Matt Titlow is CEO of Compound Solutions and an 18-year veteran of the nutraceutical industry. Compound Solutions is a global leader in supplying the most innovative, trusted ingredients for dietary supplements. Matt cares about EVERYTHING. From the health of our bee population, clean water, and clean air to your health and your children’s future. His passion for health and well-being led to the discovery and commercialization of the CoreBiome®, arguably the single most important dietary supplement to date. Do you want to learn more? Tune in to this episode and walk the path to wellness.
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CoreBiome®: Gut Lining And Health Optimization With Matt Titlow
Fiber, Vegetables, Prebiotics And More
In this episode, I have Matt Titlow. He's the CEO of Compound Solutions, a veteran of the nutraceutical industry. Compound Solutions is a global leader in supplying the most innovative and trusted ingredients for dietary supplements. He cares about everything from the health of our population to clean water, clean air, your own health, and your children's future. His passion for health and wellness has been over a years-long career. Welcome, Matt. We'd love to learn a little bit more about you and your journey.
Thanks for having me.
Tell us a little bit about how in the world you first got into health and wellness and those nutraceuticals many years ago.
Many years ago, I graduated from business school, and then I was like, "What do I want to do with my life?" My father was in nutraceuticals. I entered, and it was all about just making money. My dad got sick. He had metastatic cancer, like prostate cancer. It was in every part of his body. It completely infiltrated his entire bone structure. They gave him three weeks to live the day he entered the hospital.
It was like, "This is different. How am I going to transition the business from making money to making purpose?" That was the first time I thought about, "How are we going to make a difference?" When he was in the hospital, they were feeding him Ensure, the maltodextrin plus protein. I was young and didn't realize that he was dying faster with more muscle mass and that they were feeding him maltodextrin and exacerbating the problem.
I started thinking about how to save him like, "What are his vitamin D levels?" and things of that sort. After he passed, it was about purpose and having a direction. We always talk here at Compound Solutions about maximizing human potential. We mean that. For example, it would mean eating vegetables. We're in the supplement industry. We supply raw ingredients, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be going for a walk or eating a vegetable. To answer the question, it went from money making to my dad's passing to purpose. That purpose revolved around vegetables.
Tell me a little bit about maltodextrin. You touched on that for a second. My mother's going through her own Stage 4 cancer journey, so I'm constantly pumping a bunch of turmerics, frankincense, and all kinds of things into her. Thankfully, she's off sugar, and I know Ensure is full of sugar. You touched on that, so I think it's interesting.
Maltodextrin breaks down into fructose and glucose. They're high glycemic. Every time your blood sugar rises, typically, you have to excrete insulin to meet that level of rising blood sugar to drive that sugar into cells. If you keep doing that and spiking blood sugar and insulin for those, at some point, your cells are full of energy. They don't want any more of that insulin driving into the cell, so they start resisting that insulin. Insulin resistance, as you know, is bad. That's the source of chronic disease.
Secondarily, besides insulin and blood sugar, you can have other energy sources besides sugar. You could have resistant starch, for example. There are pea starches, potatoes, and green bananas. There are all alternatives. There are various others, like cassava. There are various other starches that are very easy alternatives to this. It doesn't have to be maltodextrin.
Thank you. What's been a frustration for me is I've done a deep dive and gotten into this deep. My husband is on keto. He doesn't believe in eating any of the healthy starches for your gut. He's had too much weight and muscle loss, so it's interesting. Tell us a little bit about what you're working on and how you tie in with nutrition and diet.
Personally, I eat everything. Generally speaking, we're not talking about niche, I believe in eating everything, roughly speaking. When I'm talking about excluding, I think about sugar. Everyone's like, "Oh," If someone thinks this is too confusing, "The egg is bad." "It's good." You're thinking, "Over all these years, can we have uniformity in what good nutrition means?" I sometimes default to if we could just have less sugar and vegetable. Those are my two things.
In terms of resistance starches, sometimes we call them fermentable fibers to make them cooler so that the consumer is not thinking resistant like, "I don't want like resistant stuff." It's resistant to digestion, which means it ferments, which is good for the colon. Starch can sometimes be synonymous with high glycemic, but this is the opposite. Resistant starch is cooled potatoes, green bananas, and things of this sort. They ferment in the colon and are good for the microbiota.
Tell us a little bit about your product. I know you've got one, and then you've got another one coming out shortly.
There are several along these lines. We supply these resistance arches, and we also supply baobab fruit powder. It's organic from Africa. It's one of the original superfoods. You're going to see a trend, but I don't want to make it appear as if it's just trendy. This is fiber. Fiber should never be trendy. It should be good. I would say baobab fruit powder for the audience, and you'll see it gaining some traction because it's a whole food. It's not processed in any way. It's sustainable. It's not a monoculture. It's not irrigated and has no water. It's tremendous.
Fiber should never be trendy. It should just be good.
Another one we have talked about is CoreBiome. CoreBiome is bioavailable butyrate. Here's why this is important. If you eat broccoli, for example, that undigested fiber from that broccoli is going to break down eventually or, let's call it, be processed in the gut into making butyrate. Butyrate is responsible for the gut lining. The reason why that's crazy important is because everything that gets to the gut lining is going to enter the bloodstream. For obvious reasons, we don't want pathogens and bad materials entering. CoreBiome is crucial, as are butyrate and vegetables.
What are some of your favorite vegetables for the gut?
I like the classics. I don't know what everyone's been talking about on the show. You got to love the brussel sprouts, broccoli, and cauliflower. Meat particularly, I eat those. I like bell peppers with hummus. I'll grab peppers and hummus because the chickpeas and things of that sort can't hurt with the fiber content. Those are some of my favorites. If I may ask, what are your go-tos?
I tend to go in and out of making smoothies quite a bit, and then I'll throw anything I've got in the fridge or on the counter. I love bell peppers, mushrooms, and broccoli. Brussell sprouts, I don't get too excited about unless there's turkey bacon, which then goes back to the argument of cooked versus raw. Are you helping your gut if it's all cooked for twenty minutes in a pan with a bunch of olive oil? I don't know.
I honestly don't know all those little details, but I tend to say that if I could have less sugar and a vegetable, I'm better than Skittles and McDonald's. I'm going for less bad sometimes. Perfect is the enemy of good. Let's go with the good.
I've been doing this homemade meatball. I'll chop up a bunch of veggies, sauté them, mix them up with ground turkey and then some chicken sausage, and put them in the oven. I'll stick them in sauce and let them cook for a while. I love stuff like that. Typically, it's salads at lunch, smoothies at breakfast, and cooking cookies at night.
It sounds good.
In terms of different things that you have coming out and different trends you've seen over the years, what do you find in health and wellness that you think is changing and evolving and things you're trying to get in front of or educate about?
If the audience would like to see what's going on in the supplement industry, there's this blend of food and supplements, as supplements as food and food as a supplement. Everything is functional now. You could see it at the grocery store. Back a while ago, you noticed that even orange juice, which is not exactly healthy, but you'll see it fortified with calcium. That's the industry we're in. We're not in that, but that's the functional portion of it. Thinking of adding even our CoreBiome to a yogurt, for example, would be super cool. You have something good for the gut, and then you functionalize it on top of that.
What are we saying? Metabolic health. Metabolic health means when you boil it down, it's insulin, blood sugar, triglycerides, and things of this sort. What are we saying in trends? It's things like what we talked about, like fibers, resistance starches, and polyphenols. Polyphenols are green tea, grape seed extract, and cranberry. It's basically fruits and plants. At the end of the day, it's plants. We see that as very trend-worthy, but not just trend-worthy but permanent. It's this march toward metabolic health which means keeping us insulin sensitive. What are we doing? I would say CoreBiome and fibers. We have a couple of things coming out. There's one we call sucre, which is a sugar alternative. It comes from acacia, a tree in Africa and Australia.
It's a great prebiotic.
It's a great gut health ingredient and lowers blood sugar. It's prebiotic. It helps maintain blood sugar in healthy ranges, which is amazing. It has something sweet and also maintains blood sugar. That's extraordinarily unique. That is coming here out toward the end of 2022. You'll see that as portions of greens products, fiber products, and everything having to do with those who care about blood sugar and metabolic health. That's our direction, and those are our ingredients.
If you're the regular person reading this and are like, "With metabolic health, what do I do to measure that?" do you have any suggestions or thoughts?
This stuff drives me bananas because I was like, "Is the egg good or bad today? Can you simplify this?" There are a couple of ways. One is anecdotally, without measurement, decrease sugar and increase vegetables. It's super easy. You don't have to do anything other than just do it. Our culture's so funny. I feel like we can't just eat a tomato. We have to measure this scientific backing of the tomato. We can't just trust that grandma and grandpa ate it, and it was good. We have to have scientific validation.
If you want to do that, there's something called a Precision Xtra. You can go to Amazon. Abbott has its little device. You can get the strips from CVS, and the strips can test for blood sugar. You stick your finger. That little tiny blood goes onto that little strip, you put it in the Precision Xtra right into the machine, and it will tell you what your blood sugar reading is. That's one. They're also Continuous Glucose Monitors that are getting quite popular now, the CGM. People can abuse those and start monitoring everything at all times. One is measuring blood sugar at one particular point in time.
That was the Precision Xtra you can get on Amazon from Abbott Nutrition or Abbott Labs or whatever and get those strips from CVS. The other is a continuous glucose monitor. The third is if you have a doctor, ask them to take your labs every year. Hopefully, it's more than that. Hopefully, it's every six months. You fast before. Don't walk in there having eaten a meal. Fast for at least twelve hours. They then test your blood glucose and A1C. A1C is your blood sugar over time. Those are, in my opinion, the three easiest.
Do you have any thoughts on this whole pin-on-a-strip for pH levels? I've got quite a few friends that do that to try and maintain this level of exactness.
I haven't done that. What is the thought process behind maintaining pH? How would you do that?
I brought one friend whose blood sugar is out of control. He's drinking an obscene amount of chlorophyll to try and regulate it. I have to imagine that it can help to a certain point, but he's depending on drinking a lot of chlorophyll because he was told that would help his pH get back in balance. It seems a little funny to me. It's not crazy, but a little too much.
There are always going to be more niche or extreme circumstances. It's something like chlorophyll might be needed. For the masses, sugar and vegetables do an amazing amount.
You've got little kids.
I've got two young kids.
Are both of them good eaters and like vegetables and everything? Do you have any tricks and secrets to hide stuff from them?
We've tried not to demonize food. I wish I could say differently. They do eat sugar. Do they like vegetables and everything else? Absolutely. They eat everything, from sushi to brussel sprouts. They eat it all. They have sugar, whereas I'd like to be militant and say like, "You can never have anything that's ever bad for your health." Frankly speaking, we took a more practical approach and tried to make it a part of the food that doesn't make it so demonized, so you end up having a healthy relationship with it.
If you're not hungry, you don't need it, as opposed to like, "I don't get that ever," so they binge on eating cookies. I love to say they haven't had sugar in the last many years. I would love to be able to say that, but the fact is they eat everything, including vegetables. We didn't have any secrets because we started early, and they had to eat it because that's what we were eating.
That's what we did in our house too. There was one time with my oldest, who I adore, but he was refusing to eat. I may have sent him to bed hungry that night, but he never put a fuss about anything again.
As parents, we've all had that. I was such a picky eater growing up. I still have to pay back my mom forever for that. I remember when traveling, I had no option other than to eat what was in front of me, and the pickiness left. That was it. It was like, "You starve, or you eat that." I was like, "I'll eat it. Thank you very much."
Any last suggestions for folks that are curious about health and wellness? Anything that you follow? Anything that you feel passionate about?
If we want to have top hits of supplements, we can do that. I'm in the supplement industry. It's been many years if people are into that and want a top ten thing. Before hitting supplements, it's good to get sunlight before you look at a phone or a screen. You wake up and get outside for a few minutes to get your circadian rhythms going. It's good to go for a walk or exercise. It's good to have vegetables. I don't want to minimize that in any way, shape, or form. Have friendships, things of this sort, like a community. On the supplement side, I know you've talked about this stuff 800 times, but here's 801, which is vitamin D. You got to shout it out every time. It's too good. K2 is great. If you want to do D3K2, were mentioning the curcumin. Those are always great. The omega-3s are great.
Our CoreBiome is arguably the most important supplement ever because it's the gut lining. There's nothing more important than the gut lining except for your skin. I believe that's gigantic. I don't want to be self-serving on the show. I believe it and invested a ton of money on this and will continue because it's helped me, my mom, and many people with this bioavailable butyrate CoreBiome. Curcumin, omega-3s, vitamin D, K2, and magnesium needs a huge shout-out. It's so dramatically deficient despite the fact that it's been in the news.
Another one that is deficient in the American diet that we're still not able to get larger quantities that I'm working on now is potassium. I'm working on an electrolyte that could help with that and being a little bit more potassium-focused in those hydration drinks. You look at some of these hydration products from drinks to powders to IV’s, and we can always joke about it. You get diabetes with eating or drinking it. It's funny. It's 11 to 13 grams of sugar. It's silly. The point is when you look at those hydration skews or products, think about higher potassium to get that in the diet.
You only can get those through bananas and avocados.
Yes, primarily. Those are a few.
I love that. I also feel passionate about oregano for killing the bacteria in your gut, leaf extract for killing viruses in your gut, and turmeric and frankincense for antioxidants and natural detox.
Can we pause on that a little bit? That's a point that shouldn't be overlooked. You make a better point than the audience may realize. We personally don't believe that we're walking around with a good bacteria problem. We're not like, "Where's my acid off the list today?" We're walking around with a bad bacteria problem. We've got too much H pylori, Candida, or something like that. My point is to pause on what you said and not overlook it and say, "It's not just about the oregano. It's the purpose behind the oregano, which is we have a bad bacteria problem from oftentimes poor diet, pollution, and things of that sort."
We have a bad bacteria problem from poor diet pollution.
It could be anything.
I appreciate your point. That's what I was trying to say.
Thank you. We eat vegetables, but we can also eat vegetables to clean out the bad stuff too.
You want homeostasis. You want balance in the gut. You are talking about that indirectly.
I've seen a lot of number two type tests to test your microbiome, but I'm still out there waiting for the world when you can do it through saliva or urine because that's not fun at all.
We can talk about it in detail, but the fact is that it's cumbersome, and it's close. We're getting to that point where testing the microbiome is going to be easier. Another thing that is a bother in functional medicine is that we're not doing that more. It's all blood.
I went through this with my son. He was getting quarterly blood draws with several vials to make sure that his healing was going in the right direction. That's painful. It's expensive and traumatic. That's terrible.
One thing to do that's super easy is the Bristol Stool Chart. It's 1 to a 7. You're either constipated or it's diarrhea. You're trying to go for a 3 or 4 right in the middle. If you are pooping well, you're probably healthy. We are talking about boiling things down to very simple things, more vegetables and less sugar. It's that, and if you're not pooping well, it probably needs to exercise or some fiber.
That's the truth. Thank you, Matt, so much. We appreciate it. Where can folks learn more about you?
It's CompoundSolutions.com. That's our company. We're more business-to-business, but we have some cool content on our blog. I'm always on LinkedIn.
Thank you so much, Matt. I appreciate it.
Likewise, thanks.
Important Links
- Compound Solutions
- CoreBiome
- Precision Xtra
- LinkedIn – Matt Titlow