used to prepare people for colonoscopies, the wrong form of magnesium. That led my dad and I to start Jigsaw Health in 2005. He had written a book called Wellness Piece by Piece. And it was his sort of, here's my checklist of the things that I found that helped me to overcome my myriad of health challenges.

[00:03:58] Patrick Sullivan: The keys to his health puzzle, thus the name Jigsaw Health. 

[00:04:04] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm wondering if you were like a baby at that time or what you were doing before, how he recruited you in. 

[00:04:09] Patrick Sullivan: 19 years ago, I was 28 years old and certainly a bathe in the woods as it came to building an e commerce company and learning how to run a business.

[00:04:21] Patrick Sullivan: In the last 19 years, I've certainly learned quite a bit. We started off, we made every mistake. It seems you could possibly make except for one. We made some good formulas. So the products themselves, including mag S. R. T. which is now America's number 1 time release magnesium 19 years later.

[00:04:40] Patrick Sullivan: Basically uses a very good form of magnesium, dimagnesium malate, very absorbable, but then it is in a time release tablet. So the tablet breaks down over 8 hours and that is to avoid the common problem, the hydrophilic problem that we talked about earlier. We had some good formulas. We just had no idea how to do the sales and the marketing and thankfully, over the last 19 years, we did eventually figure it out.

[00:05:08] Christa Biegler, RD: I could ask a hundred questions about your dad health issues and how are you arrived at some of these formulas, but you bring up a good point when we talk about magnesium forms and you were talking about drugstore magnesium. And so often the dollar version of magnesium on the shelf is magnesium oxide, which is literally just going to create.

[00:05:25] Christa Biegler, RD: A bowel movement. It's a terrible experience. Whereas magnesium citrate will also create bowel movements and you might feel a little bit better, but also not highly absorbable. So maybe we could just start to go through the list of forms of magnesium and let's go through the list of forms of magnesium.

[00:05:41] Christa Biegler, RD: And then I've got like weird questions about supplement. Stuff about when you're figuring that out behind the scenes. But first let's go through some of those. So I just mentioned, if you want to mention anything about oxide, citrate, and then any other forms of magnesium you want to talk about, there's several, at least seven.

[00:05:57] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah. Magnesium oxide has about 4 percent bioavailability. Every form is generally better than magnesium oxide. However it's used the most in multivitamins because it's the cheapest. And it has the biggest sort of bang for the buck in terms of elemental magnesium getting a little bit maybe into the weeds.

[00:06:19] Patrick Sullivan: But the point is, You're going to want to stay away from magnesium oxide. Dr. Dennis Goodman is a cardiologist in New York that wrote a great book called Magnificent Magnesium. This book came out seven years ago or something like that. And he actually did a great job summarizing, like in general, a form of magnesium that ends in A T E is generally pretty good.

[00:06:44] Patrick Sullivan: It's a malate, glycinate, threonate. Those are 3 really good forms. Now, the exception to that is citrate magnesium combined, or rather attached to citric acid creates magnesium citrate, and it is not typically recommended unless you're preparing for a colonoscopy. In general, those are my 3 favorite forms.

[00:07:07] Patrick Sullivan: Those are the ones that I tend to use. Malate is magnesium bound to malic acid, which, will tend to create a little bit of an energizing form. Malate is also good for binding to aluminum. So it has that chelation element side effect, if you will. Magnesium glycinate or magnesium lysinate glycinate very similar.

[00:07:31] Patrick Sullivan: That's a great form. And it's typically it's magnesium bound to glycine, the amino acid, which will often help to calm down the brain. So we use magnesium lysinate glycinate in jigsaw mag soothe S O T H E mag soothe. And that form is really good for at night. Mix it with 2 ounces, 3 ounces of water, and it helps to calm down the brain.

[00:07:56] Patrick Sullivan: So I take MagSRT, the time release magnesium, with Magnesium Malate, generally with my lunch, and then at night, MagSooth with Magnesium Glycinate at night. The third form is Magnesium L3 and 8, which is a, Fairly newer form of magnesium. And there's some interesting studies from MIT on absorbability in the brain.

[00:08:19] Patrick Sullivan: And of course the body uses magnesium in a myriad of different ways. It's often talked about as there's 300 known biochemical reactions. But the interesting thing about that number is that it comes from dr. Bert Valley. I think it was the 1950s that he was a professor in Harvard Medical School, and it was his best guess based on the data then.

[00:08:44] Patrick Sullivan: More recently, medical researcher named Morley Robbins, he's the creator of the Root Cause Protocol. He, through his research, has documented, if I'm remembering correctly, 3, 219 plus biochemical reactions that magnesium is involved in the body. Perhaps the most important of which is ATP, adenosine triphosphate.

[00:09:09] Patrick Sullivan: Energy. Energy ATP is actually Mg2 plus ATP. It's magnesium that creates that spark of energy. So we need it inside of our brains. That's why magnesium L3 and eight and the data that shows it absorbs into the brain. We use that in jigsaw brain boost. as a magnesium l 3nate. So there's my I don't know, three minute spiel on my three favorite forms.

[00:09:36] Patrick Sullivan: And if you stick with those three, you're going to get coverage in, your entire body. 

[00:09:44] Christa Biegler, RD: I would totally agree with you. I want to talk about, I'm going to go through each of those with you a little bit and underline some things that I think are important. People are really familiar with Mag Citrate because you can pick it up at any store in a more expensive bottle, often in a powder, but you brought up a good point.

[00:10:03] Christa Biegler, RD: It's bound to citric acid. So using that as a powder all the time, for one, it's not absorbable, like you said, but for two, it will damage your tooth enamel after quite a long time. So I don't think people know that. The reason I want to bring it up is because when people take it, they feel good.

[00:10:19] Christa Biegler, RD: They will get kind of relief to the muscles, but they're just not really getting into the cell. It's not really making a big difference long term. Whereas like you said, the malate, the glycinate, the threonate are more absorbable. So glycinate, I love this one also. So you brought this up.

[00:10:35] Christa Biegler, RD: It's bound to glycine and amino acid. I find glycine a huge or amino acids, a huge part of health improvement overall because they support drainage detox with malic acid being attached to the malate form. I think about malic acid. I think about this from a perspective of people take malic acid. It's in fruit juices and can help soften gallstones and things like that also.

[00:10:58] Christa Biegler, RD: And then finally, I don't think you talked about How three and eight you brought it up that it's a newer form of magnesium to me. I just call it like the brain focus magnesium as you were but I don't think you brought up what magnesium is bound to make magnesium three and eight.

[00:11:13] Christa Biegler, RD: And do you know. And you said it's a newer form of magnesium, which makes me think, who is creating these magnesiums? This is the part that you would know really is like behind the scenes, how does that actually work?

[00:11:26] Patrick Sullivan: That's a really great question. So magnesium L threonate, if I am recalling correctly is magnesium bound to threonic acid.

[00:11:36] Patrick Sullivan: And this is definitely out of my depths when we get into the chemistry side of things. But for instance, I know that our magnesium that we use in MagSRT, the dimagnesium malate starts as magnesium oxide, and it comes from the Dead Sea in Israel. So magnesium oxide is then reacted or chelated with a agent.

[00:12:03] Patrick Sullivan: In this case, malic acid. So I don't know exactly how that process works, but we have been working with Albion labs. And we've been working with them on the mag srt formula. Since my dad created it in 2005 and dynamics in Mali was a little bit of a newer form 19 years ago.

[00:12:23] Patrick Sullivan: It's now used in a lot of different applications. It's also used a lot for horses. Magnesium for equine is like a huge deal. So I know that, jigsaw health

[00:12:34] Christa Biegler, RD: pivoting into the 

[00:12:35] Christa Biegler, RD: pet market or the, I often feel this way also, like they say that the animal market is recession proof. 

[00:12:43] Patrick Sullivan: That's right.

[00:12:44] Patrick Sullivan: That's right. If our dogs are any concession, we do probably care about them more than most humans. I don't know if that makes me a good person or a bad person, but one, if you've met Monk and Lola, you would understand. There are two cute toy Aussie doodles who are just the cutest and really well behaved dogs.

[00:13:03] Patrick Sullivan: Going back to the horse thing. Her name is Carla and her last name escapes me, but she's been selling dimagnesium malate to horses about as long as, or I guess to horse owners as we've been selling MagSRT to humans. And she has actually been one of our largest wholesale accounts for MagSRT because for humans, see how well they're behaving.

[00:13:24] Patrick Sullivan: Horses do, and in terms of calming down and their muscle aches and tremors and stuff like that. And then they say could I take magnesium too? So she sells them a bottle of jigsaw mag SRT after they see how well the dimag malate works for her horse, their horses.

[00:13:41] Christa Biegler, RD: Oh, that 

[00:13:41] Christa Biegler, RD: is so funny. Okay. I have, I just thinking about this a lot.

[00:13:45] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. So the mag oxide comes from the Dead Sea. They're doing some kind of reaction to make it into die. Magnesium Alley and I was actually 

[00:13:53] Patrick Sullivan: in Utah. 

[00:13:54] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. I was actually thinking reacted magnesium is sometimes a term thrown around also, but it looks like it's actually an umbrella term for other, for a few types of magnesium.

[00:14:07] Patrick Sullivan: I believe you are correct. Yeah. I believe you're correct. Ortho molecular is a great company based and yeah, they're a great company based in Wisconsin and they, I don't know if branding is the right term, but they label their products as reacted. We're going to call 

[00:14:22] Christa Biegler, RD: it reacted and make up a new class, but it's really just an umbrella for a few of these magnesiums.

[00:14:28] Patrick Sullivan: That's right. Yeah. 

[00:14:29] Christa Biegler, RD: Threonic acid looks like it is part of vitamin C or ascorbic acid, actually. Interesting. This makes me really curious about, we know, and this is the stuff. I don't really have to think about all that often. I just understand magnesium L3 and eight crosses the blood brain barrier.

[00:14:46] Christa Biegler, RD: It provides calmness and brain focus or clarity of the brain. But what are the mechanisms that make that happen? I'm not honestly sure all the time. And that's okay. It just makes me think, oh, okay, cool. So you're fine with vitamin C. I can't get over this horse thing and it's God bless these people who figure this stuff out.

[00:15:03] Christa Biegler, RD: And they're like, this is a great market. I am just wondering what kind of dose these horses get for a diet magnesium Alley and how do they know? I know that's a big deal. If you have a calm horse, it's like a really big deal. I don't, I'm not a big, I have chickens and a cat and I give my cat liver and I feel like I'm good and I get my chickens certain things and that's about as far as I go.

[00:15:24] Christa Biegler, RD: So I like to talk to my team about all the dog problems. I am fat. I think that's a whole. I don't understand why we don't look at all the problems pets have, like allergies, mostly allergies and cancer and think Oh, are we worried about what's coming for us next? We're living with these animals anyway.

[00:15:43] Christa Biegler, RD: Anyway, I'm just thinking about what kind of dose of magnesium the horses might need. Not that you should know that. What, for any reason, but it's just fascinating that's how the horse owners decide that they're going to take magnesium. 

[00:15:55] Patrick Sullivan: I wouldn't be surprised if the dosage fit along the similar human dosage.

[00:16:00] Patrick Sullivan: RDI or RDA, whichever you prefer to call it for magnesium used to be 400 milligrams for adults. It's now 420 milligrams per adults. That's probably still too low. So Mildred Sealy PhD wrote a book called, I believe it was called Magnesium Factor. And in it, she created a best guess formula for dosage of five milligrams per pound of body weight per day.

[00:16:29] Patrick Sullivan: So if you weigh 100 pounds, 500 milligrams per day. So that's already 100 or 80 milligrams more than the FDA is recommending. If you're 200 pounds per day, that's about 1, 000 milligrams. Of magnesium, you should be getting per day. Morley Robbins AKA magnesium man, who I talked about earlier the root cause protocol creator, he added on a corollary of, okay, yes, it's five milligrams.

[00:16:56] Patrick Sullivan: per pound of body weight. And when you're under stress, crank it up more. Because when you're under stress, your body burns magnesium. That is the mineral that it burns the most. And that stress could be emotional, physical, all the above. 

[00:17:17] Christa Biegler, RD: People are going to want to ask right now about food based sources of magnesium.

[00:17:23] Christa Biegler, RD: And this comes up with every mineral. And I have to talk about this with iodine a lot about just showing them the amount that's actually in food versus what we sometimes need in supplements. But let's talk a little bit about most common sources of food based magnesium. And if you can, approximations of what's there.

[00:17:42] Christa Biegler, RD: I don't know if comes up for you guys very often. So sorry if I'm putting you on the spot. It's a great question. 

[00:17:48] Patrick Sullivan: No, is a great question. It does come up a lot. And yes, when I talk about five milligrams per pound of body weight of magnesium, that should be considered from all sources. So the typical sources of food or of magnesium and food, leafy greens one of the, actually the highest.

[00:18:07] Patrick Sullivan: Is almonds so pound for pound if I recall correctly it's A thousand, you'd have to eat like a thousand calories worth of almonds to get 400 milligrams.

[00:18:20] Patrick Sullivan: . So that's correct. Most people want a, a 2000 calorie diet a day. It's wait half of my diet from almonds, that's like a lot of work. So yes, almonds, I'm a huge fan. Make sure I think go sprouted and salted rather than roast. Yeah. I think because roasted now you're introducing probably some new problems.

[00:18:40] Patrick Sullivan: And obviously organic, if you can get those. So sprouted organic would be, I think the best way to go for almonds. Did you find that article on our website? You did. All right. So you fill in the rest of the details. Yeah, exactly. 

[00:18:51] Christa Biegler, RD: It was like, you've. Yeah. Bye bye. consume a giant plate of almonds? And this is the issue, and it does beg to question how we did this before supplements, but we don't have to answer those questions.

[00:19:02] Christa Biegler, RD: We don't have to know that question here today. This comes up, when we're thinking about, I'll just use another off the wall topic. But when I talk to women about Estrogen metabolism, there are products that they could take and it's a capsule, or they could eat two heads of broccoli, right?

[00:19:16] Christa Biegler, RD: Like they're going to get about the same amount. So to your point, I don't know if almonds are the most absorbable, but it's like, how did we do this before? Was our stress lower? I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure how we managed. I think, cause I do think that to your point, if your magnesium oxide is coming from the sea, I do think there is.

[00:19:35] Christa Biegler, RD: A lot to be said about getting to swim in the sea and the bodies of water, to be honest, and I'm 

[00:19:41] Patrick Sullivan: glad you brought that up because that was where my brain was starting to go with that question. We can absorb magnesium topically. Jigsaw makes a great we call it, mag relief. We did a fun music parody video featuring my wife singing Ashley get some mag relief.

[00:19:58] Patrick Sullivan: Oh, I started to watch, 

[00:19:59] Christa Biegler, RD: I started to watch that before I had you on here, . 

[00:20:02] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah, if you look, I think it's probably get mag relief.com. It should take you directly to that music video. And that it's a magnesium chloride. Directly on to the skin and I have found myself using that I hope we're going to talk about pickleball.

[00:20:19] Patrick Sullivan: I'm wearing a shirt that says pickleball saves lives, but as I found, I was pickleballing like two and a half, three hours. I would, let's call it out. Output my magnesium supplement implementation coverage that I was taking for MagSRT and MagSmooth. And in particular, my calves and my feet would need targeted muscle relief.

[00:20:41] Patrick Sullivan: So I would do the mag relief. Directly onto those and I have for me doing the lotion is a little annoying because it's I feel like we do a good job. It's not too sticky or smelly or anything like that, but it's just, you get the lotion and you rub it on and then you're like, okay, now I got to.

[00:20:57] Patrick Sullivan: Get rid of the rest of the lotion. So the good part is just put it on other areas like shoulders or arms or whatever, to fully get the magnesium on you. 

[00:21:05] Christa Biegler, RD: So I am a huge fan of topical magnesium absorption just to reduce supplement burden, but lots of comments and questions about this.

[00:21:13] Christa Biegler, RD: First of all, the thing that comes up the most often, aside from if you're taking like an Epsom salt bath, if you're using a spray on or a lotion, is that it can burn. How often are you fielding questions about this? And what can you say about that? I've never really found an amazing, I'm not sure if anyone knows.

[00:21:29] Christa Biegler, RD: Because I've not been able to find a very good explanation except for body pH and it does seem to abate. So I'm wondering how often you're fielding that as someone who makes a topical product. 

[00:21:41] Patrick Sullivan: I don't know that we've ever had a complaint, but I would say this is more of a. Low dose lotion versus a magnesium oil.

[00:21:50] Patrick Sullivan: I've tried the magnesium oils just trying it before and you really do have to cut it with water in or it can have some burning effect. Plus the oils once they dry will typically leave around a little bit of that salt residue. Actually interesting. Have you ever been to the Dead Sea and floated in the Dead Sea?

[00:22:08] Christa Biegler, RD: No. Did you get to do that and have a business write off ? 

[00:22:13] Patrick Sullivan: Maybe I could have figured out how to write off. I didn't. I just went on a trip, gosh, this would've been 2008 or, yeah, 2008 I think it was, and it was just the most. odd feeling being in the dead sea, a whole bunch of people out there and you're like floating at, almost belly button height.

[00:22:32] Patrick Sullivan: And you're like, why am I not sinking? It's so like when you get out of the out of the sea, you feel the almost like oil slick on you, but it feels like really good. So I don't know. I guess we're taking a little bit of a rabbit trail here to, I'm not trying to dodge the question.

[00:22:50] Christa Biegler, RD: But we don't know. I 

[00:22:51] Christa Biegler, RD: don't think anyone knows actually. And the closest I've come to is pH, but, and I don't push it. Cause it's like annoying to buy products and then to have it burn. But you're saying, I've not had this issue with 

[00:23:03] Patrick Sullivan: not with the top. Yeah. Not 

[00:23:04] Patrick Sullivan: with our topical jigsaw mag relief.

[00:23:06] Patrick Sullivan: What I was just going to say, and as I remember, it was like, they were really adamant about number one, if you have any open sores or open wounds, don't get in cause it'll burn. And number two, they're like, do not touch your, like your hands. You can get your hands in the liquid, but do not touch your face.

[00:23:22] Patrick Sullivan: Don't touch your eyes. Cause I'm sure you're 

[00:23:24] Christa Biegler, RD: on a tour. 

[00:23:25] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah, we were on a tour. There wasn't like a lifeguard, like blowing a whistle at you, but they were pretty adamant about, look, when you get in we touch our face a lot more, I think, than we think we even know.

[00:23:37] Patrick Sullivan: And they're like, just don't do it. So yeah, you're like, okay. And then there's like a way to there's a shower off. Thing right after you get out. So I 

[00:23:46] Christa Biegler, RD: have no desire to ever start a supplement company after having friends with supplement companies and all the hoops. But if I was going to, I do think I like the idea of topicals because there's not a lot of good topical stuff being done.

[00:24:00] Christa Biegler, RD: And there's, that's quite a. That's quite a topic, but it goes back to the question of how did we mineralize before supplements? And so one is soaking right in the sea or the ocean. And then I was also thinking about what about our mountain people? And I'm like there's minerals in spring water, right?

[00:24:14] Christa Biegler, RD: So I think our water sources were just different and we were much more focused on the minerals that were there. And I think that's a lost conversation in art that doesn't get talked about a ton right now. 

[00:24:26] Patrick Sullivan: I'll give you another one. Bone broth. So

[00:24:30] Christa Biegler, RD: true. 

[00:24:31] Patrick Sullivan: Paleolithic ancestors would use the whole animal, right?

[00:24:36] Patrick Sullivan: The whole carcass, including the bones, and they would boil those bones down. And magnesium is one of the important elements of bone broth. In the bone matrix, along with calcium it's so funny. Those got milk ads from back in the day. That was all pumping calcium. If you dropped a piece of chalk, which is calcium carbonate on the floor.

[00:24:59] Patrick Sullivan: Visualize what would that truck do? 

[00:25:02] Christa Biegler, RD: Break right open. 

[00:25:03] Patrick Sullivan: It would break right up. And it's so it would shatter in a moment. I'm, I am not a fan of the got milk people, by the way. I don't know if you want to get into that, but I'm not a fan. Okay. 

[00:25:13] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah, I feel like that died, there was a researcher local to me that as when we're talking about bone strength and bone health, she was doing research on Hutterite colonies.

[00:25:23] Patrick Sullivan: And that was, and at the time I was in college and I was interviewing different, I had this really cool job where I'd interview the different researchers at the campus. And so it was at that time that I learned about how. Weight bearing exercise was a zillion percent better for all of bone health and the milk would ever be.

[00:25:41] Patrick Sullivan: And that was the evidence in this colony where they had a lot of physical activity, their bone density was just like intense. So 

[00:25:47] Patrick Sullivan: you'll figure exercise wins again, 

[00:25:49] Christa Biegler, RD: right? Exactly. And also as you're bringing up bone broth and nose to tail, I'm thinking about how mineral rich so many herbs are, right?

[00:25:55] Christa Biegler, RD: And how we used to like maybe lean toward nature for medicine a little bit more. So when we're thinking about why do we have these things? And I think our stress is similar, but different now, I think it's very unrealized and chronic and ongoing, and we're out of touch with it a little bit. This is a passion.

[00:26:09] Christa Biegler, RD: This is my passion area, unrealized stress. I was having a chat with your wife, Ashley. She's don't you want to talk about magnesium on the podcast? And here we are in a, accidentally, and this is wonderful because people know magnesium is awesome. And I said actually everyone needs potassium to even get the magnesium into the cell.

[00:26:25] Christa Biegler, RD: And so there's a lot to say about minerals and you brought up a good point earlier that, if you don't have the magnesium, then the spark to make the energy isn't even going to happen. And as my friend Amanda says, who has a big platform around minerals, she always calls minerals, the sparks, which is probably actually a morally statement she was borrowing more, more than likely.

[00:26:45] Christa Biegler, RD: So 

[00:26:45] Patrick Sullivan: maybe, yeah, maybe 

[00:26:46] Christa Biegler, RD: I had a question for you because you're having cramps With your increased exercise. I was actually guest speaking to a group of young pastors recently. And one was talking about, yeah, I get these muscle cramps when I go skin. And so he was asking me what to do. And I was like, dude, you have to start way before.

[00:27:02] Christa Biegler, RD: He's I'm hydrating really well that day. I'm like, you really have to start your mag way before that time. It is very inefficient to replete magnesium. And I talked to clients about this a lot. I don't know if you have any feelings about, I'm, I look at this from a very clinical perspective.

[00:27:16] Christa Biegler, RD: You look at it from a sourcing perspective and what kind of feedback do you get from just this public health perspective almost. And I also will say, I think your. Customers are more health conscious and health savvy people, which I do think gives a different level. This isn't like the customers of Walmart calling to tell you that they're got diarrhea from magnesium oxide, right?

[00:27:35] Christa Biegler, RD: Or something like that. You have savvier clients and customers. So we're coming about this a little bit from different angles. And I'm looking at this it takes a lot of magnesium a while to get repleted. And I was wondering, do you ever check your body levels of magnesium, Patrick? 

[00:27:50] Patrick Sullivan: I do I test my serum and RBC magnesium levels.

[00:27:54] Patrick Sullivan: I typically will do blood work around my birthday February each year. If you wanna buy me something, it's February 8th, . You can give me on the flip side next year, , the okay, so a couple different ways to go there. Jigsaw, MAG SRT was tested in a human clinical trial with 91 people.

[00:28:13] Patrick Sullivan: It was randomized, controlled, placebo controlled. The lead researcher, the clinical researcher, was Dr. Decker Weiss, and the results were published in the Journal of American College of Nutrition. And the findings were that MAG SRT the headline really is that, That 91 percent of participants were able to take 500 milligrams a day without reporting any digestive discomfort.

[00:28:38] Patrick Sullivan: So it's like high dose magnesium without the side effects. Great. Number one, number two, serum magnesium, which is essentially short term magnesium. increased by 22 percent in eight hours. RBC magnesium increased by 30 percent over the course of 90 days and magnesium deficiency symptoms decreased by 63%.

[00:29:06] Patrick Sullivan: Over the course of 90 days. So we were very delighted to basically have all those 5 star reviews validated by science. And yes, I do check my levels each year. I test a number of different stuff. In fact, I typically will do the the full Monte panel as recommended by Morley Robbins and the various stuff that they look at.

[00:29:32] Patrick Sullivan: But there was a 2nd thing I wanted to talk about with regards to your skiing friend. So there's really 2 types of muscle cramps. And I learned this from the clinician that did the Scottsdale Magnesium study, Dr. Decker Weiss. There's 2 types of muscle cramps. If you're in the midst of an activity like skiing, or pickleball, or Javelin throwing and you tend and you start to cramp up.

[00:29:58] Patrick Sullivan: That's a sign of a potential potassium deficiency. If you cramp up after the activity, or like Charlie horses in the middle of the night, that is a potential sign of a possible magnesium deficiency. And it's because potassium and sodium are on. Two kids on a teeter totter and magnesium and calcium are like two kids on a different teeter totter.

[00:30:25] Patrick Sullivan: And if you think about the food supply in general, it's super easy to get sodium and it's super easy to get calcium, but it's not as easy to get potassium and magnesium. So with all of jigsaw health electrolyte formulas, like pickleball cocktail, which maybe we'll talk about. It has 800 mg of potassium, which is essentially the equivalent of two bananas worth of potassium, and only 90 mg of sodium, and also a little bit of 50 mg of magnesium.

[00:30:56] Patrick Sullivan: But in pickleball cocktail, Potassium is really the star ingredient and the genesis to that was, as I was playing pickleball, I started to cramp up on the court and I'm like I know I've got plenty of magnesium. What the heck is going on here? And I talked to Dr. Decker about it. He's it's actually likely the other kind of muscle cramp.

[00:31:17] Patrick Sullivan: It's the potassium that you're not getting, that you're probably not getting enough of. So that was why we formulated that. And I will tell you this. It's crazy to me that products like elements, L M and T have a thousand milligrams of sodium. And I think maybe 200 milligrams of potassium. You can fact check me on that.

[00:31:37] Patrick Sullivan: Oh, 

[00:31:37] Christa Biegler, RD: I know there's no problem. I've got a whole chart that's got all of the electrolytes listed with all the amounts because this is a really common topic of practice. 

[00:31:47] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah. I don't understand. Yes, of course. Sodium is important. Yeah. It's one of the five electrolytes. Sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and chloride.

[00:31:56] Patrick Sullivan: And of course you need all of them. Somebody once asked me, can I get addicted to magnesium? I was like, you already are. But I think that pickleball cocktail, oddly named as it is is really one of the best electrolyte products out there. It's sweetened no sugar, because again, sugar, you do need some, but it's easy to get sugar from just about anywhere.

[00:32:21] Patrick Sullivan: It's really hard to get 800 milligrams of potassium, and oh, by the way, I don't like eating bananas. 

[00:32:27] Christa Biegler, RD: You don't have to preach to me, but it's okay that we share this in general, because I already put everybody on pickleball pretty much. I already see all the tissue, potassium is depleted. I already live the potassium.

[00:32:40] Christa Biegler, RD: Deficiency in the mineral. So the thing is just to really clearly clarify really quick, your body is going to keep this imbalance as much as it can. It will steal from the tissue to keep your pH level. Otherwise you will pass out. And you will not typically see your sodium and potassium looking off in your blood unless you are about to pass out and you happen to go in and have blood drawn.

[00:32:59] Christa Biegler, RD: You will definitely see it maybe just a touch out of range or it might hover near the edges of it. We're looking at tissue nutrients, which is really I think that's a subclinical. It's like the stuff before you ever see anything in blood work, which answers the question of why or why is blood work normal, but I don't feel normal.

[00:33:15] Christa Biegler, RD: There's all these other processes happening behind the scenes that cannot happen because the action happens inside the cell, right? Not in this circulating serum necessarily. So inside the cell and then inside the tissue. And so I feel pretty dang strongly about potassium now that I've been doing this for a long time.

[00:33:30] Christa Biegler, RD: I see that it, you Promotes motility, see where it's if you have relapsing gut issues, you probably need potassium. I just cortisol are darling stress hormone when it goes up depletes potassium. So therefore, when you're under more stress, you should do more, just like the magazine comment, like you should do much more.

[00:33:50] Christa Biegler, RD: And so we've the industry, the health savvy people, they know Ooh, I feel good on magnesium. And someday I hope we will feel this way about, we will know this about potassium. Meanwhile, you're filling a really big gap. There's. A couple products, a couple that really even have this much potassium it's not easy to do.

[00:34:10] Christa Biegler, RD: Maybe if you live in a tropical climate and you're drinking coconuts and eating tropical fruit, but otherwise it's not like you said, there are things that are easy to do. And so we have an entire chart about electrolytes that gives the breakdown of everything because people will say actually, I don't get this as much anymore.

[00:34:25] Christa Biegler, RD: But once upon a time, people would say what about this one? I'm like. Add it to the chart so you can very clearly see it's and when I am at a music festival in a climate like yours in Las Vegas, I did, I used liquid IV because it was available and it's sugary and that might be okay if you're like sweating to death.

[00:34:42] Christa Biegler, RD: But. Yeah. All right. To be honest, pickleball, like that, as you said, like a lot of electrolyte products are really not that good. They're mostly carbohydrates or sodium, and we're really missing out on the potassium. And you would be shocked at how it's creates heart palpitations. Like you said, muscle cramps, it creates all kinds of symptoms.

[00:35:02] Christa Biegler, RD: People are very afraid of, right? Like heart palpitations are like, am I going to die? And I'm like, maybe let's do a lot more potassium than you think you should do. 

[00:35:10] Patrick Sullivan: Especially for those palpitations. 

[00:35:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Now I know where the name came from. I think that there is for a long time, people will be like, why is this called pickleball?

[00:35:19] Christa Biegler, RD: And it's this guy right here is the reason it's called pickleball. You can blame him. Cause he's obsessed 

[00:35:28] Patrick Sullivan: cocktail. Yes, that is a hundred percent true. We have talked about changing the name from we've talked, so we, it's hilarious. One of the biggest questions that we get from customers. Is okay.

[00:35:41] Patrick Sullivan: I don't play pickleball, but my nutritionist is recommending pickleball cocktail. Can I still take this? And it may be, it may, it might be. And I told our team, I don't know if they do, but I told them the story Thomas DeLauer big sort of personality on YouTube and had a great answer for that.

[00:35:59] Patrick Sullivan: He was like no matter what sport you play, you still sweat the same. And we have recently been thinking about changing the name of Jigsaw Pickleball Cocktail. To potassium cocktail because the potassium is really the star but it then maybe loses a little bit of it's like 

[00:36:18] Christa Biegler, RD: massage it and to pick up all potassium cocktail, 

[00:36:22] Patrick Sullivan: just add it in there, it's like me.

[00:36:24] Christa Biegler, RD: The name of this podcast really should be in pursuit of not like anyone's crossed a mountain of this and they're like living with monks. It's really in pursuit, right? So we'll just massage the title a little bit, maybe just pickleball potassium cocktail. That way we're not confused. 

[00:36:38] Patrick Sullivan: That's right.

[00:36:39] Patrick Sullivan: Making it more clear is definitely not a bad idea. And what's funny is I'm looking at the bottle right now. I know. I wish I had 

[00:36:46] Christa Biegler, RD: bought, I'm not even, if I was at home, this is my other office. I was like, I should have just put some pickleball on my shelf. It would have been, it would have been cool.

[00:36:54] Patrick Sullivan: I don't have a bottle here, but on I think MagSRT, we call it a magnesium supplement, even though categorically you're supposed to say nutritional supplement on the bottom, but I'll bet we could change it to potassium supplement because a lot of people do read the fine print, especially our audience.

[00:37:11] Patrick Sullivan: Of customers. And it's probably because they're like you said, they, the jigsaw health customers are the most savvy customer base in all of the nutrition industry. 

[00:37:20] Christa Biegler, RD: And I will say, so here's it's like a really authentic pat on your back. A lot of supplement companies make a lot of things.

[00:37:26] Christa Biegler, RD: They maybe make a couple of things. You guys, your entire product line is just good. Like I can feel really good about saying their entire product line is good at the end. It's just, it's all, I think I'm guessing it's because you're picky about it. You're not just like we should make this and this you can do everything, or you could do a handful of things really well.

[00:37:44] Christa Biegler, RD: And on behalf of those of us, including myself, who've been pushing potassium for 3 years now, let's expand the flavors here and because I always tell my clients, I was like, I am no longer going to tell you what you're going to I get in trouble if I tell people what they're going to I'm like, I don't like things I used to three years ago.

[00:37:59] Christa Biegler, RD: But I still need the potassium. And not that anyone's making any comments about pickleball necessarily. I'm just saying in general, if we do something every day. 

[00:38:09] Patrick Sullivan: The orange flavor, yeah, the orange flavor was inspired by my childhood love of Tang. Oh 

[00:38:15] Christa Biegler, RD: my gosh. I'm so wondering if that's where you're going with 

[00:38:18] Christa Biegler, RD: this.

[00:38:19] Patrick Sullivan: Oh yeah. 100 percent true. 100 percent true. And I think we got pretty darn close at least as well as my memory. 

[00:38:25] Christa Biegler, RD: So I 

[00:38:26] Christa Biegler, RD: never have thought about that in that way, but I had these visuals I had to remember. I feel like part of my childhood, I don't feel like that's totally against, Everybody had the orange Gatorade containers.

[00:38:38] Christa Biegler, RD: And then there was like imagery of you pouring that over the head after games and whatever. And this is what's in my head along with tank. Thank you very much. Yes. Orange drink. 

[00:38:48] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah, for sure. And then boy, during last year. We really worked hard to come out with a new flavor to just nail it.

[00:38:56] Patrick Sullivan: Really, we care about flavors. We care about all our products. A lot. 

[00:38:59] Christa Biegler, RD: Everyone wants to know how you can make 

[00:39:00] Christa Biegler, RD: a raspberry blue. 

[00:39:02] Christa Biegler, RD: What 

[00:39:02] Christa Biegler, RD: is a blue raspberry? 

[00:39:04] Patrick Sullivan: Did you ever watch Willy Wonka? 

[00:39:06] Christa Biegler, RD: Oh I have watched Willy Wonka. It's frightening, but yes. 

[00:39:11] Patrick Sullivan: You know what, I don't recall what the inspiration for that was precisely.

[00:39:15] Patrick Sullivan: We have a great team. We call it the Jammily, the Jigsaw family and ideas come from just about everywhere. Whether it's like video ideas, parody song ideas, flavor names, electrolyte Supreme, Berrylicious. Somebody was like. Doesn't that remind you of is it Beyonce's booty licious song or something?

[00:39:36] Patrick Sullivan: If 

[00:39:36] Christa Biegler, RD: that's where you're going to, so of course, once we realized what's going on behind the minds of what goes on the bottle, we're laying it all out right here. This is the G that's right. 

[00:39:46] Patrick Sullivan: Marketing 101. We basically say, yeah it's if the premise makes us laugh, then we feel like, okay, there's something there the rest of the script, the rest of the idea will write itself.

[00:39:58] Patrick Sullivan: If the premise makes us happy and blue raspberry have you tasted it? Of course. Okay, good. It's to me, it's a little bit sweeter than I wanted it to be, but I got upvoted by the rest of the gym. 

[00:40:09] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. You can't make everybody happy. I have people who don't want any sweetness. So they're like, I want this 1 and that's fine.

[00:40:15] Christa Biegler, RD: Coconut water. It's fine. 

[00:40:16] Patrick Sullivan: Do you recommend adrenal cocktail to your clients? Because it's unflavored. So Jigsaw adrenal cocktail salt is another one of our

[00:40:24] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, it's like salt. Oh, 

[00:40:25] Patrick Sullivan: it is very salty. Salt, I like salt 'cause we don't mask the flavor. Salt. 

[00:40:28] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah. Salt. 

[00:40:28] Christa Biegler, RD: I like salt, but everyone says you've gotta just put that in orange juice.

[00:40:32] Christa Biegler, RD: To me, that's what I do. I somehow just never got adrenal cau. So I actually don't know if you guys. Were the original name or if that was morally I don't know where that actually came from. I always forget that. Oh yeah. You guys have the adrenal cocktail. Cause in my brain, I'm like, Oh, adrenal cocktail is just a combination of electrolytes.

[00:40:50] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. My brain, it does. So for me, I recognize you more for other products, whereas some people may recognize you as the original adrenal cocktail people, which I forget, sorry. But everyone says, yep, you got to put that one in. And orange juice. I just never got, for some reason, I just was never on the adrenal cocktail train, but I'm like I drive the pickleball train.

[00:41:10] Christa Biegler, RD: So I guess, we can all have our favorites. We can all play favorites. 

[00:41:14] Patrick Sullivan: Pickleball potassium cocktail, as you just renamed it it contains, I think about four times more potassium than adrenal cocktail and the original adrenal cocktail formula. Was a formula that Morley discovered I cannot remember her name.

[00:41:30] Patrick Sullivan: Maybe you can fact check me on this but her formula, we saw that and said, man, people are like mixing 3 ingredients together to make this adrenal cocktail. What if we just saved them the step and put it in a jar for them? And at that time, we were like, yeah, we could flavor it, but I think the right thing to do is actually go unflavored on this one.

[00:41:51] Patrick Sullivan: So we've kept it unflavored and I, in my morning drink Adrenal Cocktail is one of my staples. It's great for the adrenals. Yep. And so I'll typically do a pickleball cocktail at lunch, but the adrenal cocktail in the morning right after I work 

[00:42:06] Patrick Sullivan: out, 

[00:42:07] Christa Biegler, RD: I do want to mention something that is a nod to something you said earlier in case this comes up for people and it doesn't come up a ton in my clients.

[00:42:15] Christa Biegler, RD: Cause I have a health savvy audience as well, or clients more but it does sometimes. So if you're a person who feels like you ever have any swelling if you go for a walk or something, you're like, Oh, my ring is stuck or just very slightly, or your socks are leaving a mark push the potassium for a while sometimes.

[00:42:31] Christa Biegler, RD: And so just to your point, it's not really, It's neutral, but it just reminded me of this. This is a really cool thing because the sodium is extracellular. The potassium is intracellular. It's easier to have enough sodium. It's easy to not have enough potassium. So sometimes you have to push that if you're seeing that, and that's not always the case, but we know that a little bit.

[00:42:47] Christa Biegler, RD: People will talk about sodium. It's actually an imbalance of the two, in my opinion, right? And same point about blood pressure. I've seen good results of blood pressure pushing the potassium. So I just thank you for having that product. And this would have been a beautiful place to start to wrap up, but I forgot a question about magnesium.

[00:43:02] Christa Biegler, RD: I had, which is how do you make a timed release magnesium? 

[00:43:08] Patrick Sullivan: Now that was a fun question. Hey, it's proprietary. I can't tell her to kill you. The, we use a couple of different forms of micro crystalline cellulose plant fiber and it basically, it was working with a chemist that you do these dissolution tests to get the profile dissolution, basically how quick it dissolves.

[00:43:30] Patrick Sullivan: And our dissolution profile, if I recall correctly, is something like 40 percent dissolves within the first 4 hours. But it's basically an eight hour time release using plant fibers. How did you come up with this? 

[00:43:45] Christa Biegler, RD: How did this, did you say to yourself, people are waking up in the night?

[00:43:50] Christa Biegler, RD: And they still don't have enough magnesium. Maybe we could just make an extender. Did you meet someone? 

[00:43:54] Christa Biegler, RD: Where did this come from? 

[00:43:55] Patrick Sullivan: Came from the trying to avoid the dreaded side effects of too much magnesium when you get are trying to absorb it all at one time. And previous to mag SRT. So we're going back early aughts, the two thousands of the late nineties.

[00:44:11] Patrick Sullivan: It's either slow mag or no mag tab. MagTab was using, yeah, carnauba wax. So the same thing that you put on your car, that's how they were creating their time release. And my dad, the original inventor of the products was like, Hey, I can't get around. get it. You're telling me Carnauba wax is safe for me to take, but I can't get over the fact that what I would wax my car with is what I'm supposed to put in my body.

[00:44:39] Patrick Sullivan: I don't like that. And then the only other really time release product at the time was slow mag. I don't recall what their time releases, but they were made by a company. You may recognize Purdue pharmaceuticals. Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the makers and creators of OxyContin. They, you'd say why did they make a time release magnesium?

[00:45:04] Patrick Sullivan: Because one of the problems with Oxy is it gets you constipated. Those were the two competitors in the space in the early aughts for time release magnesium. It has really just continued to be, I think, a bit of a niche category for magnesium. And when my wife and I were on a trip in, I think it was 2016 or 2017, we got to do this awesome trip.

[00:45:30] Patrick Sullivan: We went to Italy and I saw the sign at the station at the railway station that said Italy's favorite coffee. And I was like, 

[00:45:40] Patrick Sullivan: Ooh, 

[00:45:42] Patrick Sullivan: an awesome tagline. I wonder if we could be America's favorite magnesium. I was like how are we going to justify that first of all? And what I realized was because it's like.

[00:45:52] Patrick Sullivan: a category within a category. So magnesium supplements time release magnesium supplements, we have I think we still have at the time we did definitely have the most five star reviews of any other time release magnesium. So I said there you go. That's. America's number one time release magnesium supplement.

[00:46:13] Patrick Sullivan: And it's funny how that as like a marketing and branding slogan with some actual basis in fact has really turned into a little bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. And that was, 2016 2017, the clinical trial, the Scottsdale magnesium study validated all of the, 5 star reviews that we were getting by seeing increased serum, increased RBC levels and decreasing deficiency symptoms.

[00:46:39] Patrick Sullivan: And, continues to be this great, wonderful product being used by. Hundreds of thousands of people every single year. So we're delighted to be, helping to resolve a leg cramps to be the leg cramp solution and the spark of life solution and I twitch solution for so many people.

[00:47:00] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah. So any 

[00:47:01] Christa Biegler, RD: other main magnesium deficiency symptoms you think we should mention? 

[00:47:06] Patrick Sullivan: Oh, my gosh. Let's just go through the list of 3, 219 reactions that it's involved in. You pick your favorite. 

[00:47:13] Christa Biegler, RD: Many. Thanks. Any kind of muscle cramps. You're having a period take magnesium first. I think it's a great one.

[00:47:20] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah, 

[00:47:20] Patrick Sullivan: it really is a wonderful and what's fun is like seeing on Twitter, a number of people talking about, my supplements. Stack. If I could only take four, it'll always include magnesium. It'll often include cod liver oil, which by the way, jigsaw makes an awesome Alaskan cod liver oil. Alaskan CLO.

[00:47:40] Patrick Sullivan: com 

[00:47:40] Christa Biegler, RD: very good price point for what you get. 

[00:47:42] Patrick Sullivan: Agreed. Thank you for saying that. And it is a fun story behind that. Dr. Jeffrey bland. Is that a cocktail party? And he said, Oh, hi, my name's Dr. Bland. What do you do? And he met the guy that basically owned all these I own a bunch of fishing boats.

[00:47:58] Patrick Sullivan: Oh, where do you fish? Oh. And Dutch Harbor, Alaska. What do you fish for cod? And he goes, Oh, that's cool. He goes, yeah, we sell our cod for about three times more than the standard. Price of cod and Dr. Bland was like how do you do that? He goes because we line catch the fish. So rather than a big net that sort of scoops them up, they line catch, which means the fishermen can take the fish off one at a time and they fillet them.

[00:48:25] Patrick Sullivan: On the boat. So the typical process is that you're in a net, you take the net, you scoop it out of the of the ocean. You dump the catch, you release the catch into the hall where there's ice and it's cold. But Dave, that's his name. Dave hit on their boats. They were flash freezing the fillets.

[00:48:44] Patrick Sullivan: And so they were ultra fresh. There was no time for these fish to begin the rancid rotting process, oxidation process in Nevada. And Dr. Bland, smart son of a gun that he is. I was like, what do you do with the insides? And Dave was like, oh, we just toss 'em over the boat. And and Dr.

[00:49:05] Patrick Sullivan: Ben was like, why don't you send me some of the inside? I'd like to take a look at those. So Dave Ships. Dr. Bland, this huge tray of cod livers and to Dr. Bland's lab. And he's this is more than I was expecting, but then they grind them up and start assaying what's in there. And he's the liquid was almost clear.

[00:49:29] Patrick Sullivan: And it's like naturally high in naturally occurring vitamin a vitamin D the omega threes were super high. And then this really interesting immunity thing called pro resolving mediators. And so what they basically figured out was there you go. So what Dr. Bland figured out is, okay, if we build a processing plant.

[00:49:51] Patrick Sullivan: In Dutch Harbor, after these fish are coming off, we can skip like the deodorizing step. We can skip the what is it when they put in they'll add in a bunch of vitamin D, like after the fact fortifying step, that's the sort of the word I was looking for. And we'll have a much more natural product.

[00:50:09] Patrick Sullivan: So I ran into Dr. Bland at the Expo West. This would have been about 2000. Yeah, no, maybe 2019. I think it was. And he was like, Patrick, I saw your clinical study. That was awesome that you guys did that for Magus RT. I've got this interesting cod liver thing that we're working on. I was like, wait a second.

[00:50:29] Patrick Sullivan: Morley's getting super into cod liver right now. And we, at the time were selling Rosita's. Which is a great form in Norway, 

[00:50:39] Christa Biegler, RD: but a lot 

[00:50:40] Patrick Sullivan: more expensive. And so we figured out, wait a second, this would plug a hole in the root cause protocol that I think could be really cool. So cod liver oil, the jigsaw Alaskan cod liver oil remains I think on number five on our top sellers list, number four, number five, something like that.

[00:50:58] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. And it's top three for me. 

[00:50:59] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah. Okay. There you go. It's one of my, one of my stacks that I use and so yeah, just hopefully your , 

[00:51:05] Christa Biegler, RD: so did they make a plant, Dutch Harbor? 

[00:51:09] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah. They built a state-of-the-art processing plant in Dutch Harbor. 

[00:51:14] Christa Biegler, RD: This is not for the faint of heart, 

[00:51:15] Patrick Sullivan: six years ago.

[00:51:16] Patrick Sullivan: So 

[00:51:17] Christa Biegler, RD: Your raw material. Is owned by Jeff Bland. 

[00:51:21] Patrick Sullivan: Yes. 

[00:51:21] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. So what's the name of his company? Can we say that or should we not? 

[00:51:25] Christa Biegler, RD: Just curious. Bearing Select is the company. I think that is the owner of the raw material. I believe that's the name. Retired and works every day.

[00:51:38] Christa Biegler, RD: Kind of a thing. Dr. Bland so his can't remember the name of his consulting company, but it's I think he consulted with a group that formed bearing select that built the operation that partnered with Dave, the fishermen to. Basically say, Hey, stop throwing the livers into the ocean.

[00:51:58] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah, it is, but it's I'd rather it be, I'd rather that Cobb liver oil get in my body here in Arizona, which by the way, you said Las Vegas earlier. I was like, Oh no, don't connect me to Las Vegas. We live in Arizona. 

[00:52:12] Christa Biegler, RD: I was thinking about 

[00:52:15] Christa Biegler, RD: going to a music festival in Las Vegas.

[00:52:16] Patrick Sullivan: So 

[00:52:17] Patrick Sullivan: EDM probably, you're a big EDM fan. 

[00:52:19] Christa Biegler, RD: No, it was like it's called when we were young as punk rock. 

[00:52:22] Patrick Sullivan: Oh, even better. Okay. Yeah. 

[00:52:24] Christa Biegler, RD: It's like green day, et cetera. Oh, I don't have a favorite band, but since it's the end of March at the time of this recording, I love me some Irish punk rock. And one thing I would really like to do is see flogging Molly or dropkick Murphy's on St.

[00:52:40] Christa Biegler, RD: Patrick's day, which sounds like a crazy time. I actually don't think I've ever seen flogging Molly, but I have seen dropkick Murphy's. So everyone knows who they are, everyone knows who they are because their music is in, it's like a sports events and movies and all kinds of stuff. So they're awesome.

[00:52:57] Patrick Sullivan: That's right.

[00:52:58] Christa Biegler, RD: I love hearing about how people source their stuff because that's what people will ask this question and I don't get it so much anymore, but they're like, what's a good source of blah, blah, blah. And it's you literally just have to dig into the individual companies and find out what kind of person is running the company.

[00:53:12] Christa Biegler, RD: And then you will know if you're hitting a good product. That's really what it is. And that's how all businesses, right? It's is this product made with integrity? Are they doing any testing? Where are they even getting their stuff from? And that's the reality is you got to dig in. And so I have a handful of favorite companies that I think do things well.

[00:53:29] Christa Biegler, RD: And Jigsaw is one of those companies. So 

[00:53:32] Patrick Sullivan: so 

[00:53:32] Patrick Sullivan: much for saying that you said something earlier and I really appreciate it. We have attempted to be really good. At a couple of products. And one of the ways that we bring that to life is a program that we introduced six or seven or eight years ago where we triple test all of our products.

[00:53:51] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah, Ronald Reagan said, trust, but verify. And because we work with contract manufacturing partners. So it's we'll find an ingredient. And then we'll take that ingredient to, like collard oil, we'll take that to a contract manufacturer that has all of the equipment and the people that run the stuff.

[00:54:11] Patrick Sullivan: So we test it when the material is received. We test it after it's done being manufactured, and then we tested a 3rd time at a 3rd party lab after it's been built to ensure that it is what's supposed to be in there and nothing else. 

[00:54:28] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:54:30] Christa Biegler, RD: Do you ever have to throw stuff out? 

[00:54:31] Patrick Sullivan: Oh, yeah. Yeah we right now, I think we're waiting on a.

[00:54:36] Patrick Sullivan: A new batch of the electrolyte supreme which flavor not berrylicious, but I think fruit punch. Yeah, because it didn't meet spec and those are different, difficult conversations to have with your manufacturing partners, cause they obviously don't want it to be wrong and have to redo it. but those are the kind of expectations that you set up front and when they know that's what you do they just have to deal with it.

[00:55:02] Patrick Sullivan: So yeah, we had to redo a batch of that because it didn't mix the meat spec. I don't recall which ingredient didn't expect on, but that's just the nature of the game. And it's expensive. It adds cost. But I think it's an important differentiator and it really means that customers can trust that we are Putting in the bottle what's on the label, 

[00:55:25] Christa Biegler, RD: which is not always the case.

[00:55:26] Christa Biegler, RD: And I have a friend who does a very, she has a very high integrity company, not competing to yours, just different. I learned so much just being a bystander and a friend that she's it is such a nightmare. She's and I am treated so badly sometimes for these, by these manufacturing partners.

[00:55:47] Christa Biegler, RD: And she's it's very much a bro circle, which I don't know, I'm talking to a bro. So it's hard to, 

[00:55:51] Patrick Sullivan: I think it's. For us, like with MAG SRT, we started working with NHK labs in Sarasota, Santa Fe Springs, California. This would have been 13, 14 years ago when we were very young and we were very small back then, and we were one of their smallest customers, if not the smallest, and now we're one of the biggest.

[00:56:14] Patrick Sullivan: If not their biggest, but they have really scaled up and we have scaled up with them and we have a great relationship. They have great customer service and we've had to deal with manufacturing issues with them because nobody does it any other way. Perfect every single time. That's why you have to check.

[00:56:32] Patrick Sullivan: That's why you have to take the time to triple test. And they know that they expect that, but they know that they're going to keep earning our business. And they know customers are going to keep buying our products because they're already addicted to magnesium, right? And so I think that maybe for your friend, if she can get a little bit bigger or possibly work with someone a little bit smaller, but 

[00:56:56] Christa Biegler, RD: it's just a matter of going through people, right?

[00:56:58] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:56:59] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah. And the good news is I, when jigsaw health started in 2005 we were regulated, the dietary supplement industry was regulated by the FDA, but good manufacturing practices, GMPs had not yet been Enforced into the industry. And I don't think that came until maybe 2011, 2012.

[00:57:21] Patrick Sullivan: And we were still pretty small back then. And at first it just felt like a bunch of paperwork where I was like, is all this really necessary? Can't I just trust the manufacturer? I'm paying them to do it. Like, why wouldn't they do it? But then you really realize like GMP, we joke, it stands for get more paper, because if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen.

[00:57:41] Patrick Sullivan: And then once you embrace that we really feel like at Jigsaw health, we embrace GMPs across the entire business. So on the marketing side. It's if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen. Like our whole business is SOPs, standard operating procedures, GMPs on how we make the products or really working with our contract manufacturing partners to make those products.

[00:58:05] Patrick Sullivan: That's just a subset of how we operate the business. So to the extent that your friend can flex by threatening to move elsewhere, or just by like really getting. Into the lab itself, going to the manufacturing company itself and like developing a an emotional connection, a human relationship with the people who are there, like Shabir at NHK.

[00:58:32] Patrick Sullivan: I remember when his kid was born and now I think his kid is about to start applying for colleges. It's wow. Wow. That's incredible. That's awesome. What a life. 

[00:58:44] Christa Biegler, RD: Who knew you'd have all of these back stories, which is really pretty fun. And, you were talking earlier about how your magnesium source from the Dead Sea, did you have to ever change your sourcing over the years where it was just like this source doesn't work in anymore?

[00:58:59] Patrick Sullivan: I remember a time when someone texted me in about 2015 and someone texted me a news report of Albion labs in Utah and their building was on fire. They went through a, they had a fire at their lab where they react the Magnesium oxide and turn it into di magnesium malate. And I don't recall the cause of the fire, but certainly anytime you have a fire in a manufacturing plant, it's gonna cause some disruption in the supply chain.

[00:59:30] Patrick Sullivan: And it did we, yeah, gosh, this would've been 2018, 2019 because it was after the clinical trial, Scottsdale magnesium study on D Magnesium malate. And the thing that I was so nervous about all of a sudden was like, okay. First of all, I'm glad everyone's okay. Nobody got hurt. Two, we can't just change the formula of MAG SRT and use the study results from the Scottsdale Magnesium Study, because if we change out dimag malate to something else, that invalidates the study that we did over here.

[01:00:05] Patrick Sullivan: So in that case, Thankfully, supply chain, we were able to work through it, time through it. Alveon did an awesome job back then. So it was a struggle, but now just recently Adreno Cocktail contains Redmond's Sea Salt and Redmond's, which is based in Salt Lake, has decided that they're not going to resell that ingredient.

[01:00:27] Patrick Sullivan: Into to any other suppliers. So all of a sudden, one of our top selling products, Adreno cocktail, wait, we can't use one of the key ingredients. Darn it. Like I love Redmond sea salt. I think it's a great ingredient. So we jumped on the internet and it's okay what are the other salt options that are out there?

[01:00:47] Patrick Sullivan: We, we weren't a fan of the Celtic sea salt, but I think we stumbled upon a really interesting salt that's Eden. Sea salt. I think that's where we're going to end up doing. We're in the final decisions on looking at that. In Mexico, there's some Colima salt that's interesting that I think is like from a lagoon kind of a thing.

[01:01:06] Patrick Sullivan: But there's a number of, I guess that's just the nature of being in the business after 19 years. There's sometimes that a plant blows up and there's sometimes that Supplier says we're gonna change our rules, or whatever. There's also times where it's like an ingredient will go from a hundred bucks a kilo to $4,000 a kilo and stuff like, that's tough.

[01:01:24] Patrick Sullivan: I feel like we've seen some of that happen over the years and I don't know. That's just maybe the nature of the business. 

[01:01:29] Christa Biegler, RD: You're 

[01:01:29] Christa Biegler, RD: like, was something broken here? Did they accidentally add a zero to this? 

[01:01:34] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah, . 

[01:01:35] Patrick Sullivan: Oh, for sure. Excuse me. I think your quote is off. 

[01:01:37] Christa Biegler, RD: Yes, exactly. And on a positive note, at least your products have straight forward ingredients in some respect, right?

[01:01:45] Christa Biegler, RD: Where there's just like a few ingredients per product sometimes, which is better than 20, right? 

[01:01:50] Patrick Sullivan: Yeah, that's typically 

[01:01:50] Patrick Sullivan: what we aim for is a smaller supplement fax label. We don't always end up doing that quite a few ingredients in the electrolyte Supreme, but on the flip side, the electrolyte Supreme is like almost like a good tasting daily multivitamin.

[01:02:04] Patrick Sullivan: It covers a lot of different Micro mineral kind of things and stuff. 

[01:02:07] Christa Biegler, RD: So Patrick, we've covered a lot today. We covered at least five. Types of magnesium with our top three favorites, three and eight glycinate malate, we talked about how those are created, which I hadn't really thought too much about before.

[01:02:19] Christa Biegler, RD: And that was fun. We talked about these two types of muscle cramps, the kind that comes on before or during the activity and the one that's after, which is potassium versus magnesium deficiency. We talked about magnesium recommendations. We talked about how you make time to release magnesium and we made many rabbit holes on very.

[01:02:38] Christa Biegler, RD: Valiant topics. So 

[01:02:40] Patrick Sullivan: yeah, I think you said 

[01:02:41] Patrick Sullivan: we had about you said I had about 10 minutes. How did we do on time? 

[01:02:45] Christa Biegler, RD: We did okay. We did. Okay. 

[01:02:46] Patrick Sullivan: Okay. 

[01:02:46] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[01:02:49] Patrick Sullivan: An 

[01:02:49] Patrick Sullivan: hour and 20 minutes later into a 45 minute podcast, she says, somehow we got distraught. 

[01:02:55] Christa Biegler, RD: Somehow we got talking about cod livers being thrown in the ocean, whatever 

[01:03:00] Patrick Sullivan: important stuff.

[01:03:00] Patrick Sullivan: There's a good visual there. 

[01:03:02] Christa Biegler, RD: It's a good visual. I like it. The thing I enjoy most is what goes on behind the scenes. So for me, I enjoyed the conversation thoroughly. Tell me a little bit about where people can find you online if this is the first time they know about Jigsaw Health and we have a coupon code for them as well.

[01:03:17] Patrick Sullivan: Yes, we do. You can definitely visit us and find all of these wonderful products, including pickleball cocktail and mag SRT and cod liver oil at jigsaw health. com. And you can use Krista's code, which I believe we determined was less stressed. 10 less stressed 10. And certainly one other little plug that I'd be remiss not to mention, if you like behind the scenes coming out in April.

[01:03:44] Patrick Sullivan: Breaking Pickleball. Breaking Pickleball is 

[01:03:48] Patrick Sullivan: a documentary. 

[01:03:50] Patrick Sullivan: Breaking Pickleball is a documentary that we filmed. We hired a documentarian to film season one of the Arizona Pickleball League, which we hosted at our indoor facility, the Orchard at Jigsaw Health. It took us a year to make this. And I said in the beginning of the film, If we absolutely crash and burn on the Arizona Pickleball League, we might as well get it on tape.

[01:04:16] Patrick Sullivan: So this is that tape. And if you like behind the scenes I think you're really going to enjoy it, but breaking pickleball. com it comes out. The first episode drops on Monday, April 1st. 

[01:04:27] Christa Biegler, RD: I think 

[01:04:28] Christa Biegler, RD: this is where if someone is feeling burned out in their industry and their job, it's because they're probably not having enough fun and they need to pickleball.

[01:04:37] Christa Biegler, RD: If that's what you really care about, like focus on what you love. And if it makes sense, name a product after it, sell it to everybody, and then everyone can ask, is it okay if I drink this? If I don't even play pickleball and pickleball is, I think you're leading the charge a little bit, but pickleball is on the comeback team here.

[01:04:56] Christa Biegler, RD: My friend plays pickleball with a bunch of 60 year old ladies all the time. I would totally play, which I was great. I'm thankful. And I would totally play pickleball if I had a pickleball court. So anyway, sometime in Arizona. 

[01:05:08] Patrick Sullivan: Next time you're here, we're going to hit the pickleball at the orchard and it's going to be great.

[01:05:13] Christa Biegler, RD: I 

[01:05:13] Christa Biegler, RD: feel like I should probably practice before I go to the 

[01:05:16] Patrick Sullivan: beginners are welcome. Beginners are 

[01:05:18] Patrick Sullivan: welcome. 

[01:05:19] Christa Biegler, RD: Great. Good deal. All right. Jigsaw hell. Thank you so much for coming on today. Patrick and entertaining us a bit. And if you need more entertainment every Friday, they make some ridiculous, funny video.

[01:05:28] Christa Biegler, RD: I was very much enjoying the St. Patrick's day video, which is, was just, I don't know how long it takes you guys to do that, but. Thank goodness you do. Everyone enjoys their job a lot more when you make ridiculous videos on Friday at Jigsaw. 

[01:05:41] Patrick Sullivan: Indeed they do. Jigsaw funny Fridays. 

[01:05:43] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Perfect. Thanks so much for coming on today.