By Perry Flippin, pflippin@sastandard times.com
March 24, 2005
“Ike” Crill is seeking the Fountain of Youth.
He’s looking in his kitchen. His recipe relies on invisible organisms – microbes – that serve to counteract germs entering the lower digestive tract.
Using all-natural microbes similar to those found in sour cream, yogurt, cottage cheese and buttermilk, the 22-year-old former Angelo State University business student has people testifying that his dietary supplement has arrested – even reversed – several effects of aging.
“Preservatives are killing microbes in the food we eat,” Crill said. “Chlorinated drinking water and antibiotics are killing microbes in your body. When you don’t get all your nutrients, different ailments can develop.”
Since his cultured bacteria went on the market in January, at least a dozen customers have written glowing testimonials saying NutriNexus has produced beneficial health results – such as improved night vision, weight loss, greater energy and vigor, freedom from joint pain, improved balance and elimination of chronic fever blisters.
Dr. Ben Thurman, San Angelo’s best-known practitioner of alternative medicine, said he tested Crill’s product this week, and is so favorably impressed that he is recommending it to patients.
“I give beneficial flora to virtually everybody that comes through here because I think it’s important,” said the 1979 graduate of Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. “Everybody needs that to be in balance. The problem with metabolic disturbances is not just the gut flora. It’s important to correct that. Healthy people have a healthy gut flora.”
Gut flora is the generic term used to describe microorganisms that live in the intestines.
All the microorganisms in Crill’s product, he said, are normal, beneficial flora that pose no health threat. The doctor added that he has seen proof that microbes reverse effects of aging.
“Most things will give some people some help, but I’ve yet to find one thing that helps everybody,” Thurman said. “The worst thing that could happen (with NutriNexus) is someone will say, ‘I took it and couldn’t tell any difference.”‘
Crill’s product – classified as food, not as a drug – is not sold in stores. He fills orders via the Internet and ships jars via mail. Joan Smith, registered dietician at San Angelo Community Medical Center, said milk microbes are regularly used in clinical care, but much more experimental, and clinical studies are needed to establish their benefits.
She cited the treatment of diarrhea, which is a symptom of good bacteria being wiped out by bad bacteria in a viral infection, traveler’s diarrhea or antibiotic usage.
“Certain antibiotics are harder on bacteria and might wipe out the good bacteria,” Smith said. “Then they get overgrowth of bad bacteria. They (patients) still need antibiotics, but the good bacteria help repopulate the gut flora fast and get them to reabsorbing again.”
Another promising area is dermatitis in young children. Researchers report microflora can play a role in helping the immune system against eczema and other skin conditions, she said.
“There’s a lot of hope for it,” Smith said. “I wouldn’t say to the extent of any miracles. Rather, it is more in restoring normal function and helping the gut function healthier. It might help prevent other kinds of diseases.”Crill, an ASU dropout, found some validation for his endeavor in the writings of a Ukrainian microbiologist named Elie Metchnikoff, who won the 1908 Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering a phenomenon known as phagocytosis. His work became a fundamental tenet of immunology.
Metchnikoff spent the last 10 years of his life studying lactic acid-producing bacteria as a means of increasing human longevity. He attributed the long lives of Balkan populations to their consumption of large quantities of fermented milks containing beneficial microorganisms. In effect, he became the father of probiotics – beneficial microbes.
Crill said that modern sanitation methods – including chlorinated water, pasteurized milk, food preservatives, antibiotics and such processes as cooking and normal digestion – effectively destroy harmful microbes in food. They also destroy beneficial microbes, he added.Without beneficial microbes, the human body cannot process nutrients properly. The results can be illness, obesity, lethargy, mental depression, joint pain and even death.
Crill’s father, Dick, who was 61 at the time, fell and shattered his elbow a year ago. Medical exams showed the broken bones weren’t healing. The elder Crill, who holds a doctorate in genetics, began researching similar cases. He discovered a book by Luigi Cornaro, a 15th-century Venetian who lived to be 102.
Crill’s father followed the Italian’s regimen: drinking newly fermented wine, eating homemade coarse-grain bread, eggs, meat broth and microbes cultured from milk. Within a month, not only was his elbow healing, but his night vision improved, and so did his hearing. Crill thought his father had stumbled onto a miracle drug.
The senior Crill, in his world travels, previously studied Mexicans living near Cuernavaca, who routinely live beyond 100 years. Their simple diet includes a freshly fermented alcoholic drink called “pulque” that’s made from fruit, cornmeal and honey.
The younger Crill saw an opportunity to launch a company based on his father’s research and the widespread desire for healthier living without drugs or medicine. Microbes are neither.Inside his kitchen at Snyder, 100 miles north of San Angelo, Crill concocts active ingredients used to make cultured milk products. The label identifies the milk microbes in NutriNexus as bulgarius, acidophilus, casei, rueteri, Streptococcus lactis and Streptococcus citrovorus.These streptococcus varieties are not harmful.
Dick Crill said that hunger, a natural response for a missing nutrient, can lead people to overeat. Without that missing nutrient, however, people can be overweight and starving at the same time.
“Taking food away from people who are constantly hungry and telling them they are lazy and undisciplined seems to me to be the wrong approach,” he continued.
“Obese people have a disease. Many diseases are caused by deficiencies. The deficiency for some obese conditions is a deficiency in their digestive microbes.”
“Ike” Crill said two customers have credited his supplement with taking off more than 20 pounds and reducing their appetite.
“This is a wellness approach that as your health improves, food cravings subside and weight loss occurs naturally from eating less,” he said.
On the Net
To learn more about Essential Microbes, visit: www.nutrinexus.com.
You can See this story on the Standard Times website below:
http://www.sanangelostandardtimes.com/sast/news_columnists/article/ “Friendly microbes touted for their health benefits”, Perry Flippin: This is a story in the Standard Times from San Angelo, Texas. This is a story that was done about NutriNexus! You may have to register with the website to view this story but it is free! Also you may have to search for nutrinexus to find the story.
