Trends: ClearCut Analytics' Dan Harari, VP Business Development, offered a session on Amazon trends. Why Amazon? Trends happen on that website, Harari explained, 24 months before they hit retail. Amazon’s infinite shelf size allows it to offer every product any consumer wants, whether legacy brands or digital-native brands, meaning that trends aren’t impacted by availability. This allows brands to pinpoint white space, suppliers to figure out how brands are using raw materials, and retailers to better understand what customers are looking for.
With healthy aging, specifically, Harari broke it down into four categories: Mental, Joint, Libido, and Energy. These four subcategories saw year-over-year growth of 58%, 37%, 27%, and 41%, respectively. Harari then broke down each category by delivery form and price range, and noted the top five brands in each space. One tip: “Libido and menopause are a category with a bit of a taboo, so not a lot of brands are in that space—but that doesn’t mean there’s not a demand. So it’s a wide-open space, without much competition.”
Metabolism:Metabolism and inflammation, two major buzzwords, combined into metaflammation in a presentation from James LaValle, R.Ph., CCN, who noted that he did not invent the word, which is also sometimes caused inflammaging. How does metaflammation come about? It’s partially environmental—pollution, toxins, etc.—but a lot of it is lifestyle: smoking, starvation, diet, alcohol, inactivity, inadequate sleep, stress, drug use, and over-. Over- what? Over-everything: “If you over-exercise, fast too long, eat keto too much or too often—you end up driving those pro-inflammatory glycans,” Dr. LaValle explained. “So it’s about what lifestyle is best for me, that I won’t fall into this metaflammation state.” What does metaflammation cause, what gets the metaflammation ball rolling, what can your customers do to get this in hand—check out Dr. LaValle’s presentation, for free with registration onwww.NaturallyInformed.net.
Vitamin K2:Why is vitamin K2 its own bullet point? Because it covers bone health and heart health, two big factors in aging. Elise Kaiser, VP Sales, NattoPharma, broke down the difference between K1 and K2, the difficulty in obtaining K2 in the diet, and the stark results—“Vitamin K deficiency or insufficiency has been seen in 97% of a mixed population,” Kaiser shared. “Children and adults above 40 years showed the largest tissue-specific vitamin deficiency. 50% of newborns are K-deficient.” That deficiency is linked to bone health, cardiovascular health, and kidney health—and new observational studies are suggesting that it may also be linked to diabetes, Alzheimer’s, migraine and cognition, peripheral neuropathy, eye health, and lung health. Watch her presentation for the deep-dive on this science.
Related: 6 Pillars to Healthy Aging: Fireside Chat with David Katz, M.D. Trends & Opps in Active Nutrition #NaturallyInformed Event Explores Tactics that Drive Consumer Purchase
Joint Health: How much do your customers care about being able to move when they get older? That’s how much they should care about joint health. Alexis Collins, Product Manager, Stratum Nutrition, pointed out that even regular exercisers often stop exercising as they age, resulting in a loss of independence and a decline in health. Why do they stop? One of the top factors, Collins told attendees, was pain: Exercise-induced joint pain, often caused by loss of cartilage. “Exercise is already difficult,” Collins pointed out. “Pain makes it nearly impossible.”Collins focused largely on a groundbreaking discovery in this arena. For a long time, it was difficult or impossible to determine whether or not cartilage was breaking down, before individuals started experiencing pain—but recently, researchers discovered CTX-II, a fragment of type II collagen that can be found in urine or blood, indicating cartilage breakdown. This allows not only for people to figure out if their collagen is breaking down, but it also allows joint support tests to measure whether or not a product is actually affecting collagen. How has Stratum used these tests? How big is this market? Where is there space, here, to meet consumer needs? Collins covered these questions and more.
Bladder Health:Overactive bladder is more common than diabetes or asthma in the United States, affecting 37 million Americans, or nearly one in six. That stat comes from Tracey Seipel, ND, CEO and Founder, Seipel Group, who pointed out that urinary incontinence management is dominated by adult diapers—people spent more than three times the amount of money on diapers as they did on drugs, to manage this condition. And nearly none of the money in this segment is going to natural remedies, because there are so few products in this area. Seipel Group’s Urox, however, has made an entrance, backed by a human clinical trial that resulted in patents in 20 countries. Dr. Seipel covered the effects that a useful supplement could have on aging adults, the difficulties adults face when they struggle with urinary incontinence, and the potential environmental impact of a switch from diapers to supplements.
Nor is this all! Presenters from KeHE, Ingredient Communications, the Ingredient Transparency Center, and more presented on everything from eye health to the microbiome to herbs & spices. All of it is available for free atwww.NaturallyInformed.net, for you to watch on-demand at your leisure and share with colleagues and employees.
