About Dr. Scott Connelly, Founder & Chief Science Officer
When the editors of Sports Illustrated planned the 2009 exposé on the sports nutrition industry, “What You Don't Know Might Kill You”, they sought out Scott. The widely-read article disclosed the charlatans and pseudoscientists whose concoctions were anything but healthy, and the writers pointed to Scott, arguably the father of the “legitimate” supplement industry, as its one authentic and credible scientist. Long before becoming a medical doctor, Scott had already performed his own personal study on how the body responds to exercise. Although only 12-years old at the time, Scott began weight training with an emphasis on the Olympic lifts. He quickly became addicted to slinging the iron, and for good reason, as weight training changed the way his body looked, performed and felt. When he discovered the nutritive power of raw milk on the advice of a wise mentor and neighbor, he realized firsthand that under the influence of exercise and nutrition you can significantly change your life for the better.
Scott eventually set out on a rigorous educational path that allowed him to understand the finer details of just how exercise and nutrition impacts the way we look and feel. His scholastic journey included qualifying for an elite advanced degree program offered by Boston University to academically gifted and independently motivated undergraduate candidates. He earned a degree in neurochemistry and, after completing his thesis as a graduate student, was inducted into the National Honor Society of Medicine and awarded a degree as Doctor of Medicine, with Honors. His postgraduate training proceeded at Harvard Medical School's Massachusetts General Hospital and included formal training in the allied disciplines of internal medicine, anesthesiology and intensive care/cardiovascular medicine.
Scott has studied, worked, and taught at some of the most prestigious Universities and teaching hospitals in the world including, Harvard, Stanford, MIT and UCLA. But Scott feels that “it’s what you do after that really defines you”. In fact, Scott believes that the definition of true intellect is the ability to synthesize current information in a way that creates new information that has additional value. Scott would put this overarching principle of intellectual power to the test with concepts he developed after his education.
During Scott’s internship and residency, he treated patients suffering from life-threatening injuries, infections and burns. Scott developed a deeper understanding of human metabolism and body composition by working with these grave situations.
A severe burn triggers a hyper-metabolic state, sometimes with victims losing as much as 1-2 lbs of muscle mass per day. These unfortunate events afford a unique opportunity to look at an accelerated view of how the body breaks down its own tissues for fuel, cell regeneration, and immune defense recruitment, as well as how it “prioritizes” the distribution of the amino acids, glucose and fatty acids it gets via ingestion or through intravenous delivery. In essence, for a burn victim the ability to preserve and quickly restore lean tissue becomes a life-saving metabolic imperative.
It was from this extreme vantage point that Scott would do further research on how the body accrues and uses muscle tissue for energy. Then as Senior Fellow and Clinical Faculty member at Stanford University, Scott combined his insights from hospital settings with research on the tissue protecting and building properties of dairy-based bioactive substrates. This work would eventually lead to the groundbreaking protein formulation called Metamyosyn®.
Metamyosyn represents the first and only commercialized protein supplement to deliver life-changing benefits to burn victims, including: substantial increases in lean mass, reduction in patient rehabilitation times and dramatic improvement of functional independence measurements. However, Metamyosyn took an unexpected detour into the sports nutrition industry as the main ingredient in a product called MET-Rx®, named after the company Scott founded in 1992.
Metamyosyn, Scott's first composite protein supplement, is a testament of his meticulous nature. Metamyosyn was formulated to deliver an optimal amino acid composition, and Scott used several different substrates to get there. The protein blend included milk protein isolate, whey protein concentrate, L-Glutamine, egg white, and bioactive whey fractions. To the untrained eye, the formula seemed pretty straightforward. Yet, Scott had mathematically combined these proteins to deliver a unique final amino acid array with specific release kinetics. The result was a true synchronization of amino acids that maximally stimulated the anabolic process that underwrites gains in lean tissue, further enhancing protein deposition into muscle, while at the same time accelerating bodyfat oxidation.
Scott has always been a pioneer and his newest endeavor is Myotropics and its flagship product Physique 2.0. Myotropics builds on the technological advances made in dairy chemistry and carbohydrate-based food science — and the results are exciting. True to his nature, Scott continues to use his experience in nutritional biochemistry to create practical solutions that help people from all walks of life improve their body composition, health and vitality.
