How to Pick The Right Nutritional Products For Your Practice

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All right, welcome to the line life, aligning your practice with Dr. Cliff, Dr. Joe and special guests, Dr. Or Dr. Josh, I feel like your doctor Joshua Staub brought to you by align life where we want to give you the tools to find and create your line life. And so we're very privileged, very lucky to have one of the most brilliant man I know on the planet, one of my best friends, we hang out we talk we always are brainstorming and building things up together. And our whole relationship started through a Aceva by him helping me bring us even into my clinic. And so So Josh, I'd love to hear like how you got involved with Aceva, I know the story. But I'd love for everybody else understand how deep this runs in your being.

All right, well, it's an honor to be on your podcast. Really excited here. So just it's a, I can make this long, but I'll tell the short of it. I'm just really blessed. I just have a feeling of gratitude right now as I'm thinking about it. I'm a registered dietitian. And I started out in the traditional setting and hospital. And at about the time, I would say I was ever since 15. I've been interested in health and wellness. But I would say more like when around like age 2021 I got more into like holistic health, wellness, and like functional medicine and nutrition. So while I was at the hospital, I was also working in a GNC, actually, I've been in the supplement industry for about 15 years now. And I just crave something more I crave something different. And I actually went to a talk from Think of the I was a wine life here in Peoria, Illinois. And they were given a talk on functional medicine and like Salaberry labs and everything. So I went to that talk. And I was like, wow, I was just very captivated. So this was Dr. Esposito sister company aligned life. And at the end of the seminar, I basically just went up to a staff and I was like, How do I get more involved? Like, are there any positions available? She's like, Oh, well, if you submit your resume, I'll send it to the company. And we'll get back to you as we see fit. So you know, I, you know, is really gung ho went home, sent their resume. And I was like, huh, we'll see what happens. And I would say about six days later, I got an email from Dr. Esposito. And he's like, Yeah, let's, let's meet up. So long story short, they didn't have a position at it wasn't align life. It was for Aceva at the time, it was aligned like nutraceuticals. And they didn't really have a position, but he saw something in me and created a position along with my insight, and I got to, you know, help create that position. So that was in 2015. So that was about eight years ago, and the rest is history.

Wow. That's such a cool story that you remember it? You

know, I remember a resume of a guy and I'm like dietician, a, they're taught the wrong mindset of nutrition. I don't know about this guy. When I met him, his foundational understanding, due to his academic journey himself, his reading his, his just curiosity about human function just blew my mind. He was not the protege of a dietetic academic journey. Although he had that background and he sells himself short. He's got a master's degree. He's one of the lead dieticians in the hospital dealing with everything from nephrology to gut function, the guy is well accomplished, extremely knowledgeable, has dealt with cases in conventional medicine has dealt with. He was in the retail world of nutrition, as he mentioned, and it's just amazing his journey of what he's done. I recently watched him debate with some of the top functional medicine doctors on the planet on some phone calls. And to to hear him his conviction in massive debates on deep research and be able to make the top of the top in the world question their thought and actually concede to his position because of his research is just as an academic, it's a beautiful thing for me to see academic academics debate and appreciate each other so I don't want to keep going with my appreciation to Josh but he is truly the right person in the right seat for the right job, which is Moving the formulations of this company, consistently to better clinical outcomes.

That's awesome. That's an I totally echo everything you said, like Josh, like, is very understated. Like, one of my best friends had an issue. And I'm like, You need to talk to Josh, you guys. Oh my gosh, I learned so much like, everybody got an interaction, they like learn no matter what it is. My wife, like, we talked about Josh all the time, because we're like, Oh, what do you think Josh would do in this situation? What would you do in that situation? And like, he sent me this thing, I don't even know what it is. I'm like, I go, I don't know. But Josh wears it. So I'm just wearing it. And so that's great. And so I'm like, I just don't question him. Because like, I've had too many conversations. I'm like, well, he knows I'm like, I'm not going to waste time, or breath. So, Josh, I think one of my biggest questions is, you know, in a Siva, what's the process that you go through in formulating in that space?

Yeah, that's a good question. So fortunately, I have a knack for research. And just being in the space of serving practitioners, it's very important that you formulate a product, that's going to have a great clinical outcome for the end user, which in this case is a lot of times, it's like someone who has a, you know, chronic or acute illness, and they need something that works, you'll see a lot on the market today of just, it's just a lot of like marketing out there. They're just putting, you know, ingredients and inferior forms of the ingredient and concentrations that are not going to even have a significant impact. And I think that's why sometimes supplements gets get a bad rep, because some people just try an inferior product. So we first start with the why, you know, why are we going to formulate this product. So we've tried to put our ourselves in the positions of our customers, which is a practitioner and see what kinds of ailments what kinds of things are there are their patients coming in with and a need to address so. So that's we start with the why. And then usually, in conjunction, we kind of do this together, but we'll do a really highly in depth competitive analysis, and then studied the clinical research on whatever condition that the product is going to touch. And a lot of times, well, at least for Aceva products, we're looking to address multiple things with one product, we're not the type of company that has a pill for every ill, so to speak, you know, some of our competitors, they may have 100 200 products. And you know, I don't want to bash them necessarily, but it just gets too confusing. You know, when you put a patient on disk for that, and this for that, and before you know it, they're on 10 or 15, different Medicare supplements, and you know, that's going to add up and pill. So what we like to do is to you are there synergies with products, so we'll see what conditions kind of co occur. So take cardiovascular issues, and like dyslipidemia, and thyroid issues, for example, 80% of the time, maybe even maybe even more there they co occur. So let's develop a product that's going to address both, that saves the patient money increases compliance, and just makes for an all around, just, I think that's just the right thing to do. So the clinical research, again, unfortunately, I love this stuff. For a product, I mean, at the least it would take a month for a product. And at the most I mean, we've spent months on, you know, just digging into everything because we want to do this, right. And we look at our competitors products and see where there's synergies where there's, you know, gaps in their product. And just so we know what the scope is out there. So and then we also look at the nature of the ingredient, and you know, the best delivery system for the product. When possible, we will try to make the capsules as small as possible, just depending on the nature of the product. So we think about a lot of different things here, the Siva, we're not just, you know, oh, that product is popular on Amazon, let's copy that kind of thing. And we do full disclosure on our labels. kind of hesitate, because it's like, anybody can, I guess grab our stuff, but that's just the right thing to do. Right? We don't want to, you know, hide ingredients. And I think that transparency is really critical.

If I can speak to that, I think that's a real big distinction there is explaining clinically for the clinicians out that the true clinicians really want to know and understand is the efficacy of outcome in regards to nutrition has to do with the dose and the quality of what it takes to create an outcome. So what most companies are doing, just the secret behind the labels here guys and gals is that we take as many ingredients as possible of a condition like heart disease, and we put it into a blend and call it cardio max or cardio save or cardio plus or cardio is something and we put all the ingredients in a blend on the label, and then we put the total amount of milligrams of that whole blend. What you do when you do that is you take the most expensive ingredient, and only put a sprinkle of it in, so you don't, so you can still put it on a label, but there's no clinical efficacy of that. And then you do that with all these different products. So really many times not one of the ingredients, meets research claims to create an outcome. But the bottle shows 38 different amazing ingredients to help heart disease, but nothing that reaches a research claim. So we only we call it inspired nutrition. Because research, clinically inspired nutrition is because it's all based on clinical outcome. So people are so amazed at a product like the sugar balance in the hospital network. Because the sugar violence is what allowed a Siva to gain such notoriety from the Center for Disease Control of its ability to prevent diabetes. And the government certified the company, one of the only companies in the world with that certification. And the simplicity of it is sugar balance has enough alpha lipoic acid to meet the research claim which is extremely high and extremely expensive. So it doesn't have a lot of ingredients. But it has an ingredient at the level that the research says to make quick impact of blood sugar, and the story. So it's not as sexy as we want it to be. It's not as marketable as we want it to be. It's not as exclusive as we want it to be. But it clinically works. That's what Josh and I's philosophy when we do this is all that matters is patient outcomes. Nothing else matters. We could be bad marketers, we could be bad at exclusivity bad, it doesn't matter. patient outcomes is the name of our game. So I just want to carry that message jasha on that, because sometimes it doesn't look as sexy with four ingredients. But they're meeting research claim. So

no fillers, that's what I just heard. Just I love what you said, man, and you are so in the right role for Aceva, and like for doctors to lean in on I know, we've done tons of trainings over the years of going over blood results and looking at that stuff. And so how would you say Aceva is different? I know there's a product guarantee. So we could dive into that. But How's it different?

Yeah, so we stand behind a three month guarantee on the products, we're so confident and then that, you know, you could, I guess return an empty bottle and three months, and we would refund your money. Now, we don't actually get a lot of returns and think I you know, I'm not involved in all of the return process, but from what I hear, the only returns we really see are just issues with orders. So that's really makes me you know, proud and just makes me see that these people are getting results. And, you know, I think that's probably an industry leading standard, I think out there right now. So. So that speaks to the guarantee. And how we're different is, you know, there's some other, you know, good products out there, but I think we're Aceva stands apart is we want to see you successful in your clinic. So we're not about just, you know, once you make, make that order, you're good to go. Like we want to see you successful. So we'll work with your team. And we want to know your goals for your you know, what your nutrition businesses, and we're will help you reach that. So we have product integration consultants that will meet with you regularly. You mentioned labs, we do offer labs through a third party of Axia diagnostics. So we work intimately with a representatives from there, and we will work with you as well and helping you with your lab interpretation. There's a beautiful report that comes with all of our labs that actually help recommend our products. So yeah, I mean, I think it's the customer service that you know, where we stand apart, just wanting you to be successful.

I definitely as we're going through this series and stuff I definitely see like the people are the thing that matters, just like in offices, it's like the people in the Siva, that's what matters. Like you guys are so dedicated to the success of doctors and so So Josh, like who would be somebody who should reach out to you because I would love for them to be able to contact you because I know I've referred a lot of doctors who have questions. So who that who would that look like for you?

Yeah, generally if you're interested in this You mean some type of clinical support to Aceva, rather than what I used to do is give my personal contact information, but the team would like me to give the support email that would be just contact support at Aceva.com that will ensure that we can, you know, get your get you an answer right away in case like something out of the office or something like that. So, but then once, you know, I definitely provide my personal phone number and email address, I can give that to you if you want to include it in the show notes.

Okay, I'll add that to the show. I'll add, I'll add your email to the show notes. If you guys want to get in touch with Josh, there's two ways go through the support ticket into Siva, and I'll put that in there and also put Josh's personal email. So if you guys have questions like, like the reasons I like to reach out to Josh, is I want to understand the product better who should be taking this? So Josh, Joe, any final words or any final thoughts?

How much time do we have? I mean, anything you want? Tell me.

My final thoughts is, is if you have curiosity, that's really what is curiosity and then have conversation, again, as one of the previous people mentioned, that was talking about a different realm is being able to have service to help you integrate. So a lot of times, we all have fear of integrating a new thing, because we have the unknown, we may not know enough, we don't have the academic knowledge, we're a little worried. So having Joshua, one of the other team members, because it's a full service offering where you have people in marketing people in clinical people in operations that help integration because we realized, and overseen almost 40 clinics that we know this is not an easy thing. We just make it a lot easier, as Cliff has said in previous podcasts. And our job is to make it as easy as possible. So you can help as many people as possible. So if you just have curiosity, spending 15 minutes with Josh to just uncover where you're at current formulations you're using, are there gaps are the cheaper ways. Are there integrated ways is there simpler ways, and he could shed some light and then if that helps you then you can talk to other members of the team at operations or marketing to really help you feel confident in the integration of nutrition.

Awesome. Josh, you killed it today. Thanks so much for being on the podcast. You guys have questions? Man, don't be afraid to reach out to this guy. He's just a wealth of knowledge and in all kinds of different areas, and especially especially in nutrition and how to bring it into your practice. Joe, as always killed it. Thank you so much. And we will see you guys next week. Thank you very much.