Get Healthy Stay Healthy with Phillip Ethington

george grombacher 0:00
Hey what’s up? This is George G. And the time is right. welcome today’s guest strong and powerful Philip Ethington. Phil, are you ready to do this?

Unknown Speaker 0:22
Absolutely. Let’s go.

george grombacher 0:23
Let’s go. Philip is the founder of vitality box, their health and supplement company dedicated to making healthy change easy for the average person. They’ll tell us a bit about your personal life’s more about your work and why you do what you do.

Unknown Speaker 0:38
Absolutely. So I’m a married father of three kids, we’ve got two teenagers, I understand the hectic nature of life, I run a couple of different businesses. And I know that you know the day to day of people’s lives, pull them in a lot of different directions, and makes it very difficult to think about their health and and their wellness and be able to do things that are going to improve their ability to work better to have better relationships with their family to be able to spend time with their kids, and really be able to do things that are going to benefit their whole life.

george grombacher 1:17
We are pretty busy these days. Yeah, absolutely.

Do you have a sense you probably do have of how deficient? We as as the average American are when it comes to vitamins and minerals, proper nutrition?

Unknown Speaker 1:33
Absolutely, yeah. So the I think the recent statistics out of University of Oregon say that 94% of Americans are deficient in just regular vitamins and minerals. And really, there has been a big focus lately on gut biome and gut health, which is that if we aren’t working with these symbiotic bacteria in our body, that we can’t even absorb the nutrients that we’re taking in. Most people aren’t doing things that are improving their gut biome, whether it’s drinking too much on the weekend, or just eating foods that aren’t going to be cultivating that bacteria. And so they won’t be able to absorb the nutrients. Along with that, our modern farming practices kind of have stripped the nutritional value from our food, right. So over the last 50 years, we’ve lost 50% of the nutritional value within our food. So even if people feel like they’re eating a well balanced diet, they’re not getting the same nutritional quality that they were even 50 years ago. And, you know, with Vitality box, we wanted to help people from any stage in their health be able to start making choices that were going to improve their life a little bit better every day and make their life a little bit better every day. Because when you show up and you do something consistently, even if you’re just seeing small changes, you compound that over time, and you’re going to have a big benefit. We realize one of the best places to start was with nutrition. Because when you start to get the, the right nutrients in your body, when you’re starting to cultivate that gut biome, you have better energy, you have a better mood, these things translate into feeling like you have the capacity to start taking on bigger challenges in your life. So maybe you’re not maybe you’re, you’re you’re laid up in bed, or you feel like you can’t even get out of the house. When you feel like your energy is increasing, like you’re doing things that are building up your confidence, then you can start getting out there and doing things that you’d never thought that you could kind of back to my my background, my origin story. I came from a family that was very unhealthy, very overweight. I jumped into business at a very young age. So, you know, I started my first company at 18. And then, you know, through the grind of working at the office all day, and sitting at a desk, I blossomed up to 300 pounds by the time I was 24 years old, you know, and then I started having my first kids. And I realized I didn’t want to give them that same health history. Right i i came in with a lot of baggage I felt like from, you know, my personal family story. And it wasn’t their fault. It was that they didn’t understand where they weren’t. You know, they didn’t have that given to them by you know, somebody outside and because of the way that we approach medicine in this country. You know, people feel really disempowered to be able to take on those health choices for themselves. They feel like you know, a yo yo diet is going to be the next answer that’s going to help them solve their problem. They’re going to jump on something for a couple of weeks and then they’re they might have a little bit of improvement and then they’re going to get off of that and that’s actually going to spike in the other The direction so they feel, you know, lack of not just competence, but a lack of enthusiasm that you can try again, you know, they lose all of their motivation to start making these changes, they feel like, there’s nothing that they can really do. So I started having my children, I realized I wanted to change my my health trajectory, so that I could give them a better foundation to start building on their life. You know, and so, looking at vitality box, I understand what it is to start from a place where you feel like you don’t have any enthusiasm, you don’t have any confidence to move forward. And really, we wanted to give people the tools to start making small changes in their lives so that they could build on that and start to create a foundation that will benefit not just their life, but the next generation, the next generation after that.

george grombacher 6:01
I love it. That makes a ton of sense. So many different things pulling us away from being healthy. That fact about the farming practices, it’s just it’s staggering. Every time I hear that it’s super, it’s super concerning. And then the stuff that we are putting in our mouths, we’re we’re harming our gut biome. So whatever nutrition is in the food that we happen to be consuming, we’re still not even able to be absorbed it in into our bodies.

Unknown Speaker 6:36
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you know, we’ve got a billion people on the planet. That’s why we’ve got these modern farming practices, because we have to try and pump out enough food for everybody to live. But, you know, we’ve really started using agricultural methods that pulled the nutrients out of the soil, we’re not building back up that topsoil so we’re not getting the nutrients back into the food. And I don’t know what the best answer invest solution from that is, whether it’s regenerative farming or organic. But even with organic farming, you’re working with what’s in the soil, right. So if the nutrients aren’t in the soil, and they can’t be absorbed back up into the plants, and then the subsequent animals, you know, it’s not going to make it into our food chain.

george grombacher 7:19
Yeah. And he listed off some of those, some of those challenges that that we’re experiencing as a result of that, I just don’t feel as good, I don’t have the energy, just physically not as healthy. And if it’s only been 50 years, that’s a blink of an eye. So we really don’t know what the actual long term cost is going to be.

Unknown Speaker 7:40
And we’re in the middle of probably the biggest health epidemic in modern human history, right, we’ve had really poor guidance. As far as nutrition, what we should be eating, look at that food pyramid that we you know, you probably grew up with, and I did that was really promoting a very unhealthy diet, the spike rates of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disease, I know so many people with autoimmune diseases, where their body’s literally attacking you. Because it’s so dysfunctional, you know, and we’ve seen, you know, that people are able to clear that up with proper lifestyle choices, you know, so when they’re putting the right things in their bodies, and they’re starting to get some exercise, they’re starting to move their bodies and start to listen to their bodies, because everybody’s different, you know, in the same world where Shaquille O’Neal is a man, and I am also a human man, you know, what people need to put into their bodies is, is completely different for each individual person, right? And we need to be able to build that confidence that we can listen to what’s going on with ourselves, we can make good choices, without having a Doctor, tell us what we need to do. I mean, like, screenings are great, you know, you if you’ve got cancer, you want to find that cancer early. If you’ve got high blood pressure, if you’ve got, you know, things starting to build up, you want to be able to find that so you can work on that. But there’s a lot of things that you can do, just by listening to how you feel, you know, start making some choices that are going to make you feel better a little bit every day, and that’s going to compound over time. So nutrition is really where we start and you know, because of some of the stuff that we talked about with the nutrition deficiencies in you know, our foods Bly. Supplementation is really key, you know, there’s where you could it, let’s just say, you know, in order to reach the same nutritional value of what we were getting 50 years ago, you’ve got to eat 25 to 50% more food, right, just to be able to get access to those nutrients for your body to be able to absorb it, but then you’d have this huge caloric burden, right? You’ve got to you’re increasing the amount of food you eat, so everybody’s going to have to deal with that caloric burden and then we’re not moving our bodies and so that’s just going to try insulated fast forward, right, and it’s going to increase obesity, which is going to compound this cascading effect of negative health choices and health consequences. So supplementation is a really important factor. And that’s why we really start there. But we really want to look at the holistic picture, right? We know that it’s not just nutrition, we need to be able to move our bodies so that we’re starting to push, push the toxins and these chemicals out of our body that are inhibiting some of the way that we’re feeling. We need to build lean muscle mass and decrease adipose fat tissue. But things like mindfulness and breathwork, you know, we look at the the effects of medications that we’re taking, that are also going to have these effects of, you know, decreasing our mood, interacting with our, you know, our bodies in a negative way decreasing libido and increasing, you know, fat on your body. And then, you know, what do you do with it, because you’re taking a medication for a certain issue, but it’s giving you three side effects that are making your life a lot worse, you know, so things like mindfulness and breathwork can take the place of those medications. You know, we’ve seen that six deep breaths has the same impact as Ambien or, or Prozac, you know, so, you know, these these ways of altering our state without having to turn to a chemical substance that’s going to have a cascading effect of other consequences. And helping people to get that knowledge and start to incorporate that into their daily practice, you know?

george grombacher 11:42
Yeah. Yeah, I think that last part is so key. Because every, every one of the issues we just laid that you just laid out is 100%. Real, and it’s impacting so many of us. But when I take it in total, it’s like, Ah, how in the world? Am I ever going to figure out how to start doing these things? But the answer is, let’s figure out a small little piece, and incorporate that into our lives and make it easy, so that I can start doing it. And that will hopefully create that new virtuous cycle versus the vicious one.

Unknown Speaker 12:17
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, there’s so many things going on in the world, it feels completely overwhelming, you know, and then you look at all the different health information and all the different studies that might come out saying, you know, a glass of wine is healthy, and then all of a sudden, it’s not healthy and cup of coffee is unhealthy. And then all of a sudden, it’s very healthy for you, you know, the average person can take this information and make any sense of it for their own life, and maybe, you know, a cup of coffee in the morning is great for you. And maybe it’s terrible for another person. You know, you don’t know, because people are so different, you really need to be able to pay attention to what’s going on with your with your own body and your own circumstance. And that changes over time, you know, what we need changes, and we need to be able to flex with that the, you know, what you do, you know, for a couple of years, and you starting to feel better, all of a sudden, that might change, especially as we age and our metabolism changes or our circumstances in light chain. You know, there’s a whole host of ongoing effects just from COVID, you know, so we have increase in you know, heart conditions and, and, you know, these unexplained diseases and illnesses that are cascading as secondary effects of these COVID infections. And your body has changed, I know that my body’s changed and what I need to put into it, what I need to do, has changed within the last few years. So it’s important to develop that relationship where, you know, you’re paying attention to what’s going on.

george grombacher 14:00
Yeah, that’s well said, I had a physician on the show sometime back. And he said, the doctor the future as you were always going to be interacting with different people who are going to be caring for us, and it could be your primary care doc or who knows there’s lots of different folks who can help us to be healthy. But I think that we as individuals need to accept the responsibility that I am going to be driving. If I’m going to be a healthy person, I need to be interested and active in this process.

Unknown Speaker 14:31
Right. And back to what you were saying it feels very overwhelming for the individual person, you know, you can’t ask somebody who has had not only no training but or information their whole life to turn around and be equitable partner in their health decisions, you know, and that’s why people feel like they have to rely so much on these medical professionals for every, you know, change they’re going to make in their life, because they feel disempowered. And so Oh, I think that that’s a real key of what we’re doing here is trying to empower people to take those steps and become, you know that first, that first line doctor in their own health. You know, one of the things that I wanted to talk about is CBD, you know that it’s really exploded lately. But I’ve gone through some personal experiences, I had a grant, my grandpa passed away last year, and he had been battling with cancer and heart disease for the last decade. And he was dealing with chronic pain every day, so bad, he couldn’t get up and walk. And I finally got him to at least try CBD. And when he did, it was life changing for him. And I’ve actually heard this story repeated over and over, the explosion in CBD can help with pain management, in this way that really benefits the people who are most averse to it, because of the propaganda that has happened over the last 100 years, right. So this older generation, you know, people in their 50s, and older, they might be really adverse to using a cannabis based product. But it can do wonders, it can be a miracle in their life for pain management, and then doesn’t have the side effects that a lot of their pain management regimen right now will will have in their mind, you know, so, you know, without all the side effects of these opioids, that a lot of doctors are prescribing, or that people feel like they need just to deal with pain on a day to day basis. Even you know, we’re seeing these negative effects of long term chronic Advil or Tylenol use, and how they increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. Where we don’t find the same risk factors and side effects with CBD products. So I just kind of want to put that out there. Because especially for an older generation, I want them to at least look into it, you know, at least start doing your doing some homework talking to some people, because most likely, you know, people who have good experiences with it, and it can take away some of that stigma.

george grombacher 17:08
Yeah, I appreciate that very much. So how I go to the website, talk me through the experience.

Unknown Speaker 17:17
Yeah, absolutely. So we, you know, back to what we’ve said, here, we want to make it as easy as possible. So we have a line of over 50, different NSF and organic certified supplements. NSF is the highest standard in supplement purity and quality testing. So our supplements are in the top 1% of everything that you could buy out there in the market. And we also have a line of CBD products that we’ve independently tested for quality and purity, to make sure that we’re selling nothing but the best products. But we’ve taken that to the individual box, right, it’s called vitality box for a reason, you can order your box. And it’s going to be tailored to what you need for specific things, right. So our core product is going to be the vitality box, which is going to come with a probiotic, a basic vitamin D supplement, multivitamin that’s going to have hormonal support, it’s going to come with the vitamin D, it’s going to come with a high potency probiotic. And then it’s going to come with a high quality omega three fatty acid supplement. And the reason that we threw in the high omega three supplement is we’ve got recent studies, recent data that shows good levels of Omega three will reduce all cause mortality, that is everything from heart disease and cancer all the way up to accidents, just because your brain is going to be functioning better. And so what they’ve seen is having good Omega three levels really benefit their body over the entire lifespan.

george grombacher 18:58
That makes sense, my brain is functioning a little bit better probably going to it’s going to be good everywhere.

Unknown Speaker 19:05
So Right. Yep. That’s our core pack. But I mean, if you’re looking for something as far as like, you know, pain management, or sleep, or you you’re looking to decrease anxiety, we have different nootropics and things that can help with your brain function. So just go to the website and see what box will fit with what you’re looking for in your life right now.

george grombacher 19:33
In terms of from an educational standpoint, how does that fit in?

Unknown Speaker 19:40
Well, I think that what we’ve talked about here is our desire to really educate people so that they can start making these choices in their own mind, right, but we do want to break that down in a way that’s easy for them. So we’ve got tons of information on our website about each supplement What they do, if you’re looking for a certain benefit in your life, you know, try the supplement or you know, 60 to 90 days and really listen to your body and how it feels so that you can see whether there’s a benefit for you or not. Most people are going to experience a dramatic a better benefit, especially if they’re not taking a probiotic right now. Or the Omega threes or just basic nutrition supplementation, you’re going to see a giant increase in mood and in your energy levels, and just your general sense of well being acting.

george grombacher 20:37
I love it. Bill. Phil, thank you so much for coming on. Give us the website.

Unknown Speaker 20:41
Absolutely. So the websites vitality box.com. And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us. We’re always happy to talk to our customers.

george grombacher 20:51
Excellent. If you enjoyed as much as I did, she’ll feel your appreciation and share today share with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to vitality, box.com v i t a l i t y box.com. And check out everything that we’ve been talking about today. And I mean, the first step to begin, just begin. So take that initial first step and

Unknown Speaker 21:14
show up just show up and start. Yeah,

george grombacher 21:17
Amen. Thanks again, Phil. All right. Thanks, George. And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai