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Podcast 417: Camu Camu and 7Roots

Jorge Ureña, founder of the company UHTCO, producer and manufacturer of the highest quality maca on the market, is with us today once again to tell us more about UHTCO products, including Camu Camu and 7Root!

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(This is Part 2 of a series, click here for Part 1)

JORGE: So let’s talk about the products now! I don’t know exactly which products you have in your store, so I am going to show them all briefly…

MARTIN: I would very much like to carry the whole line, but at this moment we have the Maca, of course, we have the purple, the black, and the mixed. We also have Camu Camu, and we also have 7Roots.

JORGE: Okay! So 7Roots is actually a very old ancient drink prepared by this tribe in Peru. It is commonly known as the ‘panty breaker.’

MARTIN: The panty breaker? Does it have some kind of sexual undertone?

JORGE: Yes, exactly! It is well-known in this area, in the Amazon. Even if you just Google the term ‘the panty breaker,’ you will find it. It is a combination of seven different plant roots, but these are roots that don’t grow underground, these are aerial roots. Some trees and plants have all these roots in the air.

MARTIN: So these seven roots come from the Amazonian tropical side of Peru, not from the high altitude, right?

JORGE: That is correct. I will just read you a little bit of every single ingredient. Chuchuhuasi is one of them. And don’t be afraid of the names! Because many people know Ayahuasca, for example, right? Ayahuasca is another plant, and people use it to do ceremonies and they usually say that the Ayahuasca will get you into the ‘other world,’ and so on.

MARTIN: I know, the DMT, Dimethyltryptamine, has a powerful, powerful effect on brain chemistry!

JORGE: Correct! We don’t know exactly what it does, honestly, but it has been used for many years by ancient tribes. And this is more or less the same idea. What we do is we just put the actual ingredients in a hydroalcoholic base…

MARTIN: …so you do double extraction? Do you do water extraction and alcohol extraction?

JORGE: ‘Hydroalcoholic’ means we are mixing water and alcohol in such a way to achieve a balanced pH on the product, so we can extract all the biochemical components out of it, and then we press, we extract, and we get just the liquid. Then we do a mixing. On the label, there is a little bit of the history of the seven roots for you to read. So again, going back to the ingredients, we have the Chuchuhuasi, which is used by indigenous Peruvians to this day, that is a remedy for arthritis, back pain, bronchitis, and so on. The next one is called Iporuru. It is difficult to pronounce, but…

MARTIN: …that doesn’t even sound Spanish!

JORGE: It is a tribal name, it is their dialect. Then we have Huanarpo Macho, translated to English that means ‘male.’ We also have Clavo huasca, it is just like a clove, this is the same plant, but from the Amazon area, this is a wild version. Clavo huasca is very specific, it is an aphrodisiac, but only for women. 7Roots is actually made in such a way that it satisfies the needs of both men and women. And that is very important, because it all depends on the proportion of the ingredients within the mix, in order to achieve the right benefits. When you take the product, you will feel really good. There is another ingredient that I didn’t mention called Para para, and Para para means ‘up, up.’ Most of the plants in Peru were named by the Aboriginal people because of their benefits. For example, we have Chanca Piedra, the ‘stone crusher,” and the actual benefit is to dissolve kidney stones or gallstones!

MARTIN: But this Chanca Piedra is not in the 7Roots blend, right?

JORGE: No, not in our formula, but there are different recipes, different ways of doing the seven roots. We took the one that we thought was more authentic, we replicated the way of doing it, but we applied a little bit of our concept because we wanted this product to be enjoyable for men and women, not just men. That was our main motivation, to get a product that was enjoyable for everyone.

MARTIN: So tell me, how does this work? I just take one ounce, and then in one hour I am more interested in action?

JORGE: Okay, so this is one thing that everybody needs to understand. We cannot compare these products with any medication that is out there for this purpose. The 7Roots work with microcirculation. All these herbs are structured in such a way that will improve microcirculation. For example, if you take 7Roots, one thing that you will notice very quickly is improved vision. You will see everything brighter, nicer in detail. That means your circulatory system is working properly. It is not going to work the same way other medications do, but it works over time. You can take a teaspoon a day, and you will get effects for the whole day. All right. That is how an aphrodisiac works. I would like to point out something because we intended this product to work on the physical aspect mainly, but then we thought: “okay, what about the other aspect, the attraction, setting up the mood for sex, to improve your sex drive?”

That is also how we created another product, which is our Maca Pro SX. I can tell you something about this product, I don’t know if you had it before or not, but this one here is infused maca. We infused the maca roots, we soaked them in the 7Roots mixture. We are capturing all the elements from an aphrodisiac, which actually works on the physical aspect, we mix it up together with a product that provides hormonal balance and sets you up in the right mood, and gives you energy. So in other words, that combination makes the perfect product for sex drive for both men and women!

MARTIN: We don’t have this product in our shop at the moment, but if people are interested, I would like to invite them to just get a hold of me and ask to bring this one as well!

JORGE: I want to show you, I have a couple of these ingredients here, so I can show you and your customers how they look. (showing roots on the screen) So this one is the Iporuru.

MARTIN: It looks like a tree that has been chopped up…

JORGE: Exactly! This one here, which is a kind of reddish, those are also pieces of a root, but as I mentioned, these are aerial roots, they do not grow underground.

MARTIN: And this cinnamon-colored wood, that is the Chanca Piedra?

JORGE: No, the Chanca Piedra is used as leaves only. But they really work miracles for kidney stones and gallstones.

MARTIN: If somebody from our audience is interested in getting that, we could supply that!

JORGE: Yes, this is the actual product. It is in capsule form and that is probably the best way to take it. If you are having a kidney stone and a very bad pain that comes with it, you take two capsules every six hours, within a day you will just get rid of the stone, it dissolves. My recommendation for everyone is just to get the product at least once every six months as maintenance to prevent getting a kidney stone. Again, the name of the plant is called Chanca Piedra, which translates as the ‘stone crusher,’ so basically that is a direct association to the benefit of the product.

MARTIN: Okay! What about this other product that you have in front of you, the one with the pale green label?

JORGE: Oh, this is called Graviola.

MARTIN: I am familiar with Graviola! It is also known as soursop, right?

JORGE: That is correct! It is usually taken as an anti-parasitic. But there is a whole theory behind it! Probably that will take a lot of time to explain, so we will skip it until the next time. You also wanted to know about the Camu Camu!

MARTIN: Correct! Please talk about that! I see this beautiful poster behind you with Camu Camu on it…

JORGE: I don’t know if you can see it clearly from there, but this is the actual fruit, Camu Camu is a fruit that grows in the Amazon in Peru.

MARTIN: Are they the size of an apple or are they smaller?

JORGE: Camu Camu fruit is probably the size of a cherry, more or less. Camu Camu is kind of a fun name, right? You repeat that word twice, and there is a reason for that. ‘Camu’ basically means ‘lots of water.’ And when you repeat the word twice, it becomes ‘flooding.’ Why is that? Because the Camu Camu grows in the Amazon river, it grows in the actual river. There is a synergy there with the water. This fruit is really high in vitamin C. That is about 50 times more than an orange! But that is fresh Camu Camu fruit, and we don’t sell it fresh, we do special processing to get the best out of the fruit, so we get a concentrated vitamin C product. After our process, we turn 30 kg of fresh fruit into 1 kg of the finished product, so the ratio is 30:1, this is the highest ratio in the market.

Some other manufacturers sell a product that is mixed with ascorbic acid. The reason they do that is they apply high heat to dry the fruit, but when they do that, the vitamin C goes away. We are the only ones in Peru manufacturing products with a cold process, so we keep all the vitamin C. This process was invented precisely for the products we have, for Camu Camu, and also for our Maca powder. I don’t know if you remember, but our Maca powder 6:1 is called the ‘raw gelatinized maca powder.’ 6:1 is the ratio of concentration. And the word ‘gelatinized’ means that we achieve the gelatinization process with a cold way of doing it, not using heat.

MARTIN: Is this actually harvested in the wild, or is it cultivated?

JORGE: It is harvested in the wild. There are also some people cultivating the product, but these are not going to be flooded with the river. So what can I tell you about Camu Camu? It is highly concentrated. Just to give you an idea: one teaspoon of our Camu Camu powder will get you approximately 1200% of the recommended daily dosage of vitamin C.

MARTIN: Awesome! And you have it available both in powder and in capsules, right?

JORGE: Correct. Some people find it convenient just to take a capsule, some people find it convenient to put some powder in their smoothie or juice, or just mix it with water. What else is in Camu Camu? It is not just Vitamin C! We have bioflavonoids, flavonols, flavanols… On average, every person will have between 10 to 15 mg of vitamin C per liter of blood. When you eat a potato, rice, or broccoli, your body synthesizes the vitamin C and that is what’s going into your bloodstream to boost your immune system. We did a study in Belgium, comparing our product with ascorbic acid, which is another source of vitamin C.

When a person took a vitamin C supplement that is just ascorbic acid, the level of vitamin C goes up to 15-17 milligrams per liter, and the duration was less than an hour. With our Camu Camu, the level went up to 26-30 milligrams per liter, so substantially higher, basically double, and the duration was two hours. If you take the right form of vitamin C, your immune system will be boosted, you will be protected. Our product has an ORAC of 63,000 per gram. ORAC means oxidative radical absorption capacity. The synthetic ascorbic acid has no ORAC. There is no protective capability on the ascorbic acid by itself. During these tests, we were testing on every particular free radical, to see where our Camu Camu product was working. We discovered that our product had a big incident in the superoxide anion, which is a free radical that damages the body.

MARTIN: Wow, superoxide is one of the most damaging chemicals in the human body!

JORGE: It is a scavenger! It actually damaged the body, allowing viruses to go in. If we put it in a different way, I can claim that our Camu Camu is an antiviral, and it is 100% percent natural, and we have proof of that, meaning we have testing that shows you how good this product is. It has never been spiked with ascorbic acid, and we have major problems in Europe. Martin, we had a company selling Camu Camu in Germany, they are offering a Camu Camu product in a capsule form, and they claim it has 25% vitamin C.

Now, our Camu Camu vitamin C level is 18-21%. So 25% is really good, that is a super high level of vitamin C being offered on a product. But they were selling the product at a fraction of the price that we were selling our product. So we were concerned! I asked my representative to buy the product, and we sent it to the lab. They did an identity test on the product to identify the actual aspects. And guess what conclusion they came to – there was no Camu Camu in the product! That was the reason why it was so cheap! At the same time, they were fooling the consumer! Obviously, what we did is we sent the proof to the German minister of health, and the product was taken off the market.

Obviously, you will find many, many companies trying to do that worldwide. We have found two more companies doing the same thing in the US and in France. Basically, no product can compare to what we have. I am going to tell you about my experience. I’ve been using just a lot of Camu Camu myself to protect me from this virus that is currently out there. I think if you work on your immune system properly, not just with Camu Camu, but with many other products, like ginger, turmeric, even maca, they all have very many antiviral properties, you are going to protect your body for sure from all kinds of viruses.

MARTIN: So what I hear you telling me is that the Camu Camu with these bioflavonoids, not just by virtue of the vitamin C, with all the other ingredients, is strongly immuno-protective and anti-aging.

JORGE: Yes! It works as a collagen generator, so it is very good for the skin and connective tissue. In Japan, they use Camu Camu in skin care products!

MARTIN: Cool! We have it in our store, we have it in powder form, and in capsules. What would be the daily dose?

JORGE: My recommendation is just a couple of capsules per day, even three. I would do probably three capsules per day, that is what I take normally, or half a teaspoon of the powder. There are also many studies dedicated to Camu Camu and depression. It actually makes you feel good. These are independent third-party studies, real clinical studies with people and placebo, and all that stuff. I can tell you a story quickly, I was in Edmonton once, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Edmonton…

MARTIN: Yeah, in winter, it is a terrible place, it is very sad, right?

JORGE: Yeah! So we have a store down there, selling our line of products, but Camu Camu is actually our best-seller here! And we didn’t know why! So when I was there and visited the store, we found out that many people were actually buying the Camu Camu to give it for free to their staff and employees! So companies were buying the product to supply a little bit of happiness to the people! Edmonton is very sad, it is very cloudy, gray, very little sun, so people were taking Camu Camu to improve their mood!

MARTIN: That is awesome! The corporate program, bottled happiness! Treat your employees well! That is excellent. So, your company, UHTCO, you have been in business for a long time, right?

JORGE: We started a business here in Canada back in 2003, so I would say 18 years in the business. We started with the raw gelatinized maca powder 6:1, and at that time we introduced the liquid maca, the Gold 10:1, and that became very popular. At that time there were only 3 brands selling maca, and then we had other brands jumping in. But when we came up with the liquid maca, it just blew people’s minds because it was so effective with just one teaspoon. We are now selling our products in 30 countries worldwide, we sell raw materials for many companies, we are behind the scenes of some big names as well, they use our raw materials to do their formulations. We also have our own brand, and people recognize us for the quality and good shelf life of the products.

MARTIN: Great! Jorge, thank you, I think that covers everything we wanted to talk about today! Thank you very much for spending the time with our audience!

JORGE: No problem, I really appreciate it! Thank you for having me, Martin!

MARTIN: You can find all the products we mentioned on our website, www.life-enthusiast.com, direct links are attached to this video as always! This is Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast, restoring vitality to you and the planet! Thank you for listening!