I am not that different than most people.
Ok, fine, I am a different bird, I get it. However, I will argue that I am not too different than most because I want the same thing everybody else wants – health and prosperity. But more importantly, I want health and prosperity for my children.
In a nutshell, that is why I started down this road of health discovery and how I ended up founding a company that has the ultimate goal of providing the best collagen supplement money can buy (and being one of the best health and wellness companies in the country).
This is my collagen testimonial.
This is my collagen story.
And if you have kids, you need to keep reading.
How did all this happen?
Well it all started about the year 2014.
My daughter, Vivian, was a typical 1 and half year old; loud, funny, crazy, rambunctious, and I loved her more than anything else in the world (Now she has to share my love with her 2 brothers, but she will always be my special little girl).
Kids change everything for parents and Vivian is who to thank for our family’s health journey. Vivian was not diagnosed with pediatric cancer, a birth defect or a terminal disease. However, she was sick more often than not, about a week every month. She routinely had a horrible cough, which completely destroyed sleep for her, my wife and me. We visited the hospital 3 times in a year – 2 times because she had major trouble breathing and another for a fever with a 106 degree temperature. We even moved from the suburbs of Orlando closer to downtown because we thought we needed to be closer to the hospital.
Her pediatrician diagnosed her with asthma, which baffled me because my wife and I have always been “healthy”, which I put in quotes because come to find out, were not exactly metabolically healthy. More on that later. So we did exactly what the pediatrician said to do – inhalation treatments and steroids.
After probably the worst month of our lives due to:
- Vivians chronic breathing difficulties,
- horrible and I mean absolutely horrible behavior from Vivian because she was on steroids (roid range for a 2 year old, who knew),
- and of course,we were multiple months deep on #teamnosleep,
My wife and I were at a breaking point.
We were doing everything the doctor said to do and it seems as if Vivian was getting worse. Plus we were spending hundreds a month on drugs, yay.
Hello Google
So I did what every other parent looking for answers does in this situation, I went to Google. I started reading everything I could my hands on and boy was there a lot of information.
The first breakthrough came in the form of a podcast. I drive a lot for work so I had lots of time in the car and quickly decided that listening to music was a waste of time, and I needed to use that time to educate myself on all things health. Not knowing where to start, I searched ‘health’ on apple podcasts and after listening to the first few mins of a few different podcast episodes, I landed on The Fat Burning Man Show hosted by Abel James.
The ONLY reason I choose this podcast is because Abel has the voice of the radio Gods and I was like “I can listen to him for an hour, easy.” I devoured his show. I think I listened to 40+ episodes in the first week and decided I would make every change possible on myself he and his guests recommend.
Then first change was to cut out gluten, recommended by Dr. William Davis and Dr. David Perlmutter. Dr. Davis is a cardiologist and wrote the book Wheat Belly and Dr. Perlmutter is a neurologist and wrote the book Grain Brain.
After listening to them on the Fat Burning Man Show podcast (Dr. Davis’ episodes & Dr. Perlmutter episodes) I bought both books, read them in about a night, and subsequently cut out gluten from my diet.
Everything Dr. Davis and Dr. Perlmutter said made perfect intuitive sense, therefore, the science fair experiment on myself had officially begun in January of 2015.
Post-Cutting Gluten
After successfully cutting gluten out of my diet I almost immediately started to get compliments that I looked lean and my face was less swollen. Plus, I genuinely felt better, had more energy and I slept better.
After about a month, our whole family went gluten free.
Vivian experienced the first of many health breakthroughs after cutting out gluten. Not so much because gluten is the devil and wheat flour should never be consumed, but when you eliminate gluten from your diet, you dramatically reduce the amount of processed food in the diet, and almost eliminate most, if not all, grains. After all, what is 1 of the main 3 ingredients in processed food?
Wheat.
And when you cut out one of the 3 main ingredients of processed food from your diet, the other 2 diminish as a part of your diet as well. The other 2 ingredients, you may be wondering, are sugar and vegetable oil. Which is a perfect segway to the next change we did at the Bailes’ household – reduce sugar as much as possible.
Sugar. Grrr.
Other valuable episodes on The Fat Burning Man Show include guests such as Mark Sisson, Dave Asprey, Elle Russ, Josh Axe, and Abel James himself (interviewed by his wife).
- Elle Russ: How to Beat Food Addiction, Optimize Your Thyroid, and Boost Your Metabolism
- Dr. Josh Axe: The Truth about Stevia and How to Eat for Performance
- Dave Asprey: episodes on The Fat Burning Man Show
After listening to these episodes, I purchased Mark Sisson’s book (The Primal Blueprint), Dave Asprey’s book (The BulletProof Diet), Josh Axe’s book (Eat Dirt), Elle Russ’s book (The Paleo Thyroid Solution) and Abel James’s book (The Wild Diet).
I noticed one staggering similarity that all these books had in common: the recommendation to reduce sugar, reduce overall carbohydrate consumption and eat more fat.
Over the course of a year we reduced Vivian’s sugar intake. Almost instantaneously we noticed her mood change to the positive, her sleep tantrums were less frequent and her immune system started to get stronger. She was getting sick far less often. The one week a month of extreme illness turned into 2-3 times a year, which was a HUGE win for our family.
Dr. Cate
In January of 2017, almost 2 years into our health journey and our family following what many call the “Paleo Diet” (see image above) or Vinnie Tortorich “NSNG” (no sugar no grains, I stumbled upon the giant who I can thank for being the main force of change for my family’s health.
After listening to her be interviewed by Abel on the Fat Burning Man show, I immediately bought her best-seller Deep Nutrition and I discovered the two missing links of our health journey in my family.
She of course, was a fan of cutting out sugar from the diet and agreed that processed carbohydrates are terrible, but she kept talking about these things called:
- vegetable oils (what the hell are those) and,
- collagen protein, found in bone broth (isn’t collagen the stuff in celebrities lips?)
But she worked with the LA Lakers and even ‘cured’ Kobe Bryant’s ankle injury and torn achilles with bone broth.
I was hooked. Tell me more Doctor Cate.
Vegetable Oils
First, these things called vegetable oils I learned are pretty nasty and are actually made from industrial grown seeds (corn, cottonseed, canola, soybean, sunflower, safflower) and not vegetables at all.
They are pro-inflammatory, which simply means they can hurt the body and cause bad things to happen, and are a toxic fat that have horrible long-term implications on health. And the best part is that the American Heart Association endorses them as being healthy because they lower cholesterol, which is another future blog post by itself! More about Good Fats vs Bad Fats from Dr. Cate.
Now, let me be fully transparent here, vegetable oils are the hardest ingredient to take out of your diet because it is in literally (and I hate that word) every single packaged food. But, it is the most important food to remove from the diet, bar none. Eric Sharp, our CMO, shares his tips on how to avoid seed oils on his site, Healthy Dad Hacks.
Most people have no idea what vegetable oils are and people think these oils are good for health because they have the word vegetable in them. And why wouldn’t they? They are marketed as healthy, endorsed by the AHA, doctors prescribe them as an alternative to saturated fat (which is another highly debated topic, but spoiler alert, saturated fat is GOOD for you), these seeds oils are very cheap and they have a long shelf life. No wonder Clif Bars have sunflower oil in them and not butter.
If you would like to know more of the history of vegetable oils and how they came to our food supply, go read Nina Teicholz book The Big Fat Surprise or go watch Fat: A Documentary directed and narrated by Vinnie Tortorich.
Post-cutting Vegetable Oils
After a year or so of eliminating these oils as best we could, we noticed even more dramatic results in Vivian with regard to her improvement in health.
Her energy continued to improve, her attitude was better than ever and she was continuing to strengthen her immune system. She was still getting sick a few times, and getting hammered maybe 1-2 times a year by some large illness (usually always around November and May for some reason) and therefore, my wife and I were still searching for answers since we had done the major three eliminations in our diets – gluten (carbs in general), sugar and vegetable/seed oils.
Sure, we were absolutely thrilled with the improving health of Vivian, but something was still missing. Why was she still getting sick a few times a year?
Aside from eliminating vegetable oils from the diet, another pillar to the Human Diet Dr. Cate outlines in her book was an emphasis of “meat on the bone” and bone broth for good health. First off, what in the world is bone broth? Short answer is it is what your grandmother used to have cooking on the stove everyday and the base of chicken noodle soup – chicken bones boiled in water for hours. The process of making broth extracts many lovely nutrients from the bones including glucosamine, glycosaminoglycans (fancy words, I know), but also collagen protein.
More about the ingredients and benefits of multi collagen protein.
Curing my Lactose Intolerance
Now I don’t know about your kids, but mine don’t exactly jump at the opportunity to guzzle down chicken or beef bone broth. So I went to the store and bought some Kettle & Fire bone broth for myself and some unflavored collagen protein powder to experiment on them with. My thought was if I couldn’t get them to drink bone broth, an unflavored collagen protein powder has to be the next best thing, right?
Prior to giving my kids anything, I drank the bone broth and consumed 2-3 scoops of the collagen supplement myself to see what happened. And what ended up happening?
I cured my lactose intolerance in 3 days.
You read that right.
I was diagnosed lactose intolerant when I was 10, in 1997. This was something that had impacted me for 20 years, and bone broth and collagen cured me in 3 days. I drank 32 oz of bone broth and supplemented with 2-3 scoops of Dr Axe brand multi-collagen for 3 days and poof, no longer lactose intolerant. Leaky gut healed. Now I drink like a gallon of milk every 2 days.
Don’t believe me? Ask my wife.
Check out our Bone Broth & Collagen Soup recipe
After living in this health-centered world for over 2 years by this point (Jan 2015 – Spring 2017) and understanding the connection between the gut and overall health, I was actually not terribly surprised that collagen (see benefits of collagen powder) and bone broth fixed my leaky gut and lactose intolerance. In fact, it made perfect logical sense.
After all, Hippocrates, who is considered the Father of Medicine said:
Let food be thy medicine.
I had to get collagen into Vivian’s diet.
Starting CB Supplements and selling Multi-Collagen
At this time, around the summer of 2017, I had personally been taking collagen protein for months and I was experiencing tremendous results in the gym (CrossFit Orlando), felt alert, recovered well, slept like a baby, never got sick and felt better in my 30’s than I have/had ever felt in my life. But I thought you felt worse as you got older? Not me.
Read: Why collagen is an excellent supplement for CrossFit Athletes
I was also getting MBA on weekends at the University of Central Florida in the executive program. This is important because I was in the business creating mindset at this time and upon realization that I was spending $100+/month on collagen for the family, I thought to myself:
I can make my own brand. I can do this better.
After researching what to look for in a collagen powder, and some start-up work, CB Supplements was born later that year, in December 2017.
Our first shipment of unflavored multi collagen powder came in April 2018 and since then, my family’s health has never turned back. Vivian and Finn both get between 8-10 grams of CB Supplements multi-collagen protein every day and their health has never been better. My wife and I get collagen into the kid’s diets (see our collagen recipes) in a number of different ways – cook with it, bake with it, make homemade bars and treats, dilute it in beverages, put in smoothies — anything we can figure out.
If age is a concern, I’d recommend reading: What Age Should I Start Taking Collagen?
How’s Vivian today?
Vivian, who was told by multiple pulmonologists that she would be on an inhaler for the rest of her life, uses her inhaler maybe 2 times a year, when she is fighting something nasty.
I am not going to lie to you and say Vivian, Finn and now Banks are invincible. Kids get sick, it happens. But no more are the days of rushing to the hospital and frequent visits to the doctor’s office over and over again. We actually don’t get sick as much as a family. And when we do, we fight it for a few days and move on.
If you’re not already sold on giving collagen to your kids, read this:
Collagen & Kids: Your Guide to Benefits, Safety & Tips
That is the most impactful effect that collagen has had on our family – we just don’t get sick that often. And that is worth everything.
I started this blog by stating all I want is health for my family, and specifically my kids. That’s why CB Supplements was started.
To deliver the highest grade multi-collagen at a fair price, so that everyone can invest in their personal health and their families by adding a simple supplement to their daily diet.
Thank you for your support in growing our brand and making a positive impact on the world.
Please feel free to reach out to me anytime with any questions, thoughts, or comments. Learn more about CB Supplements or Contact Us.
