I’ve been asked by many of my followers to do a Make Wellness review. This new multi-level marketing company has a whole lot going on:
Shady claims! Behind the scenes drama! A pending lawsuit!
You can’t make this stuff up.
What is Make Wellness?:
Make Wellness is a multilevel marketing company (MLM) that launched in August 2024. It sells supplements that it claims are backed by science and “elevate your body, mind, and spirit to achieve a life of greater vitality and purpose.” Some of its products include hydration packs, supplements to help with muscle recovery, and appetite suppressants. I am not sure how an appetite suppressant is going to help you have ‘greater vitality and purpose’, but more on that later.
Make Wellness was founded by Justin Prince, an entrepreneur who has no college education and used to work construction and flip pizzas. He had a few business failures before going on to work for Modere, another MLM company whose products I’ve reviewed in my Modere review here. Apparently, it was an acrimonious split with lawsuits on both sides. Of course, that’s made him an ‘expert’ in some way. On his website, he offers training and blogs about how to be successful in business, with topics including sales and marketing – this man has no formal background in health and nutrition but he clearly has sales experience and is using it to help sell these very expensive supplements.
The Make Wellness tag line is “where science meets nature for better health,” and they have trademarked their “Bioactive Precision Peptides” which they use to set themselves apart from other companies. They like to say they are backed by science, yet I don’t see any references to any scientific sources or articles on their website. This usually happens when a company doesn’t have anything to back up what they’re claiming.
Their ‘Science’ page is literally just a sales pitch. It contains nothing of any value in terms of supporting evidence.
What are peptides?
Peptides are essentially chains of amino acids, the building blocks of protein. Intact proteins are comprised of longer chains of amino acids – over 50 and up to thousands. Peptides are shorter chains, containing under 50 amino acids.
Our body creates peptides out of whole proteins during the digestion process. Enzymes cleave the amino acid chains found in proteins into smaller chains, eventually resulting in individual (free) amino acids that the body reassembles for different uses.
Our body makes peptides that have important functions. For example, insulin is a peptide hormone released by cells in our pancreas that helps regulate blood sugar. Oxytocin is another peptide hormone that has a role in reproduction, labour and delivery, and lactation.
Peptides are found naturally in food, especially ones that are high in protein. The best sources for peptides are soy, fermented dairy, and meat. Bioactive peptides that we eat in these and some other foods appear to have health benefits such as being anti-carcinogenic, anti-diabetic, and anti-hypertensive. Studies around this are mainly in vitro and in animals, however.
Peptides can also be produced and used as supplements. Collagen and creatine are common peptide supplements.
Read about whether you need to take a collagen supplement here.
Make Wellness says their Proprietary Bioactive Precision Peptides™ are found in nature and effectively communicate with our body chemistry, directing cellular pathways towards youthful regeneration and away from age related decline.
What a mouthful!
They say their processing technology has been developed to protect and preserve bioactive precision peptides’ physiological activity and bioavailability.
Fine, but where’s the evidence to back all of that up?
As I said earlier, there’s no human evidence to support many of the claims that are made about peptide supplements. Make Wellness claims their products are clinically proven to get results, yet there are ZERO references to any type of scientific literature on their website.
Keep in mind that these and other supplement products are not regulated by the FDA. As long as companies include that familiar FDA disclaimer on their website, they can say pretty much anything they like.
Make Wellness FIT
Make Wellness FIT is said to be the answer to supporting natural muscle recovery processes, healthy aging, and reducing recovery time after exercising “when combined with a healthy diet adequate in protein, getting enough sleep, and a dedicated resistance training program”.
Okay, but wouldn’t those things help us anyhow? And, if you implement them along with Make Wellness FIT, I’d say that would be muddying the waters around determining the true efficacy of the FIT product.
It’s a confounder, if you will. Yet, Make Wellness is definitely not the only company to make fantastical claims about a supplement while advising to combine it with exercise and diet. In fact, it’s what I’ve seen most often, and it’s a great way for the company to ‘prove’ their supplements ‘work’ without…any proof at all. Is it the supplement? Or the lifestyle changes? We’ll never know, but spoiler: it’s probably not the supplement.
One $119.99 USD box of FIT has 30 sachets. Ouch.
FIT is made up of fava bean peptides as well as vitamins, minerals, and caffeine. This product is very high in Vitamin B12, with over 20000% of our daily B12 needs. There is no upper limit of safety established for B12 supplements, and while it is low risk for reaching toxic amounts, there isn’t a need for most people to take such high amounts. This is probably more for show than anything else.
Make Wellness says that the Make Wellness PeptiStrong PLUS blend of peptides in this product has been clinically proven to help with fatigue, improve protein synthesis (compared to whey protein) and support strength recovery (compared to milk protein) but once again, I don’t see any clinical studies to back this up.
If you’re less tired after taking this product, the effect would likely be attributed to the caffeine – it has about the same amount as one cup of coffee.
Focusing on the basics: a varied diet with plenty of whole foods, as well as strength training, and good quality sleep, is going to be much more helpful than this product, no matter what their sales rep say.
No supplement will replace those things.
Make Wellness LEAN
LEAN is Make Wellness’ product to suppress your appetite. At $89.99 USD for 30 servings, it creates high expectations without a lot of evidence. It also supports the absolutely disgusting notion that hunger should be suppressed and not fed. This is immediately a non-starter for me with any company or individual, and it should be for you, too.
The active ingredient in LEAN is their Apticurb Trimfast Complex™ which is made from Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Peptide Hydrolysate, a type of yeast. This ingredient has been studied for various effects in cells, rats, and in humans, but the human studies (and here) are old, small, poorly done, and likely biased. They are also fairly unremarkable. It’s important to understand that just because a research finding is significant, this doesn’t mean it’s actually clinically significant. If a control group lost no weight, but the intervention group lost 2kg in 8 weeks, this may be statistically significant, but not really earth-shaking in real life.
I think it’s very unwise for a company to make claims based on the quality of the evidence above.
Make Wellness LEAN also has orange, grapefruit and guarana extracts. Guarana is often used in energy drinks and has a stimulant effect, but it has never been proven to help with weight loss or appetite. If you take FIT and LEAN, that’s a whole lot of stimulant action. You probably won’t need your morning coffee (although that would be a lot cheaper and probably just as effective!)
These types of products infuriate me because your appetite and hunger are not something you need to suppress! Our bodies need food and nutrients for fuel – we shouldn’t be suppressing our hunger, we should be honoring it by eating.
In fact, food is the best appetite suppressant of them all. If you’re always hungry, there’s something else going on. As a dietitian, the most common reasons for over hunger I see in my practice include (but aren’t limited to):
- Not eating often enough
- Not balancing meals properly – I recommend 25-30 grams of protein per meal, and 30 grams of fibre per day
- Not eating enough through the day
- A mindset that is restrictive and too focused on being ‘good’ with food
If you have weight loss goals, please approach them the right way, which is not with a supplement like Make Wellness LEAN. Focus on the BASICS! Lots of plants. Focusing on protein and fibre. Being prepared. Eating on a regular schedule. Being flexible and consistent. And, just as importantly, working on your issues around food and eating.
I am taking a limited number of clients right now, so if you need individual support, I’d be happy to help.
Common sense tells us that no supplement is going to be the answer for weight loss. If it were, we would have known about it by now! It would also mean that companies like Make Wellness probably wouldn’t be in business anymore. And hey – why would we have had to invent GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic?
Make Wellness Hydrated
Hydration packets are so trendy right now, so naturally Make Wellness has jumped on the bandwagon by offering a product like Make Wellness Hydrated.
These packets contain small amounts of magnesium, sodium, chloride, and potassium as well as 1000mg of the amino acid glycine. Glycine is naturally found in some foods: for example, you can get a similar amount by eating a serving of chicken breast.
Make Wellness Hydrated also contains the trademarked SolarSea™ Sport AC ionic mineral complex. From what I can tell based on my research of this, it’s simply another mix of electrolytes in powdered form.
No magic here, people.
The vast majority of us don’t need hydration packets at. all. Period.
While they may have a role in certain conditions, most of us can easily meet our hydration needs by drinking water or other fluids (coffee, tea, milk, soup, and water found in foods all count too).
Electrolytes are found in foods and we can meet our needs through eating a balanced diet. Or, by eating pretty much any diet. It’s just that I promote a balanced diet!
People who engage in normal exercise and movement through the day are not losing enough electrolytes through their sweat to make electrolyte supplements necessary. Drinking while you’re exercising, and having a meal or snack post exercise is likely sufficient for most people.
Like other MLMs, Make Wellness has an affiliate marketing program and there are no shortage of sales reps online touting its benefits for weight loss, inflammation, and improved focus and energy.
Rumor has it that a lot of Beachbody coaches have stepped over from BB to Make Wellness, as they are frustrated with Beachbody’s recent move from an MLM to affiliate-based sales. There are allegedly plenty of Beachbody coaches who are selling Autumn Calabrese’s Belle Vitale program but with Make Wellness supplements. It’s apparently more lucrative to sell Make Wellness’s MLM products than Beachbody’s affiliate ones. Loyalty be damned!
Scandalous!
The following screenshot is by a Make Wellness rep, about another MW product, ‘Focused’:
As with every other MLM, marketing of the Make Wellness products by its salespeople is done seemingly without a lot of oversight. Whether there’s just too much rep-generated content to police or, whether MLMs ‘conveniently’ miss the more egregious posts and claims their reps are making, remains a mystery.
One particular Make Wellness rep has gone way too far in my opinion, claiming the MW products have helped a child’s cerebral palsy more than medical treatment.
This type of content is incredibly misleading, inappropriate, and potentially dangerous, and it’s another non-starter for me. A company that allows one of its reps to post this garbage, and even other reps not appealing to the person to remove it, is an indicator that profit comes before the wellbeing of their customers.
Please do not forgo medical treatment for supplements for any serious condition.
Make Wellness review, in short:
I wouldn’t recommend any of these products. I’ve never met a nutrition MLM company or products that I like, and the way they’re marketed often disgusts me. It’s just that simple.
Focus on a more common-sense approach when it comes to your health and nutrition. Eat balanced meals and a variety of different foods you enjoy, exercise regularly, get adequate sleep. Don’t feed the MLM monster, which is toxic and takes advantage of people, mostly women (I wrote about that here).
The supplement industry in the U.S. is worth $93 billion dollars. Remember that the people who are selling you supplements while banging on about how bad Big Pharma is, are also making money off of you. And, they’re doing it with false claims and unproven, unregulated products.
