Team Tranzfuse had a sit-down Q & A with Sports Medicine Physician and Chiropractor Dr. Peter Rath. Here's his take on Tranzfuse and the benefit it brings to athletes and top performers(mental & physical) alike. 

Team Tranzfuse: Would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself and your work? 

Dr. Rath: I’m a sports medicine physician, I’m a chiropractor. I have a ton of post-graduate education in sports medicine. The professors that have taught me are all the guys that organize and choose the medical teams for the United States Olympics and stuff like that. My primary professor was actually the chief medical officer for the 2016 Rio Games just recently.  So that’s why I eat, sleep, and breathe sports medicine and athletics. I love it. I work with high school students, college students, professional athletes and I even get to work with Olympians, which is really awesome.  

Team Tranzfuse: It sounds like you’ve worked with a lot of cool people.

Dr. Rath: I have been pretty blessed, you know, knowing the right people, being in the right places and the right times. I’m pretty lucky. 

Team Tranzfuse: So how long have you been in the field? 

Dr. Rath: Let’s see, I finished school in 2013, so I’ve been out in practice for 3 heading into four years now. I’ve been in private practice for about the last 16 to 18 months, and I’m actually approaching my, actually, I just passed my one-year anniversary last month with my practice here, House Power Strength & Conditioning. 

Team Tranzfuse: Let’s go over your experience with Tranzfuse. What were your initial impressions and your thoughts on the samples? 

Dr. Rath: Overall I think it’s a pretty decent product. The main thing for me was the, the number one thing is that there’s no proprietary formula. Everything that’s on the label is inside of the packet. It tells you exactly what you need to know. For someone like me, what I look for my athletes especially, I don’t let them take anything if I don’t know what’s inside it. Especially when you’re working with athletes of the caliber that I work with, when you get to the elite where you’re looking to get scholarships at division one schools, or looking to go to the Olympics, I won’t even let that athlete pick up their water bottle if they haven’t had it in their field of vision the whole time. I will make them dump it out and grab a brand new one because there are cases of people spiking drinks and things like that where they fail drug tests and whatnot, and then it ruins their career. They spend their entire lives working so hard to get to this point, and they lose it all because they were careless, and the competition was out to get them. 

So, knowing and disclosing the formulation is really important to me. I don’t let my athletes take anything that says proprietary formula. Most of the time, it’s just fillers—things like preservatives, anti-caking agents, and things like that, that are used to take up space and to make the consumer feel like they’re getting a lot, but they’re really getting practically nothing. Or, whatever is inside of the packet isn’t on the label. That’s the main thing.

The second thing I would say is the formulation itself. That pouch is not your typical Gatorade pouch. In my opinion, Gatorade is sugar water with a little bit of potassium salt. But when you’re a serious athlete that’s not enough. The amount of salt that Gatorade is supposed to replace, is negligible.  In my opinion, the product itself is almost useless.

Team Tranzfuse: So that just goes to illustrate the importance of the actual ingredients in the product.

Dr. Rath: Absolutely. I mean, you’re just throwing away money. You’re buying packaging. It’s all the money. 

Team Tranzfuse: So Tranzlabs kind of bucks that by leaving proprietary formulas out of it. 

Dr. Rath: Yes, that’s the takeaway. I know you guys are kind of geared towards the festival lifestyle now, but moving into athletics and the sporting world, that’s what I would really highlight—the non-proprietary formula. Everything that’s in there is on the label, there’s no guessing. If you were to take it a step further, I would say to get it NSF-approved because that’s like a third-party verification. Once you get it approved, that product is guaranteed to pass any kind of anti-doping testing. 

I really feel like, especially moving into athletics, as doping is really being put under scrutiny, these things are really going to be important for companies like yours. 

Team Tranzfuse: What do you think about the efficacy of the ingredients themselves?

Dr. Rath: Ironically, I was very dehydrated when I tied the product. I had just finished an event the day before, the weather was changing, it was really windy--I was so tired, I didn’t realize what was going on and I was actually cramping. Typically, in that situation, you can drink Gatorade, Powerade, or water and you don’t feel replenished because there’s not enough salt, there’s not enough electrolyte, there are not enough B vitamins or whatever primary ingredients are in there. What’s really nice about your product is that there’s enough volume of ingredients that it’s actually useful for the body. When you’re dehydrated, it’s not about drinking a glass of water to rehydrate. You have to replace everything that you’ve sweat out. You have to catch up and then replenish. A lot of products on the market say that they replenish you, but really they don’t—they’re just a Band-Aid for a bigger problem. Probably within five to ten minutes of trying your product, I felt satiated. My thirst was satisfied. It’s because you’re not just drinking a bunch of sugar water. When you get the salts and electrolytes you need, your thirst is satisfied. You can actually feel this product brings you back to homeostasis. 

Team Tranzfuse: We’ve been talking about sports, obviously that is your specialty. But how do you think this product could be used effectively by a normal person in their daily life. 

Dr. Rath: The beauty of it is that if it’s good for an athlete, it’s good for everybody. The athlete I highlight because they’re going above and beyond. They’re consuming more fluids systemically, in and out, and so if you can satisfy the need in the athlete, it’s no problem for a normal person. 

The other beauty of it is that it’s customizable. I followed the instructions, and six to eight ounces of water was definitely not enough for me because I don’t like sweet things. Personally, I dump it into my 40 oz. canteen and that was just right for me. The customizability isn’t overboard, but it’s probably just right for the kind of person who’s going to be using it. You’re not just stuck with a one-size-fits-all product.

Team Tranzfuse: If you had to pick three key benefits to the product, what would they be?

Dr. Rath: Definitely the lack of a proprietary formula and full disclosure to the consumer. Number two is the actual composition of active ingredients. And the third one, let’s put it simply—it’s good for everybody. That’s really the easiest way to say it. It’s okay for an athlete but also for the working professional.