Kelly Engelmann: Wellness is a practice, not just a word. Welcome to The Synergee Podcast. For myself, Kelly Engelmann and Lori Esarey, shed light on powerful tools and topics that nourish your body, and most importantly, feed your soul.
Welcome everybody to the Synergee Podcast. I’m so excited to be back today with you guys. We have the delight of having Joell Daniels today with us in studio. We’re gonna be interviewing her and listen, it’s buyer beware. We’re gonna be talking about all things, supplements, the reason why we need to have supplementation in our lives, what they can do, what they can’t do, how they’re made, what we need to be aware of as buyers. Y’all listen in.
Lori Esarey: Welcome to the show. We are so excited to have you, Joell. So tell us a little bit more about you.
Joell Daniels: Well, thank you so much. I’m excited to be here. I do work for a company called Xymogen/Whole Scripts, both companies. We own them both, and I’ve been with the company since 1996 and was there at the inception when the team started Xymogen.
I’ve worn many hats over the years, but my primary responsibility is educating healthcare practitioners on our formulas and how they are best used to. Positive outcomes in patients. I’m really passionate about what I do. I got into this field of work because I was a sick patient, and I think I’m like many of the patients that walk into your clinics.
Unfortunately, it took me a long time to get to a functional medicine practitioner who looked at root causes versus trying to put out fires in the forms of symptoms all the time. I approach my job al- altruistically and that I really want to have patients not get into some of the holes that I fell into on the way to health.
Kelly Engelmann: Well, I can honestly say knowing you for as many years as I’ve known you, that passion comes through. You know, Lori and I are geeks. We absolutely love education. We’re constantly learning and growing, and you’ve been a big part of that for us. You’ve been a big part of putting things in front of us and giving us opportunities as providers to spread our wings and to provide for our patients. Quality supplements that we know 100% for sure are top quality and top grade, so thank you. Thank you for being here and sharing with us today.
Lori Esarey: Yes, thank you so much. Thank you. Joell. I’ve just gotta ask you, is this conversation today that Kelly and I wanted to have for our listeners. Why is this important for you?
Joell Daniels: I’m passionate about what I do because I wanna save patients from falling into the same holes that I fell into as a sick patient back in the nineties. 1990. I was very sick and I went the conventional medicine route and really, they were just doing symptom control. They weren’t looking at root causes.
So I did filter my way into multi-level supplement company who I spent thousands of dollars with and didn’t get well. I had no result whatsoever. And it wasn’t until I went to a functional medicine practitioner who did diagnostics with me and took me through a pretty rigorous, difficult program that was- part of the onus was on me to make changes in my life and to take supplements. I took a lot of ’em more than I really wanted to, but I’m better. And I haven’t had to hear the S word, which is what I call surgery. I haven’t had to hear that word for some sort of ailment since. So that’s my goal is to get people the access to people like you, practitioners who care and practice good medicine.
Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. So, we know that it can be a journey of finding your way as a patient. You know, most of our patients are seekers most of the time. By the time they get to us. They’ve been many, many places. We’re not their first stop often times. So we hear that story over and over and over as it plays out in real time even today, and I don’t know if the Internet’s made that more problematic or less problematic? I mean, I’m thinking back in the nineties we didn’t really have the internet to lean to, to find access to resources. So I’m, I’m thinking you were kind of walking in the dark a good bit and today I think we’re walking in the light of the internet, but it’s oftentimes down paths that lead us nowhere. And I, I can imagine what that feels like as a patient. You know, we’ve all been there, right? As patients ourselves trying to find our own way.
Lori Esarey: And we need to be smart consumers because of that, right? Not just just believing everything that we see and making sure that we are educated to filter, right?
Kelly Engelmann: So why in the world do we have the need for supplementation today? Right? Shouldn’t we just be able to eat our way out of a problem?
Lori Esarey: I mean, that’s what we learned in school, right? Yeah. Most of our medical programs, you know, we don’t, we don’t need to take nutrients, so we don’t need to take supplements.
Kelly Engelmann: Supplements. It was just very expensive urine. That’s what I was taught.
Lori Esarey: Yes, me too.
Kelly Engelmann: Just very expensive. Urine don’t waste. That’s right. Waste your money on those supplements. Right?
Lori Esarey: Right. And then sometimes, you know, we hear, well it’s just another pill, right? We’re sick. It’s just another pill where, where. We’re trying to get them to understand that it’s really a supplement that fills in nutritional gaps. So let’s talk about nutritional gaps. Like why does our food. Or why does it not meet our nutritional needs?
Kelly Engelmann: So they say today that 10 cups of spinach today would be what one cup of spinach would’ve been about 10 years ago.
Lori Esarey: In nutritional density.
Kelly Engelmann: In nutritional density. And who can eat 10 cups? Who can eat 10 cups of spinach every single day, right? And I, I try, I mean, I’m challenged myself. We say we need nine cups of vegetables a day as an adult to meet our nutritional demands. I don’t have that much chew time in my day. I mean, I’ve tried to make it work, but I just don’t have that much chew time. And even with juicing, which I do daily, and even with my smoothies, I’m still not meeting that quota oftentimes at the end of the day when I look up.
Lori Esarey: So our soil is very nutrient poor. Right. It lacks in minerals the way that we grow our foods now. Right?
Kelly Engelmann: Monocropping? So oftentimes that soil is not nutrient dense because we’ve grown the same crop over and over, and by the end product it’s not, there’s no nutrient value there.
Lori Esarey: And we’re growing anything, anytime, anywhere. We’re speeding up the growth, skipping over maturation processes that are necessary for nutrients. Food doesn’t even taste like it anymore. I mean, eat a strawberry. That’s conventionally grown. It doesn’t even taste like a strawberry anymore, right? So just very, very nutrient poor food. And so I had to really rethink how I was trained as well.
And I understand, you know, if you’re going to, I would say this to our consumers and, and those listening today, if you’re gonna to your doctor and they’re saying, you know, you don’t need to take that. It’s just gonna be expensive urine, I really urge you to dig deeper and look because you’re not gonna correct your nutritional deficiencies with food alone.
Kelly Engelmann: And to the flip side of that, you’re not gonna correct your nutritional deficiencies with supplements alone. Yes, it really is the marriage of the two. That is the sweet spot, I believe. And then we think about supplementation. You, there’s a time and a place for supplementation, for healing. You know, your supplement regimen that you mentioned, Joell, you took more pills than you wanted to initially because you were working through a healing process.
And oftentimes that’s the case when they come in. There’s a lot of mal-absorption going on in the GI tract. Oftentimes more supplementation is needed to get that issue resolved, and then there’s a period of time. Or perhaps you’re on more of a maintenance or more of a let’s how to, let’s see how we maintain with the knowledge that you may go through stressors in life where you need to bump up your supplementation.
So oftentimes equate that to what do you, what are you asking your body to do? And that oftentimes dictates the strategies behind what we need in the way of supplementation to make that happen.
Lori Esarey: So, and, and because of that, when choosing supplementation, it’s really important to choose quality. Quality supplements to fill in those nutritional gaps that, like, as you just said, we create those nutritional gaps. Absolutely. We create them ourselves. Whe whether we, it’s something we like, we don’t like, we cook it a certain way or raw versus cooked, right?
Kelly Engelmann: And then we eat that thing, what’s it called? Sugar that steals all of our nutrients from us because it takes a lot of nutrients to out process sugar. Not that I do that, no, I would never do that, but yes. Sometimes I do that.
Joell Daniels: That’s right.
Lori Esarey: So that makes this an even more important conversation about quality nutrients, how to purchase them, how to buy them where. Them from and making sure that you have a relationship with a trusted, qualified healthcare practitioner to give you that guidance. So Joell, do you wanna add anything to that nutritional conversation that we just had?
Joell Daniels: I think the lives we live now. are much more stressful than the lives we lived before, and we know that high stress really affects our digestion and our gut health. So even if, and it doesn’t, the orange that was grown 50 years ago was so much higher quality with nutrients or dense nutrients than it is now.
Even if it was still that same orange. Our digestion is so screwed up from the stress that we face every day, from chemicals in our environment from a stressful life and more demands on us that it wouldn’t matter. We’re still not getting the nutrition we need, but I agree. I would prefer to eat whole food.
I think that we need to have a lifestyle that includes exercise and meditation and prayer, but we’re not gonna get it all from food. We’re just not. Not without supplements.
Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely.
Lori Esarey: So I wanted to ask a couple of questions. You know the question is, no longer are supplements necessary because we all know that our nutritional intake is so poor, the quality of our food is so poor. So it’s no longer a question of, you know, do we need them? It’s now a question of when we need them, what do we choose? So we wanted to kind of dig a little bit deeper with you on what does that look like? What does a quality nutritional supplement look like?
Joell Daniels: Well, as a consumer, prior to any of my knowledge in this field, I just assumed whatever I picked up on a shelf of a store, and of course this was pre-internet days, but it’s even more crucial now. I assumed that everything was okay. The New York Attorney General’s office did an investigation where they took lots of products off of shelves of major retailers, and not one of them met label claim and all of them except one had contaminants.
Kelly Engelmann: So Wait, wait, hold on. Joell, you said none of them met label claim. So what you’re saying is what was on the label was not what was in that bottle. That’s huge.
Joell Daniels: That’s correct. Wow. That is huge. And even something as simple as vitamin C didn’t make the mark. And I think that’s the most expensive supplement to purchase is no matter what the price tag is on that shelf, if it doesn’t have what it, what it says, and it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, it’s a waste of money.
Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. And it could be dangerous as well. Right. Oftentimes in that study, they found that there were contaminants in the product, right. Not just that it wasn’t what it said it was. Maybe it was something that would be harmful as well.
Joell Daniels: Exactly. At Xymogen, we really took that to heart and we built a manufacturing facility from ground up and we didn’t take an old warehouse and repurpose it and in doing the ground up construction. We were able to control manufacturing that other companies that try to convert an existing building weren’t able to do, and they’re a little bit boring, but they really do contribute to the fact that every capsule in every bottle is the same dose as all the rest of them. So we don’t get one capsule with 40 milligrams and another with a 200, but they’re a consistent dosing.
And we meet label claim and we don’t have contaminants. So, what’s on the label is nothing more and nothing less than what is shown.
Kelly Engelmann: So Lori and I have been able to visit, right? And we’ve been able to see manufacturing. It was really cool walking through there and it’s like a real eye-opener to see all of that come together from the way that product is brought in and tested and then produced and then tested again. And there’s a lot that goes into that process to make sure that, like you said, once you get that bottle, that every single capsule is the same.
Joell Daniels: That’s correct. And we also do things that other manufacturers don’t necessarily do, which is we qualify our vendors. So our suppliers that send us those raw ingredients, they have to go through a rigorous qualification process that once they’re approved, we received their product, we make sure that it comes with a certificate of analysis, and a chain of custody. A chain of custody is gonna tell us that it isn’t genetically modified. The certificate of analysis, which is also called the C of A, tells us that that ingredient is active, and I don’t remember the movie, but there’s a movie that talks about the circle of trust. And even though we’ve pre-qualified that vendor, they’re not really in that circle of trust. We verify, right? Their certificate of analysis to make sure, and that’s important to know because we reject raw ingredients all the time, and we ship them to other people that makes supplements when we reject them the supplier sends us a UPS label and we send them along.
Lori Esarey: So what you’re saying is that-
Joell Daniels: so they’re out there.
Lori Esarey: Right? So you’re rejecting that product. Right. And it’s, it’s being sent on to someone else who is using that product, who then that lands on the shelves. Getting back to your original statement of what’s on those shelves, you used to think, go to any store, pick it up. That’s a supplement that’s safe for me. And that’s good.
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. I’ll have to say, when I first got into functional medicine, Gosh, 2004, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was have product on my shelf. Like I just didn’t think that was, you know, something I needed to be getting myself into. But I would send patients with a list of what they needed and they would go to the local store and they would come back.
Oftentimes they would come back with not what I asked them to get, and something completely different because the person sold them something different for the symptom they were having. Right. But just assumed they came back with what I asked them to get. You know, three months down the road, we’re not seeing the result.
And I’m like, I can’t function this way. Not knowing that what I’m giving them is actually gonna get them where they need to go. So the the ability to bring in quality supplements to the practice and know that they’re gonna see that result with that product over a period of time is. Has been a game changer for my practice.
Lori Esarey: Absolutely. And mine as well. And so I think as a consumer going to, whether that be an online platform to order supplementation or to a provider’s office or to a store, what are they to look for on a bottle? Is there specific terminology that they should be looking for on that product when they purchase?
Joell Daniels: Well, there is a stamp on a label that says GMP that stands for good manufacturing practices and that can be helpful, but it’s still no guarantee. Right now with the current environment where supplies are short, demand is high. It’s like the wild, wild west. There are so many supplement raw ingredients out there that we get into our manufacturing facility that aren’t making the mark. Also, we receive things that are substandard and our rejection rate has gone up during this last few years.
Lori Esarey: So, what you’re saying is that that certification of good manufacturing practices, which historically we have said to our consumers, use that as a guide. What you’re saying now is we have to be cautious even with that on the label.
Joell Daniels: That’s correct. I think you really the consumer needs to do that and look to their healthcare practitioner who has done the research like you and Kelly have done.
Lori Esarey: Yeah. So that means digging deeper, really not just to understand again that they got that label right cuz that there’s a price that comes with that CGMP. Correct? Right?
Joell Daniels: There is.
Lori Esarey: So there’s a price that comes with that. So it’s really going beyond that and like you said, getting to your qualified healthcare practitioner to dig deeper into the companies behind the brand. That’s what I hear you saying. the companies and Absolutely what the companies are doing, what their standards are.
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. Right. Can you speak Joell at all to this thing that’s going on with counterfeiting of product? So, you go online to buy a product. The label looks like a good manufacturing label, and you get the product, but it’s not the real thing. Mm. What can you tell us about that?
Joell Daniels: Absolutely. When we first started Xymogen, we were the new kid kids on the block, and we did set the standard higher for everyone. And what we found in a couple of instances where our label had been mimicked and put on a bottle, how we found this is the person who got the bottle had a complaint about it, and we happened to mark all our bottles so we know who bought it, where it went, and these bottles weren’t. and the marking isn’t seen, but we could, we have a way to read it and the products ended up being counterfeit. And if we had those happen 20 years ago it’s even worse now. So, we check that all the time. Mm-hmm.
Kelly Engelmann: Wow. So, I’m just thinking about how many people go online thinking that they’re getting a good quality product because maybe they did look for Xymogen or another brand name that’s trusted, but then when they get that product, that product is not even what they think it is and how do we protect from that, right? Yeah. Because everything’s going online, let’s face it. The world has changed as we know it. And we are going to see, you know, vendors that historically have not sold online, be there and, you know, how do we know that we’re buying directly from that vendor? What can we do to, to look for that?
Lori Esarey: So how do we know Joell, what can we do and what can we help? I, I feel like this is buyer beware. Right? Right. Buyer beware!
Joell Daniels: It’s definitely buyer beware and I think the way to protect yourself is to, again, go through a healthcare practitioner who’s done the research, right? Because you’ll even see our formulas show up online, but that’s no guarantee.
It was interesting. There was a patient who returned product to a doctor and the reason she returned it was because she didn’t see the product on Amazon. So the patient automatically assumed that if it was on Amazon that it had been checked. And we know people selling on Amazon have been caught selling counterfeit products.
Lori Esarey: Mm-hmm.
Joell Daniels: And Amazon’s gotten in trouble for that as well.
Lori Esarey: Yeah. So directly through what you’re saying is through either a visit with your qualified healthcare practitioner in which you’re picking that up in their office, or they have given you a direct link to or provided you the proper way to walk through ordering it to know that it is the brand and the product that they have recommended?
Joell Daniels: Absolutely.
Kelly Engelmann: Does Xymogen have codes on the bottles that patients can view to verify that it is a Xymogen product?
Joell Daniels: No, but we do have our marking that we put on the label that we can investigate.
Kelly Engelmann: So, Xymogen can see that. Yeah. If you needed to investigate, but the patient themselves couldn’t see that.
Yeah. So it is tricky. It is buyer beware for the- for the person out there trying to get themselves better. They have all these symptoms that they’re dealing with or maybe they’re just trying to optimize their health. You know, they’re into fitness and they wanna stay well and it is truly by beware when it comes to the purchasing of those supplements online, I think.
Lori Esarey: So tell us a little bit about third party testing of raw material. You’ve said we’ve talked a little bit about contaminants, but what does that third party process look like to, to help you clearly know what product reject versus to keep?
Joell Daniels: So what we do when that wrong greeting comes in and it has that certificate of analysis, we’re unique in that we have our own analytical services laboratory, right in our building. A large one with very progressive equipment, and we can do what most labs do. So we test it initially ourselves and make sure that it’s within specification, but at the end product or during the process, if there’s certain tests that we need to do on an ingredient, we send it out to a third party independent laboratory.
So that’s a laboratory that has no skin in the game. They don’t care whether it, you know, they don’t make any money off at passing or not. Mm-hmm. . They make their money either way. And we just verified that our results are true and valid and it costs a lot of money to do that. And we’ve been told that we overt test things and the owner of our company is okay with that. We wanna put out a quality product that makes patients-
Lori Esarey: is that even possible? Right. I think Is that even possible to overt test? Right?
Kelly Engelmann: Exactly. From a functional perspective, absolutely not. Exactly right. We love the testing.
Lori Esarey: But you bring up a great point is. in the age in which everything is costing more.
You know, many of our patients are really thinking about their budgets and they’re wanting to trim them down as much as possible, right? But we can’t cut corners here. That’s what I hear you saying today. We can’t cut corners, we gotta be really particular.
Joell Daniels: Right.
Lori Esarey: So what does it cost? I just, I, I gotta kind of know like, what does it really cost to maybe batch tests?
Like, give us a little bit of an idea of, of the cost difference between putting just any product on a shelf at GNC, Walgreens, Walmart, versus putting a product on your warehouse shelf.
Joell Daniels: I don’t know the exact costs. I would say that it would easily double or triple the price because just the testing that we do with independent laboratories costs about a hundred thousand dollars per month.
Lori Esarey: Wow.
Joell Daniels: And I wanna reiterate that the most expensive supplement you buy is the one that doesn’t work. So while we’re trying to limit and cut our costs, like you said, Lori, this is not the place to do that.
Lori Esarey: Right. So I wanna, I wanna dig a little bit deeper into product labels and things that catch our eye. As a consumer when we shop. NSF is one of the things that my clients will come in and say that they see on a bottle. What does NSF mean?
Joell Daniels: Well, it’s a paid for subscription. So the company pays the National Sanitation Foundation, I believe is what it stands for, and they pay for that subs. So it’s not any additional verification that happens. It’s not like a GMP or for instance, Xymogen is an FDA registered facility and we’re inspected every 10 to 14 months. They knock on the back door, they give us no warning, and they come in and they stay for a couple weeks and they verify everything.
Lori Esarey: So NSF is just something on the bottle. To trick, if you will, the consumer into believing there’s something better about this formula than maybe one that doesn’t have NSF on it. Is that correct?
Joell Daniels: Absolutely. And it would be like a company that pays for their products to be checked by the Consumer Reports Organization or something like that. Those are all paid for subscriptions.
Lori Esarey: So is is USP the same thing? Because I’ve noticed a lot of , I would say brands that you see on the shelves at a health food store maybe, or even at a grocery store they’ve had there. There’s USP on there. Tell us a little bit about USP. What is that?
Joell Daniels: I’m not exactly sure. However, generally the USP means United States Pharmacopia, and that’s a standard of ingredient. Mm-hmm. . Okay. And of a raw ingredient.
Lori Esarey: Would that make that product any better than one that is labeled as CGMP or NSF? Does it create a better quality or, or not?
Joell Daniels: I think it is something to look for in that we know the company’s going the extra mile and using a USP raw ingredient. Okay. So one that has a standard.
Kelly Engelmann: Great question. So I’m curious, you know, when I toured the Xymogen facility a few years ago, one of the things that just impressed me was the, the humidity control. Cause I’m all about air quality control, . I’m kind of obsessed with that. If anyone knows me well they know why. But I, I noticed that there was a lot of pains taken to really control for humidity in specific areas. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how that equates to better quality product?
Joell Daniels: I can, and this does make Xymogen unique because again, we built our building, our manufacturing facility was built from the ground up, we didn’t take a warehouse and repurpose it. In doing that, we were able to install, train, car size dehumidifiers, and from the time a raw ingredient enters manufacturing till the time it comes out, we can control how much moisture is in the air, and that’s important because most ingredients are.
By exposure to two things, humidity and heat, and by preventing the humidity in the first place, we don’t have to apply heat to get things to flow properly. Our humidity control is from anywhere from 15 to 24%, depending on what’s being manufactured that day.
Lori Esarey: Wow. And in Florida where you’re located, that is even more important, right?
Kelly Engelmann: Right?
Joell Daniels: It is. When we opened our manufacturing facility we opened it in about April of 2011 and we were able to test it very easily because we had 19th straight days in the beginning of June, that year of rain. Wow. And they constantly were checking them because it was new. Right. And-
Lori Esarey: So let’s talk about shipping practices because one of the things that we know is that you are shipping all over the United States. Is that correct? We are. And are you also abroad? What are, are, are there other locations that you guys ship to as well?
Joell Daniels: We have a warehouse that we use in Canada that we own and ship in Canada.
Lori Esarey: Okay.
Joell Daniels: We also have distributors in other countries.
Lori Esarey: Expanding!
Joell Daniels: So we do ship both.
Lori Esarey: Yeah. Expanding. So the shipping process I can imagine has to be quite controlled to make sure that the end consumer gets quality products. How does Xymogen control for that?
Joell Daniels: Everything is under air conditioned, temperature controlled environment, unlike some major. Sellers who have big warehouses and don’t always do that. And so you can imagine if you’re maybe a patient’s taking a probiotic and they’re ordering it off of the internet, it might have been stored on a third story rack in the middle of summer somewhere, and might not end up the way it was meant to be at their home.
Mm-hmm. .
Lori Esarey: So from the time that a person orders whether that be you know, directly through again, , a provider recommending a specific link right, in which they’re ordering directly mm-hmm. From you, what is the turnaround time from that order to getting it out the door to them and then receiving it?
Typically,
Joell Daniels: we’ll ship within 48 hours, if not 24. Mm-hmm. , and depending on where they’re located in the country it could be one to three.
Lori Esarey: Yeah, I was just wondering, because I know that there’s a controlled amount of, you know, the heat as you spoke of before, I think one of the consumer questions would be, does the heat of that shipping process, like how is that controlled to make sure they’re getting a product that is still, you know, that is it.
It’s still quality.
Joell Daniels: We have equipment where we put a product in and we expose it to heat and humidity. So we know exactly how it’s affected. And for instance, our probiotics, which when we make them, we double fill them. What I mean when I say that is we put double the amount of the ingredient in there, and then what is on the label is what the strength of that product is at the expiration date.
Another way to say that is if we have 30 billion strength probiotic, we might fill that with 60 or 70 billion. When we make it, we have checked it. We know that if it’s exposed to 107 degrees for three days, it’s still two years down the road going to have and meet the label.
Lori Esarey: Excellent. Right, which, that’s the standards that you guys have put in place to ensure, again, the quality
Kelly Engelmann: product.
Right? And a lot of patients feel like if their probiotic is not refrigerated, then it’s not a good quality probiotic, but you guys have been able to vacuum seal, right, that probiotic in a way that keeps it fresh so that it doesn’t degradate with temperature changes. ,
Joell Daniels: that’s true. However, because we control that humidity from the very beginning and we never have to apply the heat.
A probiotic, for instance, is brought to life by heat and moisture, and so we’ve never brought that. Product to life before it gets in the capsule and before it gets to the patient. So it’s very stable, and then we nitrogen flush it into a blister pack. So again, we’re removing any of the unwanted part of the environment that might bring that probiotic to life.
And it’s only gonna live about three days. once it’s brought to life, we want that to happen after the patient gets it. So we expose it to nothing that’s gonna put that at risk par to that.
Lori Esarey: That’s a lot to unpack. It
Kelly Engelmann: really is. I was thinking we gotta go way, baby. Yeah, right.
Lori Esarey: We gotta go back a little bit to really understand what you just said, cuz I think that’s really important.
When you said that raw product, as I understood it, isn’t brought to life. Until, say it until when? Heat and
Kelly Engelmann: moisture. Right?
Joell Daniels: Heat and moisture is what brings a probiotic to life. Makes it active. Okay.
Lori Esarey: And that happens when,
Joell Daniels: when the patient swallows it
Lori Esarey: and you control
Joell Daniels: that. How? By not exposing it to heat or moisture during the manufacturing process.
If a company wasn’t doing that, that might be. , you would need to refrigerate it, right? But we avoid that.
Lori Esarey: And that part of that process is how you also place it in the blister packs, right? Yes. Which is
Joell Daniels: phenomenal. It is. And the nitrogen flushing gets the oxygen out of there so that product is sealed and viable.
and every dose. A trick in the industry would be to put a powder in a bottle, because every time the patient picks up the bottle, they’re going to displace the powder. As it degrades, it gets hard like concrete. Mm-hmm. . Another challenge is that just a plastic bottle allows too much air and moisture in.
There’s even a website that rates plastic bottles and how the vapor can get through them, and they’re rated. So we just avoid all of that. Yeah, yeah.
Lori Esarey: So what I, I guess my question will be when, when probiotics are supplied in a bottle like that, what is the best way to store them for the consumer? Is it refrigeration?
Well, wouldn’t at that point,
Joell Daniels: Probably mm-hmm. , since we don’t do that, I never really have to advise somebody on how to do that. Right. Ours are always in a, in a blister pack or they’re in a, a stick pack, so each dose is controlled.
Lori Esarey: Right. Which I’m sure that that costs, right. The end consumer a little bit more for the product because of the way it’s packaged.
Going back is really ING more. That’s right. Is it really cost? Let’s talk about cost more. Right. Not cost. Right, exactly. A cost is something that you spend money on that’s not creating value on your investment. Right?
Joell Daniels: Absolutely. And not contributing to your health. Right. Right.
Lori Esarey: So the investment, that’s expensive.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. . I wanna talk a little bit about the delivery system of products. You know, some of them are in capsules, some of them liquids, some of them in the straws that you referred to earlier. Give me a little. Understanding of what is the most appropriate type of delivery system for different types of nutrients?
Joell Daniels: Well, obviously there are some things like a fish oil as iGen uses a pre-digested water soluble fish oil. But those have to be in gel caps. But there’s some studies that show that taking a lot of gel caps is. , good for you. But the benefit of is a gel cap of it. Using a gel cap is the disintegration time, and so you’re always a supplement company is always chasing the disintegration time, and we use a second generation veggie cap, which equals the disintegration time of a gel cap.
It also doesn’t disintegrate where it’s not supposed to. So these, some of them will be digestive resistant, like in a probiotic. But they’re digested in the small intestine or large intestine or wherever they need to be at the time.
Lori Esarey: So sometimes it’s very appropriate to have a liquid formulation for better absorption and digestion. Right, right. Absolutely. Sometimes it’s better to have them in a capsule form, sometimes sublingual underneath of the tongue based on, again, delivery system, right. For that particular patient. But as you just also mentioned, and, and I think we need to also talk about a little bit, The best way to get it to you right, is the one that you’re gonna follow. Right?
Kelly Engelmann: Well that’s true, right, . That is so, so true. So many people do not like powders. You know, they want everything in in a capsule. So if they’re not gonna take it, it’s not any good for them. It’s not any good for them. It’s gonna sit in the bottle and not be consumed. Yeah. Yeah.
Lori Esarey: But then the delivery system really is the individual.
assessment of the qualified healthcare practitioner to determine how is their GI system, right? Are they gonna break it down right? And what’s the best delivery for them? So that’s, again, working individually with, with the client mm-hmm. to make sure of that. But so, you know, it’s, it’s really great to work with a company that offers multiple different delivery systems that allow us to choose right what’s best for them-
Kelly Engelmann: And have the patient have a voice. You know, they’re part of the equation too, and knowing what they’re going to do, or willing to do and able to do is also a huge part of the decision making when we do choose a product for them. Mm-hmm. . So Joell, you work for Xymogen? I do. Mm-hmm. , how can patients connect with Xymogen?
Joell Daniels: Through you. Okay. Or Laurie.
Kelly Engelmann: Okay.
Joell Daniels: And just to let your listeners know, you are the most amazing women, your skilled practitioners. I see clinics all day every day, and I have incredible respect for you. You have gone the extra hundred miles and looked at the science and educated yourselves, and you do think outside the box and you’re not afraid to say, I’ll find out. And I really respect that. And there any patient that ends up in your clinics are in the right hands and it’s really amazing.
Kelly Engelmann: Thank you.
Lori Esarey: Thank you so much. Sure. What a blessing. Sure. Absolutely. Well, I can speak for myself. I’ve, I’ve known you Joell for years. In fact, you are one of the key women who inspired me to take a new approach and look at look at healthcare delivery differently.
And really You know, back in the day, I like to say when I was experiencing my own health challenges you really inspired me to, to dig a little bit deeper, you know, get more education and look at nutrients, and I’m just really thankful for our relationship and I really appreciate you. Sharing your expertise with our listeners.
Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. Joell, it’s a pleasure having you here and you know, we’re blessed to have you take care of us in Mississippi. You know, I got to know you through Lori, and the only way we got you here was really through that relationship. The relationship I had with Lori and the relationship she had with you brought you to Mississippi.
And so we’re delighted as always to have you feeding into our teams with education and resources. That goes to our patients, right? We’re able to spread that to our patients. So we, we really do appreciate you being here.
Joell Daniels: Thank you so much.
Lori Esarey: Oh, you really well, thank you. But I wanna say, you know, that that really goes along with what we say all the time with Synergee.That we really are better together. We’re stronger together. We’re stronger together.
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah, absolutely.
Lori Esarey: Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. You can find more information about Synergee at synergee4life.com, that’s S Y N E R G E E, the number four, life.com.
Kelly Engelmann: And then Synergee connect is our Facebook. And then please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app so that you make sure you get future notifications of episodes.
