139: AlgaeCal's Calcium Claims: Science or Salesmanship?

Transcript

Speaker: I'm Laurel Biebersdorf, strength and conditioning coach. And I'm Dr. Sarah Court, physical therapist. With over 30 years of combined experience in fitness, movement, and physical therapy, we believe in strong opinions loosely held. Which means we're not here to hype outdated movement concepts. or to gatekeep or fearmonger strength training for women. For too long, women have been sidelined in strength training. Oh, you mean handed pink dumbbells and told to sculpt?

Speaker: Whatever that means, we're here to change that with tools, evidence, and ideas that center women's needs and voices. Let's dive in.

Speaker: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Movement Logic Podcast. Hello. Hello. I'm Dr. Sarah Court, physical therapist. I'm here with my co-host, Laurel Beaversdorf, who is a strength and conditioning coach and a degree candidate in kinesiology. What? Ooh, fancy. Once you get your degree, since it's a master's degree, can we call start calling you Master Bergdorf?

Speaker: Or I guess we would say Mistress Bergdorf. Bergdorf? Beaversdorf. Where's Bergdorf? Bergdorf and Goodman? Yeah, Bergdorf Goodman. I'm back in your work. would have a very different looking house and life. If you if you were a master Beaversdorf? If I were a Bergdorf. Well, that's true. What about if you were Mistress Beaversdorf?

Speaker: Is mistress only for single women? I think i be mistress is someone who is sleeping with a husband that is not yours. How about a madam? Madam is worse though. If we're going to go down that trail. Right. I think I'm a master. Are you a master? I you can be a female master, a male master. It's not a mister.

Speaker: No, it's not a mister. It's a master. It is a master. Yeah. i will have my masters of science. Yeah. So that's cool. That is cool. Science master. We're going to call you science master Beaversdorf.

Speaker: There we go. All right. Well, today's episode is about a company called AlgaeCal. I have been wanting to do this episode for a very long time because I really don't like them. And the more I learned about them and researched about them, the less I liked them. And there are so many social media ads by them. There's so many influencer ads. They're actually about AlgaeCal. So Today, we're going to talk about why this company is getting our attention, what they claim their products can do for bone health, and the role that AlgaeCal is playing in what we call the doctor-to-brand pipeline, especially for multiple offender Dr. Vonda Wright.

Speaker: Just as a heads up, there was so much in here. There are so many paths, like extra side quests, I could have gone on. This could have very easily become a three-hour episode, but I did my very best to stay streamlined and just talk about why they are on our radar kind of generally.

Speaker: Nice. Before we get into it, We have our barbell mini course that you can access for free if you give us your email address. So that's a way to start to learn a little bit about barbells.

Speaker: Laurel, why do we teach with barbells? Why don't we just do like everybody else and tell people to buy some 10 and 15 pound dumbbells and call it a day? There are many, many reasons, but let me start with what I think was our original core reason, which is that We wanted to teach strength because we saw so many women close to our age under loading.

Speaker: And personally, from my perspective, even if these women had dumbbells and kettlebells in their home, they were still under loading because dumbbells and kettlebells to have the array that you would probably want to have to sufficiently load your whole body and be able to do that in sets under 15 reps, which let's be honest, doing more than 15 reps in a set is something some people like to do, but most of us don't feel like we have time for that or the attention span for that.

Speaker: And I found that, especially for lower body exercises, and that's the big one, that even if someone had a couple dumbbells, had a couple kettlebells in their home, they were either stopping at like rep 15 to 20 because it's like, well, how much fucking longer am I going to have to keep doing this until it actually starts to feel challenging? Yeah.

Speaker: Or they were going for 40 to 45 reps. I had a woman once email me, she was doing some of the workouts in my virtual studio and she was like, is it okay if I'm doing 45 reps of the deadlift? Oh my God. god Oh like she was following She was following the guidance around effort.

Speaker: Sure. She was like, I have to do 45 reps until I feel like I could only do two more reps. And I was like, so technically the answer is yes, it is okay to do 45 reps, but man, for an exercise like the deadlift, like, yeah I almost want to say no, that's not okay. Like, you really should ideally not be doing more than 15.

Speaker: Can you explain why though? The why for me is that we are training the deadlift in order to not only have muscle mass and strength in a hinge, but to be able to pick things up off the floor. Yeah. It's about training to the actual goal. The goal yeah pick things up 45 times. The goal is pick up something heavier than I can currently pick up. Right. That's right. Or, or to pick up something that is like going to tire you out in at least I would hope like 15 reps, right? Right. and And even for something like the deadlift or the squat, I would even try to get it closer to like, on average, maybe eight to 10 or 12, right? So that's why barbells, you will never run out of weight.

Speaker: The weight will always be heavy enough. And This is the case if you get at least a certain number of plate sets to go with the barbell.

Speaker: Once you have the twenty five s the fifteen s the ten s the fives and the two point five s most people are good to go for life. that's a lot in my opinion easier to work with easier not to under load right right we want our lower body to be strong that's a hugely important thing for longevity for living independently for fall prevention for fracture prevention like we really want to stimulate the lower body the hips right yeah It's hard to do that when you don't have sufficient weight because you're either going to have to do lots of reps, right? Or you're probably going to, you're going to bow out because you're going to be like, okay, that's rep 35. And I think I'm exactly, i think I'm done. Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, I've been working with my mom with a barbell for ah a little bit over a year um, She has been very reluctant to increase weight because she has, let's be fair. She's turning 80 this year, but she is in very good shape. She plays tennis, but she's very nervous. Each time I suggest we increase the weight, it would be a big kind of like back and forth about it's only five pounds. You can do it. And one time I had her, we were adding five pounds and I was like, okay, before we add the five pounds, I just want you to do this deadlift.

Speaker: Until you can only do two more. And to your point, she did like 30 of them. And I was like, well, don't you see how if we add five pounds, but I only need you to do more like eight, that that's probably going to be okay.

Speaker: And like, she needed to feel it in her own body to understand it I think, I think that's a challenging thing sometimes as well is like you and I can sit here and explain it to people, but until you feel the difference of like, what does something heavy actually feel like? Yeah.

Speaker: It's hard to describe that without feeling it, but I ah more and more, and I know it's my algorithm, but more and more I'm seeing older women lifting barbells. I'm seeing less fear mongering about getting strong.

Speaker: There is of course the other side, the sort of dark side of the internet, the skinny talk where everyone's still obsessed with being as skinny as all these celebrities who are on Ozempic, but that is not our vibe. And that is not what we're out here to teach you. We're here to teach you how to get strong And how to have a life that is enjoyable because strength and capacity and resilience and endurance and all of these words, they are actively going downwards as you age. And I don't want to be fear-mongering, but at the same time, I feel like I've got to do a little bit of a like, wake up people. Like it's not, they're not going to get better. and They're not even going to stay the same.

Speaker: If you don't start doing this, they're going to continue to go down. You can start doing this weightlifting at any age you want, but today is probably the best day to start. And if not today, then tomorrow.

Speaker: So get yourself on our mailing list, get the barbell mini course, start, start checking it out. And you can always reach out to us with questions on Instagram, on our website, right? Like whatever, whatever help you need, we are very willing to give it to you.

Speaker: All right. Yeah. Today we're going to walk through four things. Number one, how we first heard about our topic du jour, which is LG Cal. And it's actually because they reached out to us.

Speaker: Two, their use of something called strontium, which product it's in and why strontium is important. Number three, Dr. Vonderwright's connection to LG Cal and the good old doctor to brand pipeline.

Speaker: And number four, how all of this shows up in influencer content online, in the claims these influencers are repeating to their customer followers.

Speaker: Right. Okay. So before we get into those questions, let's just set the stage. Who is AlgaeCal? What do they claim? So AlgaeCal is a supplement company that positions itself as a bone health solution.

Speaker: And their brand is built around this one central idea that you can not only slow bone loss, but you can actually increase bone density just by using their supplements.

Speaker: They have, of course, research on their website that supports this claim, but the studies are observational and can only provide association claims. They are not causative proof, right? It's not an RCT.

Speaker: the The research that they put on their website is not high quality. Wait a minute, overselling what the research shows? Have we seen this before ever? Literally every grifter out there standing in front of a study and pointing at it.

Speaker: So AlgaeCal sells a product that is called AlgaeCal Plus. And then they also sell a product called Strontium Boost. And they claim, but by taking those two supplements together, that is the fastest way to increase bone density.

Speaker: Do you like f to how you have to buy two supplements? Not just one supplement, right? It's this kind of evil evil marketing genius. Yeah. Yeah. So AlgaeCal's founder and CEO is someone named Dean Newells.

Speaker: Dean's story, from what I can tell, is that he wasn't satisfied with... This is where I just start laughing because it's so ridiculous. He wasn't satisfied with, quote unquote, rock-based calcium.

Speaker: And he wanted something that could, quote, build bone, not just slow bone loss. Okay. Laurel, do you know what rock-based calcium is?

Speaker: I mean... are you got to guess it's calcium from rocks? Yeah, like on the periodic table, like calcium is a mineral. Yeah. Calcium as a mineral shows up in a couple of ways. So there's actually two different minerals that we're going to be talking about here. The first one is called calcium carbonate.

Speaker: huh And that is what he is calling, quote, rock-based calcium but ah that is mined from limestone, chalk, oyster shells, right? Literally from rocks.

Speaker: hu Now, here's the thing. Calcium carbonate. It does have a high percentage of your elemental calcium, which is good. You want that. And it's often cheaper. Yeah. It's cheaper because it might cause like GI issues and they tell you to eat it with food for that reason.

Speaker: hu There also exists something called calcium citrate, which has a lower percentage of elemental calcium, but it's often better tolerated and better absorbed, but it's also more expensive.

Speaker: Okay. And so AlgaeCal's angle is that this product they may ah make, AlgaeCal Plus, ah uses calcium from a marine algae source.

Speaker: And they call it, and this is a quote, organic ocean calcium. Okay. Because rocks are apparently not organic. Okay. I don't know why not. But anyway, they present it as algae-derived calcium.

Speaker: They contrast it to rock-based calcium. Now in practice, algae derived calcium products are typically largely calcium carbonate, which is that first version of the calcium that is actually not as well absorbed. That's harder on your intestines. Yeah.

Speaker: So this idea of rock-based calcium is not like a scientific category, right? It's a framing device to make regular other standard supplements sound inferior and make their product sound special. They're claiming it's quote, more natural than rock-based calcium, which is literally absurd because whether it's coming from rocks or from the ocean, they are both part of nature the last time I checked, right? It's like the craziest thing ever.

Speaker: However, these algae-based calcium claims are certainly enough to influence Dr. Vonda Wright, and more on that later. So I went into Consensus, which is the AI tool that we use to access research, and I asked it.

Speaker: this question, is algae derived calcium, a superior source of calcium carbonate to reduce bone loss in those with osteoporosis, which is essentially what they're claiming, right?

Speaker: And so it did its search and here's what it said in summary of the research that's right out there. And this is a quote, current lab animal and limited human data suggest algae derived multi-mineral calcium complexes may be more bioavailable and more bone protective than standard calcium carbonate.

Speaker: But definitive, large, long-term trials in people with osteoporosis are still lacking. So in other words, the evidence is not there. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. A couple things kind of jump out to me as being sort of classic moves yeah from marketers who are not being completely transparent about their claims and where they got the evidence for their claims. One is that this evidence isn't conclusive, that there isn't enough evidence, but they're making these definitive claims that sound really confident, right? Like this is a better source of calcium. This is going to help you more. right

Speaker: Number two is this like pseudo appeal to nature. So weird because they're contrasting nature with nature. It's like the weirdest appeal to nature. Yeah, but like for some reason they think they the way they're spinning it, it's like rocks are less natural than algae. Right.

Speaker: And so there's almost this appeal to, I don't know, like I'm thinking of like the customer that might be like really intrigued about the idea that their bone medicine comes from algae instead of rocks. would I rather eat algae or would I rather eat rocks? Right. it sounds more like delicious and and nutritious in a way. we We might associate algae with certain ocean-based greens that we know are nutritious that have a very high like mineral, yeah vitamin and mineral content and go like, ooh, wouldn't it be nice if I got my calcium from algae because I associate it with all these really healthful foods that I eat that come from the ocean that are green, right? Right. And and and I don't like,

Speaker: particularly find the idea of eating rocks appetizing. Right? Like, we really generally shouldn't eat or consume rocks. But this idea that it's natural is something that absolutely permeates wellness misinformation, like this whole idea that we shouldn't pasteurize our milk, right? You should just drink natural milk, right? this idea that we should avoid certain types of chemicals, like in vaccines, for example, or this idea that sunscreen is toxic because it's full of chemicals. So it's just better to let the natural healing properties of the sun, like get your vitamin D kind of thing. Well,

Speaker: But the end of the day, like people are getting skin cancer from not wearing sunscreen, right? yeah And so there's just this idea that if it's natural, it's healthy and it's good, and it's a complete fallacy. It's the appeal to nature. right And I think anytime you hear a company appealing to nature, you should immediately have red flags because it probably means they're being a little dishonest or a little manipulative or both.

Speaker: There was another product that a patient was showing me and she was reading the copy from the product website because she was like, should I get this thing? Whenever anyone asks me, should I get this thing? I pretty much immediately my head, I'm like, no, because I know that it's just some other shiny object that caught their eye. But I swear to God, one of the sentences started with naturally derived from nature.

Speaker: And I was like, that doesn't, what? Yeah. How many, how many times can we toss into this? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. All right. So the other thing that algae Cal does is in terms of making large claims, not backed by research is that they claim their strontium supplement increases your bone mineral density.

Speaker: However, that may be more related to just how strontium shows up on a DEXA scan, but we're going to pause here on that. We're going to put a pin in it. We're going talk about that later.

Speaker: Let's talk about how they first approached us. Yeah. So we heard about them because they approached us. And what happened is about a year ago, we got an email from a woman who is a fitness content manager at LG Cal.

Speaker: And she said she was a huge fan of Move In Logic. She wrote a very long, very nice email. And the reason it caught our attention is because it wasn't a PR like slash we want you to sell our supplements slash will you be a brand ambassador type email, which we I immediately delete. Right. I don't even read the first sentence. I'm like, oh, I know what this is Delete. Okay.

Speaker: It was more of a confession. She started with a personal confession that she had, quote, made a lot of mistakes that we talk about on the show. Mm-hmm. And first of all, i want to say, girl, that's why we talk about it, because we made those mistakes. And she said she trained with Dr. Lauren Fishman.

Speaker: folks listening, if you don't know who Dr. Lauren Fishman is, you can go into our back catalog and we'll link it in the show notes. Our episode, Make Dr. Lauren Fishman Make Sense. But she had trained with Dr. Lauren Fishman and used his study to claim that yoga increases bone density, which we thoroughly myth busted.

Speaker: She said she strictly followed the no forward folding osteoporosis rule without realizing how harmful these broad generalizations can be. We should also link the episode in our show notes about osteoporosis myths. We went into the Sanaki study that I think is the root cause of this thought virus yes about forward folding being bad, which is it does actually not a very good study and definitely not one you'd want to make some conclusive statement about forward bends and osteoporosis from. Or even change anything about how you teach from. yeah Yeah, exactly. It's a very weak study. So anyway, so this fact that she was demonstrating a very high level of self-awareness and had clearly been on a journey that similar to ones we've been on really caught her attention. And she said something along the lines of, I'm really trying to do things differently now.

Speaker: Now, she said her goal at AlgaeCal was to produce safe, effective fitness content that encouraged an older, mostly female audience to exercise. And she was trying to learn from these past mistakes of fear-mongering, SIBOing these women out of exercise. Then she described talking to Professor Belinda Beck, whose work we have discussed extensively on this podcast and who we also interviewed her. She is one of the authors on the Lithmore trial. And she said that that conversation

Speaker: left her feeling stuck because she was worried that older women might need to train only with a PT in person to be safe. And I can understand how she would come away thinking that after talking to Professor Belinda Beck. Absolutely. That is definitely Beck's m MO is like, it's not safe without someone there. She's very much, but that's also her marketing, right? Because that's her course.

Speaker: Well, I would also add to this, it's not just older women that Dr. Beck is suggesting should work with a PT. It's older women with osteoporosis. Agreed. And so depending on the severity of their osteoporosis, I would agree. But yeah, so she does tend to lean a little bit more toward the cautious end of the spectrum. Yes. In terms of like, yes, you you should be working with a clinician, not just a personal trainer, not just guided strength training.

Speaker: Okay. And then she asked this woman who emailed us, she asked two main questions. She asked, if it was possible to teach an online weight training course for beginners, especially to, for example, a woman around 65 who's intimidated by the gym and doesn't know where to start.

Speaker: And to that, our answer is sure as hell is. I was gonna say, hold my beer. Exactly. And then second question, if it is possible, would we be interested in collaborating on a class or mini series for AlgaeCal?

Speaker: So, okay, this a legitimate question. It's ah it's an actually an offer that is like way more in line with something we would actually want to do rather than be like a brand ambassador for a supplement or sell some like company's merch. We're being asked to actually teach a course. Okay, you're speaking our language. That is something we would probably say yes to if everything kind of lined up and conditions were right, right? right And her points are spot on.

Speaker: She's clearly thought about this. Yes, a lot of people are intimidated by the gym, especially women. a lot of women have been fed, especially a ton of garbage, nocebo-based, fear-based advice around strength training, especially when osteoporosis is present.

Speaker: And then, yes, you can teach people very effectively, online, incredibly safely to lift weights yeah with osteoporosis. Lots of students in our course have... osteopenia, osteoporosis, they've received diagnoses. We've even, just to promo us for a second, we've even had more than one of those people take our course, go get a DEXA scan and have improved their bone density score.

Speaker: Exactly. So this is literally what we do. Yes. In my head, can I just speak for a second about how skeptical I am with these types of author offers from any type of company? Yes.

Speaker: Because I've worked for companies before. And I don't know if you know this about me, but I don't do that anymore. i work for myself. yeah And I work with Sarah. Me too. Same Z's. Yeah. Generally speaking, whenever a company wants to hire you to do something, unless I know the CEO slash owner personally, and they know me,

Speaker: Like, I know I'm going to be undersold. I know I'm going to be underpaid. I know I'm going to be exploited. I know they're not going to value my services. That's my baseline. That's where I start. So my hackles are up and I'm like, oh, you want you want to hire me, huh? Okay. Let me just ask you a couple of questions and see how you respond. yeah Let me ask you how much you're going to pay me.

Speaker: If you can't give me a straight, fair answer, we're done here. exactly Because I'm pretty sure you're going to try to spin this like, oh, you'll get exposure. God, that stupid word, exposure. You know, oh, you'll meet people. Oh, and then it might turn into this. And I'm like, yeah, you know what? Why don't you go fuck yourself? Yeah. I mean, especially people- That's harsh, but it's actually it's actually not harsh. What's harsh is not paying people fairly. A hundred percent. What's harsh is the idea that, oh, you're getting paid in exposure. I remember one time some lady was like, I don't live anywhere near Santa Monica. And she was like, come down to Santa Monica on Sunday because we want to teach a free class on the pier. And I was like, abso-fucking-lutely no. and But the big sell, the big sell was like, it's exposure. I'm like, exposure to what? Cold air on a Sunday morning on the Santa Monica pier? No, thank you. It's really undervaluing my service exactly and exploiting me. That's what it is. You and I are just past doing things for free. I think it's maybe a newer kids game. It's not our game anymore.

Speaker: I mean, it's, it's, yeah, there's lots to say, maybe we'll do an episode at about some point. But yeah, sure I don't think it should be anybody's game. Right? I agree. If I'm doing this to bring visibility to your brand, you should pay me. 100%. 100%. Why should make your brand more visible for free?

Speaker: make your brand more visible free Yeah. Okay. So yeah anyway, she's got all these thoughts. She's got all these thoughtful things to share. She's got this possible offer, right? Yeah. And so we checked out AlgaeCal, of course. We're like, all right, this kind of sounds like something we might and be be interested in. It was worth investigating. Exactly.

Speaker: So we looked up AlgaeCal and we did not like what we found. Not much. We found out that this is, yes, it's a supplement company and it's clearly working on building a content ecosystem. So branching out beyond just selling supplements to now wanting to sell exercise programs, right?

Speaker: And okay, this is now exercise programs attached to a supplement, which means that this content is no longer just about exercise, right? right It's kind of a mechanism for selling the supplements. because Let's be honest, no one's probably going to get rich off of selling exercise programs. It's just not going happen. but But you can get very, very rich off of selling supplements. So this is just, it will probably be a loss leader if I could use that term for this company. This is me. This is conjecture. This is just me spitballing here. But like,

Speaker: A loss leader is a product or a service that you provide that you will probably lose money on, but it brings people in the door and then gets those people to become customers of a product that you will actually make money on. But this is it's a loss leader for us, not for them.

Speaker: Right? like No, no. he made this But if we made this content for them, they're not like, oh yeah, we're here to become the number one exercise site. They're like, we're here to get people watching something and then scrolling around the rest of our website and maybe buying our stuff. Well, that's a loss leader for them because they're paying us to do.

Speaker: If they're paying us, which we don't know. Well, we don't. I mean, holy shit. Like, yeah, you're right. Because we didn't pull on that thread long enough to find out, which we fucking should have. But yeah I feel a little disingenuous doing that because then we're kind of taking up her time. Right. um We're acting like we're more interested than are. You're right. they might have They might have tried to get us to like do it for free for exposure, quote unquote. I kind of suspect they were going to pay us, right? I don't know how much they were going to pay us, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was way far too little for the service. But what I'm saying is that them offering this as something for their customers would act probably as a loss leader. If they did pay us, they would probably not recoup that money

Speaker: in payment for the exercise program, although I could be wrong about that, but they definitely would recoup it in how those people who would become attracted to that exercise program would then convert into supplement subscribers, right? On auto renew payments, right?

Speaker: So anyway, we looked into AlgaeCal, we looked into their claims, we looked into the research supporting or lack thereof, their claims and their products. And we, as I said, did not like what we saw. And I responded with an email thanking her for her message and politely declining.

Speaker: And I gave her a few specific reasons. I wrote first, AlgaeCal supplement claims seem to rely heavily on observational studies, not RCTs, and they don't appear to have been independently replicated.

Speaker: Second, much of their research involves the use of strontium, which can artificially inflate DEXA bone density readings, making bone building claims hard to separate from measurement artifact. And we're going to talk all about strontium in a minute. And third, there are safety concerns and regulatory cautions around strontium, which are also a red flag.

Speaker: yeah And then I ended with this. This is a quote from the email, quote, Because of these issues collaborating under the LG Cal banner would not align with the evidence based standards that Sarah and I hold ourselves to.

Speaker: For us it's essential that any product we attach our names to be free from supplement marketing claims that could overstate or miss represent the science. I do think your intent to provide safe, accessible entry points into strength training for older women is important and very much needed.

Speaker: I encourage you to keep pursuing ways to deliver that, ideally without the baggage of supplement-driven claims attached." Nice. unquote nice Yeah. So I, again, felt like this person coming to us came to us in transparency. Mm-hmm.

Speaker: But perhaps if I give her the benefit of the doubt, she herself had not thought or investigated the company she's working for enough to realize that it might not align with, maybe, might not align with what she suggests are her values, right? Especially because she talks about having previously followed things sort of to the letter. I wonder, I'm curious actually, because that was about a year ago. I wonder if she even still works for them anymore. In my dream world, she left and she's running her own weightlifting studio.

Speaker: that's what That's what I want to imagine for her. Or working for another company that is right more aligned with her values. Totally. Yeah. As a sort of PS to this conversation, more recently, I saw that AlgaeCal is now partnered with P-Volve. Do you know P-Volve is? Oh, yeah. We went back and forth about P-Volve. I don't know if you remember, but we had tons of text message exchanges with our friend Trina Altman, I believe. Oh, okay. Because Jennifer Aniston yes was a brand ambassador for P-Volve.

Speaker: And so her image was plastered all over social media. Am i actually confusing that or was it another woman? Jennifer Aniston? Jennifer Aniston and she's their a spokesperson. She's the spokesperson. Right. And the thing with P-Volv, I mean, if you haven't heard of it, it's basically ah just another low impact exercise method, similar to mat Pilates or bar kind of thing. It's small weights and resistance. but Yeah. And it also requires, and it's like this weird mat that it tells you where to put your feet kind of thing. It's another one of these requires you to buy their proprietary yes balls and bands and whatnot. Right. It's just another low impact sculpt and tone bullshit workout that we really don't need any more of. We could spend a lot of time talking about how P-volve is he P-roblematic,

Speaker: but again, we're going to move on, right? We're staying on course. Yes. Okay. So we've been talking about it a little bit. Let's talk about the strontium business. So AlgaeCal sells a product called strontium boost.

Speaker: Their product page about strontium boost states that it contains strontium citrate. Strontium is a mineral that can get incorporated into bone. However,

Speaker: Naturally occurring strontium levels in bone are extremely low. It is considered a trace element, not one of the main building blocks of bone the way that calcium is.

Speaker: Just as a side note, strontium comes from rocks. Oh no, I'm still eating rocks. youre still there Listen, they don't want you eating rocks, but they're going make you eat rocks.

Speaker: But i guess I guess in this case, it's okay to eat rocks. Anyway, moving on. So if we just recap, so AlgaeCal wants you to take AlgaeCal Plus. That's their calcium plus other vitamins and minerals, the usual suspects. That costs $80 for a one month supply. $80 for calcium, which I think you can probably get at Costco for 10 bucks for like the same amount. No less because it's probably a six month supply that you put. Yeah, right. Exactly. It's so cheap. Here's two years worth of calcium. Yeah. Okay.

Speaker: So, and again, as a reminder, they claim that rock-based calcium can only slow bone loss, but AlgaeCal's plant-based calcium does what others can't, actually stops bone loss and builds new bone.

Speaker: That's a quote from their website. So again, first yeah yeah yeah there's a lot of hogs wash on the product page for AlgaeCal Plus. And again, if this was a three-hour episode, we might dive into those claims. We're going to move on because we're interested in the strontium question. So strontium boosts which according to them, you're supposed to take it with that AlgaeGal Plus.

Speaker: Strontium Boost is about $30 for a one month supply. You can, of course, bundle and save. But even if you do that, you're you're looking at around $100 a month for this supplement combination.

Speaker: that is That is fucking insane. I spend $80 month for a membership at the gym for my entire family. yeah Lifting weights is how you build bone folks. yep You can't calcium yourself to stronger bones, first of all. So the claim is flat out wrong. Yes. That's an absurd, absurdly misleading.

Speaker: But yeah, this is that's a lot of money. Yeah. Well, and and again, I heard this phrase the other day on the Front Page Fitness podcast, and I forget who they said said it. So it's this is not my phrase, but it's this idea of what's called the worried well.

Speaker: The worried well, yeah yes. Did you hear that? it was It was a researcher, longevity researcher. Yeah, exactly. Whose name I'm... hu Farts. yeah i will If I find his name, I'll put it in the show notes. But basically it's like people who are essentially okay, but they have, they have a certain amount of disposable income and they're getting all this messaging about things that might be wrong.

Speaker: And so they're just going to buy into whatever new thing they need to buy into. Yeah. I mean, i think that wealthy people are particularly vulnerable to this type of wellness. Yes. Manipulation and marketing. Agreed.

Speaker: All right. So I went on consensus and I asked a pretty broad question, which was, what does the research say on using strontium for building bone density? And here's what I found. So there is an RCT, a randomized control trial from 2005, and it looked at about 3000 women over a three year period who were either taking strontium or a placebo.

Speaker: To note, both groups were also taking calcium. So I'm not sure how that's not considered confounder. Dude, what the fuck? But anyway- serious? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they had the women- So in this study, they had the women- This seems really shit study to sign. I mean, I'm no expert. Yeah. So they had the women start taking, well, maybe they're saying, is it calcium alone or is it calcium plus strontium is better?

Speaker: Okay. So anyway, they had the women start taking calcium. but were they taking algae cal or rock-based calcium? No, this is not an algae cal study. So they started taking calcium and vitamin D if they were deficient in vitamin D before the study started and then continued taking it.

Speaker: So the results of the study showed a decrease in relative risk of fractures. I'm not sure how they measured that. And an increase in bone mineral density on DEXA scans. So at first glance, that seems like a win.

Speaker: It seems like add strontium and you will have improved DEXA scans and you will decrease your falls risk. But it's not so easy. No, it's not. Because apparently there was an issue.

Speaker: DEXA scans measure how much mineral shows up on the scan. Okay. It records bone mineral density. And because strontium is heavier than calcium, if strontium is sitting in your bone, it can make the scan read as if your bone mineral density is higher than it is.

Speaker: So when you add strontium into the picture, it introduces a major confounder. Strontium can artificially increase bone mineral density as measured by a DEXA scan.

Speaker: a 1% increase of strontium in your bone can lead to a 10% increase in a parent BMD on a DEXA. That's crazy. yeah So this is where marketing gets really sneaky and I'm gonna go ahead and say fucking dishonest, right?

Speaker: Because your bone density number went up, right? Oh, that sounds really good. My bones are strong and safe, right? But if your number went up because the scan is being influenced by a heavier element incorporated into the bone,

Speaker: that's a different story yeah right your dexascan looks good your bones look like they're stronger but bones are not made up of strontium they're made up of calcium okay this is what that word artifact means something else is showing up on the scan that is confounding the results so if you have more strontium in your bones that doesn't necessarily mean they're stronger right sarah not at all because in naturally occurring in your bone is just height like a trace amount of strontium. So let's say you put a tiny bit more strontium into your bone, that's going to artificially elevate what's showing up on the dexa, but that doesn't increase the calcium in your bone. It doesn't increase the architectural structure of the bonds in the, but like it doesn't do any of those things.

Speaker: It just looks like it's done those things. It's almost sounds like they're searching for a lawsuit. Like what if I got my DEXA scan back and I'm like, oh shit, my T score is normal. I'm good to go. I'm going to go start jumping off of high places and it's like, fine, I'm going to get back to all the other activities my doctor said I should be cautious about.

Speaker: Right. Cause I had a negative three T score and now it's, now I got a one. So I'm good. Right. all Right. Yeah. I mean, they do. Well, now I go back and do all those regular activities and I fracture. Yeah. Well, that's why it says at the bottom of their website, these statements have not been validated by the FDA and nothing is intended to treat or cure any disease. Of course they fucking say that.

Speaker: Total side note. I enjoy the word artifact because it's it's something that's come up in like a lot of the my more recent x-rays about my bones. they like They're like, look at that little artifact or whatever. But I also love it in AI because artifact is the problem that happens where let's say you're trying to make an AI image of someone and And for whatever reason, it gave him a third arm. And you're like, where did you get that idea that this person should have three arms? It's artifact. It's left over from some cue that it was given earlier on, right? So artifact, I kind of like it. Yeah. ah

Speaker: Okay. Do you want to talk about the actual risks around strontium? Strontium is not risk-free. No, it's not. It's not risk-free. There is actually a 60% higher risk of non-fatal heart attack when taking it.

Speaker: Is that absolute risk or relative risk? Because that seems really, really high. Oh, shit. no i'm going to have to tell you the difference. Hold on. What is the difference? I don't know. i don't know either. Between absolute and relative.

Speaker: Yeah. So relative risk is relative to another group. So it tells you how much more or less likely an event has to happen in an exposed group. Yes. So that's relative. Compared to an unexposed group. Absolute risk is the size of your actual risk.

Speaker: Okay. So 60%. So let's put this into perspective. So you have 60% higher chance of a non-fatal heart attack. That's relative to the group that's not taking the strontium. Yeah. So their risk is already really low.

Speaker: of a non-fatal heart attack. right So we're starting from a very low risk and we're making it 60% higher than that. Okay. Doesn't mean that you have a six out of 10 chance of having a non-fatal heart attack. That's absolute risk. Right. But it's still higher. Okay. We don't want that.

Speaker: ah We don't you know we don't need to want a 60% higher risk. Well, and also like, we don't need to give that to ourselves. Right. For no value. do you know what I mean? For value. yeah Exactly. That's key. No value. It's not like you're risking this 60% because there's super huge value on the other end of it.

Speaker: Right. Yeah. Like most medications have some risk. Right. But they have value. Exercise has some risk. It has enormous value. Exercise has enormous value. And a lot of medications have way more value than they do risk for an individual. So anyway, there's also a 25 to 30 percent higher risk of venous thromboembolism, a.k.a.

Speaker: throwing a clot. For this reason, it carries strict cardiovascular contradictions and should require careful risk-benefit assessment from a medical professional.

Speaker: And side note, AlgaeCal's marketing leads hard into natural strontium versus synthetic strontium and it implies that because it's natural, their product is safe, but the safety conversation isn't solved by the word natural.

Speaker: Cyanide is natural. Yeah. Okay. So we talked about them approaching us. We've talked about the Strontium business. Let's talk about Vonda Wright. What's her relationship to AlgaeCal?

Speaker: And to be clear, it seems like it has changed over the months, but if we talk about her relationship to AlgaeCal, it's the perfect example, in my opinion, of the kind of behavior we see when doctors start acting like brands.

Speaker: So Vonda Wright's relationship to Aldecal actually highlights a type of behavior that we see from doctors when they start to act like brands that didn't actually make it into our doctor versus brand post.

Speaker: and episode. But I actually make a joke about this particular kind of grift in the episode about the cadence shoes, which is that if I was a grifter, I would just copy their shoe model and make my own special shoes. And that's what Vonda ended up doing.

Speaker: So from what we can tell Retrospectively, in September 2025, AlgaeCal featured Dr. Wright on their Instagram page as an expert on bone health, since she's an orthopedic surgeon.

Speaker: And her original message is about getting and staying strong as we age, though she has gone well off topic. They also, around the same time, created a blog post about her.

Speaker: And we talk about this in our post about her. She's got this FACE formula. FACE stands for flexibility, aerobic exercise, carry a load, and equilibrium or agility.

Speaker: Not to be confused with her face estrogen. Or her face just generally. She also pedals. Yes. She also pedals, yeah. Sure does. Okay. There are so many asides.

Speaker: about algae cow that has been very difficult not to go down. But as I scrolled through their Instagram account, I also found an interview with Dr. Lauren Fishman of the 12 Yoga Poses fame, as we already discussed.

Speaker: And then they also featured Dr. Gabriel Lyon, who is very much overdue for us to do some serious busting on. yeah yeah And it was very hard to just note all of those things and move on, but we we're trying to fry another fish right now. So we're just going to say that they are featuring numerous grifters on their site. So we can assume Yeah. There's not any particularly good anti-grifter screening going on.

Speaker: I mean, if I'm a grifter company, I'm going to look for these brand ambassadors that have an audience that is going to be very easy for me to capture. Exactly. The bigger, the better, right? Yeah. The bigger, the better. Okay. So barely any time after this blog post about Dr. Vonda Wright and her face goes up,

Speaker: Wright launches her own unbreakable bone supplement yeah that also contains algae-derived calcium. It's also described as quote-unquote natural. Yeah.

Speaker: As well as a slew of other supplement greatest hits like magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin K, and then this registered product called Fortibone. which describes itself as bioactive collagen peptides. God. Oh no. I think that's a supplement bingo win, right? That's that's a big bingo. If you've got all three of those words in. Holy shit. Yeah. And and this, this FortiBone also shows up in a bunch of other companies, bone health supplements, which is another path we could go down to focus, yeah focus, focus. The point I'm trying to make here

Speaker: is that Wright performs this classic brand move, which is instead of just affiliating with and promoting someone else's product, she makes her own and charges $150 a three-month supply.

Speaker: Yeah. One thing is I'm having all these side thoughts. So one thing is Mel Robbins kind of did the same thing with a was it a protein shake, a mini protein shake? Yes. That some bodybuilder, was it Mike Israetel was selling and then she just copied it and made her own and started selling it and everybody went crazy. Everybody in kind of the bodybuilding protein space just lost their mind. They were like, fucking Mel Robbins. There she goes again, stealing people's shit and passing it off as her own. And wasn't it also that her version wasn't as good?

Speaker: Like her version used oh pre not protein? I have no idea. I have no idea. I definitely did not like beta test it. yeah And then the second thing I wanted to say is I wanted to ask you, how did you figure out the timeline between her being a brand ambassador for AlgaeCal and then she appears to use AlgaeCal in her product though, Unbreakable Bone.

Speaker: Let me just check. Is it called AlgaeCal or is she calling it algae derived calcium? I will be able to check because I took a screenshot of yeah the. To answer your other question.

Speaker: I looked into, because we're trying to like reverse engineer this, i I had to go off of mostly social media and websites. So I looked at the AlgaeCal website and their blog posts, like when they posted things that involved her. And then I looked at their Instagram page and where she shows up and then when she suddenly stops showing up for them. And then I looked at her Instagram and when she started selling her own product. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to do it. And to your point about Mel Robbins making her own version, are AlgaeCal mad that she made her own version? Quite possibly, but I don't think there's anything they can do about it because there's no law around who gets to make supplements and who doesn't.

Speaker: Oh, it looks like it's not AlgaeCal. It looks like it's a different company because it does have a TM. huh Okay. It's Aquaman. There we go.

Speaker: whatever that is calcified red algae oh there it is so she went with aquaman there we go but it still ale it has a registered registered trademark but it's still algae it's still algae it's still algae okay so she it looks like she kind of left algae cal and went off and made her own proprietary brand using aquaman yes Interesting.

Speaker: It's such horseshit. And again, if we had three hours, we would go down this Aquaman pipeline and figure out what their and story is. I actually researched it in the post and I shared that there's no evidence for it.

Speaker: Which one? Aquaman? Aquaman. Okay. Well, we'll link to that post in the show notes as well. So AlgaeCal possibly is annoyed that she's done this, but there's not really anything they can do about it because literally anyone could make their own supplement based on anything. And as long as the blend is slightly different and it's also proprietary, so nobody gets to know what the blend is, right?

Speaker: They still have her. Those posts and things are still up on their website and social media. And from AlgaeCal's perspective, if it's someone who's just going to their web website, maybe is not as familiar with the whole menopause and who these people are,

Speaker: The content feels educational. Dr. Wright is an orthopedic surgeon, right? That carries weight, especially if got concerns about bones. She seems like the real deal, right? People will interpret that as, oh, an orthopedic surgeon is in this company's content. So this company must be legitimate. She adds authority. Because AlgaeCal does not need to prove its claims to everyone.

Speaker: AlgaeCal doesn't need to prove itself to us. It only needs to build enough credibility signals, like adding Dr. Vonda Wright, that people don't ask hard questions. who But we're over here asking the hard questions.

Speaker: you have remainder thoughts about that before we get into the other influencers? I mean, not any new thoughts. This is just yeah what we continue to see from the likes of Vonda Wright, yeah which is that She has clearly abandoned her ethics in favor of profit.

Speaker: And yeah, she's using lots of little marketing tactics and tricks and creating her own proprietary blend of extremely overpriced bone supplement and selling it with claims of its superiority that aren't proven or tested. We go back to Dr. Joe Schwartz's episode, science communicator explains pseudoscience in one of the hallmarks of supplement marketing is that they will make a lot of claims about the benefit of their unique proprietary blend.

Speaker: Yeah. And they will cite research that has studied the individual ingredients and use that to support the claims that they make about their proprietary blend.

Speaker: However, if you want to actually be evidence-based and have evidence for those claims, you would actually have to study that supplement. Right. And you would have to put it head to head. So you would have to study that supplement, its ingredients, the proportions of those ingredients, yep and put it head to head with other supplements, like the ones you can buy at Costco for 10 times less money. Yeah.

Speaker: or 100 times less money, but something in between there, right? But those studies don't exist. Why don't they exist? Well, the company will fund studies, but they don't want to fund those studies. Exactly.

Speaker: Because what are those studies going to show? There's either no difference or the cheaper version is better. Right. That's not anything they're interested in showing. That's probably what it would show. Yes. Right. And the thing is, is like, if they really wanted to show that their supplement is better, those would be the studies they would fund.

Speaker: They don't fund those studies. Well, if they really wanted to show it to people like you and me, but their gen pop audience is not literate science people.

Speaker: Yes. they're They're counting on that. Yeah. They're counting on people not knowing the difference between an observational study and a randomized control study or not understanding the nuance between testing a proprietary blend against another type of available supplement. I think people see, oh, it's clinical. There's clinical evidence. It's science proven. And I want to say as well, if this is not suggesting that people are stupid.

Speaker: I have plenty of smart friends and they reach out to me all the time about what's the deal with this thing? Is this thing the real deal? Because they want to know and they know that they don't have that literacy necessarily, or they're used to the fact that, especially in this country, we're just constantly being marketed to. so Dude, i'm this I would be the same exact way if someone were trying to sell me an HVAC unit or if someone were trying to sell me a fucking car. Sure. Absolutely. I don't know shit about any of that stuff. So I can have my gut root feelings, which I have.

Speaker: fairly good intuitions about whether I'm being lied to or not or taken to the cleaners. But but i could easily be duped in these situations because I really don't know very much at all. And so if some car salesman tries to tug on my vulnerabilities a little bit with like, oh, this car is safer because it has these things,

Speaker: but if i ask an expert they would say actually that feature doesn't make the car safer right it just makes it more expensive right exactly i would have no fucking clue that's why it's really important to be able to lean on experts that you can trust yes unlike vonda wright who is an expert but you probably shouldn't fucking trust her because she fucking burned that bridge a long fucking time ago agreed you got to find the people in the bone world that are trustworthy and that's not us we're not bone experts right we teach exercise we're exercise experts right sarah's a rehab expert we are not bone metabolism experts right we are not endocrinologists we are not orthopedic surgeons so you got to find the people who can speak to these topics at the level that bonder right apparently is trying to speak to them and

Speaker: who you can actually trust. And unfortunately, at this day and age, with social media and all the incentives to be dishonest for profit and for attention and for clicks and for power, there are a lot of people who have the credentials who you feel you should be able to trust that you really simply cannot anymore.

Speaker: Yeah, true. It's true. All right. So Instagram influencers and LG Cal, let's get into it. Unsurprisingly, AlgaeCal has a thriving ambassador program, similar to your shoe company that you did the episode on, right? Yeah. So that's like their marketing vehicle, right? And they don't actually advertise this on their website, though. They're probably reached out to similarly to how Sarah and I were approached, right?

Speaker: The influence are reached out to. Yeah, through emails and through DMs and things like that. Yes. So this suggests that you have to be selected by the company. by people on their marketing team and their marketing team is looking for these candidates who would have the audience right that they could then capture. Right? Right. So that's why Sarah and I were approached.

Speaker: There definitely exists. Can you imagine if both you and I and Lauren Fishman ended up being ambassadors for LG Cal?

Speaker: Like, dude.

Speaker: You have to be very careful of the company you keep as well. seriously Right? If you're being approached by a company that has, as an ambassador, someone in your industry that you know is spreading misinformation or not being transparent or honest or making false claims do not work for that company. Run don't walk in the opposite direction. Right? Yeah. So yeah, there, there definitely exists an affiliate program because there are a slew of influencers out there using the hashtag AlgaeCal and AlgaeCal partner.

Speaker: Fun fact, Paula Abdul is one. She is an influencer ah for AlgaeCal. So I think the criteria is either ah doctory or doctor adjacent grifter or random celebrity who has nothing to with anything well perimenopausal menopausal celebrity exactly exactly yeah that was a pop icon to a lot of the women that they're trying to approach to your audience that you're trying to capture you know paula abdul she had that fun hit in the 80s yeah your friend paula abdul does it right so so we might not have the requisite level of fame to get their attention we're not paula abdul level famous

Speaker: lol yeah we also found a linkedin profile of someone who states they have recently been hired at lg cal as intermediate influencer specialist and were we the intermediate influencer target for them like we're kind of intermediate we're not paul abdul right right we're not culture not yet we're intermediate sure but just like the idea that like 15k followers yes not 1.5 million but it's somewhere we're intermediate yeah yeah somewhere between 1.5 And 15 million. um But the idea that this there's a job title called intermediate influencer specialist makes me think there's an entire team of people working on this, right? If there's an intermediate one, there's probably some other people.

Speaker: yeah so There's clearly a whole lot of people over at LG Cal working on this ambassador influencer relationship, which is a huge deal with social media. That's how it works. That's how it works now. Yeah.

Speaker: So I thought, what if I posed as a possible interested in becoming an ambassador person just to see how they respond? Right. So I wrote them an email. I think I wrote it to this person that I found on LinkedIn.

Speaker: and saying that I was an influencer. I wanted to get in on the ambassadorship and what do I need to do? And here's the email that I got in response and I'm going to read it to you in full. Dear Dr. Kort, thank you so much for reaching out and sharing your interest in collaborating with AlgaeCal. We truly appreciate you taking the time to share your platform and enthusiasm for our brand.

Speaker: We've reviewed your content. And while we're very impressed with your work, we're currently pausing new partnerships to focus entirely on our existing internal projects and campaign commitments. Therefore, we won't be moving forward with a collaboration at the time. We wish you all the best and continued success. We'll keep your profile on fire. us Sincerely, this dude who is the associate digital marketer.

Speaker: Yeah. So, okay. I think we've been downgraded. We're no longer into media influencer specialists. We're peons. yeah Yes. Yes. So all we know from this email, unless it was just a very polite rejection, is that they're going to be doing some different kind of marketing. But there are still new influencers or new videos popping up all the time, because as I've been preparing to make this this episode, I've been saying AlgaeCal a lot and my phone is listening to me. And so my phone is showing me new AlgaeCal content. And I found this most recent one. So I wanted to play the audio of this.

Speaker: I don't know if it's technically a hashtag ad, but it's this post from Instagram from someone who is absolutely a ambassador for them in some way.

Speaker: whether or not they call it an ambassadorship. And then i think an interesting slash fun game to play would be see if you can spot all the marketing language yeah or the marketing tactics, like appeal to authority, appeal to nature. I'm going to count on my fingers how many I spot. All right, here we go.

Speaker: I had a 10.8% increase in my spine. I am now at a negative 2.4. And then in my hips, I had an 11.8% increase.

Speaker: I was a geriatrics nurse for several years, and I'm very well aware of the pain and the heartache that bone fractures bring to the patients that I served. And I wanted nothing to do with that for my future. I'm also pretty much a naturalist, so I wanted to see if there was some sort of natural remedy I could find to help my bones, so I began searching like crazy on the internet and kept coming across AlgaeCal. I was very impressed with the website. It was very informative, um and i I really did learn a lot from it. And so after a few days of searching, I finally felt comfortable with making my decision to give AlgaeCal a try.

Speaker: Well, fast forward to last week when I had my second DEXA scan. And let me just tell you, i am still on cloud nine with the results that I received. i had a 10.8%

Speaker: increase in my spine. I am now at a negative 2.4 and then in my hips I had an 11.8% increase. so I'm now down to a 0.8 which is considered normal bones for my age. So I am thrilled. i am forever indebted to LG Cal for really giving me back what I feel is the healthy me.

Speaker: Okay. yes Yeah. So many, so many appeals to things. Yeah. So that the music, the music appeal to emotion. Yes. The music swelled when she found her solution. Right. I don't know if you've noticed that, but as soon as she was like, then I found AlgaeCal, it was like, duh.

Speaker: Yeah, so like a salvation narrative. yes A hero's journey, but the hero is LG Cal.

Speaker: She is a nurse, yes so we assume she has some authority because she's a clinician. yes And she also knows the pain and the suffering of fracture. So again, she's there's a little bit of a fear-based slash appeal to emotion slash hero journey element to that.

Speaker: Yeah. but what I noticed more about what else- Yeah, it's pretty standard. I mean, it also, they have to say things like a 10% increase because the actual amount that bones ever increase is so little that it sounds like nothing. So they have to find the number that sounds big. So right even if her numbers went up by like 0.2 or something, they have to be like, oh, it's 10% better. And the naturalist. I'm yeah a Yes, I'm a naturalist. Looking for and a natural solution. Exactly, right? So she she has the authority- But she's not a she's not a doctor who's going to talk down to you.

Speaker: She, like you, also does her own research, right? And she looked on the internet for a few days. And this is, she's saving you from the work because she looked and now you can just do what she said. You can trust her.

Speaker: She really just said she looked at their website. She looked at their website. Which is basically any web, anytime you look at someone's web website, you're looking at an advertisement. Right, right. I think she did say she looked around at other products for two to three days and then and that came back to AlgaeCal. But yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. did you look at any evidence? Did you look at any research? but Did she look at any? Probably not. And then the other thing that I noticed, and this is from that post itself, is that the caption is so dramatic.

Speaker: I'm going to read part of it to you. It starts with, they lied. Lied is in all caps. They lied about your bones. It's not just about calcium. It never was.

Speaker: There's a reason your DEXA scan keeps showing declining numbers. There's a reason those drugstore calcium pills haven't stopped your bone loss. boy Your bones are starving. Starving is in capital for 15 other critical nutrients they desperately need.

Speaker: Think about it. Would you try to build a house with only concrete, no steel, no wood, no wiring? Of course not. Yet that's exactly what most calcium supplements expect your body to do.

Speaker: So it's conspiratorial. They're out to get you. The medical, pharmaceutical companies are hiding yeah this information from you. But now, here we go, a breakthrough plant-based formula is changing everything we thought we knew about bone health after 50.

Speaker: AlgaeCal Plus is the only calcium supplement clinically supported to increase bone density. Asterisk, asterisk. What think asterisk goes to? Oh, it goes to none of these statements have been whatever the phrasing is, right? None of these statements have been proved to prove anything. And then they're like, we've got magnesium, vitamin K, vitamin boron.

Speaker: All right. Strontium. We know that's a problem. I mean, just all this extra shit. And then the other thing that I noticed was all the comments. are positive testimonials, which is also a very grifter thing. Like I'm assuming if they do leave. Yeah, exactly. Things get deleted or blocked. Anything negative that might've shown up has probably been deleted or blocked. Yeah. Yeah. And, and also this plant-based buzzword is also going to appeal to a certain consumer.

Speaker: The naturalists. Yeah. The naturalists. Yeah. They don't like rocks. It's what's the expression go kick rocks. Yeah. All right. Go eat rocks.

Speaker: Yeah, it it is so, what's the word? Slimy? Yeah, that's the word. Yeah. Slimy. It's profit at all costs. We don't need to show our receipts. We just need to use a lot of manipulative tactics.

Speaker: And we shouldn't need to show our receipts, right? Well, they wave a receipt at you because they say it's evidence-based, but they wave a receipt at you from very far away that you can't read. Because there's nothing on it when you go to read it. it's not accurate What is the receipt you're referring to then? that They say it's clinically proven.

Speaker: Oh, but that's not a receipt. Well, what I'm saying is they're holding a piece of paper and saying this is a receipt and they're holding it really far away because you can't actually read it. And when you go to read it, there's no words on it. Yeah, like if they really showed their receipts, they would say, in addition to the asterisk that basically, in so many words, that this is all just a bunch of fucking bullshit. None of it's been validated and you can't sue us. Right. Right.

Speaker: They would say the evidence is very slim for the things we're saying. But buy it anyway, folks. Some evidence, but buy it anyway. It'd be funny. It would be a funny thing to to look at some marketing language and turn it into honest language.

Speaker: I remember from, i don't know. Oh God, this is like a old memory that I'm going to quote very poorly. But there was a movie from the 80s where some guy was like forced to tell the truth about things. And he was writing an ad for Volvo, the car. And he said, they're boxy, but they're good.

Speaker: right it's kind of like that there's slim evidence but it's not disgusting it's from plants it's like they're saying there's slim evidence but on the other hand it's from plants that's not the like it's not like should we spoof the ad for social media we should do our own algae cow we always want to spoof stuff but then it doesn't happen because it's a lot of work but i feel like this one might be this one might be possible you know what we should do?

Speaker: We could make our own rock-based calcium product and explain why rocks are actually superior to algae. I have rocks outside. There we go. Perfect. Rocks are outside everywhere. I could bang them together. Look at, they're in my yard. They must be natural. We could ASMR. We could just touch them. I got some fingernails now. I could clap. There you go. a clack likeck I'll do the thing where you hold it in front of your hand so that your hand is behind it yeah All Let's try to find our where we were. so Okay. So the big picture problem.

Speaker: supplements are being marketed as the center. I would even say like the sole yes character of bone health. Like we have not heard anything about exercise except for the email that we got from the marketing associate or whatever the title was.

Speaker: Supplements are not the center of any health. No. Right? Exercise in this case, nutrition, of course, but you cannot nutrition yourself out of a bone density deficit, right? You got to stimulate those bones with exercise, with load. Yeah. And then my friend who was diagnosed with osteopenia told me that she just started taking calcium.

Speaker: And I was like, that's not the solution. It might help a tiny bit. Yeah. But anyway, she and I go to the gym and lift weights now. So I got her on the right track. Yay. Yay. That's what friends are for. That's right. Yeah. So here's what actually matters.

Speaker: Progressive strength training. Mm-hmm. impact loading when appropriate, if and when appropriate, fall risk reduction, which can look like progressive strength training. And some exercises that involve impact are also great for fall prevention, power-based exercises.

Speaker: Appropriate medication decisions based on risk. See your doctor for that. Don't fucking and go to Instagram. Appropriate in this sentence is a stand-in for individualized. Mm-hmm.

Speaker: Yes. And then addressing perimenopause and menopause physiology realistically and if appropriate. So hormone therapy might be something that your doctor suggests that you try because bones actually do respond quite positively to menopause hormone therapy. Unlike this idea that we have to take hormones for muscle mass, that so far does not seem to be borne out in the evidence. Same thing with weight loss, right? That's done through a calorie deficit. But menopause hormone therapy can support those goals by improving your sleep, right? By reducing the symptoms of menopause. But it is actually also helpful for the maintenance of bone mineral density.

Speaker: Oh, and I also want to say that your doctor might actually suggest that you take supplements. Yeah. absolutely Your doctor might suggest that you start taking calcium, but you can get that fucking calcium for 10 bucks for a six month supply at Costco. So why are you paying $100 a month?

Speaker: Well, because AlgaeCal tells you, you have to. Because i don't want to eat rocks. Right. Exactly. Also, if your doctor is telling you to take supplements and some, they will test for more likely than others, but ask them if there's indications for that based on your blood tests, right? A really simple blood test panel shows things like certain levels and, or it shouldn't just be generally, unless, unless the supplement is generally benign and can be accessed directly cheaply i'm trying to say a doctor might like my oncologist for example when i started having all these bone problems he was like make sure you're taking vitamin d my vitamin d natural levels are tend to run low vitamin d is something that you need for calcium to be absorbed bone wise so that was a decent suggestion that was not going to cost me a lot of money and wasn't adding risk to me but if a doctor is telling you

Speaker: And this is what we see the online doctors telling you that you need to spend $150 a month for some specialized supplement when they've literally never met you. h That should be a big red flag.

Speaker: yeah So as far as takeaways from this episode, obviously the big one is watch out for predatory online marketing. If you're a clinician. in our opinion, you do not get to outsource your ethical standards to marketing. And if you do, we're going to come after you.

Speaker: if If you attach your credibility to a product, you inherit the responsibility of what that product implies to people. So for someone like Vonda Wright, attaching her credibility at AlgaeCal as a company that really never talks about exercise, but she, to give her some credit, has often talked about weightlifting and exercise. She hasn't talked about it necessarily accurately, but she's bringing it up.

Speaker: But she's also now associated with this company that mentions nothing about needing to do that for bone building. And she's been clear that you do need to do it for bone building. So she's inherited... this mixed message that she may or may not have wanted to inherit, but she did.

Speaker: Right. Yeah. And, and when a company like AlgaeCal builds a sales funnel around fear of bone loss, but they don't actually sell you anything,

Speaker: and none of their messaging is actually aligned with the evidence around how to prevent it, ah we're going to be, let's just say skeptical. Or as Sarah said, we're going to come after you. Yeah. Because the fear is sometimes the biggest barrier for folks, right? So you're just putting gasoline on the fire yeah with fear-based messaging. And people who do that do it for their own profit driven gains and benefit. This is opportunistic marketing.

Speaker: It's profit at all costs. It's not ethical. And it's just shitty. And us pointing that out, unfortunately, we're going to have a lot of people who, no offense, but don't really think for themselves.

Speaker: I'm sure that's going to make them love me even more. Who come after us for being mean to this profit-driven company. Yeah. Because why are we going after this company?

Speaker: Why don't we smile more and more positive? Why don't we offer bone solution? wait a minute. We do. Right. An actual real one. And I don't know. i probably getting off track here, but are these people shilling for the company or are they just...

Speaker: so conditioned within the society to just fall on the side of the capitalists. And this idea that profit at all costs is like what good people pursue and what it what is it about the people in the comments and the people that sometimes weigh in the testimonial slash, what is it called? Written feedback on our podcast, on Apple Podcasts, like people write in and get, they're really upset and outraged that we would quote, go after companies like MidiHealth these doctor brands that are abandoning their medical ethics in favor of profit. Like They're mad at us. They're like, I can't believe that I'm outraged. I am I'm appalled. I can't believe that you two women who sell a strength training course within scope of practice, who work for yourselves and aren't in bed with these companies. I can't believe you would do that. I can't believe you would speak up against these giants.

Speaker: I can't believe you would punch up like that. Right, right. Who do you think you are? i think, yeah. I don't know. Like what's going on there? I have a few ideas about what I think is going on. yeah I don't think it's anywhere near as objectively thought through as you are potentially describing. I think- Well, I did just say they they are having trouble thinking for themselves. They are having trouble thinking for themselves. So they're not really thinking. I think what happens is they discover when there is any kind of pushback, we start to create a situation called cognitive dissonance.

Speaker: where they have held one thought or one belief in their head for a while. And the thought might be, AlgaeCal is a good company. The thought might be, I really like Vonda Wright. And any pushback against that base level thought or feeling h creates this unbearable condition yeah where they have to potentially agree that they got something wrong, agree that they might've wasted money agree that they might've potentially even influenced other people, friends and family to waste money based on them getting it wrong.

Speaker: And I think for most people, that is a thought experiment that they don't wanna engage in. They don't wanna go down that route. It's much easier to dig your heels in and say, no, we are right, you were wrong. And by the way, who the fuck are you?

Speaker: I think it's less cognitive dissonance and maybe more the backfire effect. Cognitive dissonance is when you are uncomfortable because you are holding two opposing beliefs.

Speaker: And it's so uncomfortable because you know that you can't probably hold them both together. So you're either going to have to change your belief or your behavior, like smoking cigarettes while knowing that smoking is very bad for your health.

Speaker: There's lots of people holding those two truths and it's uncomfortable. It's not easy to smoke because they know that it's harming their health, but it's also not easy to quit smoking. The backfire effect is when you hear something or you are presented with facts that contradict your deeply held beliefs. And so you double down. You double down and you believe your original belief or misconception even more strongly. It's like it gives strength to the belief. Yeah. I would almost say that it's, I think it's maybe the two combined where the discomfort of the cognitive dissonance leads people to double down on that first one.

Speaker: Yeah. And I think that we actually get both people, right? Because we get people all the time coming to us like I used to. Right. Like, for example, the woman who reached out to us from AlgaeCal was like, I used to follow Lauren Fishman.

Speaker: And I'm sure there was some cognitive dissonance. Right. But she changed her beliefs, right? She changed her beliefs and decided that, you know what, maybe Lauren Fishman is not actually sharing truthful, evidence-based information.

Speaker: Then there are on the other side of it, folks who are just completely aghast that we are calling into question a doctor. And they'll say, well, what credentials do you have?

Speaker: As though you have to have credentials to question a doctor. Mm-hmm. You don't have to have any credentials to question it a doctor, right? Or what have you done with your life? Right. Right. You know, and they'll use like minimizing shame based tactics to put us in our place. Or they'll claim that we're jealous or they'll claim that we're just out to get women or we're not women supporting women. And it's very it feels very defensive.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. Right? And because they don't actually come to your point like that you've made. It's like they don't actually have any evidence, like strong supportive evidence to the contrary what we're saying. They don't then present us with, oh, actually, you didn't see these RCTs.

Speaker: You didn't see this meta-analysis showing. Or the thing that you just said about muscle physiology or menopause hormone or whatever is actually incorrect. And here's what's correct. And here's how I know, right? right Here's how I got this information. That never is that. No. a part of the exchange. It can't be because it doesn't exist.

Speaker: It's all personal attacks, commentary on us as people, personal attacks, but also our credentials, appeals to authority. It's a lot of assuming that we are pointing out these grifters or pointing out the pseudoscience in bad faith because we must stand to gain from it.

Speaker: like no let me do this podcast for free right we don't get paid for our social media posts we don't actually represent a brand we don't sell anything other than our course and like a couple of t-shirts we sell like a couple a year yeah we don't sell anything that's out of scope for us right yeah i have a separate business on top of movement logic right i'm sorry we're not getting rich here people we're doing this because we care exactly and it actually you know what i'm doing it because it pisses me off it really gets my goat that these people are profiting off of dishonest. They're being dishonest and making money doing it. They're preying on people's vulnerabilities. They're hurting people and making money doing it. And I think that just sucks.

Speaker: And that's kind of what gets me up in the morning. Yeah. Like gets me to work. I'm fucking mad. me too. I got so mad the other day, driving to the gym, thinking about how women my age are were told to do aerobics.

Speaker: And now we all have osteoporosis and people are like, well, you fucked up. You should have been doing bone building stuff back in the day, as if there was any messaging around it, as if any of the messaging around bodies in the eighties and nineties and early aughts. And even to this day, some messaging was about, was about appearance.

Speaker: Yeah. They defined the term sarcopenia in the eighties. So If your parents are baby boomers, they didn't fucking know about it. Right, exactly. They fucking know about for it. There was no Yeah, there was no word for muscle loss. yeah It was just something they thought people thought happened. And there was nothing to do about it. And people were maybe a little bit more generally active back then because there wasn't as much technology, but I wouldn't say they were much more active because there were still cars, right? right there There weren't remote controls. well And they weren't like, women in particular, were not doing heavy manual labor for the most part.

Speaker: No, for the most part, no. In fact, yeah. I mean, I think that it it is enraging. and And it's funny too, like you you mentioned how there just wasn't the information and there was even misinformation and disinformation that was misogynistic in nature that was specifically targeting women to actually prevent them actually from doing the things that would make their bodies healthier, make their lives longer, make their quality of life higher. Yes, that pisses me off. But now what pisses me off even more

Speaker: is the way that these doctor brands and these companies are filling in this gap, this gaping hole that was left between the misinformation of the baby boomers and the emerging information now about exercise and about menopause and about perimenopause.

Speaker: And there's this big gap that these influencers are rushing in to fill because we still are learning, we still are changing people's beliefs and mental models. And they recognize that there's an opportunity here, right? There's an opportunity to step in and start to spin the narrative, to use marketing techniques to sell these products that people think will solve the problems that they just starting to realize they have, but that don't actually.

Speaker: I think that's where We are, in addition to trying to help older women start to exercise, we're also combating the misinformation that has but acted predatorily and opportunistically now to capture an audience that is like, shit, I know I need to do something.

Speaker: Right, right. Help me. What do I need to do? Well, to that point, if you're listening to this episode and you're thinking, well, what should I do? here's what we want you to walk away with.

Speaker: Number one, please don't panic by your way into osteoporosis care. Yeah. You should also be suspicious of big promises about bone density numbers.

Speaker: In this instance, we're seeing inflated bone density DEXA scan numbers based on an increase of a mineral that is not actually of a huge part of building your bone.

Speaker: Understand that changes on the DEXA scan don't automatically mean you have a change in your fracture risk. Your fracture risk is actually much more about how well you recover from a loss of balance.

Speaker: And that actually has a lot more to do with things like your ability to produce strength and power than it has to do with your DEXA. Right on. With that said, your plan about doing something about your bone density should be focusing first on strength, which means loading your body.

Speaker: right? Which means doing movements with external load. It means following a program that increases the impact of that load, whether with more load or more repetitions of that load or more instances in the week, right? That is where you're going to get the bread and butter bone building. It's in that consistent lifting over time. It is not in giving AlgaeCal a hundred and plus dollars a month, right?

Speaker: Yeah. If you're going to be using supplements, they should be an adjacent tool. They should not be your main strategy. And if your current plan is mostly pills and very little loading or very little else, that plan you have been sold. I'm so sorry to tell you is bullshit and you need to start doing something else.

Speaker: Yeah. Do you have anything you wanted to add to that list? No, it's a good list. I think that fear is just a very powerful marketing tool yeah and appeals to authority, appeals to nature, appeals to emotion.

Speaker: Don't fucking go to Instagram for your osteoporosis. and osteopenia penia and bone building solutions, go to your doctor. yes A good doctor will give you advice on all of these these prevention strategies and all of these evidence-based ways to build bone.

Speaker: And then if you can, in addition to seeking out that individualized medical care, which is how it should be delivered, right? Seek out more individualized guidance around exercise, right? So if you can, find someone to help you learn how to lift weights.

Speaker: Find someone to help you learn how to do impact or power-based exercises or work on the types of exercise that will help you prevent falls, right? That's maybe a way better way to use the money that you have, not overspending on a supplement.

Speaker: Yeah. That's like way, way down on the bottom of the list. Should be. If you're going to spend money, okay, and money can solve problems. Oh, it certainly can. I just bought a litter robot. Oh, nice. Yeah, it's a really expensive solution, but I think it's going to solve a really stinky and yucky problem. Great. Money can solve problems. Identify the biggest bang for your buck solutions and put your money there.

Speaker: Yes. Find the solutions that are actually gonna move the needle and invest in those. If you're being asked to invest in a supplement and that investment is more expensive than a gym membership, back the back that wagon up, folks. yes like I don't know, what is the, that's like, I don't have a good analogy. i was gonna say like some car analogy. like If somebody's telling you to put $1,000 rims on your car from 1988, they are focusing on the wrong thing. But your brakes don't work, right? Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, thank you so much for listening. Hopefully that was helpful and gave you some information about, again, what to look for and in grifter companies generally, why we don't like this particular company, why we continue to dislike Vonda Wright, and what we think you should do about it.

Speaker: Please, if you're on Apple, you can rate, review, subscribe. You can probably do that on some of the other platforms. I just don't know as much about them. We'd love your comments. The reviews are always appreciated. Whether you like us or not, give us a review and sign up for our Barbell mini course, which you can get for free.

Speaker: And everything is linked in the show notes. If you've ever wasted money buying a product that you now know you didn't need, and you gave money to a grifter to do it, you can offset that by leaving us a review and a five-star rating for free. ah ah We don't charge you for these episodes. That's fair, actually. So the grifter that charged you for the non-solution, you offset that.

Speaker: That's how it works. It's science, guys. That's right. That is science. You know what? Not only is that science, it's math.

Speaker: It's almost STEM. We're practically there.

Speaker: All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. And we will see you in two weeks. Awesome. All right. Nice. Good stuff.