Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Eat to Win show, where sports nutrition meets peak performance. Get ready for expert insights, real stories and tips to help you win with every meal. Let's dive in.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Good afternoon. My name is Margaret Downs. I am a registered dietitian, and I'm also a board certified specialist in sports nutrition. And we are here to welcome you to the Huddle, which is our live show.
And I am here on behalf of my sports dietitian, and we are here to talk about all things sports nutrition and how we help athletes win. We are excited to welcome athletes, coaches, trainers and dietitians, as well as parents and anyone who's interested in this topic. We're here to talk about all things sports nutrition, and so if you have that passion, this is the place to be today. We are thrilled to have an amazing guest with us. Joining us is Tavis Piatoli. He is also a registered dietitian and has been active in the area of sports nutrition for many years.
Expert and he is also our host and a presenter coming up for the Sports Nutrition Symposium, which is going to be taking place October 27th through the 31st of this month. And so we're thrilled to have Tavis here to answer some questions with us and talk to us a little bit more about what this symposium is and specifically about his topic, which is related to omega 3 testing. So, Tavis, thank you so much for taking the time on our live show to come out and let people hear from you about the symposium and also about your specific topic, which I know is going to be of great interest to our listeners.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Margaret, thanks. It's so, so fun to be here. It's always weird to be on the other side where I'm asking questions, so it's kind of cool to get some questions and have a discussion.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Well, I was just thinking this morning how lucky I was to finally be able to interview the Tavis Pietoli, because I have been following you for many years and have learned a great deal from you as a professional in this, in this area of practice. So I feel very privileged to be able to interview you today and, and hear more. You know, just all the work that you go, you, you do behind the scenes of these symposiums that bring so much great information out to practitioners and anyone working in this area.
So thank you for all of that effort that you're always putting in behind the scenes. So, just to get started, tell us a little bit about my sports dietitian. Tell us a little bit about the company that you've been so actively Involved with. For, for many years.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, so myself and my business partner, Ronnie Harper, who, if anybody, deserves a lot of credit for this company, it's really Ronnie. He's put so much effort in time into growing this into what it has been. And obviously we know there's so much more to go, but yeah, we, we met 15 years ago now because I know I base it on how old my daughter is. She's 14. And Ronnie came. He was like the first person to visit her when she was born at the hospital. So I know it was before that. So probably 15, 16 years when we met randomly. He just called in the fitness industry. At the time, he was an athletic trainer in a high school setting. I'm a dietitian working in sports and I spoke at a conference for athletic trainers in Louisiana and we had a conversation. He had an idea about building resources and education for young athletes. You know, he had 900 student athletes in his school all leaning on him for advice and feedback on how to gain weight, how to, you know, what supplements. Typical questions that we get on a regular basis. But you know, you're the athletic trainer and you're really, your focus is sports med and you and treating kids and making sure kids can get back on the field. And now he's trying to serve a dual role and go, well, how do we build a model that is probably problematic in every high school, in every college. And at the time, colleges didn't have the amount of full time sports dietitians they have now. So we've just been building a company around that and trying to solve problems and figure out what do people want, what do people need, what tools and resources can help them be more successful in their practices. But yeah, I mean, my role has really been just focused on the symposium side and Ronnie, yourself and many others, Sam and Courtney and Shay and all these incredible people we have on our team that have built so much to, to help us kind of get to where we are today. And we know so much more to accomplish. We're just getting started.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Yes, yes, I agree. And I think it's just an amazing. Ronnie is just unbelievable, you know, entrepreneur, go getter. We're all also privileged to be working alongside him and just love the history of how you both came together and started out on this amazing venture to bring such robust resources to all the sports dietitians and people, you know, allied health professionals that work in this area of sport, which is, as we all know, a very unique population of people having sports, you know, dietetics, you know, board certified professionals in this area really lends into the level of expertise that's needed to work with athletes and see. So tell us a little bit about the sports Nutrition Symposium. What inspired you to put together this very, I think it's very deep and well delivered amount of education that you bring to all the people that are interested in this topic. What, four times a year?
[00:05:36] Speaker A: We do, yeah, we do four times a year. And you know, it was pandemic year, right? 2020 seems like it's crazy, it's already been five years. But we were just kind of figuring out like, what do we do now that everyone's kind of stuck and we're all at home and we can't do much.
We thought let's just see what happens. And we've been doing webinars. We've been doing webinars monthly, every other month and a lot of people were attending. So we said, I wonder if we just do something like a symposium and make it a big event during June of 2020 and let's see what happens. Boy, was it big. And it was free. And it's still free. We keep it free because, you know, it's not about just making a bunch of money, charging people a bunch of resources. But we had like 3, 500 people register. So that was like, wow. And then we're just like, let's just maybe keep doing this twice a year, every six months, let's get some speakers, let's reach out to some professionals. And then we decided how can we, you know, grow this to where. Yeah, I mean you put a lot of time and effort in. You have to pay people in order to present. They're not going to present for free. So can we monetize it a little bit to where, you know, it keeps the doors open, you know, for, for our company because not easy to run a company. People, a lot of people want things for free and they don't understand there's a lot of time and money that go into online resources. All kind of different stuff. So we were became a CEU provider and then it went from a one symposium to now four to where we're trying to do this every quarter. Provide resources for dietitians, athletic trainers, strength coaches, mostly on the dietitian side is really where we're heavy because that's what we, you know, we specialize in. But other people that work in that space. So yeah, it's difficult to try to find and not try to do the same topic over and over. And eventually you're like all Right. I'm trying to find 36 unique people every year to speak on something, and sometimes we have the same speakers come back and talk about different things. But it's been a lot of fun. It's. It's. It can be stressful trying to find people in. In a. In a short period of time. Like now. We have to start thinking about speakers for the one in January. And, you know, this one coming up is. We have a really fantastic lineup. I'm excited about.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Well, I know that it just takes a lot of time and. And that you have put it out there, which I. From, you know, my perspective and being someone who's attended these for years, I feel like the quality of education is so high and so good, and the fact that it comes at a very low cost to get these continuing education credits is just a huge win. And so I wanted to also just kind of like, throw in there. We do have a VIP pass, correct. That people can access, and they get unlimited access to the CEUs, or tell us a little bit about how that works.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: Yeah, no. So every symposium will have access to CEUs through the VIP pass. The VIP pass is typically somewhere around $89. It depends on when you get the VIP pass, but usually you get it for 89 bucks. You get, I think, all kind of CEUs from dietitians. We have certain amount for dietitians. We have a certain amount, usually 9, 10 CEUs for dietitians, for athletic trainers, through their specific credentialing boards. There's other resources that we throw in there. You get Access to the e2Win app, the premium version. And then if you. If you want really, the big package, if you really need CEUs to. Because what we try to do is, if you look at CEUs for dietitians, they can run as much as 15 to $30 a CEU. So we're like, what can we do to make it more affordable? Right. Unless your work's covering you to go to conferences where you might spend $1500 to get 15 CEUs. The work is covering that for most of these people. But how can we offer them a lot to where they don't have to stress about spending so much money? So that's one of the things, is we make it affordable. It's free. But if you want CEUs, yes, we have to pay for that. You know, we try to put a low ticket price on that to where it's really valuable and try to get some good speakers behind that as well. But 89 bucks, you get all the CEUs for that course, you know, depending on the number of sessions that we have.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Yeah, is tremendous value. And, you know, coming from someone who works in the field but also has, you know, I have other positions, you know, that are outside of sports nutrition. I have always paid for my own, you know, continuing education credit. So I find a tremendous value in that price. I think that it's just extremely affordable and also just with the quality of, you know, information that you're getting, it's just really, really great price at the pump. So who would you say the symposium is developed for and what has the attendance been. Been like over time?
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's a great question. Mostly dietitians, probably those that work in the field of nutrition. Whether you're a dietitian, whether you're an athletic trainer, a coach, a strength coach. I mean, we probably have 60 to 70% of people that attend our event or dietitians that work in some sort of athletic community, whether it's a team, whether it's their own private practice, or whether they want to want to work in those fields. We've had so many people over the last probably 10 years that either joined our internship program or are reaching out saying, how do I get into this field so they attend our event. I mean, anybody that is passionate about, you know, working in performance, but just learning a little bit more about different topics related to nutrition. Because not everything is going to be just like it has to be for the athlete. It could be for the general population as well.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. And I thought one of the. Really one of the coolest things about the very most recent symposium we did over the summer, which I was fortunate enough to be a part of. But we had exhibitors. Right. Set up outside of the. The regular symposium, which enabled our listeners to go in and actually have even more interaction and networking available to them inside of that virtual meeting, which was the first of its kind that I've attended. And I really appreciated that extra networking piece that was kind of built in there.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we're trying to. We. We've partnered with some companies over the last couple of years that kind of have the same, I guess, outcome and goal, whether it's a institution like Concordia University of Chicago that has a sports nutrition program. Shipping is another organization in the sports nutrition field. Organizations like gpni, oaim, who is an organization that became one of our first. Our first exhibitor last year. So just companies that are all in the sports nutrition space. And we're working on some opportunities for this upcoming one where we're going to have some new exhibitors in there that are signing on. And we're, we're super excited about that to give just you come listen to a session. But maybe you need a product or maybe you need a service that, you know, some of our partners can help you with, that we can help you with. And we just want to make sure that the people we partner with have the like minded goals that we have to try to help sports dietitians grow their practice.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Absolutely. And that private practice window was also open on the Alignable Network. We had an exhibitor space there for anyone who's in private practice to come join and join our group in Alignable and be present there. So I just thought that was a really great way to enhance the networking of a virtual symposium that was very, very unique in terms of the way it was delivered. Tavis, I know you're going to be also presenting this time for our upcoming symposium between October 27th and 31st, and you're going to be discussing Omega 3 testing and supplementation in athletes. So I wanted to give us a little time to talk about that a little bit more. So can you discuss what Omega 3 testing is and who offers this test for athletes?
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Yeah, my first will be a disclaimer. So I do work for a company called Omegaquant. I'm the director of sales and business development. Omegaquant invented the Omega 3 blood test. It was actually invented by Dr. Bill Harris, just an incredible research scientist that has published close to 400 papers on Fatty acids. So he came up with a way to test the blood for Omega 3 back in the late 90s, early 2000s with a guy named Dr. Clemens Von Cha out of Germany. Dr. Von Shacki has a lab there. Omegaquan has a lab in the US and also in Scotland with the University of Sterling. So it's a nutritional biomarker like vitamin D or, you know, B vitamins or if you want to measure other vitamins. But it's a pretty critical nutrient that I know we'll talk about and I'll go into more details in the symposium about what does the research say based on blood levels in athletes? What makes omega quants testing unique? There are other labs like from Quest that you can get in other ways, but they test the red blood cell membrane. That means they're looking at Omega 3 over four months, whereas if you do a blood draw for Omega 3, it's only looking at plasma. So it's only looking at Omega 3 over 24 hours, which means you have to fast there's a lot more variability in the outcome, whereas with omega quants version, less variability. A lot of research, over 200 published studies looking at that specific test alone.
So it's the most well researched method of analyzing Omega 3.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: That's incredible.
So what is your experience with dietitians and sports dietitians taking this testing and running with it for use in their athletic populations? I mean, what kind of results are the tests going to provide to the sports RDs and those who are also working with athletes?
[00:14:25] Speaker A: We've seen a lot of testing grow in that space. A lot.
We probably have over 70 teams from college to pro to Olympics to the military. And we have a research division of the company too. So what's really cool is it's not just a testing lab, it's, it's a research company that strictly we have tons of research studies going on from clinical trials, but a lot of, a lot more sports dietitians and people in the athletic space, whether it's a team, whether it's in the fitness space, are now understanding, wow, this is a valuable biomarker. Just like we also do vitamin D testing as well as a at home test kit. And teams want to, they want to test omega 3. They, they're seeing the literature and what it, what it's been demonstrating in regards to things like a reduction in inflammatory response, improvement in outcomes and potentially concussion with higher blood levels. Yeah, I mean it's a really important marker. It's not one of these like life threatening markers where if you're deficient, oh my gosh, you have to harp and correct this tomorrow. But at the same time it's a very easy nutrient to correct. And we'll talk about, you know, what, what do you need to do to do that? Right. How much do you need and what's the best way to do that? But yeah, it's, I think it's something.
90% of people have low levels of omega 3%. Like 80, 80, 80% of the globe. 90% of Americans typically are, I don't want to say deficient because deficient is less than 4%. Optimal range is 8 to 12. We hover and see most people in the US around 4 to 5.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: I didn't know it was that high.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: It is, it's a bigger deficiency than vitamin D, which can hover around. 50 to 70% of people are having low to suboptimal levels. But you look at vegans and vegetarians, they typically have in the military have the lowest Omega 3 scores on record. And that's because Plant based omegas like chia, flax, walnuts, they do nothing to increase your blood EPA and DHA levels which yeah, we'll probably go into a little bit of that. But yeah, that's more ala. That's, that's Vegetarian Omega 3 which won't convert at a high enough percentage to EPA and DHA to increase your blood. So people that are vegan or vegetarian, they have to use algae or algal oil as supplements. That's the only way they can increase their blood omega 3 levels.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Wow. Well, that's just really great information for people. And is it easy to administer? I mean how complicated is this test to take and how expensive is it?
[00:16:36] Speaker A: I probably should have just like grabbed a test kit so I can like. Hey, it's a really. It's just a lancet. Yeah, it's just a little. We use a dried blood spot. It's a dry blood spot test.
Um, it's typically you just take a lancet, prick one finger, wipe the blood off, turn it over, squeeze it, drop a spot of blood. Our, our test only requires one drop of blood for Omega 3, a little bit more for vitamin D and other things that we measure and then you just send it back into the lab for an analysis. It's pretty easy to do. We work with teams too that they'll buy like a combo kit. We don't sell them standalone but we'll do vitamin D and omega 3 together. Like we have several NFL teams and several college teams. Like look, I want to test my athletes for both. Can we just get a baggie, a little Ziploc baggie with all the collection material and then we code the barcodes when they buy those to where it'll test for both biomarkers when they submit it in. But very easy to do if, as long as you don't, you know, get stressed out about looking at blood. Some people hate blood. So if you're not that kind of person, then you'll be fine and it's really easy.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah, well even if you are, it's like a little finger stick. So maybe, maybe it won't be too overwhelming for those.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: You'd be surprised how many people at trade shows like I'm going to be at a trade show. We have a pharmacy show in New Orleans next Sunday and Monday. So we'll be there exhibiting. Pharmacies are really area that has growing with, with point of care testing and we'll do testing on site like at ASPDA this year we did. I tested the first hundred dietitians that Came up and said, I want to get this done. And there are a few that are like, oh my gosh, I hate blood. I don't like. You know, it's just even like some of your like people that like offensive linemen, right. You just people that are like getting crushed. And every single play in football, they're like, I don't want that my finger to be. They're just anticipating something worse. Yeah. I mean, some people are scared.
The cost is we, we think incredibly reasonable. You know, you look at vitamin d, it's only 36 bucks wholesale. You know, through insurance right now, what we're hearing from providers is people are paying out of pocket, and my wife did that too, is 100 to 150 bucks even when you build insurance. So we're giving teams a very affordable ways to, to test. But Also the Omega 3 test could be as low as $33, depending on which one you want. We have some that are omega 3 index, others with omega 3 index with ratios like omega 6 to 3 and omega arachidonic acid to EPA, which we say stop chasing seed oils and ratios. Focus on getting your omega 3 up and your ratios will take care of themselves. And then we have a complete test which is all 24 fatty acids that include other markers as well. Incredible.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: Well, that's, that's super.
Um, I know I'm gonna ask the question in a minute about how to maybe increase these omega 3s, you know, in our body. However, I want to talk a little bit for a minute about the research right behind Omega 3 levels and any specific outcomes that you noticed? I know you mentioned a few earlier that, you know, the anti inflammatory markers, the concussion improvements that we've seen when we're administering this to athletes who experience those kinds of injuries. But what is kind of the foundational kind of research that's really driven the application of omega 3 in sports nutrition and with athletes.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I think one of the leading scientists that we've had present at one of our conferences in the past this is Dr. Jeff Heelson. He's out of Bethesda, Maryland. He's with the military. He's published a lot of really good research around looking at different levels of EPA and DHA in the blood, looking at Omega 3 index, looking at supplementation in athletes to see an improvement in strength, power, heart rate variability. Not all of that's his research, but most of the stuff on the athletic performance side is. Jeff was also with John Oliver's paper and in Southern and several other authors on those papers. That look at head injury and look at concussion and look at the improvement in outcomes that athletes with a higher blood omega 3 level and those that are receiving 2 grams of DHA a day saw a reduction in what's called neurofilament light. So basically that's a marker of head injury to where over the course of an entire football season that marker continued to go up and those that got no omega 3 therapy versus those that got at least a minimum of 2 grams had a very small rise. So there seems to be a head, you know, a protection of the brain. Although there's other blood markers that we need to maybe explore. Obviously the anti inflammatory response has been pretty well studied to show markers like lower omega 6 to 3 ratios, lower arachidonic acid to EPA levels, which means the more EPA you consume, the less, you know, the lower that ratio is going to be. High sensitivity CRP or CRP is a marker of inflammation which is lower when your blood omega 3 levels are high. Heart rate variability or heart resting heart rate reserve is improved when you have a higher blood omega 3. So I'm going to go through some of the newer science too that was recently published in the last six months just to kind of talk about, you know, what are the average levels we've seen in athletes in the military which has been quite low. Pretty much all of the studies that have been done in collegiate and pro athletes have shown like less than 5% of them have high levels or levels we would consider optimal, you know, for them to achieve an improvement in outcome.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Well, and I mean I'm sure it, it also extends beyond we're talking about athletes here because that's our population of, you know, conversation. But obviously Omega 3s have huge implications in longevity and health overall. And so heart disease and some of these other chronic health conditions that we know are just plaguing our nation in this culture anyway.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: Yeah, no, the, the study that was done with Dr. Harris and others looking at the UK Biobank in hundreds of thousands, like a couple like 180,000 people, I don't remember the exact number, but if you look at mortality, all cause mortality, cardiovascular cancer, all of those are so much lower, they're significantly lower when you have a higher blood like DHA and EPA level, around eight and a half percent. So we've got longevity studies, we've got mortality studies. I mean if you're an older adult or just middle aged adult, like you know, like us, I'm taking a lot of Omega 3 for more of a longevity and prevention standpoint to try to minimize my risk more than like achieving more muscle mass. If that happens, great. If not with a 14 year old, I want to be here as long as I possibly can. So it's pretty, pretty convincing that we have some really good data from our lab and other labs that show higher blood omega 3 levels are so important to potentially reduce those types of diseases.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's really neat. I mean I, I'm not going to sit here and date myself in terms of age, but I have an 8 year old and I think I'm eating a lot of these foods. But I'm interested now to find out from you how do we really impact increasing the omega 3 levels in our body?
Is it just nutrition or do you feel like supplementation is also required?
[00:23:09] Speaker A: You can do this through just eating foods, fish, seafood, not plants like you know we talked about earlier. You can't go eat a whole bag of flaxseed. That's not gonna.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Well now they're fortifying a lot of foods too with omega 3.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: They are, but they're typically not for fortifying them with non plant based. I mean they're putting flax and other things in there that are more Ala alpha linoleic acid which is not gonna help you increase your levels. Even if you ate grass fed grass finished beef with a thousand milligrams of Ala, that will not be helpful for you. So it has to come from.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: That's such good insight because how many people know that when they go to the store and see Omega 3 is fortified in your milk and fortified in your eggs and you see it now throughout the food chain as maybe it's just marketing phase. It's not really going to have the same effect that you're telling us it should.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Correct? Yeah, it really has to come from marine sources or algal or algae based sources. What we've seen is number of fish meals per week. People that ate three meals at about a three or four ounce serving probably had, you know, you were talking salmon, Pacific herring, sardines, halibut, really high omega 3 rich fish had a level of about 7.1, 7.2% on the omega 3 score which is not bad omega 3 index. But I mean it just depends. If you're eating fish four days a week and you test your levels and you're good, keep doing that. I mean we've seen some of the highest levels in the lab for people that don't take supplements. I'm not going to eat salmon three to four days a week. Not That I don't like it. It's just, can be cost prohibitive for some people. It's not, you know, it's not as less expensive as like a turkey or chicken if you eat meat. But supplementation is probably the best way or easiest way to be consistent. And then obviously with fish oil supplements, there's about seven or eight different forms that circulate the market.
You have what's called an ethyl ester, that's processed oil that's probably 90% or more of the fish oil that sits on the shelves of grocery stores, pharmacies. If you walk into a Walgreens or cvs, you're getting the least quality, the lowest quality oil you can probably get from most of those brands. So what happens with an ethyl ester? Most of your good fish that supplement companies. And we'll say something. Let's, let's. Let me take a step back real quick. Supplement oil. There's crude oil suppliers, Omega 3 oil manufacturers first. That's not even the supplement brand. That's, that's the people who catch the fish. They bring the boats to Chile, they go to Peru, Norway, and they catch those types of fish. They bring them back to the manufacturing facility and then they make the type of formula of oil they want. That oil can be in an ethyl ester. So that means they have to take that fish, extract the oil, they add an ethanol to that to make it an ethyl ester and they break it down of its triglyceride form. Others so the company, we have a high concentrated omega 3 fish oil product that is certified for sport. But our company is based out of Norway. Our oil supplier, they've been around over a hundred years. They only provide high concentrates in triglyceride form. That's what you want. You have what's called the natural triglyceride form and you can only get natural triglyceride meaning basically it's like eating the fish off, off the out of the water in what's called an 1812 oil. That's 180 milligrams of EPA and 120 milligrams of DHA per serving. But if you don't want to add any fillers, you have to make it a small soft gel and make it around a 300 milligram soft gel and consume that natural oil. There's what's called re esterify triglyceride. When they convert it to an ethyl ester, re esterify it back and convert it back into a triglyceride that's the most common you'll see. But you want to make sure you're using a high concentrated triglyceride form. What does high concentrated mean? It means the majority of the fat inside the soft gel is EPA and dha. There's a lot of brands out there that if you say, oh, I'm getting a thousand milligrams of fish oil, but you're only getting 300 milligrams of EPA and DHA, that means you're getting a 30% concentration. That's incredibly low. You really want 70% or higher to see any movement in your blood level. So DHA is what's going to drive your Omega 3 score up. Because when we consume DHA by itself, it increases your blood EPA levels as well. If you just consume epa, it won't do anything to help your blood DHA levels. It'll only increase epa. So triglyceride form is the most bioavailable effective way to increase blood EPA and DHA levels and raise your Omega 3 score. You don't want to use ethyl ester. People ask, well, how do I know? On the label it's going to say triglyceride form. If that brand uses it.
It's also a phospholipid will also be a very effective way. The problem with krill, it's five to ten times more expensive than triglyceride. And you have to use like 20 soft gels to get a recommended dose. I'm a fan of about 2000 to 3000 milligrams a day of combined EPA and DHA. I take more. That's just for me. I'm not. That's not relevant to today, but that will move the needle very well. If you're using a good oil and you test yourself and you're like 4%, take about 2000 milligrams for the next three months and retest yourself. If you're consistent and that doesn't go up, you either have Crohn's disease, a GI disorder, or you're just training at a very high intensity that could be slowing your body's ability to absorb omega 3.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Well, that is just tremendous insight. And if that hasn't convinced anyone who's listening to us today to show up to our symposium, this is just scratching the surface of these speakers that we have and the quality of, you know, newest science and stuff going on in the field. So it's just a phenomenal value once again. So y' all get out and get your VIP pass Today, lastly, I'm going to ask one more question. Then we want to kind of summarize with who else are we going to see at the symposium? What other kind of speakers are we going to get to hear from? Lastly, how long does it take to correct a deficiency if you have an omega 3 deficiency? What are we, what should we expect in terms of timeline?
[00:28:54] Speaker A: Yeah, like if you're, let's say, right, that's the low end of the, that's, that's the higher end of the deficiency. 2% is really low. But you can truly, depending on how much you can tolerate and take, you can get it up in two or three months, three months easily, if you're consistent. Two months is very possible if you take maybe a bigger dose. If, if, you know, we have an Omega 3 calculator on OmegaQuant's website. You can go to the calculator, you can type in what your score is, and then it'll tell you, based on the form of oil, how much to take.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: We also have a dosage guideline we give to practitioners that use in their practice. So it's two to three months. If you're 6%, obviously within a month and a half, two months, you can easily be 8%. I like to stay a little higher. Just, I like to try to stay hopefully 10, 11, 12, because levels can go down if you stop taking omega 3. You know, I had a, we had a colleague of mine of ours that he's in the fitness industry, but he's a dietitian. And he's like, for three months, he just stopped taking Omega 3. He was at 11%. He's like, I want to see what happens if I don't do anything for three months. It was levels went from 11 to 6 in three months, it went back down. So he's, it just shows that that's significant.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Wow. Well, that I know you've not only, I mean, I knew before, but now I really am convinced of how important this is. And I need to probably go run out and get my test and get on a supplement right away. But I can't wait to hear your overall presentation coming up at the end of October. So, Tavis, tell us a little bit about who else is going to be with us during this, the symposium this fall, and what should we expect in terms of our lineup?
[00:30:23] Speaker A: We have an incredible lineup. I'm just, I'm, it's all like just PhDs for the most part. It's people a lot smarter than I am and have done a lot of research. But, you know, you look at Dr. David Church. His topic's going to be called From Boulders to Pebbles Priorities and Muscle Hypertrophy. So he's gonna be talking about nutritional stat strategies to truly increase muscle mass. That'll be on Monday. He's going to kick off the symposium. And then Katie Emerson, who is a dietitian, she is going to be talking about Cognizant. So it's going to be talking about game changers in the, in the world of sports performance and sports nutrition in the brain health space. What are some nutrients that really highlight that space in brain health? Day two, we're going to be talking with Erica Goldstein. She's a. A PhD and also a dietitian as well. She's also a certified strength and conditioning specialist. From exhaustion to recovery is her topic. How carbs and protein lead the way. And then we'll close day two with Dana White. She's a sports dietitian and an athletic trainer. She'll be talking about sports nutrition and sports psychology and how they interact. Day three, we'll kick off with Michelle Barack. We'll be talking about considerations and recommendations in the assessment of treatment of energy deficiencies in adolescent athletes. Right. So that's a unique, I think, market that people really need to focus on. And then she'll be talking about that. I'll close out day three with our omega three topic. Day four, we'll start with Dr. Jeremy Townsend. He's actually with athletic greens and ag1. He's their director of research, but he's going to be talking about sleep nutrients. What's the REM remedy? Right. The REM cycle for rest and recovery, supplements for sleep. Dr. Annette Larson Meyer, who's been with us before to talk about a few different topics. She's going to come back and talk about the current perspectives of vitamin D and sport. And then on Friday, we're going to close out with Dr. Nick Barringer, who's with the military. He's done a lot of research in that area. This topic will be on thermal stress and nutrition. Supporting the warp war. No, I can't say it. The warfighter in the cold and the heat. So we'll talk about nutritional strategies for that. So just an awesome group of presenters.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: That were so fired up to have, well, incredible topics. I cannot wait.
All of you who are live listening to us today, make sure you spread the word to your colleagues and your friends about this incredible opportunity to come in and join the sports Nutrition symposium that is offered four times a year. From my Sports Dietitian it's hosted by Tavis Pietoli, who we have as our guest today, who will also be presenting on Omega 3 testing and supplementation and as you just heard, is a great and renowned expert in this area. So we can't wait to hear more. Tavis, is there anything else that you would like to wrap up with before we start? See you in just a few weeks.
[00:33:07] Speaker A: No, just be sure to get your VIP pass. If you need cus, get registered for this for this symposium. It goes live two weeks from today. So we're super excited about that. And if you are in the the field of sports nutrition, be sure to join Margaret's alignable group. That's just an important group to network. Networking is so important, you know, without networking and, and, you know, looking up to others in this industry that came way before Margaret and I and others, it's like using those individuals, leaning on them to grow. Your practice is so important and it's one of the things we've developed resources for with the Eat to Win app and other things to help you grow. So hopefully we can support you in that space.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Absolutely. And I mean, I think networking has really changed, you know, since COVID too. We've, we've seen it go live, go virtual. You know, everyone's been able to connect from all different kinds of places who might not otherwise have been able to attend a live symposium with such robust speakers, topics and current research.
So just always love what you and Ronnie and my sports dietitian do for the field, how you advocate for the most current and exciting information and how to apply it in practice, which is huge for dietitians working in this area and other professionals, our athletic trainers and our strength and conditioning specialists, our coaches and even parents who have so many questions about how to fuel their young athletes. So thank you everyone who has come on today and we look forward to seeing you in just a few weeks and look for the huddle because we are going to be back on live once a month and we're going to have a very robust show going forward to keep everybody involved and on their toes with respect to what's going on in the field. So thank you for joining and we look forward to seeing you shortly in just a few weeks. Take good care.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Thanks, Margaret.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us on the E2 win show. Remember, every meal is a step toward victory. Until next time, stay strong and keep winning.
