Jennifer Vance: Hi Everyone, I’m Jennifer Vance, the Associate Product Manager of Essential Nutrition here at Young Living. I’m very excited to discuss 3 of our monumental Young Living products today: Life 5, Di-Gize, and Detoxzyme.
With me today I have a panel of product experts; Doug Corrigan, our Vice President of Product Marketing; Marc Schreuder, our Director of Product Formulation; and Jason Giles, Product Manager of Essential Nutrition. We’re really excited to get your take on these products and why they are so beneficial to our health.
Now Doug, it seems that these products all have a common theme, and that seems to be digestion. We talk a lot about digestive health at Young Living; why do you think it’s so important?
Doug Corrigan: Digestion is, of course, critical and anybody who has digestive complaints will tell you that it is troubling if whenever we eat we don’t feel right for a long time afterwards. That can be very problematic; in fact digestion and digestive complaints are one of the main reasons why people go to the pharmacy or to the health food store.
But I think it goes a little bit deeper than that, Jennifer; a lot of people have issues with their gut health so their gastrointestinal function is just not optimal, it’s not working like it should. And when the gut is not working like it should you have all kinds of problems that go far beyond just digesting your food. It could affect our immune response, how quickly we get over illness and sickness; it can lead to other problems and other issues that can become chronic conditions. So the products we’re going to talk about today not only help us with our digestive health, but they’ll actually improve your health in more profound ways than a lot of people would even know.
Jennifer: Well let’s start off by talking about Life 5 then. Tell us a little bit more about the probiotics in there. There are probably a lot of people out there who don’t really know what a probiotic is. How do they work in your system?
Doug: What we find when we are talking to consumers is that they don’t know the word ‘probiotic,’ but most people know the idea of a probiotic because most people have been exposed to a cultured or fermented food like yogurt, and most people would quickly say ‘Yes, yogurt is good for you because it has cultures in it.’ Those cultures found in yogurt are probiotics. Now probiotics have gained even more of a stellar reputation of late as people have started to investigate how higher amounts of probiotics, or probiotics from other sources like a supplement, can affect your health. That has really led to the development of a whole huge market of different probiotics that are claiming to improve your health. The reason why these things are working is because generally there have been big changes in diets and lifestyles, and they have taken a toll on our guts. Most people out there are taking pharmaceutical drugs; they’re making poor food choices; they have tons of stress; there are tons of environmental toxins; and guess what, all those things really make our gut a tough place to be because those things all lead to inflammation, and this prolonged inflammation can lead to conditions like leaky gut, Crohn’s disease, and chronic bowel disorders which are on the rise at an alarming rate.
Long before we get to those points, we suffer poor health. We just don’t feel right, we don’t digest our foods, our energy can be low, our immune system can be off. All these things can be assisted by taking a good probiotic supplement, starting to get these things back into our bodies.
Jennifer: You mentioned that there are a lot of other products in the marketplace that can support digestive health. As a consumer I might be confused as to what type of product I need to help that. I know if I go into a health food store I’ll see rows of probiotics. Marc, maybe you can speak to this. Tell us a little bit more about how your team formulated Life 5, and how Life 5 is different than any other product out there.
Marc Schreuder: That’s a great question, Jennifer. What makes the Life 5 so different is that we use 5 super strains in this formula. Other products may use anywhere from 6 to 20 different strains, and actually if you mix the wrong strains together you’ll get an antagonistic activity among the probiotics where the product is actually consuming itself in the gut; where you’ll have one strain either competing with another strain or antagonizing another strain. This can be a real issue, so what we have in the Life 5 are 5 strains that are clinically studied to work together. They work in harmony. They work like a symphony, an orchestra, rather than in discord. Also these strains have actually been clinically tested; at universities in Finland, China, all over the world they have been tested. They’ve actually done tests in the elderly, improving innate immunity. They’ve done testing in children, improving digestion. There have actually been clinical studies where infants have been using these probiotics, these 5 strains, to improve their digestive health and their assimilation of milk in poorly-digesting infants.
Jennifer: So Marc, it sounds like it would be safe then to give Life 5 to my young children all the way up to maybe a grandparent.
Marc: Absolutely. They are safe for all ages ranging from 6-month-old infants all the way up to an 80-year-old person. They’ve all been studied and so some of the strains that we have in there – and you can actually research these yourself on PubMed – we have the lactobacillus acidophilus 014 strain; then we have the rhamnosus HN001 strain, powerfully clinically studied, all designed to improve immunity, improve immune health, improve digestive health.
Now this is very important if you’re trying to avoid being overwhelmed by some of the pathogens that are abounding in our environment today. It’s very very important; it’s like armor for the gut. Now some people say they like to take them before they travel, and that’s really great advice because you want to take them before you travel, and you want to use them prophylactically – you want to use them before you have health challenges. The optimum time to take a probiotic is before you have health challenges. It will certainly be effective after you have a health challenge but better before, as a preventative, rather than expecting miracles after you are sick.
Doug: Can I just interject something here? I think Marc brought up some great points. One of the things that’s so critical for the consumers to watch out for is that there are a lot of probiotics out there that don’t have the clinical evidence to support them. They could be exotic-sounding strains but from everything that we found in the research process for Life 5 was that it was better to go with the clinically-proven strains that were actually shown to be superior in head-to-head competition. They would help with nutrient absorption; it was improved. They would help to build immunity; again improved. Marc mentioned a few of these strains, but one of the strains that I was really impressed with was the acidophilus strain that we use, which is LA14, and that acidophilus strain has all kinds of research to support that it is improved over other acidophilus strains! Anybody can go to the health food store and find an acidophilus product, but now you have a sub-species of acidophilus that’s been proven in head-to-head competition to be superior in its health-promoting benefits. I really like that about our products, and it’s one of those things that really puts us ahead.
Jennifer: Now Jason, when talking with Young Living members I really noticed that most all of them recommend Life 5. Have you also found this to be the case?
Jason Giles: Life 5 is one of our top-selling nutritional products. Just the other day I received a comment on Facebook from a member named Melissa who said ‘We take Life 5 probiotic every night right before we go to bed. My hubby and I are both much more regular.’ It’s always nice to get a comment like this on one of our products. The main goal that you try to accomplish with a probiotic is to deliver strains to the large intestine, having it survive the harsh environment of the stomach. Now both Doug and Marc have explained a little bit about why we have 5 strains and why they’re impactful, and the other thing to remember here is that we’re delivering good bacteria. The digestive tract has good and bad bacteria; what we’re doing with Life 5 is delivering good bacteria. A minimum of 50% of your flora has to be good bacteria.
Jennifer: What time of day do we recommend taking this product? How many should I take? Marc, can you answer that?
Marc: Well you want to take it toward the evening or following your large meal of the day, before or after your meal. The reason is because the bacteria require a substrate to grow on – they require food, they require fiber and protein, and they grow best, their gastric best, when they have adequate nutrition. You feel better with adequate nutrition; they also prosper with adequate nutrition.
Doug: And one of the great things that a probiotic does is it helps to accentuate or enhance all the other positive nutritional things that you are doing, so if you take it at that time, as Marc said if you take it with food, that actually encourages or builds the gut’s ability to absorb proper nutrition, as well as to not absorb the things it doesn’t want to, so it really helps the gut at that exchange point and the effects can be profound. Jason, you had another testimonial?
Jason: Yes we had another member who recently sent in a comment that said she lives with Crohn’s disorder and she has begun to use Di-Gize and Life 5 together, and the effects have been priceless.
Jennifer: Wow, that’s huge Jason. This consumer mentioned Di-Gize, and that’s another product that we need to touch on today. Marc, can you tell us a little bit about Di-Gize essential oil? What makes it so special?
Marc: Well it’s the purest essential oil blend and it includes Fennel and Anise. If you look at the history of fennel, a lot of people in the Middle East actually chew fennel seeds, anise seeds, cumin seeds following a meal. Why do they do that? Of course there are parasite issues in that part of the world, and they do that not only to enhance digestion, not only to promote gastric juices, but also to reduce their risk of maybe having an unwanted hitchhiker travel into their intestines.
Jennifer: Is there an emotional effect when taking this product as well?
Doug: I don’t think most people would think of the emotional effects of the different medications that they’re taking, because they want them to do one thing in their body, but one thing I’ve really noticed is that there has been some pretty significant research in regard to how those smells and those aromatics in regard to Ginger and Fennel … just by smelling those things, not even taking them internally, can actually ease discomfort with regard to motion sickness or nausea or different things like that and can make a profound difference on how we are going to deal with our digestive concerns. Di-Gize is fantastic! Marc, you’ve seen it and I’ve seen it used as a supplement internally that can be really profound.
Marc: Yes of course, because it has some of the most potent essential oils known. Some of these have been studied in the University of Scotland for their ability to preserve food. In fact fungi is one of the primary reasons we lack energy, because we’re feeding fungi. So if you think that you’re overwhelmed with problems, this is one of the products that is formulated specifically to assist with this.
Doug: You’ll see that this also has Anise, Fennel, Ginger; these are the oils of the plants that herbalists would call carminatives. That’s a big word for saying it’s anti-gas. It will reduce bloating, and for anybody who knows how discomforting that can be and how quickly you want release of that condition, Di-Gize is a natural product to really affect quickly that bloating sensation, the gas sensation. Again, a lot of times that gas sensation is caused exactly by the things that Marc is talking about, what I call the Yeasty Beasties, Candida and all those different pathogenic microbes that sometimes can be overwhelming. Now with both these products you have an awesome one-two punch against these problematic microbes, because now you have the probiotic which is affecting and building structure and helping the body, and then you have a great product like Di-Gize which is going to reduce some of the discomfort.
Jennifer: So Doug, you mentioned the smell of Di-Gize and taking it aromatically. You also spoke a little bit about taking it internally. Can a customer also apply it topically? Maybe Marc can speak to this; where would you recommend people apply Di-Gize topically?
Marc: Well you can apply it directly over the abdomen, that’s a particularly effective method of application. You take 2 or 3 drops and you rub it around the belly button area and perhaps a little bit lower. You can also inhale it; you get some of the benefits actually through the lungs in inhalation; that’s a great secondary or adjunct way of using the oil. If you’re going to use the oil as a supplement I recommend that you dilute it in a milk; soy milk or rice milk, or perhaps put one drop in a teaspoon of olive oil or virgin coconut oil.
Jason: Marc, you’re bringing up some good points. We recently had Donna, another member, tell us that she applies Di-Gize in the belly button and she says it works very quickly that way, and that it’s a great blend to always have on hand. We’ve also had a member, Heidi, say that she uses Di-Gize for airplane flights and on ships, and it’s worked so well that she has indicated her vacations are so much more enjoyable now than before she started using Di-Gize.
Doug: Fantastic point, Jason. This is one of those ‘first aid oils’ that you just have to have with you all the time; not just when you’re traveling but you need to have it close, in the car, you never know when you’re going to have problems with indigestion or bloating or gas or different things like that, and Di-Gize affects any of those conditions. I like it as a traveler because when you’re out there on the road and you have a bout of sickness, well Di-Gize is awesome in that regard. Here again you have a great one-two combination with Di-Gize and a probiotic. Whenever there is something going on inside, the probiotics are going to help, and these oils like Di-Gize are going to profoundly help as well; so a great one-two punch.
Jennifer: I am getting very excited as we’re talking about both Life 5 and Di-Gize; it sounds like these are something that I definitely need to add into my health regimen. There’s one more product that we want to talk about today, and that’s Detoxzyme. Jason, what would you say people can expect from Detoxzyme?
Jason: What people can expect from Detoxzyme is a hearty dose of 9 essential enzymes. Most of you know, enzymes are key in starting reactions within the body. The 9 enzymes in Detoxzyme help with digestion. More importantly, they help with incomplete digestion which seems to be a common problem with the American diet, wouldn’t you say, Marc?
Marc: Oh absolutely. In fact a lot of food today is not properly digested, or it’s digested in a way that can actually give you an allergic response, so enzymes really are key, especially if you’re on an organic raw diet. A lot of these foods have a lot of cellulose, a lot of fiber in them, for example, and that’s one of the key enzymes we have in Detoxzyme is an enzyme called cellulase, and the cellulase actually works to help unlock the vitamins, unlock the minerals in these raw foods, because a lot of us just simply are not absorbing the nutrients. You can look on the label of a spinach bag and it has all of this protein and all of this iron and all of this zinc and all of these B vitamins, but are you really going to get the benefit of it? Probably not; you’re only going to get a fraction, maybe 1% or 2%. So Detoxzyme is really one of the best adjuncts for a whole-food or raw diet.
Jason: I think Marc brings up a good point in the key enzymes. He mentions cellulase, which helps breaks down fiber and improves nutrient absorption, but you also have protease which works on proteins, lipase that works on fat, and phytase that works on plant proteins, and amylase which is found in your saliva, which breaks starches into sugars. So you have a nice rounded enzyme group that works on all fronts of digestion.
Doug: One of the things I love about Detoxzyme is that these are all vegetarian-approved sources on enzymes so these haven’t been derived from any animal sources, and so for a lot of people out there who are trying to live a vegetarian lifestyle, Detoxzyme is probably your best multifaceted enzyme of choice. We have many different enzymes in our line, but Detoxzyme is a great broad-based vegetarian enzyme.
If I only had enough resources to purchase a very small number of products, the products that we’ve talked about today with Detoxzyme, Life 5, and Di-Gize; these would be some that I would choose automatically. The great thing about Detoxzyme is that even if you are eating a healthy diet, just like Marc said, most people aren’t getting the nutrients out of their food because they still don’t have enough enzymes to digest properly, and their gut is not prepared to absorb them, which probiotics can help! So you can eat a great diet all day long, being careful with what you eat, but if you don’t have enzymes and your gut isn’t working properly, it won’t do you nearly as much good.
Jason: Yes that’s an important point, Doug, and one of the other things we haven’t touched on is the key oil blend in Detoxzyme, comprised of Cumin, Anise, and Fennel. Marc, do you want to describe what this oil blend’s purpose is in Detoxzyme?
Marc: In fact, Detoxzyme is the only enzyme blend that actually contains essential oils, and this is vital because enzymes work best with essential oils. So they’re not only actually accentuating the activity of the enzymes themselves, but they actually have unique and powerful effects each on their own – Cumin, for example, is one of the most powerful antioxidants and also cleansing for the digestive system. Here’s another oil that derives from a seed, and the seeds are customarily chewed in different areas of the world for combating worms, combating parasites; this is how they were used traditionally. You see here again we have the Anise seeds as well, a similar type of activity and similar type of traditional usage. This is why the essential oils, which are the active part of the seed, are used in Detoxzyme because we’re trying to detoxify our bodies, we’re trying to enhance digestion.
Doug: One of the things that just came to mind as Marc was talking is that when you smell Ginger or Anise, you’ll know that immediately the body will start to produce more bile and produce more of these digestive fluids, and that’s really helping your digestion the right way instead of trying to reduce acid by using calcium carbonate, or reduce acid by popping Tums; now we’re actually working with the body to stimulate the natural processes of digestion, and that’s going to help our health a lot in the long term.
Marc: Absolutely. In fact, look at one of the enzymes in the Detoxzyme, lipase. People don’t realize but let’s say you take wheat germ oil and they say it’s rich in vitamin E, but without the lipase enzyme your body can only extract a tiny or minute amount of the vitamin E in the wheat germ oil. So your body needs help with the lipase in any fatty oil where you have active nutrients in there, you can have the most powerful phytochemicals in the world in a fatty oil but you’re going to need lipase to help unlock their value; not just the vitamins but any active biocompound in a fatty substance, in oil in particular.
Jennifer: Jason, can you speak to how I use this product? Do I take this once a day, twice a day, how many capsules?
Jason: Detoxzyme is recommended to take 2 capsules 3 times a day, between your meals so a total of 6 capsules in a day should be adequate.
Jennifer: Jason, what other benefits have been noted with Detoxzyme?
Jason: One that comes to mind is another comment from Dana, a Young Living member, who said she lost 30 pounds by taking Detoxzyme and watching her fat grams. She said ‘I just had a baby 8 months ago and I only have 10 more pounds to go to be back to my pre-baby weight.’
Doug: That makes a lot of sense with what we’re understanding about why people are obese in America, right? I mean, we are eating and eating and eating and not getting any nutrients! So now if we not only start to eat a sensible diet but we have Detoxzyme to help us to absorb those nutrients, then we’ve gone a long way to solving our problem.
Jennifer: So to recap, we’ve just gone over 3 amazing products: Life 5, Di-Gize, and Detoxzyme. I can tell you for one, I’m going to be adding these to my order this month! We hope to hear back from you on how these products have improved your life. Make sure to check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and of course on http://www.youngliving.com as we keep each other up to date on how these products are really improving our health. Thanks again for joining us and thank you gentlemen for being part of our product panel today.