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SIX<br />
QUESTIONS<br />
with<br />
MICHAEL<br />
FRANKOS<br />
SPORTS<br />
SCIENCE<br />
SPECIALIST<br />
at HERBALIFE<br />
Can you provide an<br />
overview of what you and<br />
your team are responsible<br />
for at Herbalife?<br />
Our primary responsibility is product<br />
development and innovation of sports<br />
products, so we do a lot of research about<br />
competitive products and ingredient<br />
research. We’re constantly looking for new<br />
and effective ingredients to put into new<br />
products. We also concentrate on product<br />
and nutrition education. We do a lot of<br />
article writing and presentation pieces<br />
that explain why we pick the ingredients<br />
we do, when the best time is to use our<br />
products and the main benefits of taking<br />
them. It’s our job to educate Independent<br />
Herbalife Members so they can pass<br />
this knowledge onto the consumer.<br />
What is your background<br />
in sports and nutrition?<br />
I’ve always been involved in athletics.<br />
When I was younger, my main sports<br />
were lacrosse, wrestling and football.<br />
My passion is football – I love football.<br />
In college, I really wanted to get into the<br />
science and nutrition aspects of sports<br />
performance, so I got my degree in biology<br />
and finished my master’s degree in<br />
biochemistry. Now, I impart this knowledge<br />
when studying how nutrients work in<br />
the body, and how supplements can help<br />
with sports performance and fitness.<br />
How important is the<br />
connection between<br />
nutrition and sports<br />
performance?<br />
They’re definitely interconnected. Nutrition<br />
serves as the fuel for your body. When<br />
you’re participating in sports, you’re<br />
really trying to push your body to the<br />
limits to perform at its highest level.<br />
In order to do that, you need to ensure<br />
your nutritional requirements are met.<br />
How have recent<br />
advancements<br />
in technology<br />
affected the sports<br />
performance arena?<br />
You can look at it in two ways: From<br />
an ingredient standpoint, purification<br />
techniques have advanced quite a bit.<br />
Today you get much purer ingredients –<br />
and different combinations of ingredients<br />
– than you would’ve gotten 15 or 20<br />
years ago. Safety and screening have<br />
improved, too. Before they weren’t able<br />
to detect a lot of things that we’re able<br />
to detect now, such as heavy metals and<br />
adulterants in herbal blends. There’s also<br />
the sports science standpoint – being<br />
able to test athletes and look at what’s<br />
going on in their cells. We’ve really made<br />
advancements to evaluate how effective it<br />
is to supplement with different nutrients.<br />
40 / MOMENTUM
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