Do Bison and Beef Liver Supplements Work for Everyone?
I frequently am asked by customers (and potential customers) about what they can and should expect from taking our 100% Grass-Fed Bison Liver pills & supplements. While most folks experience increases in energy among other benefits, occasionally we do find folks who claim to experience no benefit from our product, as well as those from competing beef liver pill & supplement companies. If you’re going to buy from another brand, here are the criteria we recommend looking for in your beef (or bison) liver supplements. And, we certainly do not recommend buying supplements from overseas, such as New Zealand, Argentina, or Brazil—here is a detailed article on why!
These supplements are certainly not a magic pill or silver-bullet-fix for anything. Some folks experience life-changing results while others might as well be taking a placebo.
The factors impacting this are myriad, but I believe the potential impact of the products can be best and most-accurately anticipated by evaluating the variables outlined below.
1) MTHFR Gene polymorphism
OK, let’s just get the nerdy bits out of the way first. As humans, we all have the MTHFR gene, which determines how capable our bodies are of methylating nutrients. Nutrient methylation refers to the process by which our body makes certain vitamins and nutrients bioavailable, by attaching a methyl group to the molecule and thereby making it usable by our body. Here is an article which sheds a bit more detail on the process.
In short, you are either a very poor methylator, a poor methylator, or a good methylator. Most of us (including myself) fall in the former two categories (lucky us!). This means that we are not absorbing or able to utilize most of the vitamins we are taking in, if they require methylation (such as the B vitamins which are so richly-supplied by liver). Liver, especially from ruminant animals such as bison, contain these vitamins in methylated form. This means our own bodies can skip the methylation process to make these bioavailable, because it has already been done.
So, liver consumption (whether fresh or in freeze-dried supplements) can greatly mitigate effects of MTHFR gene mutations and polymorphisms, as we are directly supplying our bodies with methylated vitamins rather than demanding that our body go through this process with all the nutrients we are taking in.
I highly recommend everyone be tested (or consult their 23andme or similar genetic testing results) to determine where they are on the spectrum of methylation. If you are a poor methylator, consuming liver can have a night-and-day impact on your energy levels. If you are a good methylator (the minority of the population), liver consumption will likely not be as impactful for you as for others.
2) diet
One’s pre-existing diet is a key determinant as to whether beef liver supplements or bison liver supplements will be beneficial. These supplements are immensely rich in vitamins, nutrients, minerals, peptides, and other compounds which are rarely (if ever) found in other foods. So if one is severely lacking in these, the supplements could be shoring up deficiencies and alleviating lack. This will translate to boosts in energy levels and feelings of well-being after consuming these supplements.
If one already is mitigating nutrient deficiencies and has a relatively rich and complete diet, they may not notice as large of an impact. For example, if your body already has all the B-vitamins it needs, introducing MORE B vitamins is not going to make much difference aside from intensely coloring urine, as those vitamins are uselessly excreted out of your body! Viseversa, if you are severely lacking in B vitamins and then introduce them, you will likely notice profound and near-immediate changes in how you both function and feel.
So, your pre-existing diet and supplement regiments (or lack thereof) greatly influences what you may or may not experience from taking a bison (or beef) liver & organ supplement. Interestingly and somewhat paradoxically, folks with good dietary choices generally DO notice an impact from liver supplementation. However, I suspect that this is correlative and not causative—many folks making good dietary choices do so because they are more sensitive to how food impacts them, and thus they are more likely to notice positive benefits when introducing any high-quality supplement or food, liver included.
3) activity levels
How active one is (or isn’t) impacts efficacy of bison liver supplements similarly to diet. High activity levels require high metabolic demands, as our metabolism must speed up and complete more processes on the micro level, as we speed up and complete more process on the macro level (translation: if you are moving about and busy, so is your metabolism!). The more active we are, and the more metabolic processes are happening, the more nutrients and calories we are using and depleting. It should follow then, that we need to replenish these nutrient & caloric stores if we wish to maintain the same activity levels.
Whether this activity manifests as intense physical exercise or highly-demanding cognitive tasks, the story remains the same—we are using up resources, and we need to add those resources back in to meet the demand we want. I have found that athletes, high-powered individuals with demanding careers/lifestyles, involved moms (yes, being a mom seems to be equally as demanding as the former two categories) are generally the folks who find our bison liver supplements the most impactful. These people are running at high RPMs (metaphorically, of course) and are burning up all kinds of calories and nutrients as they make their mark on the world. These folks need a higher intake of high-quality food and supplements to keep up with their metabolic demands, and liver supplements are an ideal way to meet these demands. So, if you have high activity levels (or, are fatigued but would like to have higher activity levels), supplementing with liver sourced from clean ruminant species is probably a good idea.
4) lifestyle
Beyond diet and activity is lifestyle. Our lifestyle choices have a major impact on metabolic processes and nutrient demands just as exercise, cognitive work, and diet do.
Lifestyle factors that influence these include sleep, exogenous toxin intake (like sitting in traffic, exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals, etc.), endogenous toxin production (from microbiome imbalances or otherwise), emotional stressors, our social situations, and beyond.
For example, something as small as an upcoming test or work evaluation can cause heightened stress, which manifests as cortisol release. Cortisol is good, because it makes energy available to your body and encourages action. Chronic cortisol release however, causes rapid aging and other negative health effects. Unfortunately, we live in a world and society which encourages chronically-high cortisol levels for many individuals.
Even more unfortunate is the fact that no amount of bison liver can fix poor lifestyle choices. If you are exposed to high stress levels, poor dietary choices, low activity levels, and then make less-than-wise lifestyle choices on top of it, liver is unlikely to alleviate much suffering.
I have found both from personal experience as well as anecdotally from our customers that making positive choices in all these realms generally leads to multiplied and compounding benefit. So if you feel one notch higher from solid diet, and another from solid activity levels—you can often gain more than two notches of benefit by incorporating both into your life.
The customers who experience the most benefit from our product are generally those who are doing almost everything in their power to feel amazing and kick ass at life.
5) individual differences
Obviously, humans come in myriad shapes and sizes. There is such great variation and variety among humanity that there is certainly no one-size-fits-all prescription for ANY of the above-outlined factors—I would never recommend a single diet to all humans, or a single exercise regimen, or anything else for that matter.
Similarly to the MTHFR genetic polymorphism, there are countless variables which shape who we are on the individual level. We know about some of these (like the MTHFR gene), while others remain yet to be discovered by science and experimentation.
Because of this, my favorite experiments are the n=1 experiments—you are the guinea pig, and only the results for you matter! If everyone EXCEPT for you benefits from liver supplements, then I would recommend that you not waste your money on them. And viseversa, if you notice benefit but everyone around you shrugs and notices nothing—their experiences should not impact your own decisions. We must account for individual differences, and experiment often sheds insight into this. If you consume some liver and feel great, then I recommend to continue consuming liver.
Key takeaways
Some people experience immense benefit from taking grass-fed bison and beef liver supplements, while others notice almost nothing
Differences in impact from liver supplements likely comes down to diet, activity, lifestyle, genetics, and other individual differences
Lack of nutrients in diet can make liver supplements more impactful, while other folks with very clean diets notice huge impact. There are many variables at play
Higher activity levels and higher metabolic demands will likely make liver supplements more impactful for any given individual
Other lifestyle choices like sleep, environment, social interaction, etc. will impact how beneficial (or not) a liver supplement is
Making positive lifestyle choices (and consuming liver supplements) generally has a multiplying and compounding effect that is greater than merely summing the changes
Individual differences account for the variation in impact as well—some folks claim they cannot live without peanut butter, while others will die if they eat it. Variation among humans is immense!
Consuming bison liver supplements is probably a very good idea, no matter who you are :)