- [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  

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.