The Making of Greens Stack
Phytonutrients and Adaptogens (or Greens, superfoods and herbal medicines) (All non scientific)
As Hence is still small and currently (June 2018) only offering one product, people are asking - "Why Greens and Superfoods?"
The secret to long-term gains in athletic performance AND day-to-day health are the same: it’s about finding the perfect balance of nutrients for your body and mind and keeping your body at this optimum level of nutrition. No chemicals, no side effects, multiple health benefits. My mission was to find the ingredients that created this balance and supplemented nutrients lacking in people’s diets – athletes or not. I wasn’t looking to create another short-term performance enhancing product, like the millions you see in the fitness industry.
So why greens...
1. Personally, it was the toughest part of my diet to get right and keep on point. Eating enough greens, once you know what enough is, is really tough! and expensive! Quality green vegetables aren't cheap. They are also often old, well travelled and sometimes questionable once you get them home and out of the chilled produce section of the local supermarket.
2. They can be labour & time intensive. The other option is to grow vegetables. My parents grow 80+% of their own veg and have done since I was young. It's cheaper if you grow - but much more labour and time intensive! The major positives (if you can do it!) are its organic, freshness is unbeatable and the flavours are like you have never really tried these plants before!! (Nothing beats fresh runner beans.) Unfortunately, allotment owners haven't yet started farming spirulina, yamabushitake mushrooms or ashwangandha plants. So the variety and opportunity to specify particular food sources is limited.
3. If you read the previous blog post you will know Hence's mission is provide products that work and offer a noticeable impact. When you have this mantra over your shoulder, accountability for the merits of ingredients, serving sizes and research supporting the blend of ingredients are very much front-of-mind! Sticking with naturally sourced ingredients, at least initially, felt like the obvious choice. Phytonutrients and adaptogens by definition do not have side effects and are literally grouped together as positive health compounds! I certainly didn't want to alienate anybody from day one and all ingredients I have chosen have large amounts of scientific study behind them and a lengthy history of use across various cultures around the world.
Missing from my diet, safe and effective.
The initial research
I was convinced by the above ideas, and on first inspection many scientists, nutritionists, bloggers and passionate researchers like me showed agreement. So I felt I was on the right track. I then set about looking at natural ingredients with:
· research proving one or more health benefits
· multiple sources of evidence of the benefits*
· health benefits for anyone and everyone
· that complement each other, or enhance each other’s benefits
· ideally multiple benefits (adding value to the eventual product)
· a proven exact dosage for optimal human consumption based of real life experiences
There are lots of ingredients that tick a couple of these boxes simply by being "anti cancer" or "fighting disease".
But the key was to find the ingredients that ticked ALL the boxes - multi layered benefits, proven by multiple scientific studies, that complement the theme of the product and have a noticeable impact on everyone that tries it.
So it turns out, unsurprisingly, it wasn't just me that struggled with getting quality greens! What's more, the top performing ingredients were not easily available!
I needed to start here - with natural greens - phytonutrients and ancient herbal medicines or adaptogens as these were the groups of ingredients that ticked ALL the boxes...
What are they you ask?
Phytonutrients is a genera term for "substances found in certain plants that are believed to be beneficial to human health and help prevent disease."
Adaptogens are substances often used in herbal remedies and medicines for " stabilisation of physiological processes and the promotion of a stable equilibrium."
To find high levels of phytonutrients and adaptogens you don’t need to look any further than green vegetables, but you do need to look beyond the general "good veggies" thinking you often see in bodybuilding. Picking very specific plant varieties, grown in a certain way and harvested at a certain point in growth offers lots of benefits beyond good macro-nutrient breakdown. Take broccoli sprouts: 50x higher concentration of sulforaphane (a type of antioxidant that is widely considered best in class), treating cancer and promoting heart health etc.
Adaptogens are where a lot of the big claims can be made, as many of these types of ingredients (roots mainly, but also plants and other compounds from natural sources) have had literally thousands of years of human use with results to match the claims and scientific research to back everything up.
The body needs the micro nutrients or Phytonutrients antioxidants,for the body's natural balance to be correctly aligned for quick recovery at all levels. Antioxidants are cause the "main" benefit of many of the "greens" aspect of Greens Stack, pretty widely underutilised as a method of fitness and health enhancement, whilst also being lacking almost everyone's diet!,
The body and mind love adaptogens - increased brain function and cognitive enhancement with hormonal tweaks for bodily improvements. You wouldn't need these herbs and roots (unless anything was in deficit and an issue) but anyone and everyone can benefit and see natural progress in areas of their performance. ...
Searching for the perfect blend for Greens Stacks I also considered the overlap between the two categories of ingredients. Many adaptogens have phytonutrient or antioxidant qualities and vice versa.
Aside from adaptogens and phytonutrients I was also keen to incorporate ingredients with anti-inflammatory properties in the "Stack" I was creating. Many people, from top level athletes to totally out of shape people (and everyone in-between) get struck down by inflammation of some sort or another . Be it sporting injury, the inflammation around a limb. Or lesser considered organ inflammation for poor diet, Alcohol, other drugs or inflammatory foods or illness etc. . Anti-inflammatory ingredients help you bounce back as quickly as possible and keep you out of the doctors’ surgery. If you want to perform at a higher level you have to recover fast or ideally avoid injury or ill health altogether.
The findings...
After a lot of research, I found some pretty impressive ingredients that do a great job of providing a really noticeable uplift in your day-to-day performance. I don't want to get too much into the ingredients but its important to explain at least the process.
The no-brainers
A few of the ingredients (Spirulina, Matcha, Broccoli Sprout, Kale and organic Spinach seemed like absolutely no brainers at the time).
Spirulina is becoming widely regarded as the top food source on the planet and I don't doubt more and more will include or be made completely from Spirulina in future
Matcha, again commonly known as a mega ingredient, every cafe seems to have a green grow of Matcha in at least one of their recipes.
Broccoli Sprout is like the mega version of broccoli in terms of health benefits, harbouring the largest natural dosage of sulfurophane, the best of the best in the antioxidant world.
Spinach is another fantastic green with more and more studies being released on the various organs and digestion that benefit from increased Spinach in a diet. This is the ingredient that also needed to be organic, all others I was less concerned about and aware costs could spiral if every ingredient was from organic sources. But when Spinach is growing he has such absorption of everything in the soil and air around it, organic is the only way to be sure the benefits and qualities of Spnach are being found and properly transported into the body.
My need for anti inflammatory
I have explained above my mild obsession with anti inflammatory and the need for inclusion in Greens Stack no matter what.
Curcumin is the odd one out in Greens Stack, in fact, you can even see it when you add water, the orange tiny flakes. Not a Phytonutrient nor an adaptogen. A very healthy and benefitical ingredient but it didn't really fit the criteria I was setting out. I couldn't not, I had to wedge it in there, the need to fight inflammation the body is as necessary and as overlooked at the antioxidants.
Piperine acts as activation for the benefits of Curcumin, Allowing the bio available compounds to be absorbed at a increased density. Absorption is again something I feel is often over looked in nutrition at all levels and in many areas. It's been proven now that many processed foods offer such poor nutrient absorption, even the calorie quantity is effectively wrong as the body simply doesn't recognise it as a food source.
The deeper level of Greens that led to the adaptogens being added
Digging into Phytonutrients as I was, it was a apparent there were a number of plants (green leaves) that crossed over into herbal qualities. Not just offering micro nutrient qualities but some hormone or congative support, in fact, Spirulina was the one that started my thinking of making this more than just a necessity supplement to a healthy diet, but a "Stack" of ingredients, with some variety in benefit, all adding to a "better you" (or me at the time)
Moringa Oleifera is a antioxidant, through and through. Less popular in western culture but very effective and widely used in the eastern world. It also had some interesting claims of muscular growth and stress release that were not immediately associated with antioxidant qualities. The research is a bit thin still (hence no link here) but it had to be included as well getting me thinking outside the box more and more.
Ashwaghandha, an Indian weed, literally growing commonly on the side of a busy road in many places. It's becoming more popular now in the sports or performance nutrition world as it has such interesting qualities of hormonal support (clearly adaptogenic). It can promote testosterone increase in men particularly but interesting regulate testosterone to the required levels in women and where necessary, promote oestrogen.
Lions Mane mushroom or Yamabushitake is an amazing adaptogen that has been proven for hundreds of years to increase brain activity leading to memory improvement, cognitive enhancement and therefore physical performance. Once I had this in mind I was all in on Stacking the ingredients and making something more than it's inital ideas.
Finally (for now) there is Dang Gui Buxue Tang, an ancient Chinese medicine with a reputation for blood invigoration and increase in "gui" energy. High in Iron, explaining the beneficial qualities but again far better absorbtion of iron, as its a natural source and higher concentration of iron than many other extracts I could find.
I want to get into the ingredeints again in another post (so be warned!) but I think this is a good overview of my thinking and process I went through.
After the research
At this stage, to be honest, I didn't know how much people would like it. I knew it wouldn't taste like the super sweet whey powders and bcaas available because of the flavour and smell of the ingredients. Coming from plant extracts, roots and traditional herb based medicines the most of the ingredients we had picked are known for their terrible flavours.
Would that stop people?
Even if they understood how good this blend was going to be for them.
Prior to this, Hence was a concept and only really a list of ethics and morals that I wanted the Brand to be structured on. However it was becoming apparent I was developing a product and ethos that is pretty unique. Even though most of the ingredients are found elsewhere, few are combined into a single powder and virtually none had the correct serving size based of proven effective doses.
Why was this?
Any resistance I was getting from people, either in the industry - product sourcers, blenders etc. or friends and family was along the lines of "this will be super expensive" or "it's pretty niche, is there enough of a market".
Perhaps it should have made me reassess - time will tell.
Quality ingredients, particularly natural ones are expensive to buy and blend. What you get at the end of this pricey and tricky process is unflavoured unsweetened and well, not great smelling let's say. It's no surprise some didn't want anything to do with it.
In conclusion
Once the bones of the brand had been hashed out and the product was well formulated and in alignment with the mission of Hence, I got a chance to reflect and consider
Will this help people?
Will this help me?
With regards to other people, we ahve had lots of great reports, the flavour is hard to get by for some poeple, but in the main the responses are very positive**
We are also still very much building. So people are still finding us (June 2018), understanding Greens Stack and slowly but slowly but surely more and more are trying it. So fairest to say - the results are not yet counted...
When it comes to me, I think the easiest way to explain this briefly is by describing my current morning routine:
1. OAB(out of bed)
2. Greens Stack (2-3 times per week, full serving), protein powder and nut butter***.
3. meditate
4. Gym workout.
5. Crash on with my day with a spring in my step!
* check out our resources page for the studies backing the research!
** check out our testimonials page!
***If I'm on a mission, be it in the gym training, fat loss, or Hence related with a tight schedule, I up my protein intake and use Greens Stack at full serving max 4 times a week basically to ensure I have what I need to be on top form. But this is short lived, max a month and then back to usual regime.