Cleveland doctor develops ethnic-based multivitamins

After becoming aware of the disparities, he committed his career to finding solutions.

Hall went on to educate himself on the topics and write about issues such as hypertension, stroke prevalence, and other high-risk health conditions plaguing African Americans on his personal website. To go “upstream,” he wrote a book for doctors and other healthcare providers to educate them on treating African Americans.

His book, “Patient-Centered Clinical Care for African Americans: A Concise, Evidence-Based Guide to Important Differences and Better Outcomes,” covers best practices for conditions such as high blood pressure and other common diseases disproportionately found in American Americans.

By Rhonda Crowder

Dr. Gregory Hall MD, a native of Cleveland who grew up in the Glenville community is a second-generation medical professional. He is an internal medicine physician who works at University Hospitals as the medical director for the Cutler Center for Men and has treated a predominantly African American clientele for more than 25 years.

For over a decade, Hall has served on the Cuyahoga County Board of Health and is currently the president. He’s also served on the Ohio Commission on Minority Health. While on these boards, he learned about the health disparities that exist among African Americans.

“I didn’t know what minority health was,” says Halls. “I didn’t know about the disparities, even though I lived it. This minority health thing does not impact minorities as people think. It impacts Black people.”

While writing his book, Hall devoted a chapter to laboratory result differences that varied by race or ethnicity. For example, he says, there are some instances where African Americans’ white blood cell (WBC) counts are dramatically lower. This normal variation runs in some families of African descent, but many doctors remained unaware of this condition and initiated additional and unnecessary testing.

“It’s called benign ethnic neutropenia. It’s not a disease. No increased risk for anything. It’s just a lab result,” says Hall. “If medical providers know about it, they can recognize it and move on.”

Finding a wide range of lab differences in his research, Hall started to review them more critically. He knew that vitamin D levels tended to be dramatically lower in African Americans. Hall later learned that zinc, magnesium, potassium, and vitamin C tended to be significantly lower as well so he thought making a supplement that uniquely addresses these deficiencies in a population with poor health outcomes might finally make a positive difference in African American health.

Then what he discovered about vitamin E startled him the most.

“Some research found that vitamin E was associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer,” says Hall. “I was like, wow, Black men have by far the highest prostate cancer rate.” Hall explains that one pill of vitamin E with 400 international units (IU) a day is associated with worse outcomes than if you didn’t take one of those a day. Selenium was also found to be associated with increased cancer risk in some studies. Other research has subsequently been conflicting in their risk conclusions, but none shows an advantage to taking vitamin E or selenium.

Until the controversy regarding vitamin E and selenium’s risk is settled, Hall determined he would create a multivitamin and deliberately leave these out, something no other major multivitamin company to date has done, he says.

Following medicine’s central tenet to “first do no harm,” Hall turned to vitamin K which is essential for blood to clot.

“African Americans have no evidence of vitamin K deficiency,” says Hall. “However, we do have the highest rates of stroke (blood clot in the brain), heart attack (blood clot in the heart), and deep vein thrombosis (clots in the legs).” He adds, “While there is no direct evidence that increased vitamin K causes these deadly clots in African Americans, why risk taking more particularly if there is no deficiency?”

With all considered, Hall developed GNetX Sequence Multivitamin tailored to the published research specific to African American health with the goal of maximizing the benefit and minimizing any risk.

“I removed the things that could potentially cause problems. More is not always better. There’s a preferred ingredient mix and amount in every good recipe. Why should multivitamins be different?” says Hall.

GNetX Sequence Multivitamins hit the shelves in Dec. 2020 with four formulas: African American men, women, men over 50, and women over 50, and can be purchased online at SequenceMultivitamins.com, as well as on Amazon.com and Walmart.com.

“Half of the people who try them continue to buy them and a lot of people are very proud that I took the time to put this formula together,” he says.Richard Andrews, 77, is the publisher/ editor of The Real Deal Press and has been Hall’s patient for about 8 years. He’s a consumer of the GNetX Sequence multivitamin formulated for Black men over 50. He says there’s no immediate benefits he can detect, as with all multivitamins but as one who writes and edits health-related stories, when he comes across ingredients important for someone of his age and stage, he’ll look to see if it’s included in GNetX Sequence. And, it is.

“I find it reassuring that there’s a product designed for me,” says Andrews, who also notes it’s the only medication he takes.

Hall says he will continue to develop multivitamins tailored for other racial/ethnic groups but wanted to start with African Americans since they have the worst outcomes. “This is really going to be a gamechanger in terms of supplements,” says Hall.