About Us

My name is Paul Francis, I am a scientist with a PhD from one of London’s most prestigious universities, and many decades of research experience in multiple sciences in the fields of chemistry, biology, nanotechnology and diagnostics.

I have the desire to apply my entrepreneurial spirit and knowledge to both help my own health and those of others by providing some much needed analysis of nutrients and supplements that are openly available on the internet (amazon etc).

The problem with existing options to analyse the purity of supplements is that while there are options for this, commercial chemical analysis is not designed for the person on the street: the cost is likely too much (likely > $100 per sample!) and the user information isn’t in a user friendly format. The reason for this is that such commercial chemical analysis often uses a technology called HPLC (High-Performance, or High-Pressure, Liquid Chromatography). While this is very accurate, it is also very costly in materials such as the solvents required to perform the analysis. You also need a specialist lab and staff to run these tests. Additionally, while the data is excellent, HPLC data are a series of lined peaks on a graph, not particularly user friendly!

My experience has covered working in academic universities and research institutes, and in industry, in Asia, the UK and currently in Ireland. I’ve generally enjoyed most of my work, but in recent years, thanks to a several year stint of not looking after my health (most particularly sleep quality) I suffered with burnout in my current job, and that in turn pushed me into an overactive sympathetic nervous system and associated mental health challenges. It has taken a few years to almost get back to normal thanks to a variety of health and lifestyle changes. One part of my continued recovery has also surrounded an understanding of physiology, and the role that supplements can play to support a healthy lifestyle. There is so much information on the internet, my choice of “brain rot” is youtube videos.

I can appreciate the type of anxiety that health related topics may induce, “take Vitamin D….”, “Don’t take too much Vitamin D…”, “Don’t take Vitamin D without Vitamin K”, “Take a multivitamin…”, “you don’t need a multivitamin if you eat well…”, “eat this for magnesium…”, “use this type of magnesium…”, … OMG!!

Being a scientist, I have a concern about the lack of quality information supplied with some suppliers of supplements. Personally, I try to buy the best quality I can, but not all the time, I use my judgment too, but I’d quite like an additional analysis that I can do myself. That’s where NutriTLCy comes in, a business designed to give you, and me, a way to see if your supplements are what they say they are.

The planned pricing should fit within a budget much lower than what a commercial analysis lab can provide, while providing where possible a simple visual indication of your supplements ingredients and an explanation of how our TLC works. The analysis aim is to at least be semi-quantitative, meaning to a good level we can approximate the amount of material in the ingredients you provide us. Additionally, there will be a subscription plan so you can see comparison analysis of different suppliers of different supplements.