Cavities, Sinuses, and Censorship: The Case for Xylitol with Nathan Jones of Xlear - Episode 288

For all things Xylitol, go to https://xlear.com/

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Nate Jones, founder of Xlear, reveals how xylitol revolutionizes oral and nasal health by eliminating harmful bacteria and preventing pathogen adhesion to tissues. He shares compelling research about xylitol's effectiveness against respiratory infections, ear infections, and dental caries while explaining how it outperforms traditional treatments like fluoride.

• Xylitol nasal spray was developed originally to prevent ear infections in children
• Studies show xylitol prevents bacteria and viruses from adhering to tissue
• Xylitol nasal spray increases airway volume by 36% compared to saline
• Five-carbon sugars like xylitol were common in ancestral diets before refined sugar
• Fluoride only masks tooth decay while xylitol treats the bacterial infection
• Periodontal disease increased COVID hospitalization risk by 8x
• Regulatory agencies prevented sharing of research about xylitol during pandemic
• Grapefruit seed extract at 0.2% concentration showed remarkable antiviral properties
• Proper hygiene and sanitation drove most health improvements historically, not pharmaceuticals

Find Xlear products at most major retailers including CVS, Walgreens, Target, Walmart, and natural health stores. Visit xlear.com for more information and research studies.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Sandy K Nutrition
• 2:41 Meet Nate Jones of Clear (Xlear)
• 10:33 Xylitol's Impact on Microbiome Health
• 17:54 Challenging Fluoride Myths
• 31:14 Censorship During the Pandemic
• 45:05 The Four Pillars of Public Health
• 58:42 Closing Thoughts and Resources

Transcript

Sandy Kruse: 0:02

Hi everyone, it's me, sandy Kruse of Sandy K Nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen. For years now, I've been bringing to you conversations about wellness from incredible guests from all over the world. Discover a fresh take on healthy living for midlife and beyond, one that embraces balance and reason, without letting only science dictate every aspect of our wellness, and my guests as we explore ways that we can age gracefully, with in-depth conversations about the thyroid, about hormones and other alternative wellness options for you and your family. True Wellness nurtures a healthy body, mind, spirit and soul, and we cover all of these essential aspects to help you live a balanced, joyful life. Be sure to follow my show, rate it, review it and share it. Always remember my friends balanced living works. Friends, balanced living works.

Sandy Kruse: 1:31

Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy K Nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen season five. It's actually season five and a half. I just like to start a new season in September because to me, september feels like a new year. It always does, and I know a lot of the people who follow me on Instagram feel the same way. It's like if you've got younger kids, it's time to go back to school. I know some kids go back in August, but you know, here in Canada, kids go back in September after Labor Day, and I think it's the same in other places too, and you know whether you've got kids going to university or even if you don't have kids, september hits different. I didn't really do much this summer except work work with my husband on his business and I didn't record a lot either, so I've got a lot of recording to do to be able to fill my funnel of amazing recordings for all of you who have been following me for over five years. I started this podcast in February of 2020, just before the pandemic hit and this recording is with Nate Jones of Clear, spelled X-L-E-A-R. I always thought it was X-Clear. I know a lot of people probably do that. Anyway, I was using this product during the pandemic and you're going to hear about the controversy around this product. You're also going to hear about some uses of this product. I do want to make sure that I preface this conversation by telling you that nothing I speak of is medical advice. We do not make medical claims on this podcast.

Sandy Kruse: 3:31

All of this information is really here just to support you in your wellness and for you to decide if it makes sense for you. Definitely. Follow me on Instagram. I'm most active there. Go to Sandy K Nutrition. I'm also on Facebook. I have a Facebook page. I have a Facebook group, a private group. Just look for me there if you're only on Facebook, but you'll get different content everywhere. I'm also on TikTok, sandy K Nutrition. I'm on threads. Just look for Sandy K Nutrition. I'm also going to see what I can do about YouTube. Youtube's really funny in that they don't always really show my content. I don't know why. I guess maybe I'm not optimized. I do everything myself.

Sandy Kruse: 4:23

My friends and I have been doing it pretty much all on my own ever since the beginning, and I might as well go back a little bit and talk about my story, because this is it's like a new year, right? So I began this podcast in 2019, no 2020,. I graduated from nutrition college in 2019. So it was interesting. I was speaking with another nutritionist. So what I don't like is this. It's just that term has no licensing around it, so it's used so freely. So you'll hear all sorts of people calling themselves nutritionists, even though they just did like a weekend long course, or maybe they're a personal trainer or something like that. But a true nutritionist has letters after their name, like mine is RHN, which stands for Registered Holistic Nutritionist, and it's a two-year college diploma.

Sandy Kruse: 5:31

I haven't really been working much with clients one-on-one, just because I'm focusing on my podcast and now I am also working with my husband's distribution company. I am also working with my husband's distribution company there will be some announcements coming soon and it's a crossover and it's a natural synergy that I work with my husband to develop the health and wellness leg of his distribution company right, it just kind of makes sense. Company right, it just kind of makes sense. So I am around. I've been a little quiet all summer long. I'm excited to bring this conversation to you with Nate. It's a very authentic, real conversation, which is something I try to bring to you each and every week.

Sandy Kruse: 6:20

I can't, obviously, make my guests be a certain way, but one of the things that I'd say I'm pretty good at is to be able to have authentic, real conversations and do my best to bring that out in all of my guests. So with that, I'm going to ask you to share my content, engage with it, like it. So I have so much competition out there and I don't even try to compete because I don't put let's say I don't put a lot of influencer money behind what I do. I hope that it catches on. I feel like you know, the world is full of this pay to play and I don't personally like it in a lot of ways, not saying that there aren't people who are authentic and doing great things who also pay to play, but a lot of us here are just trying to put good out in the world and don't have those kinds of funds. We're not celebrities. We don't have thousands and thousands of advertising dollars, which is that's me. I just hope and rely that word of mouth will keep me alive in what I'm trying to do, which is really trying to bring you real conversations that are not mainstream, that you're not going to hear on the news, you're not going to read it on Google. It's going to just be a real conversation that you can take with you, not as medical advice, but you can go all right. This might be something that could help me and this might be something that resonates with me. So that's my whole purpose.

Sandy Kruse: 8:11

My friends, I also write on Substack. I am an English literature graduate, so I do write. I have released one book. It's actually not a book, it's a guide. It's the Essential Thyroid Guide. It is on Amazon and it is not a clinical book. You know I try not to get hurt by some of the reviews and I'm like you know I very clearly in the description state it is not clinical. It's just to educate you on your thyroid gland, what it does, how can you optimize it, what are the tests you want to ask your doctor for? What are the signs that maybe something's wrong. And in there I have patient notes for you to write your notes when you're having these conversations with your doctor. It was very clearly outlined on what this guide is for.

Sandy Kruse: 9:08

So if that appeals to you and you want to learn from somebody who's had some serious thyroid troubles, I had thyroid cancer in 2011, had my thyroid removed. Now I'm 55 years old. I was 41 when I had it removed. Now I'm figuring out menopause without a thyroid gland, which is also something that's not often talked about, and I do plan to do a solo episode only about this, which, again, is not medical advice. It's just to talk to you guys about, you know, a woman going through menopause without a thyroid gland, and there's a lot of you who might have the gland but might have had an ablation or something in that there's basically no function of your gland left. This also means you, anyway. So I do have the Essential Thyroid Guide.

Sandy Kruse: 10:04

I do write on Substack, and these are all explorative short essays that I write in my own creation, and a lot of it is for you to just take as breadcrumbs so that you can go. Okay, that makes sense. I want to research this further. So go to sandycruisesubstackcom so S-A-N-D-Y-K-R-U-S-Esubstackcom the link will be there and subscribe to my sub stack and also make sure you're following my podcast. Write me a nice review, few kind words that goes a long, long way and also be sure to share this episode to anyone who might benefit.

Sandy Kruse: 10:49

And now let's cut on through to this amazing interview with Nate Jones of Clear. Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy K Nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen. Today with me I have a special guest. His name is Nathan Jones and he is the founder of Clear, but it's spelled X-L-E-A-R. I always used to pronounce it X-Clear, so now we know how to pronounce it. It's pronounced Clear.

Sandy Kruse: 11:21

And he is a global leader in xylitol-based health solutions. For over two decades, nate has championed innovation in oral and nasal health, funding research published in leading scientific journals and earning recognition from industry leaders, like Better Nutrition and Vitamin Retailer Jones has appeared as a health expert for CNBC, usa Today, newsweek and more, and today this topic is going to be so good because we are going to talk about the health benefits of xylitol. We're going to talk about, obviously, the microbiome and nasal health and oral health and how important that is to the microbiome, but we're also going to talk a little bit about censorship of these natural health products that are researched and are studied to really be beneficial for our health and especially for prevention, because that most of you who know me know I'm like listen, there's a lot that we can do in this life to be preventative with our wellness. So with that, welcome Nate. Thank you so much for coming today.

Nathan Jones: 12:47

Well, thank you for having me and I hope it's a very interesting conversation.

Sandy Kruse: 12:52

I feel like it will be because we had a little chat beforehand and I think we've got a lot of good stuff to bring to everybody. And, of course, I always like to begin with. You know, how did you get into this? How did this all begin for you?

Nathan Jones: 13:07

I got into it because my father is a physician and he is the one who started using a xylitol nasal spray. A lot of people are very familiar with saline nasal spray, saline irrigation. He was the first one that really added a xylitol to it to help prevent these kids in his practice from having ear infections. And where that came from is prior to 1998, they've been looking at xylitol and how it prevents tooth decay since the late 1960s. They've known for 50 plus years now that it helps reduce plaque, that it helps actually get rid of the strep mutans, bacterial infection that causes tooth decay. It works differently than fluoride or these other remineralizing agents because those simply mask the problem. They make your enamel more resistant but they don't actually address the bacterial infection. And that's something that xylitol or any other non-hexose polyol, any non-hexose sugar molecule, will do. And the xylitol has the most research behind it. But in these studies one of the things that they actually started noticing was the kids who use the xylitol gum. Not only were they not getting tooth decay, they were also getting 40% fewer respiratory infections, ear infections, stuff like that.

Nathan Jones: 14:28

And prior to 1996, 1998 timeframe the dental journals were publishing that. But you know the dental and the medical were separate. You know they were separate places and you wouldn't find people going in and researching a medical topic and being able to pull up the dental journals in that. And when PubMed came online, that was the first time that all of these were collated and searchable on the same database. And my dad being a physician, he went in and he started querying preventing ear infections in babies, because he had a bunch of kids with recurrent otitis media in his practice. And what kept coming up were these dental research studies. And then in 1998, there was a paper that was published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy where they showed that what's happening is the xylitol is blocking the strep pneumo, the H flu, the MCAT these common bacterial pathogens from adhering to the tissue. And if you block that adhesion then obviously you don't get sick, because the bacteria or the virus has to adhere to the tissue. Then it penetrates into the cell and that's where you have an infection.

Nathan Jones: 15:35

And so he came up with the idea of using it in nasal spray because he had children that were too young to chew gum, that were having ear infections. And you know, ear infections start in the nose. They really aren't, they don't start in the ear, they start in the nose, they go up through the eustachian tube into the ears. So he started using it in a nasal spray and these kids stopped getting sick and he had such good results with it that he started using it on older children and children that have a lot of respiratory issues. A lot of times they have multiple issues and part of that is because you have what is commonly called a biofilm. Like you have plaque on your teeth, that's a biofilm, and if you have chronic respiratory issues, whatever type they are, chances are pretty good you have a biofilm buildup in your upper airway.

Nathan Jones: 16:22

There was a great paper written by a doctor, ronald Hoffman. Any paper that I referenced, though I want to make sure that you can go to our webpage and we have a page where every study that I referenced it'll be there, you can read the summary of it and then there'll actually be a link where you can go to this actual study in the medical literature and do that. Again, our webpage is xlearcom and I encourage people to go there and read up on it themselves. Don't trust me a hundred percent. You know most people don't know me from Adam, so go there and read the studies, please. But?

Nathan Jones: 16:57

But he started using this on older children who were having constant respiratory allergies and within a couple of weeks they started being better. Also, they stopped needing to come in for their allergy treatments every week. They were out playing, playing sports again. Um, and so I was actually working doing underwater welding, underwater construction, out in the Gulf of Mexico on the oil rigs, and I came up to visiting one time and, uh, you know, he told me about it and I said, well, why don't we go and sell it? He goes I'm, you know, I'm 63. I don't want to waste risk when I risk my retirement. And I said, well, ok, I'll do it. And so in 2000, I started a company. And here we are today.

Sandy Kruse: 17:40

OK, you are blowing my mind about the whole ear infection thing and I'm going to tell you because my daughter she's now almost 20, but she was that kid I actually have pictures of her Nate with cotton balls in her ears because I was using herbs to try and help the ear infection so she wouldn't go on yet another course of antibiotics. I mean, this was going back, like I said, 20 years and I was still like a holistic mama back then. But I didn't know about xylitol, like. So I don't know. That's like 20 years ago, no, a little less. She would have been around two years old.

Sandy Kruse: 18:30

But then, interestingly enough, the allergies to peanuts came up soon after that, like severe anaphylaxis. But the whole point is is that I was this desperate mom. I didn't know what to do. She was a toddler and she kept going on all these courses of antibiotics and then you know there were times that she would have to be on puffers. So how do you even use xylitol? Like you said, there are kids too young to chew the gum, so what do you do, like make them rinse with it, like? Well, how do you give them xylitol?

Nathan Jones: 19:06

when they're two years old, you use a nasal spray and spray it up their nose. Oh, you can do that for a child.

Nathan Jones: 19:11

Yeah, so the nasal spray that my dad developed was originally developed for babies. It was developed for infants that were too young to chew gum. Wow, I mean, my kids have been using it since literally the day they were born. When kids are born, they're usually given saline drops to put in their nose to moisturize it. The saline and the xylitol the xylitol actually works better in any instance.

Nathan Jones: 19:39

I can't find a single instance where saline alone works better than xylitol, because the way that your, that your nose, that your mucus membrane, I guess, regulates how, how fluid your, your snot is, your mucus is, by shuttling salt back and forth, back and forth across the membrane in your nose. If your nose is runny, then it will transport salt into the tissue and the water will follow the salt. If your nose is dry, it will shuttle salt out of the tissue into the mucus. Then the water will follow the. Again, the water will always follow the salt. The difference is xylitol does not get transported back and forth across that barrier, across that cell membrane, and so xylitol will constantly sit in the mucus and slowly pull moisture out of the tissue toward it.

Nathan Jones: 20:34

That's one of the reasons why it actually reduces inflammation in the nasal cavity quite significantly. Two examples of that is there was a study again these are on our webpage where they used ultrasound, they measured the airway volume and then they used our nasal sprayer and in three minutes they measured the airway again and in those three minutes the airway volume had improved by 20%. Whoa, it's a huge amount. And if they use it on a regular basis, once in the morning, once in the evening, kind of like what we suggest as a hygiene tool, there is a study out of Georgetown University here in Washington DC where an ENT comparing it to saline actually showed that it increased airway volume 36%.

Sandy Kruse: 21:20

That's incredible. So, okay, because we all know, listen my son back in the day. I always talk about all the things that I used to do Like I tried to do things holistically, but this is way before I became a holistic nutritionist and he had his tonsils and adenoids removed when he was only five. And one of the things that I've always taught him since I became a nutritionist which was not that long ago I would always tell him to do salt rinses, because that's what I learned was a good way to prevent the viruses from basically going down to his chest and causing a chest infection. So your research is kind of showing the benefits from the nasal cavity, the oral health, all the way down to the respiratory health.

Nathan Jones: 22:17

Correct, oh that's. And I want to point out this isn't us paying and doing research. This is research that's being done independently at universities, at other research institutions. I mean, most of the research that we're funding is actually research that we as a company will never use, but it's research looking at xylitol and how it helps with cancer.

Sandy Kruse: 22:49

Okay, okay, okay. Let me go back a little bit because there's so much to unpack. It goes from the xylitol can benefit the microbiome in the mouth, the nasal cavity, all of that area, all the way to the chest, and now you're talking about cancer.

Nathan Jones: 23:08

Well, the stuff we're doing with cancer, let's not dig into it. There are a couple of papers out there that have been published. Okay, Again, this is not something that we sell products for or we ever plan on selling products, but there have been studies showing that xylitol helps to stop the progression of oral cancer. There have been studies showing that xylitol helps with lung cancer, causing it to autophagocytize, which means eat itself. I mean, there's a couple of really good studies out there and there's another one that will be published here shortly from Northwestern, where they actually took lab rats that were humanized and they had cancer and you know you'll have to read the study, but it was very interesting. But that should be out published pretty soon.

Sandy Kruse: 24:00

Okay, how does xylitol affect the microbiome? I mean, you kind of touched on how saline works and how it helps to move salt, I guess, in and out of the tissue. But how does xylitol work to affect the microbiome?

Nathan Jones: 24:19

Well, so xylitol is a carbohydrate. Okay.

Sandy Kruse: 24:23

Yeah, it's a sugar alcohol, right, it's a sugar alcohol.

Nathan Jones: 24:26

But the difference is is, if you think about this for a couple of minutes, if you go back before we started refining sugar, if you go back before we started refining sugar, what do you think the number one sugar carbohydrate that we were eating was? It was five and four carbon sugars, because the six carbon sugars that we're using that are refining those only come out during the harvest time, and so we would have those when fruit was being harvested, when corn, when grains were being harvested. That's when we would have the six carbon sugars, but the rest of the time the number one sugars that we were eating were five carbon sugars, and five carbon sugars are part of the. If I'm trying to not go too deep into biology class here, but plant walls are made up of xylem, and that xylem sounds a lot like xylitol because that's really where it comes from. So any plant wall that you know that's made up of xylem, which they all are. Those are long carbon sugar alcohols that like xylitol, that's where that comes from.

Sandy Kruse: 25:36

OK, you're blowing my mind here, by the way I I hated biology, just so you know so. But so I'm trying to get into that scientific mind because I think this is important, because a lot of people, like you, know how a lot of the keto stuff is using sugar alcohols. And if you eat too much of it, it's going to upset your stomach right, like you know. If you're eating mounds of it, it could give you a little bit of digestive upset.

Nathan Jones: 26:06

It does. But if you continue using it on a regular basis, you're going to. You're going to switch your gut microbiome back to a healthier microbiome, more like what our microbiomes were three 400 years ago.

Sandy Kruse: 26:22

Why is that Nate? Well is it.

Nathan Jones: 26:25

That's what we were eating three 400 years ago, before we started adding refined six carbon sugars into our diet.

Sandy Kruse: 26:33

Was basically the sugar. Alcohols from plants is what you're saying Correct, but you know you hear that too right. You hear about people getting digestive upset now if they eat too many plants.

Nathan Jones: 26:48

Correct. That's fascinating. What you have to do is you have to let your gut microbiome adjust. I mean, if you start eating a lot of plants and you start getting digestive issues, keep eating it. I mean, give your gut microbiome a couple of months. You know you might have to put up with some uncomfortable moments, but continue doing that and maybe do it more on a gradual thing, because if you let your gut microbiome adjust away from the six carbon sugars that are American, are sad our standard American diet is today you get to be a healthier microbiome.

Sandy Kruse: 27:27

You know it's interesting that you say that because I have made a concerted effort. You know I am a nutritionist. I do try and eat whole real foods. Effort you know I am a nutritionist, I do try and eat whole real foods. I don't believe in specific diets, but I did notice like when you add in a ton of plants you can feel the difference in your gut and there is this adjustment period for sure. So, but you know, of course we're not talking about eating mounds and mounds of sugar alcohols, because in something like this, like the nasal spray, you shouldn't feel digestive upset from using it.

Nathan Jones: 28:06

I don't know that we've ever had anybody from the nasal spray complain, and I mean usually where it is is when you're using it to cook, and a lot of people that are diabetic they're going to use xylitol or erythritol a lot of these sugar alcohols, especially erythritol because there are zero calories. Your body cannot metabolize erythritol and so you get something that's sweet and that has no calories to it.

Sandy Kruse: 28:40

Yeah, I used to do the whole keto diet and everything that I made you know baked with was using xylitol, and I think I not xylitol erythritol, it was erythritol that I used, not xylitol erythritol. It was erythritol that I used and I almost think I overused it. Is it possible? To get too much xylitol or erythritol Like. Is that possible to have too much?

Nathan Jones: 29:06

I'm sure there is. But if your option is to have too much sugar, I think you're going to be better off having more erythritol than you are having sugar. I think you're going to be better off having more erythritol than you are having sugar. But what I actually use is I actually use a blend of xylitol and erythritol 60% erythritol, 40% xylitol. That's what we use in my house when we're cooking and we want to make something sweet. It works just like sugar. It has some calories to it, but not nearly as many you get. I mean, you're down to about I can't remember what it was, we figured it out once, but I think you're down to about three calories instead of 16 for a tablespoon. You get the sugar. You don't get any of the gastro issues. We haven't had any of those at that blend.

Sandy Kruse: 29:52

Okay, so let's get into some of the actual xylitol products. So there's nasal spray. You and I had an interesting little discussion about toothpaste fluoride, because you guys also make a toothpaste that's xylitol.

Nathan Jones: 30:14

Correct, and we have mouthwash and gum and mint. Again, the big body of science behind the utilization of xylitol is actually I mean, it's actually in how it prevents tooth decay and it does it by treating the strep mutans bacterial infection that is in your mouth, as opposed to what our dental industry is telling us is. The solution is fluoride and fluoride and more fluoride, and after you've had too much fluoride, then use some more fluoride. But what the fluoride does? The fluoride simply makes your enamel stronger. When your enamel demineralizes. If you have fluoride and it remineralizes, it remineralizes from hydroxy apatite, which is what our enamel is made of, to fluorapatite, and fluorapatite, nobody questions it's stronger than what hydroxyapatite is. So if that was the only option you had, that's actually not a bad option. It's a great option to use because it makes your enamel stronger. But the problem is is that we know that there's so many other options that work better than fluoride at remineralizing and strengthening your teeth and there's other options that work better at actually treating the bacterial infection.

Sandy Kruse: 31:29

And then there's the fact that fluoride is not really meant. It's not beneficial if you're swallowing it. Well, that's true, Right Like it's what I've read.

Nathan Jones: 31:40

I've read Don't tell a dentist that.

Sandy Kruse: 31:44

Because you know I've read some research Nate about you know the intelligence of our children being diminished by swallowing too much fluoride. So you know there's that it's one thing for it to be for our teeth but it's another thing when you're drinking it, swallowing it all of that and that is true and and but.

Nathan Jones: 32:09

the thing is, is that the the whole fluoride argument it? It shouldn't be an argument simply because since fluoride came out 75 years ago and they started putting in our water, we have researchers have shown us it's not. You know, this isn't debatable. There's lots of other products out there that remineralize your enamel better than fluoride does. We actually, in our toothpaste we put a product called sodium trimetaphosphate. Studies show, going back to the 70s, that it actually remineralizes your enamel about 36% stronger than what fluoride does. But yet the ADA and the FDA and the CDC still only promote a fluoride only. You know practice for preventing tooth decay.

Nathan Jones: 32:58

Again, fluoride does not treat the strep mutans bacterial infection. But you can use xylitol, you can use erythritol. If you use it on a regular basis, you get rid of the bacterial infection, and you can also. A university I'm thinking it was UCLA, but one of the California universities actually came up with a dental vaccine and I don't know much more about it other than that it was drops that you would put in your mouth. It was effective at actually getting rid of the strep mutans bacteria and our government, our health agencies, would not allow that to come to market.

Sandy Kruse: 33:34

I don't know why agencies would not allow that to come to market. I don't know why. Well, we can surmise right that strep mutans bacteria. Why is that so bad for us? Is that because you know how they talk about your oral microbiome and how it could connect to your heart like heart disease? Is that one of the bacterias? Do you know?

Nathan Jones: 33:58

Well, strep mutans, it's a mutant. It's. That's the whole definition. It's strep mutant. It's a mutant bacteria, okay, and it mutated after we started having all kinds of access in our mouth. Bacteria in our mouth had all kinds of access to all kinds of sugar. It mutated and it doesn't metabolize the six carbon sugars as fully as it should because it doesn't have to, and when it doesn't metabolize it, it actually excretes. You know, sugar bug poop is what we tell our kids, but it actually excretes an acid and that acid is what dissolves the enamel of your teeth. Okay, and we've known since 1924 that tooth decay is a bacterial infection and today, in 2025, we are still not treating it as a bacterial infection.

Sandy Kruse: 34:51

Okay that's fascinating because, you know, you hear of some kids who have cavity after cavity, after cavity, and then they'll say oh well, it's genetics like well, it might be genetics of the bacteria in their mouth.

Nathan Jones: 35:09

It's not the genetics of the person. Tooth decay does not come from bad genetics. Most of the time it comes from just bad parenting.

Sandy Kruse: 35:19

Ooh.

Nathan Jones: 35:20

That's a bold statement, nate. Well, but the problem? But the problem is is that the dentists aren't telling the parents the proper way to treat tooth decay. Okay, and so it's bad dentesting dentures, dentures, dentures.

Sandy Kruse: 35:37

There's a lot of that going on, Nate.

Nathan Jones: 35:40

But it's because the parents are listening to the professionals. But I mean, when you just stop and think about it logically, the dentist sits there and says use more fluoride, more fluoride. You're not treating the bacterial infection. So the parents that we need, parents that are much more proactive in their children's health care and pushing and asking the dentist why aren't you talking to me about ways to actually treat the bacterial infection?

Sandy Kruse: 36:12

Yeah, you know what. But that's one of the reasons why I do what I do, right, it's to provide information that's not necessarily the mainstream narrative that the American Dental Association or the Canadian Dental Association is regurgitating over and over and over and over again. And then we hear it from our regular dentists and it's the same old, same old. So that's why I do what I do. It's to say, okay, I'm giving you breadcrumbs, now you can go follow them and research it for yourself. Like you said, you have a lot of these independent studies. But that's why I do what I do.

Sandy Kruse: 36:47

But a very important point that I need to make is the way that I heard about your company, and this would have been five years ago. I'm part of a community where we were trying to learn what can we do to optimize our wellness during this pandemic, and so I'm gonna preface this just by saying we're not giving any medical advice or anything like that. We're just having a conversation here. I think it's very important to talk in the in that way, because we're not giving you expert advice. We're talking about some situations that happened during the pandemic and I don't listen.

Sandy Kruse: 37:36

I don't want to get in any trouble for saying this, but I was doing my research back then and I found your product through my group of professionals in this preventative health and I traveled with it, nate. I traveled with it and I was spraying my nose with it because everyone's like, okay, you got to test before you go away for COVID, you got to test before you come back. And I'm like shit, I don't want to leave my kids stranded at home. I have to be in quarantine for two weeks, for God's sakes. Coming home from Vegas with my husband, I brought your nasal spray along with another spray and I was using it. So talk to me about the whole stuff around COVID, because from my understanding, there was some lawsuits, there was all kinds of things that happened and you know, I would love to hear your perspective on all of that.

Nathan Jones: 38:38

Well, that is true, all of what you just said. And again, I would love to hear your perspective on all of that. Well, that is true, all of what you just said. And again, I'm not giving any medical advice. I don't sell any medical products. What we actually are giving advice on is hygiene and better practices and better ways to practice better hygiene.

Nathan Jones: 39:05

Hygiene, according to the dictionary, is acts of cleanliness with a desired improvement in health outcome. I think is what it is exactly. I think that should be changed just a little bit to where it's acts of cleanliness and moderating a microbiome, a gateway microbiome, for acts of improved health or for a desired improvement in health outcome, because most of the times that we get sick, it enters through our nose or our mouth. Okay, and I'll give you two great examples, because you know you can bring up the COVID thing During COVID in early 2020, there were two papers that came out, one out of Israel, one out of Canada where they actually showed and pointed out that if you had periodontal disease, which is inflammation of the gums, and you caught COVID, you were eight times not 8% eight times more likely to be hospitalized and die from. Okay, that's a big number to be hospitalized and die from. Okay, that's a big number. And did you ever hear our public health agencies come out and say hey, people, while you're sitting at home munching on the pizza that you ordered because we told you to stay there, brush your teeth a little bit? You didn't ever hear that. The second thing is, when it comes to nasal hygiene prior to 2020, reduce the viral load in the nose to make it so it didn't spread to the lungs and to make sure that you didn't, you know, breathe it out on other people, because you're washing all that, those viruses, out of your nose and they're going down the drain.

Nathan Jones: 40:52

Um, and in early 2020, the, the nih, actually funded a study that was done at vanderbilt university in nashville, tennessee, and in that study, they took 60 patients, all of them over the age of 65. All of them had other comorbidities, every single one of them had symptoms, every single one of them tested positive and every single one of them used salt water, and they were better in under a week. And you would think that the government agencies, if they truly were looking out for the best interests of our populations, they would have said hey, people, go down to the store, it's going to cost you about 10 bucks but if you get sick, start using an easel irrigation. But they didn't. And that's where hygiene comes into it. They were ignoring the hygiene solution.

Nathan Jones: 41:40

And to go further on it when it comes to adding other ingredients like xylitol, there was a study that came out of the university of tennessee in knoxville where they used they were. They were looking at how xylitol and iota carrageenan blocked the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to adhere to the tissue. Okay, and I mentioned earlier that my dad made this whole product because a study came out showing how xylitol blocked bacterial pathogens. We had never looked at it at blocking viruses and we should have, but this study we could. Actually, once you saw that study, it was like, okay, if it blocks the SARS-CoV-2 virus to an undetectable level, then that's going to have a huge impact on reducing infection. The same way washing our hands, the same way using salt water.

Nathan Jones: 42:33

We tried to share that information with our government and the our government, the Federal Trade Commission, they actually sent warning letters to me and my company clear. They sent them to Navaj, they sent them to Nelman, some of our competitors and said and told us not to share the data from these studies. Share the data from these studies and the other companies that I just mentioned. Those companies, they said, okay, we won't, we'll be nice, we're going to do what you tell us to do. And they shut up about it. We continued to share that information and the government sued us. Okay.

Nathan Jones: 43:15

And they came back and they kept asking really bizarre questions. They came back and said you can't use this study because it wasn't done on human airway tissue. No, it was done on what is the pharmaceutical industry standard, which is varro, kidney, monkey tissue. But they said, well, that's good enough for the pharmaceutical industry, but you, a hygiene product, you need to go out and do it on human airway tissue. So they're holding us to a higher standard for something that's not even a drug. Um, they hold it to a higher standard. But.

Nathan Jones: 43:44

But the good thing about it is, we went and did the study that they asked. We actually did the study on looking at human airway tissue and the interesting thing is, not only did we look at SARS-CoV-2, but we looked at RSV, we looked at H1N1. We looked at H5N1, the bird flu, we looked at rhinoviruses, we looked at a number of different viruses and we looked at a number of different sugar molecules. And the interesting thing is different sugar molecules block different viruses more effectively. The only thing that we have not found a sugar molecule that will block it is actually the rhinovirus, but all the other ones that I just mentioned we showed that you could block it.

Nathan Jones: 44:27

And the interesting thing is the FTC. When we went and shared that study with the FTC, the FTC said well, you can say that it blocks rsv, you can say that it blocks h1n1, you can say that it blocks h5n1, but you can't say it about SARS-CoV-2. And at that point I just said this doesn't make any sense. Just, you know. And I and I told my attorneys, I said just kind of, let them sue us because what they're saying doesn't make any sense at all.

Nathan Jones: 44:59

And we're sitting here trying in good faith to share the studies and actually discuss the studies with these people at the FTC. But it was kind of like chit-chatting with children because they made no attempt to even understand what we were talking about. They said you do it the way we say to do it or you don't do it at all. And so they sued us and we spent three and a half million dollars over four years fighting them in court and about a month and a half ago, they just they really, I mean, in my opinion, I think that they knew that they were going to lose and rather than have a judgment against them, they just quit and said, ok, we'll dismiss it with prejudice, which means that they kind of admit that they're wrong and they're walking away from it.

Sandy Kruse: 45:46

Whoa, you know I have a lot of questions in my mind, but I'm not sure we're going to go there. I just don't understand why.

Nathan Jones: 45:55

Why? What part of why?

Sandy Kruse: 45:57

Why were you allowed to speak about all those other viruses except for the SARS-CoV-2 virus?

Nathan Jones: 46:08

Because it was never about the science, it was about the power. They had said we couldn't do it, didn't matter what kind of studies we brought to them, they didn't care. They said we couldn't do it about SARS-CoV-2. One of the things that was very telling is when we were doing the deposition, we asked these attorneys how long have you been with the FTC? 20 years, it was about the average, I think and we asked them how many times in 20 years has the FTC sent a warning letter to a company or an entity? And after sending out the warning letter, they received enough studies to where you were okay and you retracted the warning letter. And let me just put it this way, it's never happened, right. And so you either have attorneys that are so brilliant that they've been batting 1,000 for a quarter of a century or they're corrupt. Those are the only two options.

Sandy Kruse: 47:13

Well, I think also, nate. The fact is is that, just like you said with some of your competitors, they just didn't proceed further. So a lot of people are not willing to risk it and, to you know, go to bat for their product because of fear. They're afraid to.

Nathan Jones: 47:36

Well, they should. If they trust their product, they should go to. Well, they should if they have.

Sandy Kruse: 47:38

if they trust their product, they should go to bat for them we could go on there, but I do want to ask that because I don't want to forget, is there has been some stuff about xylitol being connected to cardiovascular events and that kind of thing. Are there any contraindications to using xylitol?

Nathan Jones: 48:02

No, and there's really only one doctor, one group out of the Cleveland Clinic, and it's the same doctor, and every year he puts out another one. He puts out one on erythritol and then he puts out one on xylitol, and it really is the same thing. But they're not even looking at realistically that xylitol is what's causing this issue. I mean, if you look at one of them, if I remember right, he gave them the xylitol or the erythritol the night before and then measured it in their blood the next morning. Well, neither one of them stays that long in there One of the other ones. And there's a paper that just came out and I can forward it to you after this you know, we should have read it before where they actually point out that the xylitol and the erythritol in these people is a marker okay, it's not the cause, it's a marker that you have issues with your heart Because you have a marker. If you take away the marker, that doesn't cause. The marker isn't what's causing it.

Sandy Kruse: 49:13

You know one thing I always say Nate is for almost every study that supports one thing, you can find something to negate it, right? I mean, it's research and really we're all bio-individual. We have to see what works for us and our own physiology. So you know, there's that and I think personally, I always believe in everything in moderation. So if I'm using a nasal spray daily or that is xylitol, or I'm using a mouthwash that is xylitol, I'm not gurgling, you know, jugs of xylitol.

Nathan Jones: 49:56

Please no, you need no kidding. You know jugs of xylitol? Please no, you need no kid. Now, once in the morning, once at night, I mean, and what we tell people to do with with xylitol with our products? Um, you know, you brush your teeth, once in the morning, once at night. Hopefully you're using a xylitol toothpaste, and the reason why is most of the toothpaste that you're going to find on the market will have sorbitol in them, which is a six carbon sugar alcohol that feeds the strep mutans bacteria. So if you're using a toothpaste or a mouthwash that has sorbitol in it, you're actually feeding the bacteria you're trying to get rid of.

Sandy Kruse: 50:34

Right, and you were saying your toothpaste has both the xylitol as well as what was that other ingredient? That's really good for the enamel, that's better than sodium tri-metaphosphate.

Nathan Jones: 50:47

Sodium sorry, sodium tri-metaphosphate.

Sandy Kruse: 50:50

Okay. So that's really important because it sounds to me like a very comprehensive formula that deals with that bacteria right, and then also helps with the enamel. Now here's something interesting. Maybe this isn't going to make any sense to you, but we're talking because I did read some research about the xylitol and heart. However, if the bacteria in your mouth is let's say the poor bacteria is overgrown in the mouth, that in and of itself can cause heart disease.

Nathan Jones: 51:28

Absolutely.

Sandy Kruse: 51:29

You see what I'm saying.

Nathan Jones: 51:31

The reason why is, if you have inflammation in your gums, bacteria a good way to describe inflammation, and I describe this to doctors all the time and a lot of doctors don't really understand the significance of why it matters. But think of it this way. Think of your tissue. Take a bunch of beach balls okay, let's say 50 of them and if you fill them half full of water water you have a bunch of cells that are very malleable and you could actually take those and stack them up and make a make, a cell membrane. Take the garden hose and squirt it and no water gets through because they're all molding and filling in the gaps.

Nathan Jones: 52:15

Now. Now inflame this tissue. Inflame it by filling them all full. So now they're all tight balls that are inflamed. And how big are the gaps between each of those cells? Spray that wall with a garden hose and there's all kinds of water getting through. Yes, and so anytime you have inflammation in the mouth or anywhere else, what you're doing is you're opening up that membrane for bacteria and viruses and other pathogens other things to go straight from your mouth straight into your bloodstream.

Sandy Kruse: 52:53

Right, Totally makes sense. And you know I actually did a little bit of research before I recorded with you on the fact that you use grape, you use grapefruit seed extract in this. What does that do?

Nathan Jones: 53:12

Well, we've been using it for 25 years, 23 years, as a preservative.

Sandy Kruse: 53:19

Oh, interesting.

Nathan Jones: 53:22

But it turns out that in some of the studies that we did, going back to SARS-CoV-2 again, in some of the studies that we did the very first studies that we as a company did we just sent our nasal spray up and had it tested to see if it killed the back, the virus, sorry to see if it destroyed the virus and it did. And we originally thought that that was the xylitol doing it, because the xylitol is the number one ingredient there and until we broke it down to each of the individual ingredients it was actually the grapefruit seed extract at 0.2% was annihilating the SARS-CoV-2 virus as effectively as a 70% solution of alcohol.

Sandy Kruse: 54:06

Holy smokes. So that little formulation together in synchronicity is what's really helping when you're taking it for preventative measures.

Nathan Jones: 54:20

Correct.

Sandy Kruse: 54:21

And you know I also did some research because I know that grapefruit itself can. What is that enzyme? The cytocrine P450 enzyme. You know how? That enzyme in a lot of medications. It can prevent absorption of certain medications. The research that I did showed that there's not even close to enough that it would interfere with that.

Nathan Jones: 54:46

In 20, 23 years we've never had anybody call and say hey, this has affected my heart medication.

Sandy Kruse: 54:54

Right, right, and you know, for me, I'm going to look at every single ingredient. I know most people don't, but that's why we're here talking right. So, but okay, you know what I think this is really been an incredible conversation. Is there anything that I didn't touch on that you'd like to touch on, Nate?

Nathan Jones: 55:15

Oh, I'm sure that as soon as I, you know, cut the feed, it'll be. Oh, we should have talked about this. Oh, we should have talked about that. We talked about it in oral hygiene, we talked about it in nasal hygiene. The two are very much connected and the two are very much drivers of our gut microbiome. Our oral and nasal microbiome are really what drives the health of our gut microbiome. You know, if you want to really get off of pharmaceuticals, I think the most effective way to do it is through better oral and nasal hygiene.

Nathan Jones: 55:51

I mean, if you go back to the late 1800s, to the mid 1900s, we had the largest increase in longevity and quality of life ever recorded in history, and the pharmaceutical industry and the medical establishment they try to take credit for that. But if you go and look at it, what was truly driving that was that we were having clean water pipe to our houses and we were having sewage taken away and we had people going around teaching us. I mean, we had sanitation police believe it or not, here in the United States. I don't know if you had them in Canada, but around the turn of the century we had sanitation police that were going around and making sure that people were actually cleaning up their houses. We had water, we could bathe, we could wash our linens, we could wash our bedding, and so we started getting healthier. And the pharmaceutical industry came in and looked at all these and said, hey, let's make a vaccine for this. But if you go look at the actual charts of the diseases, the vaccines for the most part came in well after they started declining, and it was more hygiene and sanitation that improved that than it had anything to do with the medical establishment.

Nathan Jones: 57:10

And that's something that if we could get our public health agencies to focus on hygiene and sanitation, health or exercise and nutrition, those are really what I call the four pillars of great public health policy. I don't think that people working in public health should even be allowed to discuss pharmaceutical products. Leave that to the doctors. Leave that to the pharmaceutical companies. They're going to get their pound of flesh. Leave that to the pharmaceutical companies. They're going to get their pound of flesh, trust me. I think we, all you know know that they have too much. But if you can rein in what public health agencies can talk about, to where they talk about those four things nutrition, exercise, hygiene, which is personal, and sanitation, which is communal, you're going to start to see some really increases in longevity and quality of life, like what we were seeing in the early 1900s.

Sandy Kruse: 58:02

Yeah, I would have to agree with you because you know you look at our nutrition there's so many things that are, you know, really not doing well, even like our water quality and our food quality. I mean, you know, we didn't even get into mineralization of our soils and you know, I see all these people like going and getting ozone water and then having nothing in their water. I'm like no, please don't do that. You know, like chlorine and fluoride, okay, in our water, not great, but don't take away everything, all of our minerals, so that it's basically void of anything that we need in our body. So, yes, I would definitely align with you on that and let us know where can we find you? How can we find your products? Are they available worldwide? How can we find your products? Are they available?

Nathan Jones: 58:58

worldwide. They're available in the US. They're available everywhere CVS, rite Aid, walgreens, target, walmart, all of your natural retailers with the exception of Whole Foods. We actually pulled out of Whole Foods a number of years ago. Why?

Sandy Kruse: 59:13

is that.

Nathan Jones: 59:16

Because they kept wanting to charge more and more and more, and it was just ridiculous that they wanted to drive the price up while everybody else was trying to keep it the same or bring it down, and so we just pulled out and left. But you can find us in pretty much every store, obviously. You can find us online. You can find us at our webpage, xlearcom, obviously on Amazon, vitacost, iherb, all of those places, and there's a lot of retailers. Most of your natural retailers in Canada will have our nasal spray and some of our other products also.

Sandy Kruse: 59:50

Perfect. Thank you so much, nate. I really appreciate this conversation and I appreciate your passion. I just I really appreciate this conversation and I appreciate your passion. I just I really appreciate it when I see people like you.

Nathan Jones: 1:00:04

Well, thank you, thank you.

Sandy Kruse: 1:00:08

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to share it with someone you know might benefit, someone you know might benefit, and always remember when you rate, review, subscribe, you help to support my content and help me to keep going and bringing these conversations to you each and every week. Join me next week for a new topic, new guest, new exciting conversations to help you live your best life.