From NIH to Pennington: Dr. Stefan Pasiakos on Supplement Science

In this episode of Supplement Source, Jeff Ventura sits down with Dr. Stefan Pasiakos, a leading researcher now at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and former NIH scientist, for a candid conversation about the science—and realities—behind dietary supplements.

Drawing on his experience inside government research and now in the academic space, Dr. Pasiakos offers a balanced perspective on the supplement industry: where the science is strong, where gaps remain, and how researchers and industry can better align. He discusses the challenges of translating research into real-world health outcomes, the importance of context when evaluating evidence, and why—even without “perfect” science—the field continues to play a meaningful role in improving public health.

The conversation also touches on his time working with CRN and other stakeholders, highlighting the productive (and sometimes complex) relationship between researchers and industry.

It’s an honest, nuanced look at supplement science from someone who’s worked on both sides of the research ecosystem—and a reminder that progress in health rarely comes in absolutes.

About the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) 
The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), founded in 1973, is a Washington, D.C.-based trade association representing 180 dietary supplement and functional food manufacturers, ingredient suppliers, and companies providing services to those manufacturers and suppliers. In addition to complying with a host of federal and state regulations governing dietary supplements and food in the areas of manufacturing, marketing, quality control and safety, our manufacturer and supplier members also agree to adhere to additional voluntary guidelines as well as to CRN’s Code of Ethics. Follow us on Twitter @CRN_Supplements and LinkedIn.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Please note the Council for Responsible Nutrition, CRN, does not endorse any guests appearing on this podcast or any products or services they may discuss. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of CRN. Thank you and enjoy the episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

You are listening to Supplement Source, the official podcast of the Council for Responsible Nutrition. And now your host, Jeff Ventura.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Hello, and thank you for listening to Supplement Source. My name is Jeff Ventura. I'm the Vice President of Communications here at CRN, and I am so thrilled to be joined today by Dr. Stefan Pasiakis. Doctor, uh thank you so much for being on our show today. We're so excited to have you. Dying to catch up with you. You, of course, formerly director of the Office of Dietary Supplements at NIH, also known as ODS for us folks in the supplement industry. You are now the director uh at the Center for Human Performance Optimization, uh, and that's at Pennington Labs at LSU, correct?

SPEAKER_03 1:14

That's correct. Thanks, Jeff, for having me. And it's a pleasure to be back here talking to some CRN folks again.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Geez, we're we're dying to catch up. Tell us a little bit about what's going on with you down in Louisiana. What are you working on these days?

SPEAKER_03 1:27

Yeah, sure. So since I left NIH and got back into research, I've been focused on two principal items. One is developing a strategy and plan to build a program centered around human performance for those exposed to the most extreme environments. So that research encompasses spaceflight, it encompasses the military, and any first responders that might be exposed to environmental extremes. And that really builds off of nearly four decades of research that Pennington Biomedical Research Center has done in partnership with the Department of Defense or Department of War. I first came to know Pennington right out of graduation back in 2009 on my very first project and learning how to do some different tracer techniques with their laboratory. So I've been working with Pennington since I've gotten out of school, and this is just an opportunity to come down here and get back into research, which is what I'm doing. So that's the second half of my priorities right now is ramping back up my own individual research program. So a number of different things in the mix from different strategies to accelerate recovery from musculoskeletal injuries, improve the body composition of adolescents and young adults who are ineligible for military service, and things looking at countermeasures to prolong microgravity. So exercise countermeasures, nutrition, pharmacological agents, things that we can use to offset physiological decline in the extreme environments.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

So when we talk about extreme environments, my immediately I'm thinking about the elements and weather. Is that what we're talking about specifically?

SPEAKER_03 2:58

Yeah. So, you know, traditionally when we think about extreme environments for military personnel here on Earth, there's a few things that we think of. High altitude hypoxia and the wars in Afghanistan, the war in Afghanistan particularly, that brought that research out considerably. And there's been efforts around the globe for decades now which expose service members to that high altitude scenario where they're not adjusted. So there are a lot of consequences of being hypoxic, especially over the first few days where emissions can be compromised. Other conditions are heat stress. And being now in Baton Rouge, you can you can imagine you take someone who's not acclimatized to heat stress, you put them in a heat, hot environment, they can suffer from heat exhaustion, and more importantly, or more consequentially, heat stroke, uh, and you don't want that to happen.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

As I said, I I I lived in Baton Rouge, and you can die you know in the line of dairy queen. I mean, you're that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_03 3:54

And and a lot of my research used to focus on the cold. So we did a lot of research on nutritional interventions, amino acid supplementation studies in cold weather environments, and the cold is is unique in that it doesn't alter physiology as much as the heat does or or most importantly has high altitude does. But what it does is that you have to wear a lot of gear. Uh you have to work through the snow, which makes things that much more difficult, raises energy requirements, raises fuel requirements, and just there's a lot of logistical constraints of fueling your body properly when you're dealing with snow and ice and um and the tough conditions. So and there's subterranean, that's also an environmental extreme. So that's what we're talking about in terms of on Earth. Spaceflight, obviously, we're talking about microgravity and and radiation exposure and the duration at which you are unloaded, if you will, and that causes a lot of stress to the body.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

How long has it been since you left NIH? Like I'm losing track of time.

SPEAKER_03 4:52

Yeah, we are getting very close to a full year. Wow. Okay. So I I started here at Pennington uh on May 1st of last year.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

Let me ask you this. So that's sort of the overview of what you're working on. Let's talk a little bit specifically about if there's any Venn diagram overlap between what you're doing now and what you were doing in terms of like your knowledge of supplements. Obviously, nutrition comes into play. Can you give me a little a little feel for where things kind of overlap or intersect there?

SPEAKER_03 5:18

Yeah, definitely. So my research background is in is in dietary protein and countermeasures to stress. In that, I've always been interested in amino acid supplementation, isolated protein supplementation. I know some of the nutrition products that are so-called they're marketed as dietary supplements, they're not really dietary supplements, but amino acid powders, things like that, those are dietary supplements. My work is always traditionally focused on that. I'm also interested in other potential mechanisms for dietary supplements and how that can help offset some of the physiological extremes. That overlaps a lot with my past history with the Army. In terms of NIH, what I'm bringing to the table now, that made my interest in NIH. That's why I was interested in that position. And what I learned at NIH over those two years was quite eye-opening in terms of what the industry really is, what the marketplace looks like, what the trade associations have to do in terms of how they interact with the dietary supplement companies, how they interact with the federal agencies in terms of research. And I'm really trying to build off of that in terms of making sure that the science that we do here, if it ever implements a dietary supplement, it's done to the best possible standards. Because one of the biggest things that I was trying to get up and off the ground at ODS, and I know Dr. Adam Kuzak is continuing that, is a program that we called RIGOR, which is really trying to standardize how dietary supplement research is conducted. So making sure all the proper controls are in place when it comes to funding decisions, when it comes to study execution, and when it comes to reporting that research in the literature, so that a lot of that heterogeneity that you see in dietary supplement science, even with the best possible intentions, let's just say, let's just pick one of the most commonly used dietary supplements, vitamin D, there's still a lot of noise in that science. So if we can clean that up by eliminating some of the experimental factors, you know, that was one of the biggest emphasis behind that program that we try to get up off the ground. And that's what I know I will do here if my research does entail a dietary supplement, is learn from everything that we did during my time at ODS.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

What are we not talking about that is of interest to you now, in and it can be broadly in terms of nutrition or supplement science? What's new in terms of things that you find, even personally, innovative in the space?

SPEAKER_03 7:32

Aaron Powell Well, I think there are some things that fundamentally need to be done. So my research is in the past has traditionally only focused on the Army because I was an Army scientist. One of the things that has come into play is that in the 26th National Defense Authorization Act was a approval for Special Operations Command to procure and administer dietary supplements to special operators. That is a step in the right direction and also comes with some inherent risk. So one of the, I think the benefits is that it puts controls in place over how dietary supplements are used. It has to be done in coordination with human performance-related dietitian that works for special forces. They have to be used for specific reasons. It can be ensured that they're third-party verified in terms of safety or in terms of product integrity. So I think that puts a lot of safety in place. What needs to be done in coordination between that implementation and policy, along with operation supplement safety, which I know CRN is well aware of, there needs to be a continued investment and look at actual return on investment for administering dietary supplements. If the intention is to optimize some aspect of health and human performance, which is what dietary supplements are supposed to do, they're supposed to supplement the diet and augment something, some aspect of health. I think there should be some sort of continued investment in monitoring that, monitoring adverse effects, potential adverse effects, and understanding is this actually having the intended benefit. And I advocated for this at the NUTRA ingredients meeting that I went to. And that was really because here at Pennington, we stood up in cooperation with my old laboratory, U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, stood up a program called the military version of NHANES, MHANES, currently being conducted as a single study. And they've been around multiple installations collecting data on 640 or so soldiers, different military occupations, a representative sample very similar to NHANES. And data like that is so crucial for the field because it sets up important associations between health outcomes and nutrition and dietary supplements, and also can pave the way for new innovative science to really point scientists in the right directions in terms of interventional and hypothesis-driven research. So I would love to see more research going into actually our dietary supplements having that intended benefit. And that gets beyond just randomized trials. That's actually getting out into that ROI space, uh, which you don't see too much of.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

You know, people are gonna they hear your story and they hear about what you're working on now and they flippantly think that you're you're the guy who's working on the pills and the born identity, you know, the Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:17

So funny story. So I did do I did I've done some testosterone research where we give in testosterone. So basically you take we take we didn't take service members, it was done here at Pennington. We put people through like a mock uh military training exercise for a month and really beat them down with exercise, sleep deprivation, food restriction to cause all the stressors that they would be exposed to in the harshest of conditions, minus the fact that they're in a in a lab as opposed to being somewhere in Iraq or Afghanistan or Iran, if you will. Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

This is the MBC, every every January after I make all my New Year's resolutions. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:54

We gave them testosterone to see whether or not that could ameliorate some of the effects because one of the things that those stressors do is that it shuts down uh gnadal function, and be men become very quite hypogonadal during those stressful conditions. And nutrition was always falling very short of offsetting those consequences. So we wanted to take a different tack. So that's just uh I used to get, oh, you're trying to create the super soldier. I'm like, no, I'm not trying to create a super soldier. I'm trying to keep them where they are, where they are, as opposed to declining dramatically when they get exposed to stress. So yeah, I with the supplements and everything like that, it will be the same thing. How can I keep people at their best so they can perform at their best when they're called upon? It's very hard to go above inherent capabilities if you know that.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

So let's um let's uh let's shift gears just a bit uh on the downslope here and just talk uh real briefly about I promise you I wouldn't I I'm not I'm not getting into the politics that is NIH and the federal government, but I am curious in terms of your takeaway with regard to the industry sum total. What surprised you uh given where you were? You know, you had kind of a unique vantage point, right? How long were you there for again?

SPEAKER_03 12:07

You uh it was a little bit less it was a little bit less than two years, and um it was quicker, it was quicker than I wanted to develop.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

Yeah. But I mean, in two years' time, you met a lot of different people, you kind of you really got to see the landscape sort of soup to nuts in terms of of the industry. What what are your kind of afterthoughts or takeaways uh from the whole experience?

SPEAKER_03 12:28

Yeah, to be honest with you, I didn't know very much about the dietary supplement industry before I got to NIH, and I was kind of blown away by how complex it was, how many players they are in the game, their role in shaping what goes on in terms of or helping assist what goes on in terms of of agency support, where the agencies play. From my standpoint at NIH, I always found it important to understand what is the industry seeing, what do they see as a priority and a need, and how can science best uh facilitate that? Uh so I always thought that there should have been a, you know, there should continue to be a very close overlap between the NIH, the ODS, and the dietary supplement industry. And I learned that there's a lot of good, there's a lot of great intention. You hear a lot about the negatives of the dietary supplement industry, that it's all snake oil salesmen and it's it's not, you know, high quality science.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

You hadn't heard that.

SPEAKER_03 13:21

You haven't heard that before? Yeah. So, you know, I can say that overwhelmingly I think the industry is a positive industry. I think people want to improve the health of everyday Americans uh and they're doing good work. Are there pe are there things that sneak out there that aren't the best? Of course there are. Are there unintended consequences? Of course there are. Is there overwhelming science to support all the supplements on the market? No, but there's not overwhelming science in a lot of areas. So I, you know, I really enjoyed my time interacting with CRN, with some of the other folks in the other trades. And I found it challenging and also rewarding to understand where your space was and where the research landscape was. And you know, I found those two years, almost two years, to be quite informative.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Well, Dr. Stefan Pasiakos, we really uh appreciate you coming on Supplement Source, taking time out of your your busy, if not hot, probably day. Is it hot there yet? It's in the 80s. It's in the 80s already. Oh boy. No, it'll be in the you know it'll be in the 90s very soon. So yeah, we it hit 80 something degrees here in DC the other day, which was a surprise. But yeah, today it's today it's back to it's cold again. I mean, it's just been bonkers. But we really do thank you for coming on, and um we wish you all the best uh in your research. Uh glad that to hear that you're back in the lab, and uh we're looking forward to good things coming out of Pennington with you there. Thank you so much. All right, thanks, Jeff.