“I grew up in India, and we were used to using traditional Ayurvedic medicine for little things that happened on a day-to-day basis. As a kid if I had a tummy ache, sore throat or scraped a knee, my grandmother would always have a solution and that solution was always on her spice rack. It would be something like ginger, turmeric or some sort of tea.” Said Dr. Leena Pradhan-Nabzdyk, Pharmacologist, Professor, and Entrepreneur.
It’s Difficult to Navigate Tradeoffs for Convenience
Many of us feel guilty when our schedules don’t allow us to pour time and energy into meals. Leena said, “When I was growing up in India, we didn’t go out to eat at all. Everything was home cooked. And meals were very regimented because both of my parents worked so we had vegetarian food 4 or 5 days a week, once a week we had fish and maybe twice a week we had meat or chicken. I have an 11-year-old who’s a picky eater and I still think about, how to make him eat nutritiously.”
Especially When it Comes to Nutrition
We discussed how difficult it is for many of us to emulate practices we grew up with. My parents are from Barbados, and growing up my mother would grab an aloe vera leaf over an antibiotic for cuts. She also made our meals from scratch. But it’s important to find strategies and systems that fit within our real lives and calendars.
Leena said, “As much as I’m into this for my startup, I don’t always have time to properly plan meals. When I think about my eating habits or my family’s eating habits, when we have to eat some meals that are quick, supplements can really help.”
Supplements Can Help You Save Time
Moms are the “chief medical officers” in most families. And let’s be real, managing health for ourselves, children, parents or partners. Especially when their needs differ, is a demanding part-time job. Peeling and grating fresh ginger is more difficult than buying a ginger tea but the latter may not be as effective.
Stepping into the vitamin and supplement aisle to decide which products will suit our needs can feel like entering the wild West. In the US, where we have a semi-regulated supplement industry, organizations can put beautiful labels on products with no guarantees about their safety, efficacy, or strength.
But Not All Supplements Are Equal
Leena’s spent her entire career as a scientist. Now she runs a company that uses genomics and AI to validate, test and certify the biological efficacy and safety of functional ingredients. So how can moms without this training discern what products make sense?
She said, “When people ask me, ‘what products should I buy?’ it’s not an easy question to answer. I’m asked this question over and over because I’m in this industry. Yet, when realized I couldn’t give a straight answer my colleagues and I started looking into these products ourselves. And we decided to create resources to help guide consumers, because we don’t have our own products on the market.”
So, Look for the Science and Evidence Base
Leena’s company primarily provides testing services to manufacturers to help them bring science-backed products to market. She realized there’s a lot of confusion about what constitutes an “evidence base” and wanted to make it less murky.
She said, “There are companies that do all of the non-required clinical trials just to make sure they have the best products for their consumers, and some companies don’t. And then there are other companies, with fraudulent ingredients or fraudulent marketing claims. So, you have to know there are all types of companies operating in this industry.”
Are the Core Ingredients Natural or Manufactured?
To help demystify the confusingly similar claims about ingredients, efficacy and potency Leena and her colleagues, decided to start scoring different supplements on a scale of one to ten. Then they created a consumer solution, literally called WhatToTrust. She explained, “At times organizations scratch the surface. They try to productize something really effective, without necessarily having the depth of why that compound, plant or spice was so useful in the first place.”
“When I was growing up in India, if I had a cut on my hand my grandma would put turmeric on it and if you had a sore throat, you drank turmeric milk. Turmeric is the answer for everything in the Indian culture. But we were really surprised when it got popular in the Western world.”
For example, you’ll see turmeric infused products everywhere but they’re not all effective. On her company’s Instagram page, she explains what makes a turmeric supplement work and recommends a few brands rated ‘10’ using rigorous criteria. “Turmeric gets its golden color (and most of its benefits) from curcumin – a powerful compound known for its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.”
Underlying Ingredients and Approaches Matter
Leena explained, “When I started seeing these products sold in the US as dietary supplements it brought back those memories of my grandmother. However, productizing botanical ingredients is quite complicated. For ibuprofen, you can take Advil or the CVS brand ibuprofen, because it’s a small molecule and it doesn’t matter what brand you buy. What’s inside that bottle is more or less the same from one company to the other. But that’s not the case with botanical ingredients. A lot depends on the strain for that crop and what were the conditions it was grown in. Including the soil condition and any climate related changes in that area.”
Figure Out What You Really Need
I asked Leena, can we really eat enough cauliflower or broccoli to move the needle on nutrition? Spoiler alert, there isn’t a ‘quick’ answer for that either. For example, your nutritional needs can often be met with fresh and whole foods but not always. Your needs change throughout your life, as well. Like when you’re pregnant, postpartum, or going through menopause and your specific medical conditions and health history can change what’s required.
Consult with your healthcare practitioner, whether that’s your primary care doctor or a specialist in nutrition, to help you personalize your diet.
It’s Not One Size Fits All
I remember spending hours researching the “the best” prenatal vitamin, a topic that Leena has tackled to provide more details about. Her website, includes a guide on buying dietary supplements. But even when you’re trying to match your life stage with supplements, there’s still room to personalize.
We discussed for example, that moms entering menopause experience it differently. So finding a supplement needs to align with your symptoms. She explains on her IG page, “Some dietary supplements, like black cohosh, maca root, and soy isoflavones, have been studied for symptomatic relief, but it’s always worth knowing what the science actually says. So, do your research on menopause supplements. And talk to your doctor about whether they are appropriate for your overall situation.”
Yes, it’s worth taking a little extra time to find reliable sources for your nutritional needs. Especially where food, supplements or vitamins come into the mix. It doesn’t, however, need to feel daunting. You can use great resources like Leena’s site, ask your medical providers and look for NSF certification.
Many thanks to the talented Dr. Leena Pradhan-Nabzdyk, PhD!
Check out her company’s website to research supplements whattotrust.com and follow her great adventure on Instagram.
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About Dr. Leena Pradhan-Nabzdyk:
Dr. Leena Pradhan-Nabzdyk is the CEO and Co-Founder of Canomiks Inc. based in Cambridge, MA and Rochester, MN. Leena has a PhD in Pharmacology and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. She is an accomplished life sciences professional and Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School with extensive experience in industry and academia.
Leena co-founded Canomiks with her colleagues from Harvard Medical School to bring their collective expertise in science, health, and wellness to the food, beverage, and dietary supplement industries. Canomiks has received several grants including the prestigious National Science Foundation SBIR grant to develop new standards for the botanical ingredient industry using genomics, bioinformatics, and AI technologies. Leena has served on the community board of trustees of the non-profit organization, Jeremiah Program in Rochester, MN, on the board of Launch Minnesota, a MN state organization to support start-ups, and is a former Co-Chair of the science committee of the global organization, Women in Nutraceuticals. Leena currently lives in Rochester, MN with her husband who is a physician at the Mayo Clinic, their 11-year-old son, Richard, and their two standard poodles, Carbon and Arthur.
