In a conversation with The American Chiropractor (TAC,), Weston Bussler, PhD, (\NB) shares with us Standard Process’ mission and latest projects, NIC’s innovative research and development, as well as the future of nutritional supplementation. Read on to learn more.
TAC: What is your background in nutrition?
WB: I graduated in 2018 with a PhD in nutrition science that emphasized food science and plant breeding. My research aimed to connect these three areas and outline how they simultaneously can help us produce food that is better able to promote health for individuals. For the past four years, I have been working at Standard Process Inc. in research and development, where I am currently a product development manager.
TAC: What kind of environment is being created at the NIC?
WB: Standard Process has made a huge investment in creating a facility focusing on research that looks at how natural products can support many different areas of health. We focus on running a lot of this research ourselves but also have a great resource on the North Carolina Research Campus that helps us partner with key scientists from different universities to find ways that we can improve products and our understanding of how to use them.
We spend our time looking at our historical ingredients as well as new innovative ingredients that may be ones we make from our own materials or ones we can source from outside groups. This research includes analytical chemistry to outline important compositional components of our ingredients, basic sciences that understand mechanistic relationships that make these ingredients work, crop development that looks at how we can utilize our farm, food science that determines ways to deliver products, and clinical sciences to further develop the evidence around the health benefits.
We also have a dedicated education team that works to translate the information into usable formats for health practitioners.
TAC: How does Standard Process determine what types of strands of crops and other products to include in their supplements for providing optimal nutrition?
WB: The biggest driver for figuring out which crops to use in specific products comes from what we leam in that analytical chemistry stage. Each plant can have tens of thousands of different compounds to consider, and finding ones that are relevant for specific health connections becomes important. This is a main driver we use that makes us unique. When we are choosing new plants, they have to hit our nutritional targets for the particular product. We also have other factors like availability and performance of the crop, can we grow it in Wisconsin, do the seeds scale to production, do we see enough consistency to the crop, do we have the right equipment to harvest and process it, and does it work in our rotation pattern on our field.
TAC: Are there any new products that Standard Process has forthcoming that use this type of technology?
WB: We can use this crop-focused approach to strengthen our existing products or develop whole new options from. We currently have multiple hemp offerings, and we have been using this approach to transition to entirely hemp material grown on our farm for these products. This was a huge effort to identify hemp crops that expressed potent cannabinoid and terpenoid profiles from the whole plant (everything above the root), figure out how we were going to grow it, and then have everything in place to turn it into that potent oil ingredient that meets our quality standards.
By using the whole plant, we can be very efficient and use a lot fewer plants than if we were to use the buds alone. This efficiency lets us then carefully manage the crop by hand. Hemp is also one of those very difficult plants that likes a lot of nitrogen in the soil, so it lets us manage the soil in the field for future uses.
“The merging of technology with health will continue to be something we see in the nutritional supplement field.”
We have also been working toward new products that utilize specially selected oat varieties for their very balanced nutrient profile and extremely unique phytonutrient profiles that help take an already nutritionally important crop like oats and benefit from the diversity available in nature to bring forth an even stronger nutritional crop.
TAC: Are there any studies being undertaken at the NIC that you can talk about?
WB: We have several ongoing studies running by our research team, and groups that we collaborate with. One recently completed study paired hemp oil, high omega-3 oil, and broccoli extract with chiropractic care. This was compared to a chiropractic-only approach, and we saw beneficial additive effects from the nutritional addition for patients. We were excited with this result since it showcased the synergistic aspect of using nutritional bioactive compounds in standard care.
TAC: Where do you see the future of nutritional supplementation going?
WB: The merging of technology with health will continue to be something we see in the nutritional supplement field. By this development of new tools to help patients stay on top of their own interventions, or more
of an ability to monitor how an intervention is working. I do a lot of work in the microbiome space for Standard Process, and the tech and advancements we are likely to see in the future will be very exciting. I also think we are going to see a lot of interesting pivots and innovations in the ingredient space in response to new sourcing challenges for ingredients that have become more prominent in recent years.
TAC: How do you view the educational level of chiropractors with regards to nutritional health?
WB: At Standard Process, we work hard to develop advanced nutrition education materials that help continue to advance nutritional knowledge and understanding, and we see a strong amount of participation from the chiropractic community. It is clearly a big interest for the profession and one of the areas they seem to be committed to staying up to date on. And trying to find ways that nutrition insights can be applied for their patients, especially the ones that I encounter in my position.
TAC: Do you have any final words for our readers?
WB: I think that it is important for readers to understand the worldwide potential of plants. Nature is the best plant breeder; it has given us countless options available to choose from. However, we have really narrowed our usage in the past 200 years. The more we look back to what is available in nature will help us move forward and utilize things that have been lost for future health.
To learn more you can visit standardprocess.com
Dr. Bussler’s Bio
Weston Bussler, PhD, currently works at Standard Process Inc. as a Product Development Manager of the Research and Development team. His work involves translating novel research insights and natural product innovations into successful products and educational material for health care practitioners to support health and wellness. Dr. Bussler earned his B.S. in Nutrition at The University of Minnesota and continued his education at North Carolina State University where he earned a PhD in Nutrition Science that emphasized food science and plant breeding. His research at NCSU aimed to connect these three areas and outline how they can simultaneously help us produce food that is better able to promote health for individuals. Weston pairs his multidisciplinary background with a passion for nutrition and health promotion.
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