- [Dr. Patrick]: The question is, "What brands
of sulforaphane supplements do you consider reliable?"
- [Dr. Fahey]: Okay, the story there requires, again, I've given it to you, my disclosure.
I started a company with my mentor and his son, and the company is still being run, Brassica
Protection Products, and they make broccoli seed extract that go into a variety of supplements.
I know that. And I also, based on my, you know, grandfatherly love of the company,
which, you know, I'm trying to help do good things now that I've retired, I know that
the vendors or the supplement makers that they sell their stuff to by and large do a good job
and make good products. And my lab, before I retired, has tested many of those products and
found that, you know, if they say they have X milligrams of glucoraphanin in their product,
yeah, they've got at least that in there, and so they're good supplements.
As I mentioned, there are a lot of supplements that are pure crap that don't have what they say
they have. And fortunately... Well, I'm not aware of any of those that are... Well, I shouldn't say
that. I am aware of some of them that are widely sold and probably people are taking. But I can...
So I've commented on brands that I would know...that I know and that I would trust on
our website, www.chemoprotectioncenter.org. They're in the FAQs of that website.
And, you know, specifically... And I can provide links, but they're easy to find.
I know that Crucera-SGS by Thorne is good, has what it says it has. OncoPLEX,
which is made by a company called Xymogen. Avmacol, which is made by Nutramax. Swanson
has a Vision Defense product that's decent. Ortho Molecular has something called MitoCORE.
Max International has something called Max N-Fuze which is a drink, I believe. Yeah, it is.
So, I mean, these are mostly gelcaps, tablets. The first two that I mentioned are gelcaps,
the Avmacol is a tablet. Vision Defense I can't remember, but
it's a supplement for eye health, so it's go other things in it.
So these are all good. I'm not endorsing them in the sense that,
you know, I'm not associated with any of those companies, but I've
talked to some of them, I've used some of their products in clinical studies that we've published,
or that we're getting ready to publish. I would stick with a supplement that someone like me says
decent things about. And I only say that because if you take some of the shoddier supplements,
you may wind up just making expensive urine. Meaning, you know, you'll spend $30 or $40 or
$50 or $60 for a bottle and, yeah, you'll not get the benefits that you hope for.
- [Dr. Patrick]: Just to follow up on that. I know, of the supplements that you mentioned,
that Avmacol has stabilized sulforaphane in it. Do
any of the other supplements, or are they just all glucoraphanin?
- [Dr. Fahey]: No, it doesn't, actually. That's not...
- [Dr. Patrick]: Oh, it doesn't. Stabilized myrosinase.
- [Dr. Fahey]: Right. So Avmacol has glucoraphanin in it and it has myrosinase.
I think all of those companies are going to move towards adding myrosinase to their mixes, but I,
of course, don't know that. You know, I think they're all decent products and
we've done trials with Thorne's Crucera, with Xymogen's OncoPLEX, with Nutramax's
Avmacol. Some of the... There are a lot of clinical...there are a number of clinical
studies that are going to be coming out or are in press using Avmacol with autism and schizophrenia.
But it's not to say that those are the best supplements. I think
they're decent supplements and they have active myrosinase, that's true.
I think getting...you know, we talked about this when we talked about dosing, but we probably
didn't talk about it enough. Your listeners should know that, you know, if you're counting on your
gut's...your intestinal tract's myrosinase to do all of the conversion for a supplement, you're
probably going to want to take a higher level of glucoraphanin. And if you're getting a product
that has myrosinase in it, you don't need as much glucoraphanin because some of that conversion is
theoretically going to happen based on what you've provided in the supplement tablet.
If you were supplementing with sulforaphane, and I know there are a number of questions about this,
with stabilized sulforaphane, so let me jump ahead to that.
- [Dr. Patrick]: Like Prostaphane, does Prostaphane have stabilized sulforaphane?
- [Dr. Fahey]: Prostaphane is the only product that I know that reliably has
what they say they have of sulforaphane, the amount they say they have. And it is stable.
But it's a European product, it's a French product. I think it's fair to say that it's
difficult, it's very difficult in fact, to get it in this country, to buy it. And, you know,
because it is a European product, our...it doesn't fall under the purview of our FDA.
So, you know, you can say all the nasty stuff you want about our regulators and about our FDA,
and there are plenty of negative things that have been said about them, but they do have
some oversight capacity. And although they don't do a good job of...based on the law
that governs them, they don't do much in terms of regulating quality of dietary supplements,
at least they have some power over the industry.
So, you know, I wish there was more stabilized sulforaphane, various people are working on it.
We've done some... There's a company in
England that has something that's nonnatural, a synthetic sulforaphane that they've stabilized.
We've actually done some experiments with that type of sulforaphane
and found that there are some adverse side effects, so I certainly wouldn't recommend that.
So yeah, it's a work in progress, again. And companies and universities are looking
to ways to stabilize sulforaphane. It's a very unstable molecule inherently,
which is one of the reasons why it does what it does in your body. So it's difficult to deliver,
it's difficult to stabilize, which is why the pant, you know, focuses on storing glucoraphanin,
and then it converts it when it needs it. Because, after all, it's a defensive plant chemical. And
we, when we take supplements, I think, are well-advised to take glucoraphanin
and myrosinase, unless and until someone does a better job of stabilizing sulforaphane itself.