Using experience gained from over 20 years as a pharmaceutical salesman, David Blechman named the company for his two sets of twins and started marketing a liquid protein supplement from their family garage.

Sales of Twinlab's only product skyrocketed in the 1970s, in part from the success of a 1976 book entitled The Last Chance Diet — When Everything Else Has Failed: Dr. Linn's Protein-Sparing Fast Program.

Dr. Robert Linn was a Pennsylvania osteopath, who had begun prescribing for his overweight patients a program of fasting and four- to six-ounce daily doses of liquid protein.

Following a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigation the associated coverage of the popular diet and its potential side effects by Newsweek, Parents' Magazine, and Science Digest, the liquid protein market bottomed out, and Twinlab's revenues declined sharply forcing the company to cut nearly all of its 150-person workforce.

[8] In July 2018, Anthony Zolezzi, founder of Bubba Gump Shrimp Company[9][10] and Pet Promise Natural Dog Food[11] was named CEO of Twinlab, after being appointed to the Board of Directors the previous May.