Kevin Harrington, original Shark Tank Shark interviews Dallin Hardy, Product Development Specialist at Hardy Nutritionals for a spotlight on our micronutrients. Hardy Nutritionals aims to develop and provide the most effective and clinically proven nutrition-based solutions for mental wellness. We understand the scientific knowledge supporting nutrition as an effective means of achieving long-term wellbeing. Our mission is to guide as many people as possible to an improved quality of life by educating and training those who suffer, as well as their caregivers and healthcare professionals.

Kevin Harrington: Hi, I'm Kevin Harrington, an original shark from Shark Tank. Hardy Nutritionals aims to develop and provide the most effective and clinically proven nutrition-based solutions for mental wellness. They understand the scientific knowledge supporting nutrition as an effective means of achieving long-term wellbeing. Their mission is to guide as many people as possible to an improved quality of life by educating and training those who suffer as well as their caregivers and healthcare professionals. Now, joining me today is the director of product Development, Dallin Hardy, and I want to thank you for being here today. Thanks for having me. Awesome having you. So I appreciate it. How did Hardy Nutritionals come about?

Dallin Hardy: Well, it started with my dad. The founder is David Hardy and very good. He spent 20 years in animal nutrition formulating feed for livestock. Nice. Before he got into human nutrition. When he was there, he learned the importance of essential micronutrients to the animal's health. And there were some things that really struck him about that. One is human nutrition was so far behind in animals. They supplement broadly at high doses, and the animals are really healthy and safe. It's safe to do that. And in humans, they would dabble in low doses and just a few nutrients at a time. And then another thing that struck 'em was the incentives are reversed. So for a cattle rancher or a feedlot owner, the cows are only valuable to you if they're healthy. But in humans, the hospital, you're not valuable to the hospital unless you're sick.

Kevin Harrington: So it's totally backwards. But what really motivated him and motivates us at Hardy Nutritionals is there was mental illness in the family. And my dad applying his nutritional knowledge resolved that, and we saw firsthand how essential micronutrients can bring peace and stability to a home and heal strained relationships and revive the opportunity for a productive life when that hope had been fading. That's super. So 20 years of experience your father had in working with animals micronutrients, and now he's taking that experience, applying it now to what you're doing now to humans out of necessity. And so what is the ultimate thing you're selling here? Let's talk about it.

Dallin Hardy: I view it as a foundation. So obviously a supplement is not going to resolve trauma, and it's not going to prevent stressful life events from happening. It's not going to fill that existential void for meaning and purpose, the people yearn for. But what we do know is there's a biological, physiological aspect to mental health. And if you don't have that foundation, if your brain is not capable of functioning optimally, then there's no amount of therapy or counseling or faith or drugs or anything else really. You're right, that will provide complete healing because you need that physiological foundation.

Kevin Harrington: So Dallin, on the research page of the Hardy Nutritionals website, there's pages and pages of independently funded and conducted clinical trials that actually do validate the benefits of your micronutrient products for mental health. But could you maybe just summarize all of that? There's a lot of stuff there.

Dallin Hardy: We've been really blessed to have researchers who are interested in humanity. They really care about people and they're academics at universities, and they've been able to research our products without asking for a penny from Hardy Nutritionals

. That's really unique in the pharmaceutical world, it's actually unheard of. And among supplements, there are very few, especially in the mental health space, that have as much clinical data to back up their testimonials. The studies cover all the bases of evidence-based medicine. So you've got randomization to the treatment, you've got controls, placebo controls, very good. You've got independent funding and design in the studies, and you've got peer review of the results, the methodology and everything. Very nice. And you've got blinding. So the researchers don't know, and the participants don't know who's getting the active, who's getting placebo. It covers all those bases. And across the board in psychiatry. So we have daily essential nutrients, which is what my dad named his core formulation, just simply as daily essential nutrients. And it's been studied for autism, bipolar disorder, depression, other mood disorders as well, ADHD, and even substance abuse.

Kevin Harrington: Wow. So when I look at the label of the daily essential nutrients, it looks like a lot of regular vitamin and mineral products to me. But why does it get such incredible results when actually regular multivitamins don't?

Dallin Hardy: Right. That's a really good question. And it's definitely not an irregular multivitamin. It's a lot more comprehensive than most, has 30 line items for all the essential vitamins and minerals. Wow, that's awesome. Micronutrients plus 10 other ingredients in the proprietary blend, antioxidants, amino acids, et cetera, and trace minerals. And then it's the form of the nutrients is really important. So not just the vitamins, but the minerals. Especially because in nature, the plants will take minerals from the soil and sort of package them with an organic molecule that delivers them to the body in a utilizable way. That's a great explanation. And so we've tried to mimic that in our proprietary tech chelation process to make those minerals bioavailable for the body. And then the ratios like the way it's formulated, a lot of supplements, you'll see the percent daily value. If you look at the supplement facts, it's nice, fancy, even numbers, a hundred percent daily value or whatever. But those are daily values are just minimum intake requirements to prevent deficiency with nutrients. There's this large, safe range of intake above minimum requirements where you want to get into, get therapeutic benefits without getting into toxicity. You need larger doses of all of them to come up into that range. And the dosing is definitely different. Most of the clinical trials are on 12 capsules per day. Oh, wow. So that really brings it up into that therapeutic range without getting into toxicity. There aren't very many supplements that even try to do that.

Kevin Harrington: Yeah, for sure. Well, you guys have essentially created this daily essential nutrients concept. And I wonder, are other healthcare professionals or people in the organizations in the industry recommending your products?

Dallin Hardy: They are. They're very interested. So a large proportion of Hardy Nutritionals' customers are clinician referrals. And so that's really exciting. But there are barriers to more widespread mainstream acceptance of it. For instance, in medical schools, doctors just don't get a lot of nutrition training. And so you go to the hospital for conventional clinical care. It's not a focus. Nutrition is simply not a focus. Exactly. And especially in psychiatry. Psychiatry is one of the medical specialties that's most focused on drugs and least focused on nutrition. Right. There's regulatory approvals. The reality of brand awareness and knowledge of any particular product at society at large is it's a regulatory stamp of approval, not efficacy studies, not the actual clinical reality. And that process is tailored to manmade molecules that are patentable and one active ingredient

. Wow. Not 30, 40 active ingredients and none of them patentable. So there's things like that.

(07:29) And the healthcare industry also, it's really systematized. So a lot of doctors are actually just employees of large organizations. They have to follow strict protocols. They don't really have the liberty to do, in some cases, what they think might be best for the patient. There's insurance contracts and liability minimization that the hospital administrators take into account that sort of limits the doctor's ability to practice. But in independent practice, and in integrative and holistic-minded clinicians, we have a ton of traction. There's a ton of interest. The research has been incorporated into by accrediting bodies into continuing medical education for doctors. And also a whole chapter of an integrative psychiatry textbook published by the American Psychiatric Association is dedicated to that research.

Kevin Harrington: You guys have this covered on every side. These products of yours are probably more widely applicable than the alternatives, I would assume.

Dallin Hardy: Correct. Yeah, definitely. The alternatives, psychiatric medication, you're not going to take those for general health. I mean, there's some microdosing and nootropics and stuff that's taking and psychedelics that's taking off, but they're just essential nutrients. And the reality of modern life is that most people could stand to improve their mental health. Sure, absolutely. And so I take it daily at lesser general health doses, four to six capsules per day. And that's the range where most people will experience improved moods, more stable moods, better sleep, more energy, increased resilience to anxiety and stress. And that's actually been proven in studies at those lower doses after natural disasters like earthquakes and floods, they've actually studied and proven the increased resilience to anxiety and stress in those situations. And that's people without diagnoses, just otherwise healthy individuals.

Kevin Harrington: So Dallin, really excited about your products and you've given a very thorough explanation. Folks that have been listening, hopefully they understand why Hardy products are better than those alternatives that are out there. So thank you so much for being here today. And please be sure to visit gethardy.com to get started.

Dallin Hardy: Thank you, Kevin.