After attending Utah Valley University, Nathan Jones started a career in commercial diving. During this time, his father, Dr. Lon Jones, began developing a xylitol nasal spray. Nathan Jones recognized its potential and decided to leave his job as a diver to commercially produce and distribute the nasal spray. In 2000, he created Xlear Inc. with Xlear Nasal Spray being the flagship product. In 2008 Utah Business awarded Jones with the Entrepreneur of the Year award. Today he is the president and CEO of Xlear Inc.

Question: Please discuss xylitol and its history.

Answer: Xylitol is a natural five-carbon sugar that bacteria cannot metabolize, ferment or use an energy or food source. For this reason it has a very wide range of benefits from oral care, sinus care and a lot of new research showing how it actually helps build a healthy microbiome in the gut. Xylitol has been shown to be a very good prebiotic. It isn’t really that xylitol is this amazing thing, it is that six-carbon sugars such as glucose, fructose, sucrose, etc., whether they are natural, organic or not, are great food sources for the bacteria that cause a lot of our systemic diseases. We all know that diseases in the mouth—caries, gum diseases, inflammation, etc.—are caused by bacteria that eat all these six-carbon sugars. It doesn’t matter if the sugars are organic or not, the bacteria are going to eat them and grow and thrive.

Question: How does xylitol give relief from allergies?

Answer: Xylitol helps allergies because it works exactly opposite of what the common drugs do. It keeps your mucosal layer moist and fluid so that your body’s natural cleaning mechanisms can trap the dander, pollen, dust, bacteria, viruses and wash them away faster. If you wash them away faster, you will find that your body doesn’t react to them as much. While the Xlear nasal spray was originally invented by a physician to prevent ear infections in children, the largest group of consumers of the Xlear nasal sprays is people using it for allergy symptoms. Traditionally used drugs try to stop your body from creating mucous, they do nothing to solve the problem of what is being breathed into your lungs. Xlear helps to improve the ability of your body to clean its airway and facilitate better, healthier breathing.

Question: What is the latest most significant research on xylitol?

Answer: There have been a few great studies that have been published in the past year that continue to show that xylitol is much better for cleaning the airway than the more traditional saline products. Anybody that irrigates the nose and sinuses on a regular basis needs to try doing it with xylitol. Xylitol rinses shorten recovery time after sinus surgery, they promote more nitric oxide production and they lower the SNOT score. In every category that was measured in these studies the xylitol beat the normal saline. There have been preliminary studies showing that xylitol can help stop oral cancer, and lung cancer (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25650339; www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28718681).

We don’t and probably never will sell a product that would address these issues, but to read the studies is pretty interesting.

Question: What can natural product retailers expect next from Xlear?

Answer: I am very excited for the future. We have some very good scientific research that is getting done on our next generation of nasal sprays and the results are spectacular. Our next generation oral care products that will be out early next year have some great data behind them that shows that they can make the outer layers of the enamel much stronger—as in much stronger. We have some new gum products coming out that will include baking soda that can be chewed for a few minutes after each meal that will help reduce the amount of time that our mouths are in the acid zone.

Question: How does Xlear spread the word about their products?

Answer: We really try to get health care professionals educated about the many ways that the Xlear and Spry product lines can help their patients stay healthy. We have full-time hygienists that travel to a lot of the state and national meetings, they do webinars for dental offices, and we attend about 250 educational events a year as a company. We also do about 50 consumer events a year; we are corporate partners with Ragnar races—we attend a lot of the Rock ‘n’ Roll marathons and hand out samples to the attendees. It’s amazing what breathing better can do for your run times.

Website: www.xlear.com