Functional Yeast Extract vs Epicor

It is our answer to Epicor. We are about to release our Immune Defense supplement on Natrium, and we originally had Epicor in there. Well it was by far the most expensive ingredient in the stack, and this is already going to be our most expensive stack yet, so we were originally going to just half the dose of Epicor. However, I decided that I was not going to just work around an overpriced ingredient, especially when we didn't even yet have our own version of it. Epicor is a processed extract of Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast. So we started digging into the patents and research behind it, and tried to figure out why it boosted immune function. Funny enough, the light came on in my head as we were working on our other project: mushrooms.

You see, we have been working for a while on improving the testing methods for mushroom extracts. We found a flaw in the existing Megazyme testing that led us down an interesting path. That path led me to the realization that the types and structures of beta-glucans are immense. We are treating them as one group of things, but maybe we should be looking closer. It's the same thing we are doing with withanolides, ginsenosides, bacopisides, etc. We always talk about them as a big group of things, but each one does different things. In mushrooms case, there are mainly 3 types: β-1,3-glucans, β-1,4-glucans, and β-1,6-glucans. The ones we are really concerned about are the 1,3 and 1,6. Well the immune boosting effects of the mushrooms are mainly due to β-1,3-glucans with long β-1,6 branches. Then I looked into Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast and found the same. Then things clicked. This is why Epicor boosts the immune system so much! It's the β-1,3-glucans with long β-1,6 branches. So we decided to go with an extract with a high amount of beta-glucans, and we ended up with the product we have today, a 50% beta glucan yeast extract.

So now our Immune Defense has our own yeast extract in it, and we were able to bring the cost of each bottle down $5 by doing so! So not only is it less expensive, we feel it is a better product. We are going to be doing more of this with other extracts as well. We are currently working on our own bacopa, ashwagandha, ginkgo, and various mushrooms. With all the new capabilities of our in-house lab, we are able to analyze and reverse engineer some of these patented extracts. We are using that data, along with our own knowledge of making novel improvements to things, to create our own optimized versions of all sorts of things. The cool thing with our development in Natrium Health is that we are also bringing out all the ingredients we are using in the stacks as pure powders and capsules. So us pushing the novelty on the Natrium side is also giving us the ability to bring out more single ingredient products on ND.