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Oct. 23, 2025 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
59:03
Mike Adams & Jeff Hooks: The Science of Prodovite — Rapid Nutrition for a Healthier World
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There isn't a product anywhere that has the payload of our products.
And this formula per serving is 96% food.
It's 96% botanicals.
This is not designed to replace healthy eating.
This is designed to augment and supplement healthy eating, the healthier we can eat.
And then you supplement with good quality nutraceuticals, then you're going to live better.
You're going to have more vitality.
Welcome to today's interview here on Brighteon.com.
I'm Mike Adams, the Health Ranger.
And we've got a great guest today, someone that you have never met.
I only met him, but I've been a fan of a product that he's put together, which is a liquid multivitamin mineral superfood supplement that we're going to talk about here.
Because, I mean, I take a lot of supplements.
And of course, my company, HealthRangerStore.com, we manufacture lots and lots of supplements and superfoods and so on.
But we've never had a liquid multi-formula because it's so complex to source it.
So we found this amazing company that does this.
Actually, they were introduced to us through a pro-America, pro-freedom liberty advocate.
And we did the lab testing on their product and it came back just outstanding.
So we're bringing on today the president and CEO of a company that makes the Protovite daily multivitamin liquid supplement.
It's Jeff Hooks.
Welcome to the show, Mr. Hooks.
It's great to have you on here today.
Hey, thank you, Mike.
It's a pleasure to be with you.
And as I shared with you, I've been a fan of you and your team's work for many years.
So it's an honor to be with you today.
Well, it's nice to have you on.
And that's great.
So just right away, you and I are both into nutrition.
We're into healthy living.
We're into maximizing human performance and liberty and freedom.
And we understand that nutrition plays a key role in that.
Can you talk about that first, sort of your philosophy about health and liberty?
Absolutely.
So, you know, we believe as a company, from the very inception, our perspective is that our creator made our bodies to heal.
And that if we give our bodies the proper raw materials, the nutrients, the human body can do amazing things.
So our whole philosophy has been, look, we believe in prevention, but we also know that the body can course correct.
And so again, if you give the body the natural, the ingredients, the raw materials that it needs, the body can do amazing things.
And so our premise, Mike, from the very beginning, my business partner, our founder, who since went to heaven way too early, but was a Bill was a brilliant, brilliant biochemist, formulator, research scientist.
And his vision of what is now our company, Victoria Nutrition International, was to create a line of products that help restore the body's ability to use oxygen and water to make energy, maintain energy, and eliminate waste.
That's metabolism.
And we can go, you're far more scientifically gifted than I am.
I'm a businessman, Mike, but if you want to unpack that a little bit as we move forward, I'd love to do that.
Well, I have business questions for you about this also that are related to nutrition.
But one of the challenges that we've faced over the years is even thinking about formulating a product like this because you have so many ingredients in it.
I'm looking at the ingredients on our website.
Let me just tell the audience, they can find this at healthrangerstore.com slash liquid vitamins, plural liquid vitamins.
But here you have astragalus, which is just an amazing immune modulator herb.
Green tea, which is rich in EGCG and L-theanine and other phytonutrients that we talk about all the time.
You've got Gota-Cola, which is also really great for cardiovascular health and many other things.
Ginger elderberry support, which is fantastic during so-called flu season.
And many, many other ingredients that we'll get to later, including aloe vera, which it's extraordinary.
But doesn't this create like really difficult sourcing problems to get all of this in one place at one time to do the manufacturing?
Yes.
Capital O. Capital E. Capital S. I would imagine.
Yes.
We have been producing this product for 11 years.
We have a very, very loyal customer base, thousands of customers, but it is a very complex product to assemble.
We have, from a formulation standpoint, and again, I want to make sure I follow your lead, Mike, but the formulation itself took years to create, as you indicated.
We are a liquid, multivitamin, multimineral, but we're really from a formulation philosophy standpoint, we're a botanical that added and fortified the formula, if you will, with vitamins and minerals.
So to your point, we've got 34 ingredients, 22 vitamins and minerals, and 12 actives in the phytonutrients.
But in terms of the payload per serving, if you will, this product is 96% food.
So it's a very complex product to assemble.
It's got our proprietary absorption technology, which I'm sure we'll probably cover at some point.
But the assembly process and the bottling process, again, to your astute question with your expertise, is a two and a half day process.
And it's sequential.
It's 28 steps in our blending and assembly recipe, and it's got to be done perfectly.
Our clinical studies that support the product are all dependent on us executing flawlessly, which again, after over 10 years, we've got it down, but it's a very special product.
And the name itself, Mike, I don't know that we've discussed this.
This is long before Jeff Hooks was running the company, but the name comes from our science team took proto, the Latin proto to deliver and vitae life, to deliver life.
That's where Protovite comes from.
And it's designed from its inception to be a foundational health and wellness product by nourishing the body at a cellular level.
Wow.
Okay.
So a lot to unpack there, but thanks for sharing that.
And I'll tell you, see, this is a product category that we will never attempt to manufacture because it's too complex.
It requires a special focus in order to do it.
And yet it has so many benefits.
For example, there are a large number of people who they've reached their limit of how many capsules that they want to swallow per day.
And there are also, especially older people, who have esophageal constriction where it's just difficult to swallow the large capsules.
And at the same time, many of the nutrients that you have in your product, such as B vitamins, if you were to take a B vitamin capsule, it's like 99.9% not a B vitamin.
You know, it's right, asteric acid or other things, you know, maltodextrin in some cases for common products.
So you don't need all this other bulky stuff in order to get the nutrition.
So what Protovite delivers is in one swallow, you know, just one capful or even one tablespoon, you get all that stuff together without the difficulty of swallowing a lot of capsules.
I mean, that's what I really enjoy about the product separate from the formulation.
You want to speak to that for a second?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, the utility, to your point, the idea is it's simple, it's convenient, it's complete.
Now, I augment.
I'm very much like you.
I take a lot of different products, including some of yours, phenomenal products.
I take caps.
I prefer capsules, if not liquid.
And so I do take a lot of capsules, but I agree.
We've discovered the same thing that you just articulated that capsules are great, especially more than tablets, in my opinion.
But from a consumer perspective, some people, and I have no issue, I can take a handful with an ounce of water.
In fact, I often try to show off for my wife and do that.
But some people do have what I call pill fatigue.
They have a challenge with it.
So liquid's easy.
It's simple.
It's convenient.
It's complete.
It tastes great.
It's easily absorbed and assimilated into the bloodstream for the payload to make an impact.
So again, I think that's one of the benefits of the product.
You take it preferably on an empty stomach.
You don't have to, but I take mine first thing in the morning right when I wake up.
Oh, really?
And I'm set.
And then if I'm feeling a little run down or traveling or, you know, my partner used to say feed the need.
So if your body's a little stressed or a little fatigued or a little under the weather, then obviously you have the ability to take more servings during the course of the day, not at once, and your body will absorb what it needs and pass the rest.
Yeah, that's well stated there.
And I also want to mention, I'm so impressed with the video that you sent me that showed the effects on blood platelet aggregation that is allowing blood cells to flow more freely just within minutes after consuming your product.
Can you talk about that video?
And maybe I'll even have my editor show it while you're talking.
Yeah, that would love to.
So that was from a clinical study, our first clinical study on protovite, peer-reviewed, double-blind, placebo-controlled, IRB-approved, institutional review board-approved clinical study.
So, you know, as you know, with your scientific rigor and QAQC commitment, it's, you know, it's what I would call a real clinical study.
And in that clinical study, we have our absorption technology highlighted with this protovite product where the clinical study showed that protovite got into the bloodstream in five minutes or less with all the participants in the clinical study.
And so one of the phrases that my partner used to say, our founder, is that, you know, you quote Leviticus, the life is in the blood.
And if a product's not impacting blood health in some way, then from his perspective, the formula was not all it could be.
And so that particular using live blood cell microscopy shows the impact of the absorption technology.
One of our taglines, as you know, is nutrition that gets in.
And so what's on the label is important.
The sourcing of the ingredients is mission critical.
But at the end of the day, it's what our body can absorb and assimilate into the bloodstream.
So we have a proprietary absorption technology called protozoming.
And for those of your listeners, I know many are very sophisticated in nutrition.
It's more than liposoming.
You can't liposome minerals.
And so it's a trade secret.
We were going to patent it.
We decided not to.
And that might be a conversation for another day, Mike, but we felt like someone was trying to reverse engineer our absorption technology.
So we pulled it and kept it as a trade secret.
But that's what you see in that video you're referring to.
That's where you can actually see what the protavite is doing.
And then real quickly, we have a separate clinical study that our science team presented at Harvard Medical School a number of years ago that shows that iron-free protavite restores hemoglobin to red blood cells.
And so, of course, hemoglobin is what's critical to pick up the oxygen molecule in the lung and take and distribute oxygen to the body where it's needed based on need or exertion or crisis.
And so this is an impact product and we're very proud of it.
Well, this is why one of the things that really I came to love about your product is because you have aloe vera gel in it.
There's a branded ingredient.
You have, what's it called?
Bi-allo.
It's a special.
Okay.
So some of the research that I've done in the past, and I've talked about this over the years, is that aloe vera actually allows the blood to carry far more oxygen than otherwise is true.
And there was even research done by the military for the frontline medics to be able to inject soldiers with an aloe vera extract if they had suffered severe blood loss.
And what they found is that with aloe vera circulating in their blood, the remaining blood that they still had in their bodies was able to carry far more oxygen and keep them alive.
So a soldier could lose even 30 or 40 percent of their blood volume and still be kept alive, which is almost unimaginable for trauma surgeons through the use of aloe vera.
Now, I'm not saying that you should go out and get injured to test this.
Keep your blood in your body.
It's pretty much a good overall rule of thumb.
But like I'm out jogging almost every day.
And I'm not running at a fast pace or anything, but I'm using your product, plus all my other nutrition, right?
And I have lots of great nutrition.
And it's effortless.
It's just effortless.
Like I'm not huffing and puffing.
I don't even have to open my mouth.
I can just breathe calmly.
And I'm doing like, I don't know, three miles in 30 minutes.
It's not a fast pace, but it's not difficult at all.
And I credit nutrition with like the blood is carrying the oxygen.
The blood's doing its job.
It's delivering everything to the muscles as needed.
And also about brain.
And I'd like you to talk about, I mean, first, if you could respond to my comment about aloe vera and blood oxygenation and also how important that would have been during COVID, but then also cognitive support.
That's a really critical benefit, I think.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
So first on the aloe comment, and I share your enthusiasm for aloe, and we are so proud.
We source premium ingredients.
So for example, you mentioned the Biallo.
This is a patented organic aloe vera ingredient.
Full disclosure, it's very expensive, but that's not for you.
We handle that, but it's an amazing product from the inner leaf of the aloe vera plant.
And so it's the bioavailability, the absorption, the not to get into the formulation side of it, but there's some just significant utility advantages for bringing this premium patented aloe vera that has its own clinical studies.
And to your point, the advantage is, I think a lot of people recognize the value of aloe topically, but the benefits are much, much more significant actually internally.
It enhances nutrient absorption.
So literally by consuming the bi-allo from the proto-vite product, for example, found at healthrangerstore.com, as you shared, anything else you eat or consume, including other supplements, are going to have enhanced bioavailability.
It promotes and enhances nutrient absorption.
It's great for digestion.
It's an anti-inflammatory.
It boosts immune markers.
It's just a significant botanical and one that we, you know, it's one of the bedrocks of this formula.
And so, you know, back to the oxygen, you know, it's the one of the foundational visions, as I mentioned at the very beginning from our founder, from Bill Downs, was he wanted to create a line of multi-ingredient formulas, proprietary, that helped restore the body's ability to use oxygen and water, as I mentioned, to make energy, maintain energy, and eliminate waste.
And again, I'm a business guy.
It was just so, it was such a blessing to sit at his feet and just be a sponge on all the things that he taught me.
But he used to say and used to lecture, and I don't know if I ever shared this, but the first many years of the company, all we did was move product through healthcare practitioners from Bill's lectures.
That's okay.
That's all we did.
And for years and years and years, which is why until now, thanks to you and HealthRangerStore.com, we're no longer going to be a best kept secret, which I'm elated about.
But the whole idea, Bill used to say that you could tell how important something is to human beings, for example, by how long we can live without it.
And with that as a litmus test, you can say, all right, what's most important?
Well, oxygen or air, right?
We've got three to five minutes before significant problems.
And then secondarily would be water.
You got a couple, three days before significant issues.
And so as a biochemist, he would go way over my head after that.
But the protovite specifically, again, is designed to help restore the body's ability to use oxygen and water and then get those nutrients in, get the payload in, the botanicals, the vitamins, and the minerals.
And then when you have, for example, restoring hemoglobin, so you're enhancing the body's ability to utilize oxygen to one of your previous points.
It has to impact brain health.
It has to impact every core function in the body in a favorable way.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, absolutely.
And I don't know if people know this, but the hemoglobin molecule, it's a self-morphing molecule.
It circulates in the blood in two different forms.
In one form, it's pulling oxygen out of the lungs and delivering it to your cells.
But there, it picks up carbon dioxide, right?
And it morphs into a completely different structure to suddenly have very strong affinity for carbon dioxide.
And it carries that back to your lungs to be exhaled out of your body.
And people often forget about that part of it.
It's like you got to get rid of the CO2 or that becomes toxic in your cells.
And in order for those blood cells to function properly, you need the catalysts, you need the minerals, you need the vitamins, you need the nutrient support.
And either one of those pathways can kill you if it's not functioning, obviously, correctly.
You know, if you don't get oxygen, you're dead.
If you don't get rid of CO2, you're dead a little bit later.
But, you know, so both of these have to work very, very well.
Let me mention on our website, if you go to healthrangerstore.com slash liquid vitamins, all one word, then you'll see the protovite product here.
And here it is.
It's a 30-ounce supply, which you could say could last you 30 days, I think, is the recommendation.
But Jeff, I have a question for you.
I think this is a great product as a preparedness nutritional supplement as well, because it's so simple.
You don't have to think about all these details.
But if someone were to refrigerate this unopened, what's the shelf life of that for a storage type of scenario?
So two years all day long.
I mean, realistically, Mike, it's longer, but for Compliance for regulatory purposes.
Yeah, we'd say two years.
I would say personally, and I'll say this is off the record.
We only have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of your close friends and family watching, but I would be 100% comfortable if it was if it wasn't opened, as you said.
Yeah, unopened, obviously.
And consuming it at a much later date, particularly if things were in a challenging environment and I was looking to get nutrients into my body and my family for sure.
Yeah, exactly.
And also think about caring for those who are ill or injured or what have you, who may have difficulty keeping down solid food or swallowing or even chewing or what have you, right?
A lot of different scenarios.
This is an easy way to help those people get high-end nutrition.
I mean, the absorption starts in the mouth, doesn't it?
I mean, absolutely.
Digestion begins in the mouth.
Right.
And our absorption technology, of course, you know, the description sublingual can never be used.
But to your point, absorption does begin in the mouth.
Digestion begins in the mouth.
And our product begins absorbing in the mouth as well.
And so that's how, if you think about it, if you look at the digestion process, our clinical study, that video again that you referenced earlier, showed that the payload was in the bloodstream and made an impact in five minutes or less.
Well, that by definition can't be through the normal digestive process.
Right, right.
No, it's clear.
I mean, I can see how rapidly this gets absorbed.
And even also, you know, even how rapidly my urine color changes after taking it, right?
You know, B vitamins are right there.
That's it.
And the B vitamins, you know, they're so simple, but they're overlooked by so many people.
The importance of niacin, and especially we learned this after COVID.
And I talked to guests about things like nicotine.
And then there's nicotinamide and niacinamide.
I mean, there's so many different names, actually, for just formulations of niacin.
And nicotine and niacin have a molecular similarity, which is why they're also named in a similar way.
But if you are niacin deficient, you're in real trouble in any kind of like a toxic, infectious environment, in my view.
Yeah, go ahead.
Talk about the B vitamins.
Yeah, absolutely.
B vitamins from a detox perspective, you know, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting.
And I want to be careful here.
I'll keep, I want to communicate this the right way, the intended way.
You know, there's, there's a lot of detox programs, many of them very effective, very credible, well-intentioned, good quality products.
I will go through detox regimens periodically.
I typically use herbals.
But the key is detox is not something that should be done every quarter or every six months or once a year because we're exposed to toxins, obviously, airborne in our food and water, chemicals from upholstery, and on and on and on every single day.
So our philosophy, my philosophy with Protovite is detox is a daily regimen.
Drinking lots of pure, clean water is a simple, healthy way to help your body eliminate toxins.
But the B vitamins are important for that, among other benefits, and also for cellular energy.
So I agree with you.
I'm a big fan of the matrix of B vitamins that not just that we have in Protovite, but that are in other formulas and forms as well.
Yeah, I completely agree with you that detox should be just a daily habit.
Every time you exhale, you're detoxing.
Every time you sweat, you're detoxing.
This is the issue I have with people who slather on aluminum-based antiperspirants because your perspiration is supposed to happen in order to eliminate toxins through your skin.
And of course, lots of other methods as well.
So I completely agree with you on that.
It's critical, obviously, what you're putting in.
So have clean water, have clean food.
And I want to be clear, I'm not saying that this product replaces healthy food, right?
They go together.
I mean, I'm still going to drink my smoothie here, right?
Here's my avocado, turmeric, banana, whey protein smoothie.
This isn't going to replace that, but it provides things that I don't have in my smoothie, you know?
Lots of things.
I don't have B vitamins and minerals and so on.
But let me ask you this, Jeff.
If people go on to Amazon.com and they search for liquid vitamins, probably, they're going to find products that are less than half the price of yours.
Can you talk to us about what's the difference in terms of the qualitative difference?
I mean, I can see on the label, but can you explain it to our audience?
Absolutely.
So, so, you know, we are there, there's the formula itself.
And again, I just want to encourage your listeners, your community to go to healthrangerstore.com and just check the check, look at the label that you showed briefly.
It's this is this, there's not a product like it.
So it's a proprietary formulation, multi-ingredient formulation.
So, again, there are products, for example, on Amazon, as you mentioned, that are just astragalis.
And I won't talk about some of the sourcing of the astragalus.
Let's just say some of them have quality astragalus, some of them don't, but that are doing 10, 15, 20 million in sales per year off of that single ingredient.
Well, that's one of the whole mosaic of 34 actives that we have in the formula.
And again, it's designed, the formula is designed to be synergistic.
So one plus one equals three or more.
And just like, by the way, our bodies, like I agree with everything you just said about this is not designed to replace healthy eating.
This is designed to augment and supplement healthy eating, the healthier we can eat.
And then you supplement with good quality nutraceuticals, then you're going to live better.
You're going to have more vitality.
You're going to have the immune system that can help you avoid and prevent disease, et cetera.
And so I think the key is going back to your question.
There are obviously some good products, but there's nothing with the payload that we have.
Again, this formula per serving is 96% food.
It's 96% botanicals.
Those 12 botanicals, of which we've just mentioned a few.
The astragalus, which is designed to, I mean, it boosts the immune system, has anti-aging properties, supports heart health.
For example, we talked about the aloe, our patented aloe.
We have Proligna.
It's a patented, clinically proven Scotch pine cone extract.
I was going to ask you about that.
Yeah.
Oh, I love this.
It's one of my favorite ingredients, Mike.
So I want to come full circle to your question, but this is, in fact, we'll put a pen in that and I'll follow your lead.
But again, if you look at there isn't a product anywhere that has the payload of our products.
And when you combine that, again, it's a unique proprietary formula, 34 actives in it.
So that right there, you can kind of compare labels and see that there's nothing on Amazon at a lower price point that even comes close.
And then you combine that with the fact that we only use premium ingredients.
So those branded premium ingredients that you'll see on the label itself when you get the product from Health Ranger Store, you'll actually see we do licensing with these ingredient companies.
You see Biallo is one of the larger logos because these are premium.
You know, you can have a great recipe, but if you use bad chicken, it's not going to, the casserole is not going to turn out well.
And that's why I love your, I will say for your community, if you don't know it, we've been in this business.
I've been in the nutraceutical business for decades.
The QAQC protocol that Mike's team took our product through for two weeks was absolutely the most, and again, we've got many, many clinical studies.
So we've got a, we're a heavy RD science company, unlike most in the industry.
And your QAQC and your lab testing was absolutely extraordinary.
And so, you know, yeah, you saw the report that we sent.
Oh, yeah, just tremendous.
And literally, it reaffirmed what we knew because we're rigorous too.
But I would say your group, your company is the only entity that I would say is as rigorous or even more so because of your resources than we are.
Quality.
We do extensive laboratory testing.
I wouldn't be here advocating for your product if we didn't run it through the rigors of our MassSpec testing lab.
And everything came up the highest rating.
And also, I want to mention, you mentioned the ProLigna Scotch Pine Cone extract.
And so I ran that through our AI engine.
Okay.
And I just asked him, what is that?
Here's what our AI engine says.
It's a food ingredient derived from the cones of the Scotch pine.
It's a lignin, a plant compound with a complex structure of phenyl propanoid units.
And the LPC 108 is origin is from the Laboratory of Plant Chemistry at the University of Turku, Finland.
The 108 refers to a specific extraction process number standardized to contain a minimum of 70% lignans with the primary active compounds being pinoresinol and larissoresinol.
Okay, does all that sound correct?
You know, it does.
That's a little bit over my pay grade.
What I can tell you is, to your point, this is a, this is one of the things that I love, Bill used to ask in lectures, he'd say, have you ever seen a pine cone, a rotten pine cone?
Right.
You don't.
Yeah, and you literally don't.
And so the benefits of our ProLigna, that patented, clinically proven Scotch pine cone extract is, and again, there's an anti-aging immune boosting benefit that is extraordinary.
It promotes, it actually promotes immune cell development.
And again, this can, I can quickly, unless I'm reading something, which I don't have in front of me, Mike, I can quickly get over my pay grade, but it's boosting the immune system in a different way in terms of our formula than the other botanicals.
And that pine, so again, it's the idea back to your question of the lesser expensive ingredients.
If you took the Protovite at HealthRangerStore.com and y'all are offering deep discounts on this product and you compare it to some of the liquids products on Amazon, you don't have the proprietary formula.
You don't have the ingredients.
You don't have the absorption technology.
And therefore, ultimately, you don't have the clinical studies, by the way, but therefore you're not getting the impact.
And the thing that I always share for me price point, I mean, I take single ingredient, you know, I'll take potassium citrate.
If I eat out at a restaurant, I'll take potassium citrate to augment and counterbalance the sodium that's in restaurant food.
So I have no problem with single ingredient supplements.
I take them all the time.
Me too, yeah.
Yeah, but that's not what protovite is.
And so there really is nothing when people go to healthrangerstore.com, there is not another product on Amazon that comes close that's even in the same conversation.
Not saying there aren't good products, but it's so much more than a multivitamin, multi-mineral with the botanicals and the way they're all blended together with our absorption technology.
Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right.
I mean, I've looked on Amazon too, and there isn't anything that compares qualitatively with your formulation.
There's cheaper stuff.
I mean, there's cheaper ways to get cheaper vitamins and cheaper minerals.
If you want a bunch of calcium carbonate in your stomach, you can go out and lick limestone, I suppose.
But I mean, that's what people are getting, you know, and a lot of their so-called calcium supplements.
Now, let me ask you about the way your formulation decisions to preserve freshness, right?
So every liquid formula has to have some kind of preservative to stop bacterial growth.
And to me, it's always very important what ingredient is chosen.
And you have chosen potassium sorbate.
And then also, I think you have another one called Nissin here or Nissin.
I'm not sure how you pronounce that.
Can you talk about your decision, your formulation decisions in order to make sure that the product stays fresh and has shelf life?
And just any of your thoughts about that?
Yeah.
So our science team, our head of R D is a homeopath, and he formulated the product.
He's a co-founder.
He formulated the product with our founder.
Even before the company launched, they were working on the formula for a couple of years.
And so the formula has evolved in a couple different areas, but the preservatives that we selected, and again, full disclosure, Mike, I don't want to get out over my skis in terms of my scientific capacity, but the discussions that were had were very, very intentional that preservatives were selected that would not mitigate the impact of the formula.
And preservatives were selected that were body friendly, that also were body-friendly in the sense that the body would detox.
So the preservatives that we have in the proto-light liquid, because as you said, liquid is a different animal.
Liquids, it's a really, a really complex.
And again, at some point, maybe we have one of our scientists on with you because even our assembly process is proprietary.
Well, and let me interrupt, because it's so food-based, everything wants to eat it, including bacteria.
I mean, I've known this about cosmetics for a long time, that the chemical companies that make the cheap garbage cosmetics, they don't need much in the way of preservatives because their products are toxic and kill bacteria themselves.
But when you're making like natural cosmetics, you have to solve that problem because everything wants to eat it.
And I think a similar situation with your product, Protovite.
You are so wise.
Yeah, I'll jump in real quick.
I've never shared this publicly, but years and years and years and years ago.
All right, many, many years ago, I've been running the company for eight years.
When I first started running the company, we had a challenge with a production run.
And you're so wise in what you just articulated.
And what happened is we had a couple customers call and say, you know, we opened the proto-light liquid.
Now, I want to reaffirm, everybody, this is over seven years ago.
And it's the reason we took complete control of supply chain pyramid, by the way, seven years ago.
So I want to make sure everybody understands this is rear view mirror.
But what happened is we had the product and it was like when a couple of customers opened it, it was like a two liter, like a soda, which I don't drink soda.
Like if you shake it and open it and it sprays.
Oh, well, that's an instant indicator that something's growing.
Yeah.
And so we did a full recall.
I mean, we did the right thing, did a complete recall, expedited the production run.
We were only back ordered for about two weeks.
We got new product out and then we spent months troubleshooting and say, what's going on?
Long story short, I'm going to be real careful with, I want to speak with accuracy and honesty, but not full transparency.
So the contract manufacturer that we used at the time, God bless them, had purchased, we were not sourcing all of our raw materials.
They had purchased some B vitamins from a large company that everyone knows that had done a probiotic production run before the B vitamin.
Okay, I know the rest of the story.
You know the rest of the story.
And so they didn't properly clean the bin.
And so our B vitamins had some, by the way, they were healthy probiotics.
Right, right.
You got fermented B vitamins, basically.
Yes, yes.
And so, so, yeah, you're very wise.
The liquid, any, you know, it's very living organisms want to consume proto-vite.
And bad, you know, bad organisms run from it.
And that's why sometimes if somebody's got gut issues, when you first said, this is a quick rabbit trail, but I think it's relevant.
Like when you first take protavite, if you've got unhealthy anaerobes in your gut, you might feel it, right?
You might feel it.
Those, but because you're giving your body, you're giving your gut health, the calories coming in with reinforcements, good stuff.
And the bad guys in the gut don't like it.
There's going to be some short-term earthquakes.
Yeah, you can back off to half an ounce for a few days, but it's a good thing if and when that happens.
That means you're out of balance in your microbiome and you just keep taking the protavite, stay at the course, and your gut health is going to improve significantly.
That makes perfect sense.
And also about your formulation, one of the things I really like is that you're using xylitol and a touch of stevia.
So a lot more xylitol than stevia, obviously.
But I love xylitol because it's a natural sweetener that is, you know, it's just a different format of a sugar and it has anti-cavities properties in your mouth, right?
So it helps to protect your oral health and your teeth.
It's delicious.
A little bit goes a long way.
I've seen a lot of other formulations that will use artificial sweeteners.
They're so common in the cheaper liquid vitamins.
They'll use aspartame.
I've seen saccharine.
I've seen like crazy sugar alcohols at high levels that would give people digestive problems.
Talk to us about your sweetener formulation there.
Why did you choose xylitol and stevia?
Yeah, you actually articulated exactly why.
We don't want to, we didn't want to, our formulators in-house.
Again, all of our formulations are done in-house.
We don't contract out.
We're committed to a good tasting product, but not one.
And to your point, I actually, years and years ago, long before BNI, I'm talking 20 plus years ago, I found a really good basic vitamin, a mineral liquid that I really liked.
And I was taking it, taking it, taking, I really candidly didn't study the label too much.
I took it for a few months.
It was from a consulting project.
Long story short, I finally slowed down and looked at the label, and it had eight grams of sugar per serving.
Oh my goodness.
And it was pure cane sugar.
Wow.
No wonder it tasted good.
So to your point, the key is finding, you know, if you look at flavor profile, flavor science, there's so much to it.
And you know this, Mike, more than me.
It's, it's, there's multiple components.
There's a masking of the actives, which is not easy.
That's a part of the process.
So in other words, for example, you take our 12 botanicals.
You put them in water.
They're not going to taste good, right?
So you got to have the masking agent.
You've got to have the smell.
People don't realize that taste begins with smell.
And our bodies, as we're taking something, particularly to our mouth to drink it, the taste already, that whole taste experience begins with smell.
So you've got, so this product, I mentioned earlier, we've made improvements over the years.
Some of the significant improvements over the last five years were more of those consumer facing, which was so important to me.
I said, look, we've got a game changer impact product, but I want people to want to take it.
I want people to love the taste of the product.
And even if they don't love it, it's like, okay, this is really good for me.
It's pretty good.
Pretty good being kind of the baseline of what we wanted it to be acceptable.
And so the sweetening, so you got the masking, you've got the smell component, and then you've got the sweetener component as well.
And we can't choose a sweetener.
We weren't willing to choose a sweetener, even though there are some couple of the options you mentioned, as you and I know in your audience, are much cheaper to get really like something really, really sweet.
We chose the more expensive route because we didn't want kind of do no harm mindset.
We didn't want to have a shortcut on the sweetener that undermined the impact and the efficacy and the integrity of the formula.
Yeah, well, that's why I appreciate your formulation so much because it's so many people are in business today looking for opportunities to just cut costs and put out a cheap product with high profit margin.
And clearly from your label, that's not your focus.
You're putting out a quality, nutrient-dense product at, I think, actually a much lower margin and a more reasonable price based on what you have in it compared to what I've seen from other companies.
Let me ask you about this.
Citrus bioflavonoids is one of the components of your phytosil ingredient.
Now, and show my screen, if you would, please, to my producers, citrus bioflavonoids here from Rose Hips.
This is extraordinary.
And I'm not sure that everybody understands this, but I want to give you a resource.
You can go to our engine here.
This is at brightu.ai.
And if you scroll down to the wellness coach here, click on the wellness coach, and you can just ask it a question.
Tell me about the health support benefits of citrus bioflavonoids and hit go.
So like you can do this yourself.
You can do this with any ingredients.
So you can see what it's what it's saying right here.
Look, let me scroll back up here.
Benefits, you know, antioxidants, immune support, heart health support, blood vessel function support, brain health support, anti-inflammatory properties that are in the scientific literature, et cetera.
Healthy skin.
Now, these are not claims that you make about your product directly, but this is what's known in the scientific literature about, generally speaking, citrus bioflavonoids from all kinds of different sources.
But since a lot of people aren't eating enough fruit in their diets, they're lacking the benefits from these bioflavonoids.
So we could just go down the list one by one, like the research behind each one of these.
You could spend hours going down these trails to find out all the benefits of this stuff.
It's amazing.
It is.
And you just, with your blessing, I want to share a memory, a fond memory of my partner and founder, who I mentioned, who's in heaven.
So years ago, we had a very sophisticated customer that had a medical practice, a homeopathic natural medicine practice, and very sophisticated consumer.
I would say maybe knows as much as you might.
Close.
I mean, literally, and I'm not joking.
And so I asked him, and he fell in love with Proto-Bite.
And I scheduled a call between him and his wife to meet Bill.
And I challenged this gentleman.
I said, listen, take the bottle, have it in front of you.
It was a phone call.
I said, literally ask Bill anything that you see on this label.
Ask him why it's in the product and try to stump it.
And this was like a 40-minute, just a wonderful, enriching conversation where Bill was able to share with passion why, to your point, every single ingredient is intentional, including all the way down to the sweetener that was selected to offer a premium product that'll help people.
Our mission statement is we make you healthier.
And so it's not the only tool in the tool bag, right?
It's all the other supplements, exercise, good clean food, good clean water, et cetera.
All these things are important.
But we were committed to creating a formula with Protovite that was an impact formula and where every single ingredient had a function.
And like you said, not enough, if you look, how many people, myself included, even with best efforts, are eating enough raw foods in their diet every day.
And I do whole food smoothies like you do, and that certainly helps.
I do use the denatured way.
I mean, a lot of the things and the tools that you have available, again, at Health Ranger Store, but we're not eating enough raw, you know, clean, healthy food.
And that's where that supplementation comes in handy.
And so when you're taking that one ounce, it's just one ounce, one ounce serving.
So a 30-ounce serving, one bottle is a one-month supply unless you have some extra needs.
But in most cases, it's a one-month supply.
In that one ounce, you're giving your body these macro and micronutrients and these phytonutrients and these botanicals that are going to really impact your body.
You know, I'm taking it half an ounce twice a day.
I'm just spreading it out by 12 hours.
So I get a better nutrient curve.
That's the way I do it.
Do you know other customers that do it that way?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That's a great way to do it.
That's a great way to do it.
Yeah, because some of these are water soluble and they are eliminated from the body pretty quickly, like the B vitamins, for example.
Yeah, exactly.
And so for some, you know, that want to kind of set it and forget it, take your one ounce in the morning and you're good to go.
But I think for optimization and if you have the ability, dividing it up is wise because you're getting that payload spread out through the day.
Okay.
Now, this is the first product that we're carrying from your brand.
And again, it's at healthrangerstore.com slash liquid vitamins if you want to pick it up.
We have it in stock ready to ship right now with whatever else you want to order on the same order if you choose to do so.
But I want to ask you, do you have, is there a travel version of this?
I'm just curious, like a smaller, more portable version that would be suitable for taking on a trip.
There is.
There is.
We've got Protovite, and then we will be introducing on HealthRangerStore.com the portable version, as you say, which is called Protovite Plus.
And it's a single-serve stick pack.
The plus, and I hope you can hear me.
I'm going to confess.
Yeah, I can hear you.
Yeah, good.
My neighbor's yard crew is deciding just to hang out by my yard.
Oh, I'm not hearing them.
Good, good.
So, yeah, so the Protovite Plus, this was three years of RD, Mike, because the liquid is so, we've got the liquid down.
We've got the Protovite liquid down to a mard.
And I wasn't going to sacrifice, and the team, we were not willing to sacrifice anything with a portable version.
But to your point, the utility advantages of having single-served stick packs, of being able to travel, throw it in your briefcase, throw it in your purse, throw it in your car, throw it in your suitcase, and take it on the go.
We designed it where it can be taken like a pixie stick, but most of our customers take it with water.
They'll add it to a bottle of water or juice or smoothie, etc.
So we do have that.
It's called Protovite Plus.
Oh, wow.
Let's get that in our store.
I want to use that.
Perfect.
Yeah.
It's a good combination.
I do, full disclosure, I'll do liquid when I'm home all the time.
But then I do travel quite a bit and I'll throw the Protovite Plus in some way.
I would do it the same way because I would think that the liquid, with all the advantages of the liposomal delivery, I think the liquid's going to have higher absorption efficiency.
It would be my guess.
Yeah, it's an impact product.
We did do follow-up validation that showed the impact was consistent with the Protovite Plus.
However, I just love the liquid.
So full disclosure, we launched the Protovite Plus, the single-served stick pack version comes in a 30-serving pouch.
And again, we're working with your team.
That'll be in queue very shortly at healthrangerstore.com.
But I want to encourage everyone, try the liquid, fall in love with it, and then you're going to be able to want it on the go.
And that's when we'll, by then, we'll have we'll have everything set up at the Health Ranger store for the Protovite Plus version as well.
Well, that's great.
When we get those sticks in the store, would you come back on and join us again?
Would love to.
Would love to, Mike.
Thank you.
Because I'm enjoying the conversation because both of us are in the business of nutrition.
We're advocates of nutrition.
We support clean foods and smoothies and so on.
But we also understand the need of supplementation.
And what we're looking at right now, like, did you see in the news that the Beyond Meat company is basically bankrupt and gone almost?
It did.
And that's because, you know, Beyond Meat, I mean, this is my opinion.
It was always the process garbage in my view.
Because I looked at the ingredients and I know what they mean.
And I'm like, this is like a dumpster fire of fake meat, you know?
And pretty much the whole market said that.
That's why, you know, their stock just plunged like 30% in one day.
They're done.
They're done.
And I said, I even posted publicly, I said, this is awesome.
You know, fake food is down and out.
Real food is up.
Real food, real nutrition, real plants.
I mean, even what you have with Protovite, it's from real plants, just augmented with natural vitamins.
But the core of it, the aloe vera, the scotch pine cone extract, these are from real functional plants.
Like, this is not just fake garbage augmented with MSG in the shape of a burger.
We don't want that.
We don't want to eat cricket and eggs in our protein bars, you know?
Had enough of that.
I'm nodding till my head hurts.
And I'm also smiling because, again, we're not, you know, I don't think anybody has health issues because we're eating too much food.
We're eating too much real food, right?
It's chemicals.
It's chemicals.
It's preservatives.
And it's the things that are not real.
And GMOs and pesticides and all that garbage.
Yeah.
Wreaking havoc.
And so the more we can kind of re, you know, and again, to your point, and that's why I love your new AI engine.
And, you know, again, between healthrangerstore.com, between natural news, your various properties within your ecosystem, you're providing educational, and not the least of which is your show.
You're providing educational resources.
I was fascinated by your, and again, I'm not sure when this is going to go live, but today as we record this, the gentleman you had on today on red light therapy.
I mean, these are not, you know, breathing.
There's a book that I recommend that I have no say-so in called Breathe.
And it talks about the history of breathing through the nose and how that boosts the immune system and all the culture, you know, through thousands of years of tribal knowledge and natural healing, the importance of breathing, inhaling through your nose, especially, but nose breathing instead of mouth breathing.
And these fundamentals of good foundational, clean water, real food, supplementing with impact supplements that are going to give your body and augment what you're not getting in your diet on a daily basis.
And again, these technologies, these tools, the things that you're bringing to your community, of which I'm a grateful part of, this is where health and well-being and vitality can be found.
It's not found in chemicals.
Yeah, you know, and it's so interesting to me because even though I'm very much steeped in the AI technology and we rolled out our AI engine, I listen to people in the AI space, these high IQ machine learning specialists who don't know anything about health and nutrition typically.
And they will say things like, well, AI is going to solve cancer.
AI is going to solve diabetes.
And I'm like, we already solved all that stuff, guys.
It's already solved.
Actually, God solved it through Mother Nature, put everything in the forest, in the weeds, in the plants that already solves cancer, that already solves diabetes.
Like you don't need an artificial superintelligence.
You have the creator superintelligence already did that.
Amen.
And so many people don't understand this.
They think that a computer is going to solve cancer.
No, what's going to solve cancer is you stop living a pro-cancer lifestyle and start consuming anti-cancer nutrients.
I mean, it's so simple and getting sunlight and, you know, all these decisions that you can make that are so simple, easy.
It's easy to beat cancer.
It's like, It's so true.
My partner used to say all the time, all vitality is health and wellness is being in an aerobic state, utilizing oxygen.
So aerobic or alkali.
And all disease is anaerobic without oxygen.
And he used to use the visual of think of a pristine, you know, say rocky mountain river and all the life that flows around that as compared to a stagnant pond.
And you know, stagnant pond is without oxygen.
It's anaerobic.
And so all disease, he used to say, and again, I'm not a biochemist or a research scientist, but it makes sense to me.
I was an econ major and a math minor, so I am a little bit left-brained.
But he used to say it's all anaerobic.
And so diets that are creating anaerobic states in the body are putting the body in a like a stagnant pond.
Clean eating, good supplementation, like you said, sunlight, movement, foundate fundamentals, grounding pads.
I'm sitting on a grounding pad in my home office.
My feet are barefoot sitting on a grounding pad.
And these are things that, again, you teach and train and you've done it for decades.
And this is what the world, this is what all of us need to hear more of.
And we just want to play a small part in that for sure.
Well, I think you're playing a big part.
And, you know, I wasn't even aware of your product until maybe six months ago.
So I'm very glad to learn about it.
I'm glad to be able to share it with our audience.
And I know you've been working with like clinical specialists for many, many years, but I hope that this is just a widening of your reach to people, to a much wider audience who can use it on a daily basis because I think you've got a really great formulation, a quality product, a clean product that we've tested and confirmed.
And that's why we're carrying it.
So, Jeff, is there anything else you want to add before we wrap this up?
I just, again, I'm very grateful.
And I just want to tell you that the work that you're doing is making an impact.
It's making an impact in my life, the shepherding of my children, four young adult children.
And it's meaningful and it's impactful.
And so again, we're honored to be part of the Health Ranger team and movement and look forward to expanding that relationship one step at a time and supporting your community in every way we can.
So thanks, Mike, for having me today.
And we look forward to talking soon.
Well, we're very happy to work with you, Jeff.
And by the way, I have a minor in economics.
I graduated with a minor in econ.
And my first economics professor was a Japanese man named Ishizawa that none of us could understand.
But so it forced us to study the books very much in depth because we would sit through the lectures and he was a brilliant man, but his English wasn't that great.
So, but he taught us everything, supply-demand curves, subsidies, you know, just classic economics.
We had a great time.
I've had a great time talking with you today.
Very nice to meet you.
Thanks for coming on and thanks for what you put together.
We appreciate it.
Thank you, Mike.
We'll talk soon.
All right.
We'll talk soon.
So that's Jeff Hooks, everybody.
And his product, again, is called Proto-Vite.
I've got a bottle right here.
This is what it looks like.
You can get these at healthrangerstore.com slash liquid vitamins and pick up, try it, pick up a bottle and see what you think and see how you feel.
And I think you're going to be really pleased by this and you're going to see some increases and some results.
Even if you're already eating in a healthy way, as I have been, you may be missing something or you can benefit from some of these other ingredients that you may not have been exposed to, like the scotch pine cone extract.
Very good stuff.
Okay.
Well, thank you for watching today.
I'm Mike Adams, healthrangerstore.com and brighteon.com.
Oh, be sure to use our AI engine, by the way.
If you want to look up any ingredients or anything about nutrition and health, just go to brightu.ai right here and you can ask it anything or you can scroll down and you can use the wellness coach engine.
We have a financial coach and then we have an ingredients analyzer.
Huh, that sounds handy right now.
Key in all the ingredients you want to know about and it'll just give you all the knowledge right there for free.
Very cool.
All right.
Thanks for watching today.
Take care.
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