Transcript
Michael Roesslein: Ready? All right, we’re recording. Hey, everyone. We are back with another Wellness Vault Spotlight Webinar. We’re talking enzymes today with my friend Steve, right? Steve, thanks for hanging out with us.
Steve Wright: Thanks for having Me, Michael.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah, man. We’re going to talk about Holozyme today. We did an enzyme webinar earlier this month, so September has become the de facto enzyme month at Rebel Health Tribe on accident and it worked out well. We’ve known each other a while and you’ve been involved in gut stuff for a really long time. A lot of our audience probably is familiar with the SCD diet and the SCD lifestyle, the site and brand company that you co-created with Jordan, and now Healthy Gut is spawned off of there.
You have a few products you’ve created, which is new. I’m curious, I guess, just, I know a lot more of your story than our audience does, so perhaps you could share … You weren’t always a health guy, and you became one out of necessity, just like most people in this industry. If you want to share just a little bit of your background and how we got to here, and then we can talk a little more about enzymes.
Steve Wright: Yeah. Hopefully in brief, but interesting way. I graduated college with an electrical engineering degree and I worked at GM. Then I worked at a big consulting firm in Chicago, and it was a high stress environment. I had already had some digestive issues in college. I became aware that other people didn’t spend an hour on the toilet every morning, before class, and I did.
Michael Roesslein: That’s real awakening?
Steve Wright: Yeah. So, one day at downtown Chicago in a high rise building, my boss called me into his office, and this was my wake up moment. He was like, “Steve, people are complaining about the smell in the office. Everyone’s saying it’s you. You need to take care of this if you want this job.” That was …
Michael Roesslein: Wow.
Steve Wright: I know, I really think that, at least for many of us, we have like a wake up moment where we’re like, wow, I have a problem here and I have to do something about it. For me, that was probably one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, and a real wake up call that I could no longer suck it up, and just crop dust office, and just go through life. He didn’t know this, but I was crying every day for about 30 minutes after every meal, because I had so much bloating and gas, and I didn’t want to be that guy.
I was eating chicken rice. I was eating chicken lettuce, I was trying all these different things. I had panic attacks. I had some depression. I had acne. Back then I was about 230, and I’m 185 right now, so I was pretty round, facially speaking. That set me on a path of, okay, I’m going to handle this. If my “dream job” is being threatened by my gas and bloating, I can no longer suck it up and be a man. I went down that track, and of course, Western medicine gave me antibiotics and Metamucil, and whole grains, and that did nothing, and made it worse.
Michael Roesslein: Ouch.
Steve Wright: Yeah, so then luckily, I had a good friend named Jordan, and he was really sick and dying with celiac disease, and someone told him about the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. I had some more really embarrassing stories on buses, and on dates, and all kinds of things. I was just like, this has got to change. Changed my diet, the bloating went from crying every day to not crying, and I was like, holy cow, I’ve been lied to. I was just freaking mad. I was so mad. This was in 2008, 2009. The internet wasn’t what it is. You literally did have to go to a bookstore and find these types of books.
This stuff wasn’t available, and I realized that consulting in this go-go life was not the life for me. I was like, why don’t we tell the world about this diet thing, this nutrition piece, because everybody who has digestive conditions should know that they could change their diet and have some resolution. That’s how SCD lifestyle was started in the summer of 2009, and then it was just a quest. Getting pissed, like why can’t I eat gluten? And why won’t my acne go away? Why can’t I have dairy, and why don’t I sleep very well? All these questions, and so I spent about $400,000. I did. Kalish’s Functional Medicine Institute, some other trainings with Dr. C. Becker, things like that.
Just the ongoing process of who’s the best in the world, and this I will pay them whatever the costs for stem cells or peptides, or whatever, and I’ll try it on myself. If it works, I’m going to tell people about it. I’m going to report on it, like this is what happened to me. Also, I’m going to look up all the research that these clinicians, these Maverick clinicians, I’m going to go find the research that actually backs up what they do, and try to tell people about that. Everything’s morphed back into Healthy Gut now, and that’s the new company and the new brand, and part of the mission.
Michael Roesslein: Cool. Man, that’s a long road, and 2008 is way longer ago than it seems like it is, so been at it awhile now. I mean, you guys reach tons of people. Everybody that comes to us knows of SCD as a diet, and I learned about it from you guys. There wasn’t a lot out there on it. The original book was Breaking the Vicious Cycle. Or was that the book that you read about it in? Or was it …
Steve Wright: That was the original book that I read, but actually, that was a rewrite of a 1950s book by the original doctor.
Michael Roesslein: Wow.
Steve Wright: Dr. Sidney Haas, yeah.
Michael Roesslein: So, for 60 years, somebody was just chilling on that information?
Steve Wright: Yeah. I mean, it was getting passed down by family, by family in the Vanderbilt University community.
Michael Roesslein: Interesting. Yeah, but nowhere near the medical community, which is frustrating. We could do a whole another webinar on what is SCD, so we’re not going to do that today, but, so the diet helped you quite a bit. You’ve probably learned there’s personal deviations there between people and what’s perfect for one person might need to be tweaked for another. No magic diet bullets, unfortunately, but there’s general directions and templates that can be used that work a lot better.
Now you have created a digestive enzyme and I’m curious. Well, let’s go back to not assuming everybody knows what we’re talking about. We’ve done a webinar earlier this month, which not everybody here probably even saw, so let’s go back to square one. What are enzymes? Specifically, what are digestive enzymes, but we do one and one A there. What is an enzyme and what is a digestive enzyme, specifically?
Steve Wright: Yeah, let’s start with the basics, but also, I just want to insert one [inaudible] I, for a really long time, was like [inaudible] SCD meets gaps and meets all these diets, and I was like nutrition can heal all. Then, it was just very clear that nutrition can’t, and there are certain things that go wrong in our physiology, or our mental areas that nutrition is like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s the bottom rung that we need, but a lot of times, you do need supplementation to really correct a body or have an optimal body.
I quickly learned that SCD wasn’t enough. I was on Betaine HCL and various types of enzymes for much of that 10 year span, until I gave it up. Again, when I tried to go fully granola and nutrition, again, it didn’t really work. That’s how we got back to these supplements. When I came back to them … because I always thought, who needs another supplement company? How are we changing the world with another supplement company? Like, seriously?
Michael Roesslein: Yeah.
Steve Wright: But, after eight or nine years, it was still clear that there was no real option here for digestive enzymes that I could find that would work for me. That’s when I was like, okay, there actually is a reason to do this kind of work.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah, because there’s a lot of them that exist. It’s hard.
Steve Wright: Yeah, there’s hundreds.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah, well, yeah, I’m sure …
Steve Wright: I was trying [inaudible]
Michael Roesslein: I’ve tried quite a few. I’m guessing there’s probably … yeah, there’s dozens of brands that I’m aware of, at least, and so I’m guessing you’ve tried a lot of them over the years?
Steve Wright: Yeah, two years ago, I set out to figure out what was the answer. I tried over 30 brands, all the top stuff two years ago, all during the year, just … I was like …
Michael Roesslein: That’s not a cheap experiment either.
Steve Wright: Well, luckily, we have companies where we could write it off as R&D, but…
Michael Roesslein: Yeah, that’s true. I guess if you’re going to be making a digestive enzyme, buying and trying digestive enzymes counts as a write off. Tip to everybody out there, start a supplement company, [crosstalk] write off your supplement purchases, but so … Go ahead.
Steve Wright: Do you want to come back to enzymes?
Michael Roesslein: Yeah, back to enzymes.
Steve Wright: Okay, so enzymes are basically catalysts and catalyst just mean that they speed things up. They speed up reactions. Without enzymes, your food would just sit inside of us for days, weeks, months, maybe even a year. Really, enzymes just come into contact with food or objects and they speed up the reaction of breaking it apart, and they’re essential for all function. I mean, I know in the other enzyme webinar that you did, you guys covered how important for all the different parts of our bodies, but digestively, you think about it, you start with a whole piece of meat, or something like a steak, or whatever, and then you chew it, and you’ve mashed down the particles, made smaller pieces.
With that point, it’s up to … if you’re somebody like me, who tends to be terrible at chewing more than 10 times, and I just don’t go slow enough, you’re swallowing big bits of, say, a walnut, or a piece of steak, and now your body’s got to deal with something that, if you tried to make that into mush with your fingers, you would be there for … I don’t know if you could even do it. Our bodies are pretty amazing. One of the biggest ways they do that is through the enzyme process, which basically comes in and breaks apart these bonds, and makes it into smaller sized pieces.
Michael Roesslein: So, it makes up for too fast eating and lazy eating. Yeah, I always used to hear … I’ve taught it, too, so I’m going to just be full hypocrite here. Chewing your food till it’s liquefied, or certain practitioners would always give some exact amount of chews that food should have, something ridiculous. It’s like, “Chew your food 62 times,” and it’s like, it’s not 61. I eat like a savage. Most of the time, like four bites, chew twice, swallow. Get done with the meal, but I also don’t suffer from digestive issues very much.
I would guess if I did, I would have taken it a little more seriously, but we probably eat faster and careless versus what would be natural, normal, or optimal, or ideal. The enzymes, which do naturally occur in food, plants and vegetables, or fruits and vegetables, mostly, I would guess, that help break down the food in addition to our own stomach acid, things like that. Why might someone need to take them supplementally? Why don’t we just have enough of them? Or what’s the problem there?
Steve Wright: Well, that’s a super complex question, but one thing to keep in mind is that as we age, we only get a limited set of enzymes. It’s almost like we get a limited set of stem cells, or a limited set of, I don’t know, say, hormones, if you look at menopause or what happens in the ovaries. So, the same vein, the predominant theory at this point is that we are born with an amount of pancreatic enzymes that we can make in a lifetime. Somebody like me, probably not you, but somebody like me who’s had digestive conditions and issues since I was in high school, I’ve just been burning them up, right? I’ve been needing extra ones.
Then you throw on anybody with low stomach acid. If your stomach acid is low, that’s the primary signal to your gallbladder and your pancreas to basically do the whole deal and bring them in, make them bring them in. Activate them with bile salts, and bicarbonate. If you have celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, anything that … like SIBO, anything that messes up the villi in the small intestine … The villa are the little hairs at the end of the little hairs. They make brush border enzymes that finish the job, after the pancreatic enzymes, after the big boys do their job. [crosstalk]
Michael Roesslein: And if they’re trashed, you don’t have those?
Steve Wright: Right. Yep, if they’re all messed up.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah, the stomach acid cascade is involved. People always think it’s just in the stomach, or that’s why I have reflux, but when we did a webinar with Kiran on upper GI, he talked about stomach acid and the various cascades that the pH of the food leaving the stomach starts and is responsible for, from bugs living in the small intestine that shouldn’t, to food not getting broken down, to starting enzyme processes, to everything. It ended up being about an hour and a half.
I asked him one question and it went on for 70 minutes, and I’m just like, dude, I’m supposed to ask him so many more questions, and we ended up having to do a two part webinar on upper GI because he spent an hour just talking about the importance of stomach acid production for the whole sequence, so this is another way that that plays in. Stomach acid is notoriously low when people are stressed, and we live in a stress ball now, society. Becoming more so by the minute, it seems. Remember when they added that thing on the bottom of the news, like holy shit, look what’s happening today bar around 9/11. It was like, anytime that popped up, everyone was like …
Now, there’s like five bars that run concurrently in every direction all the time on every channel telling you 70 … Yeah. Anyways, we live in a thing that makes less stomach acid, for sure, and my eating like a savage. If you’re not slowly eating and smelling your food, and enjoying your food, and chewing your food, and all of that, low stomach acid, low enzyme production. All right, back to, you tried a bunch of them. Didn’t work for you very well. What were you looking for? When somebody takes a digestive enzyme, what is generally the why, and what is the desired outcome? Or, how would you know if it’s working?
Steve Wright: Yeah, so I generally find that there’s two classes of people who are into digestive enzymes. I’m hoping that by the end of this, you might consider that there are three classes, but this is a new thing that I’m trying to get out into the world, but the number one reason why is you have some GI complaint, right? You have gas, bloating, heartburn, diarrhea. Sometimes people will take them for constipation, but more like leaky gut, diarrhea, gas, bloating. You have some sort of … you just know when you look in the toilet, it’s not a Bristol stool chart number four or five.
There’s food in there. There’s oil in there. I don’t know. There’s all kinds of interesting things you can find in the toilet when you’re not properly digesting your food. I think that’s how most people here have these enzymes. Of course, if that goes on long enough, then I think people cross over into the second bucket, which is they just know they’re not absorbing food. They’re fatigued all the time. They’re like, “I am eating wild caught this, organic that, and I don’t feel good. I just feel like I’m getting the nutrition.
My hair is brittle, my nails are brittle, my eyes are sunken in or red,” or just all these markers of malnutrition and inflammation. That’s another group. Hopefully, at the end, you’ll realize that if you cross 60, and you’re not having enzymes every day, I mean, after 60, you just don’t necessarily have the machinery anymore to absorb your food the way you need to. I look at enzymes, as well, as the anti-aging tool, especially after 60, but definitely starting at 50.
Michael Roesslein: You’re being way more conservative than when our guest earlier this month, came on to talk about systemic enzymes. Numbers of those in the body start dropping around 30, around age 30. It depends, though. I mean, it depends on the person and how many of them are used, and the demand and all of that, but that as the numbers of finite material starts to dwindle, the body becomes more conservative with the use of them.
You might still have them, but it’s like, do I want to give these out to … and so you’re getting fewer. He said that starts around 30. By 50, 60, he said … like, they have a lot of doctors that work with the systemic enzymes, like geriatric patients that they said, “You need to take these because your body doesn’t make them.” They are involved in thousands of processes in addition to digestion, and it’s, yeah, like a little, give yourself a little bit of your youth back type of thing.
Steve Wright: Yeah, totally. I mean, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that most people start reporting … a lot of people start reporting their first GI issues around 30. Somewhere between 30 and 35 is when the majority of … Predominately, I’ve worked with women in the past, 80/20 women to men, and most of the women I talked to, if they didn’t have these issues from birth, it’s something happened between like 28 and 35.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah. I’m actually reading … I’m in Dr. Gabor Mate’s professional training right now. We our homework reading his books. When the Body Says No is a great book that talks about stress and trauma, and things, and physical disease. I’m in the chapter right now on IBD. He said that it’s between ages 25 and 35, almost exclusively, that it rarely kicks in before that, and that if people make it past 40, 45, they generally don’t develop the autoimmune versions of gut issues, but that there’s a huge kick up in people around age 25 to 35 in those conditions.
I wonder if there’s a connection there. It’s always weird. Guests always talk about things that I’m listening to in a book that day when we go on webinars, but so around then it starts to dwindle. There’s the category of person who has like acute digestive problems, and if you’re in that group, you know you’re in that group, because digestion and bathroom things are no fun for you, and it probably hasn’t been for a while.
The second group is, you know you have poor digestion or absorption, either you’re being treated for something and it’s coming up that you’re deficient in all these things. “But I eat this, or I eat that, and why are my numbers low?” Things like that, nails, hair, just weak, fatigue, feel like you don’t get anything out of your food. Then the third group, you’re saying needs to exist is the I don’t make enough enzymes, and I know that these are good and optimize my digestion.
Steve Wright: Yeah, look, I mean, if you think about how much money we all spend on organic, amazing fast food, and then you could-
Michael Roesslein: A lot.
Steve Wright: … just throw a little bit more in there to make sure you actually absorb and retain all those nutrients. I think if you’re over 50, and you’re not using a solid digestive enzyme, whether it’s ours or somebody else’s, you’re leaving a lot on the table, literally.
Michael Roesslein: It’s like buying that expensive gas in an old car.
Steve Wright: Right.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah. I got to do that the other day. The gas station was out of the cheap and the middle gas, so they dropped the price of the premium gas to the cheap gas. I told my car, don’t get used to it, but this one time, we’re going to get you a steak.
Steve Wright: Nice.
Michael Roesslein: So, over 50 and just want to optimize digestion, and any organic foods. Yeah, it’s not what you put in your mouth. It’s what you actually absorbed into your body.
Steve Wright: Totally.
Michael Roesslein: Where did you even … So, the enzymes aren’t working that well for you and you’re like, “Okay, well, I need to figure out a solution to this.” How did you educate yourself? Where did you decide on … where was step one? Why the formula that you came up with? How did this come about?
Steve Wright: Well, let’s also just talk a quick primer. There’s enzymes in your mouth, mostly amylase-
Michael Roesslein: Sure.
Steve Wright: … that starts with chewing.
Michael Roesslein: Carbohydrates, right?
Steve Wright: Yep, carbohydrate breakdown. It starts right away in your mouth. That’s one of the reasons why you should chew more. Again, there’s getting out of the fight or flight state.
Michael Roesslein: Keep saying it. I’ll listen eventually.
Steve Wright: Yeah, this is for me, too. I’m just as bad. Then there’s pepsin, which is a proteolytic protein breakdown enzyme, a really strong one in your stomach. The amylase is still working, than the stomach, the food’s in the stomach for two to four hours. Pepsin is getting to work on the protein. It dumps into your small intestine. It’s like a slow slurping dump thing. Meanwhile, when that’s happening correctly, there’s these signals, like this hormone CCK, and some other ones that tell the pancreas and the gallbladder to make the enzymes and start to bring the pancreatic enzymes in at the top of the intestine.
The pancreatic enzymes are, again, more amylase, way more amylase [inaudible] which is four fats, and then protease, again, for more protein breakdown. Those are like your three big guns. You need a bunch of those at the beginning, but you need that bicarbonate release, which is why the stomach acid has to … Pancreatic enzymes only work between seven and nine on the pH scale. It’s a very short window that they’re active. There’s this whole cascade that you mentioned from what you Kiran talked about, which happens all the way from the beginning with stomach acid.
Part of that is when these enzymes are allowed to be activated or turned on. After that, then of course, it starts to hit the brush border. I don’t actually know that we have a number for how many brush border enzymes, but it’s a lot. There are some primary ones, like you have sugar breakdown enzymes. Most people are familiar with lactose or lactase. That’s a brush border enzyme.
Michael Roesslein: And bugs make enzymes break down food to write like our micro biome. If that’s all over the place, we’re probably deficient in the ones that they would make.
Steve Wright: Right, yep. I mean, I’m sure your audience is familiar with this, but sometimes people don’t just grasp the physical nature of our digestive tract. Literally, if you feed different sized molecules all the way down, you’re going to grow different bugs in different places. If you don’t break things down and absorb … most of our sugars are meant to be absorbed in the upper GI tract, but if some of those sugars are making it down lower because they didn’t get broken off, because you’re low in cellulase, which is a cellulose wall, like a plant wall breakdown, brush border enzyme, or you didn’t split your polysaccharides up into monosaccharides, you’re going to grow different bugs in your lower small intestine than in your large intestine. It’s just how nature works. You can try it [crosstalk].
Michael Roesslein: Things are going to get a snack that aren’t supposed to be getting fed there.
Steve Wright: Right. It is that physical as far as how things work in there as well. Then the last class of enzymes is the systemic enzymes, right, inside of our body as well. There’s like five classes there. I really wanted to find out, how can we build an enzyme that when I took it, I noticed my bloating and gas go away. That’s always been my biggest issue. My family nicknamed me Gas Man, back when I was in high school, because I just smelled so bad and I always had gas, and it was shameful and, and all those things. I’ve embraced, at this point, that it’s my life’s work.
Michael Roesslein: You’re down an interesting path.
Steve Wright: Yeah, it’s become my life’s work. All right, there’s a lot of us that are really bloated. What does that mean? How do we make that less? Why is it that if I have one handful of corn tortilla chips, I’m fine, but if I have three handfuls of corn tortilla chips, I’m all bloated? Or whatever.
Michael Roesslein: Let’s be honest, nobody has one handful of corn tortilla chips.
Steve Wright: Exactly.
Michael Roesslein: I think you missed a home run with the brand name, though. I think Gas Man would have been a good company name, but there’s so many Gas Man’s out there, though. That’s the thing.
Steve Wright: Totally.
Michael Roesslein: How many just jokes … I mean, just growing up, people just think it’s normal now, in our culture. “You eat that, you’re going to be on the toilet for three days afterwards.” People are just like, “Yeah, ha-ha-ha.” Then they do it, and then that happens, and then we just think that that’s the way things are.
Steve Wright: It’s like beer farts. There’s wine shits. Yeah, there’s taco [inaudible]
Michael Roesslein: Yeah, all these things that are just part of our … yeah, it’s not normal, folks.
Steve Wright: Right, and you need …
Michael Roesslein: Well, it’s normal. It’s not ideal.
Steve Wright: Right. If your gut’s working correctly, and you can handle those foods, you don’t have those issues.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah. Wow. Okay, I …
Steve Wright: Yeah, I was just having a flare up of my bloating and I was trying to figure out what I should be doing next in life. I started buying people’s enzymes, and just taking them. Then taking double the dose, triple the dose, quadruple the dose, and they just … I would get all bought in, like, this brand has the most protease. That’s so important. I’d buy all that and I’d try it, and be like, man, this doesn’t seem working. Like, this brand has the most cellulitis or whatever, and so this brand’s more pure, or this brand’s more … This is the most expensive thing on the market.
Michael Roesslein: Except Medica.
Steve Wright: Yeah, exactly. Yep.
Michael Roesslein: I used to exclusively use the Digest Gold in my practice with my clients, and at the dose that you have to take them. It was the most expensive thing they were buying.
Steve Wright: Yeah.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah. Anyways, I don’t want to dig at ends Insight Medica. I’m sure their products are nice, but they’re also extremely expensive. I won’t cut you off anymore. Continue.
Steve Wright: Yeah, and no, I mean, hey, look, that’s what I that’s what I used in my practice, too, was Thorne Dipan-9, which is a powerful strong pancreatic enzyme. Then, if someone didn’t do well on that, then I’d switch him to Digest Gold ATPros or whatever. I don’t think they had ATPro back then, but that’s what it is now.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah, they did. Well, whenever back then was, when I was with clients, they did.
Steve Wright: Yeah, and some people needed both. It was always this weird thing. I would talk with my favorite GI doctors, and they would be like, “Yeah, a lot of times, you have to use both.” I was personally motivated to try to figure this out. Then also, it just annoys me when we don’t quite understand things. When I ask my really smart doctor friends, and they’re like, “Yeah, I don’t have a good solution for that either,” then I get like a dog with a bone. I just can’t give it up till I try to figure out what the heck is going on here.
That’s really what happened that summer, was I wanted to make a product that actually the world needed. I couldn’t figure it out for myself. You’re right. I love a whole bag of corn tortilla chips, and a bunch of salsa and a little bit of wine. I’d love to eat that and not be totally bloated such that I’m in pain, and then have really bad poops the next day. That was my litmus test, in a lot of ways, was, could I find an enzyme that would get me through that experience? It wasn’t until I met this crazy scientist, and had a bunch of meetings with other …
Michael Roesslein: So many good stories start that way.
Steve Wright: Yeah, seriously.
Michael Roesslein: I know a few crazy scientists, too, and everything changes once you meet them and talk to them.
Steve Wright: It dies, right? Because I just thought, maybe all these companies are unwilling to accept how much it would cost to make a powerful enzyme, right? So if I just take Digest Gold, and I double the [inaudible]-
Michael Roesslein: Until seven, yeah.
Steve Wright: … double it, and then I asked manufacturers to quote me on that. I was like, “Well, I just want this formula,” which is this double Digest Gold capsule or whatever. A lot of it would be like, “Well, we can’t make that, A, and B, that might not be good for you.” Meanwhile, I’m shoveling eight of them at a time, and being like, I don’t know, it kind of works some days. It kind of doesn’t work other days. I think that’s what most people’s experience with digestive enzymes are. “Yeah, I think that worked for me. Now, I don’t know why I take it, but I’m pretty sure I need to take it.” That’s what I hear all the time.
My will changed when I met a crazy scientist, like you mentioned. He was like, “Nope. It’s all about this other thing.” I was like, “Yeah, okay, man. I’m a miracle buyer, so I’ll buy your miracle. I’ll try it.” I’ll tell the [crosstalk]
Michael Roesslein: Yeah, you actually do have … we had a webinar last time you were on about you investigated a whole bunch of different things and you’ve put them together into a nice research product. You do buy and test, and try, and share the things that work, and trash the things that don’t? I’ll vouch for that.
Steve Wright: Yeah, no, my fiancé is on me all the time because I just fall for sales pitches. I want it to work. I want it to be a miracle.
Michael Roesslein: So you try this guy’s crazy enzymes?
Steve Wright: Yep, and literally worked. Literally did the half bag of corn tortilla chips, and two glasses of wine, and I didn’t have any gas. I was perfect Bristol stool chart next day. I was like okay, that’s interesting. Haven’t had this experience. Then I just started pushing it, things like ice cream, which are like total trigger … you don’t want to be around me. Or a beer, you don’t want to be around me. It kept working. I was like, what in the heck is going on here? We talked more, and he really started to explain to me more about how enzymes work. A, I didn’t really realize the pH part of enzymes that the majority of enzymes in our body only work in a certain pH range, but when they’re outside that range, they don’t do their job. They stay inert, or sort of closed up.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah, they’re not living things. Right?
Steve Wright: No, much more like a virus or something.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah, and they get activated in the right environment, in the right setting.
Steve Wright: And that’s the two things. They basically need a activation ingredient, if they’re a microbial based enzyme. If they’re an animal based enzyme, they come with their activation cofactor, but then they need the right pH environment. He was saying, “Look, man, I have a patent on this. I sat in a lab, and I basically added microbial based enzymes with different mineral cofactors until they went crazy and did their job really well, and then I wrote that down. Then I made a whole list and I kept testing. It turns out it was magnesium oxide.
He tried magnesium oxide, malate, carbonate, glycinate, and just went down. Which of the magnesium turns on in this specific enzyme? He did that with all of the main enzymes that we use both pancreatically, but also brush border. That’s why he was saying, this is why it’s working. He’s like, basically, the reason why pancreatins work really well is they don’t need an enzyme. They’re already a complete unit from an animal, but a microbe created enzyme is an apoenzyme, or missing the cofactor. When you add the cofactor, it becomes a whole enzyme, a whole dash enzyme is how science talks about it.
He’s saying, “Look, I’ve created a pill in which all the enzymes are whole enzymes, and that’s why it works in the gut.” Because do you have minerals and things floating around your stomach? The answer is no, you don’t. If you take a micro based enzyme and non pancreatin enzyme, and you’re wondering, why does it work with some meals? And why does it not work with other meals? Literally, the answer is basically because, at that point in time when you took it, either there was a little bit of mineral available for it to work or there wasn’t.
That’s where Holozymes this whole thing was born was A, it worked on me, and then I started buying it, and I started making my fiancé do tests. I made Jordan do tests, even though he’s not part of the company anymore. I’m like, he’s the most sensitive dude ever. I’m like, “Here, dude. Take this, and eat a bag of chips and tell me how it goes.” He sent me a text the next day and he was like, “I had a whole bag … a bowl of chips, man. It was awesome. I haven’t done that in years.”
Michael Roesslein: He must trust you.
Steve Wright: Yeah, for better or worse.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah. This time it worked out.
Steve Wright: Yeah, this time it did.
Michael Roesslein: Then you knew you found your special sauce, and then you’ve been working since then to bring them to fruition.
Steve Wright: Right.
Michael Roesslein: I know the headache involved with all of that. I’ve explored creating products and product lines, and testing and production, scaling and all of that. Kudos to you for going through that. Now, the Holozymes are brought to market and we like them. You sent me some and I tried them. I don’t have a lot of GI issues. There are certain foods where if I … like popcorn. I don’t know. In your years of working with people with GI issues, did you run into that as … or is that just like an ‘off the table, can’t have that’ food?
Steve Wright: No, honestly, popcorn is the biggest trigger for diverticulitis.
Michael Roesslein: Interesting. My wife and I both feel like hell if we eat more than a handful of popcorn. Again, popcorn is a food where you don’t eat one handful. It’s like the most addictive substance on Earth. If you make this much popcorn, you eat this much popcorn. If you make this much, you eat this much. We hadn’t had popcorn in a long time, because she’s just coming out of a really long autoimmune flare, and any food that we know upsets her belly, we just have been avoiding all of those for a long time.
Recently, we found some popcorn in the cabinet. We were like, “We’re going to eat some popcorn.” It was the week you sent me the enzymes, so I’m like, “Cool. Steve is going to be responsible, whether or not this popcorn makes us sick.” We each took two with the popcorn and felt pretty good. We didn’t eat a zillion popcorn, but it was quite a bit and we both felt pretty good. I switched her on to them and her digestion’s been pretty solid.
I haven’t had any issues and I’ve been taking them throughout the day. Yeah, I totally get the science and the activation situation, and how that could work with the minerals in the gut. I’m sure now they’ve been out long enough that you’ve heard back from quite a few people. You’ve got a pretty big network of practitioners and doctors, and people who followed your work and stuff. I mean, the sample size now is probably a lot bigger than you.
Steve Wright: Yeah, we sold out our first thousand bottles between January and March, and then COVID hit. Of course, we were out of stock, and then we couldn’t get more, but we got 4000 more in and we’ve already sold another 2300 of those in the last six weeks. Yeah, word is spreading and a lot of it’s return customers, because look, if you’re listening to this webinar right now, if you’re following me, you’ve already tried a lot of these products. You might already have a favorite enzyme or a digestive enzyme that you use. I get it, right? I mean, you’ve been through the grinder.
When people switch to Holozyme, they’re shocked that it actually can do what they were sold originally when they started using enzymes [inaudible] some new things. I think I feel most proud of those people, right, who have been trying different enzymes for years. Maybe they’ve been on some of the brands we’ve already mentioned, maybe other brands. And they switch and they’re like, “Wow, my bloating did go away.” “Wow, I can actually eat ice cream or pizza with my family.” Things that were just totally off the table. You can’t participate in Thanksgiving and now you can.
Michael Roesslein: No, that’s awesome. I, as being married to someone who has a lot of food issues, an autoimmune situation, I see what it’s like, too. It’s something I take for granted, that I can just eat whatever I want wherever I go, and I see what happens. I know the emotional toll it takes. I know the feeling left out. I know the being bummed. I know the watching people eat pizza in front of your eyes, and everything like that. Yeah, it’s $15, not 15%.
Steve Wright: Yeah.
Michael Roesslein: I put a link in the chat. That is a link to the Holozyme, if you want to try them out. It’s $15 off. Steve corrected me, not 15%.
Steve Wright: Yeah, and free shipping. [crosstalk]
Michael Roesslein: Yep, and we also have it in the Wellness Vault on the website. These are not through Rebel Health’s website. If you’ve been getting the emails I’ve been blowing you up with the last few weeks, we did finish the Wellness Vaults area on the site. There are about 42 companies listed in there now, and this one is under the supplements tab. It is the first product listed under the supplements tab. An there’s a link there to click through, the code, Rebel-15, which I think is activated already in the link, [crosstalk] it looks like. So it’s auto piloted. When you click that, that 15% off, or $15 off, and free shipping code kicks in. He’s got some pretty solid deals, too, on bulk orders on there that really make it an awesome deal. That doesn’t break the bank for a really high quality digestive enzyme, like we were joking about earlier, but they get really expensive-
Steve Wright: Yeah, really.
Michael Roesslein: … especially when you’re taking seven of them, and you don’t need to take seven of these. What is it? Two per meal that you generally recommend?
Steve Wright: Yep, it’s two per meal to start with. Now, if you are someone who is a ‘tough case’ or a ‘zebra’, or something like that, you may end up at four per meal, but most people are between two and three. It’s mostly just people like me who know that I should be slowing down and eating, or I know I shouldn’t reach for that dairy. Who take four.
Michael Roesslein: Okay, so based off what you’re eating, kind of? Lighter on the meals that you know would probably be good for you, and heavier on the meals that are a little sketchy for your system?
Steve Wright: Yeah.
Michael Roesslein: Cool. Yes, go ahead.
Steve Wright: The whole thing is, that guy did six clinical trials on them.
Michael Roesslein: Wow.
Steve Wright: Initially, in order to get the patent on, basically, making this whole digestive enzyme for activation in the stomach, the patent office was like, “Hey, this sounds fake. You got to prove it,” and so he actually did six trials on the enzyme. That’s the other cool thing is that the dosage in the studies was two enzymes per meal. We really do have actual data on that number.
Michael Roesslein: That’s good to know, I’ve seen studies where the dosage in the study is like 5000 milligrams of something, and then the capsules are 500 milligrams, and then they put the study on the sales page for the capsule, and don’t mention that you need to take 10 of them to equal the same dose that was used in the study they’re referencing. That’s good. I do have a couple questions in the Q&A. With a meal, I take Betaine HCL, digestive enzymes and bile. I’m guessing like a bile salts type thing. What order should they be taken in? Or can they all be taken at once. Some brands contain them all.
Steve Wright: Yeah, so look. If you’re taking a supplement that has HCL in it, and enzymes and ox bile, it’s a kitchen sink supplement. It’s probably for you, if you don’t have any health issues. You really don’t need … it’s more like an anti-aging supplement. If they all are in there, they’re not going to be at therapeutic dosages, and you’re not going to have the capacity to level one up or down based on what you need. For instance, when it comes to HCL dosing, many people need a custom number of pills, whatever brand they’re taking, two to six, or eight pills, but you don’t want to necessarily take that much ox bile, and you may not need that many enzymes. You might only need two enzymes. I would definitely recommend buying supplements that you can customize to your own body in the food.
Michael Roesslein: Because if they were going to take all three, is there an order in the meal? If they were separate supplements, would you take one at the beginning, one in the middle, or one at the end, or anything like that? Or do you think that that matters specifically?
Steve Wright: I would take HCL and enzymes right at the beginning of the meal, before your first bite, and ox bile at the end of the meal.
Michael Roesslein: Okay, cool. What about gluten? The question here is relating to digesting of gluten. I’m just going to say from my own standpoint, I know there are gluten … like, ‘eat gluten and nothing will happen to you’ products on the market. You will have never seen me endorse one of them and you will never see me recommend them to people, or encourage anyone to … Maybe if you’re eating out at a restaurant and you’re really sensitive to gluten, and you’re ordering gluten free, but you’re concerned about cross contamination.
And you want to totally reduce the amounts that you may or may not get exposed, or whatever, one of those gluten enzyme products perhaps, but I really don’t care for the marketing around them, to say you can take these and eat bread and pasta, and all your days of gluten sensitivity are gone. What is your stance on that? The question is, do Holozyme digest gluten, and I just wanted to frame that in a way that I don’t think any enzyme, for people who are really sensitive to gluten, makes it safe.
Steve Wright: Yeah. No. I mean, so I wanted to create the world’s best digestive enzyme here. I looked at all the research on the various gluten ‘digesting enzymes’, DPPIV, there’s telomerase G or something like that. There’s a few others. The research isn’t that good. Like the research at the actual research studies behind these gluten digesting enzymes, these specialty ones, is not that profound. It seems to offer a little bit of help to some people, knowing who that person is and how much that helped, and how to quantify that help seems to be just a lot of marketing at this point.
There is not a specific gluten ‘digesting enzyme’ in our product because of that. Does the protease inside of Holozymes and the activated cellulase and invertase, and all these things that help break down the actual gluten molecule, or the wheat molecule, are those in there, and are they ready to go in every pill? Yeah. Do people who buy Holozymes write in and say, “I ate pizza with my family last night, and it was the first time in five years?” Yes. Do I condone that? No. Don’t-
Michael Roesslein: Disclaimer.
Steve Wright: Yeah. Use it smartly. Yeah, if you’re going to go have your anniversary dinner and you’re like, “Man, I really want some tiramisu,” or I’ve never had whatever in so long and you want to try it, take something, but I can’t say that Holozymes for sure is going to protect you if you’re a celiac and you’re taking up Domino’s and beer every day. That’s just unrealistic.
Michael Roesslein: What about down negative feedback loop? So, I’ve heard that about enzymes. If you take enzymes, you need to always take them because your body will stop making them. The question here is, if you’re taking something with multiple enzymes, and at least one of them overlaps an enzyme that you do have enough of, is there any down regulation effect from the exogenous enzyme?
Steve Wright: So, at this point in time, I have not found any research that can say that that happened. I also was very concerned about that for my personal health. I want to try to live till I’m 100 and move around, and do squats, and cool stuff like that. I’m not trying to take anything or building thing that’s going to make it so that I have a negative feedback loop, and again, I’m an engineer, so I literally am trained in feedback loops and what happens there, but I have not found any science that suggests exogamous taking of enzymes will down regulate internal production, either of pancreatic or brush border, at any point in time.
Michael Roesslein: I’ve never seen any evidence of that either, and I have looked for it because that’s something that gets brought up quite a bit with various types of supplements, but it definitely got brought up with this. I also unrelated. But melatonin, there’s always the story that taking melatonin makes your body stop making melatonin. I’ve also found zero on that, for anybody who was looking.
Steve Wright: I actually just found … I believe that, too, dude. I so believe that. I just saw study a week ago, I can send it to you, that says it doesn’t … there’s no negative feedback loop.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah, it was one that I always just took … assumed and would say yes, because I heard it somewhere on something one time and it sounded credible. I’ve never found an ounce of evidence for it, that taking [inaudible]. Some practitioners are using high dose melatonin now for certain conditions.
Steve Wright: Yeah, if you have cancer or know someone with cancer, look into high dose melatonin. If you have that thing that’s happening right now that we can’t mention, look into high dose melatonin.
Michael Roesslein: That mystery thing, but yeah, that’s it, you’re bonus tip of the day, look into high dose melatonin with cancer or mystery illness number seven, we’ll call it for today. These enzymes do not cure that either, while we’re in the world of disclaimer. Cool. Well, I put the link there again with the correct information. We’re going to send this replay out to a whole bunch of people, and it will be up on our site. We’re going to have videos for all of the Wellness Vault products. This is one of the first ones we’ve done, mainly because Steve’s a good friend of mine, so I bumped him up to the front of the list.
Steve Wright: Thank you brother.
Michael Roesslein: No problem. Somebody commented, exogenous melatonin can even increase endogenous melatonin. I think Doris Lowe mentioned this.
Steve Wright: [crosstalk] Yeah, she [inaudible]
Michael Roesslein: She loves the melatonin, and the vitamin C and the … She’s been on the ball with mystery illness number seven. Her articles, though, I got to be honest, I have a master’s degree in physiology, and I’ve read a lot of journal articles and a lot of science, and a lot of sciency blogs. Doris is exhausting to read, for me. It is heavy stuff. I need to take like timeouts and half times during her posts, but if you want to get heavy into the research, go look for Doris Lowe.
Steve Wright: Yeah, and if you really … It is wellness enzyme month at Rebel Health Tribe. If you are a super user of Rebel Health Tribe, and you search influenza and enzymes, you will find some papers on those. Of course, we can’t say they do anything.
Michael Roesslein: On viruses and influenza viruses, other kind of viruses and enzymes. Cool.
Steve Wright: Yeah, there’s some really cool stuff there as well.
Michael Roesslein: Let me do that here. Sorry, FDA, or whichever organization will try to arrest me. Last one, do you ship to Canada?
Steve Wright: Yes, we do. Yep.
Michael Roesslein: Yes.
Steve Wright: All shipping times are obviously disrupted right now due to USPS. Everybody, FedEx, UPS, DHL.
Michael Roesslein: The tracking now says it’ll probably get there sometime when I check on my packages, [inaudible]. Well, because the USPS is being intentionally slowed down and then the other ones are getting more influx of things to try to cover it. My UPS guy told me they’re not working with like holiday level of package things without the holiday level of people and infrastructure. It’s a mess, but yes, they will get to Canada. I don’t have a gallbladder. Do I need something else besides Holozyme for my digestion?
Steve Wright: We have a lot of people who don’t have gall bladders, who do switch to Holozyme and end up giving up ox bile. Now, that’s not true for everybody. The other big thing that gallbladder people seem to be, I don’t know, not getting the message on … first, I just don’t think there’s any good gallbladder experts out there who are talking about this, but most people who lost their gallbladder have an HCL problem. You have a low stomach acid problem. You can correct the ox bile thing with the HCL instead of taking the ox bile. Most of …
Michael Roesslein: You’ve got an HCL product as well. Is that on the same site? Or is it on a different site? Will they find it over there somewhere?
Steve Wright: No, we’re in a new website rebuild, so they will. If you watch this in six weeks, they’ll be [inaudible]
Michael Roesslein: If you buy some Holozyme, I’m sure you’ll get an email about it.
Steve Wright: Yeah, I mean, I’m busy trying to build a website, but you can go to … we can send out another link. Or if you send us an email at [email protected], we’ll give you the same deal.
Michael Roesslein: I’ll get a link from you and I’ll stick it below this video.
Steve Wright: Okay, yeah, you can …
Michael Roesslein: For those who are interested in the HCL subscriptions.
Steve Wright: We’ll give you a deal on that as well. That’s totally cool. Look, I mean, if you have an enzyme product in your company, and you’re like, “This thing definitely works,” stick with the one that you know that works, but if you’re looking at your enzyme product going, “I don’t really know if this works,” or, “I’m still having all the conditions that we just mentioned, like oily toilet, undigested food, gas, bloating, heartburn, diarrhea,” and you’re already taking one, the best thing you can do tonight is triple your dose-
Michael Roesslein: That’s a good offense.
Steve Wright: … and see if it works. Then maybe consider trying mine, because it’ll probably end up being cheaper in the long run, and it will work, usually, and if not, I’ve been in your shoes. We offer a 60 day money back guarantee, because I’ve tried a lot of things that didn’t work out.
Michael Roesslein: That’s pretty awesome. Most supplement companies do not do that.
Steve Wright: Yeah. I mean, look, I just want to take care of people who are trying to take care of themselves. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Not everybody’s going to see results. I want to take care of those people and make sure you can take your money elsewhere, and find something that does work, because that’s the last thing I want, is for you to still be in pain, and not have the resources to get out of pain.
Michael Roesslein: Cool. Well, we appreciate the deal, man. I give you kudos for getting frustrated enough with the market to create something that didn’t exist that you need, and to go through … The average user of these products has no idea what goes into actually creating a product and bringing it to market, and it’s a lot of work. I want to honor that, too. As long as I’ve known you, I’ve known your mission is really just to help as many people as you can. I like to highlight people that are doing that. Yay for team good guys and down with team scam artists, which our industry is full of. Yeah, awesome stuff. Give it a try folks, and hit me up, too.
You’re going to go to their site and get this from them, and they’ll go that way, but let us know, too. Give me some feedback. Shoot me an email, any way to communicate on Facebook, anything. Let me know you ordered it. Let me know you tried it. I’m definitely curious to get some feedback on it from our audience. I appreciate the deal. It’s really generous, and we’ll help a lot of people try it out. Thanks for making it. Thanks for hanging out. Thanks for offering us the deal. I know you’re traveling, I think, right now, so this is a special travel edition webinar. Are you back in Michigan?
Steve Wright: Yeah, I’m at my parents’ house right now, back to Michigan.
Michael Roesslein: Cool. All right. Before the cold comes.
Steve Wright: Yeah, in and out.
Michael Roesslein: Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks a lot, Steve. It’s always great to catch up. I think there’s a few more things we can talk about coming up soon in the future, too. We’ll do more of these.
Steve Wright: Yeah, for sure. Thanks, Michael. Thanks, everyone, for listening and stay safe out there.
