By: Autumn Warren

It all began with a desire and passion to make a probiotic that actually worked to help myself and my family. I’m going to share specifics of my Ether Elixir and then my personal story of how I was driven to create this product and how I spent countless hours testing and experimenting to make sure it was filled with bacteria in the billions! The more alive it is…the more beneficial it becomes.

Ether Elixir is a yummy, fun way to consume reliable, high doses of probiotics and there is no need for dairy or added sugar. Made locally in historic Fairmount, Fort Worth – Ether Elixir is formulated with only 100% organic juice and lab certified probiotics. Every five ounce bottle contains nearly 10 billion CFUs of beneficial bacterias and yeast – each one individually recognized by the World Health Organization as being vital to human gut health. Due to the flash fermentation process, the natural fruit sugars in the juice are drastically reduced, while at the same time creating the chemical reactions that create both natural carbonation and a sweet and sour taste people love!

Having been an active yoga practitioner, since I was 18 years old and brought up by a hippie parent, (try living with the name Autumn Rianne, in a 1980’s class room filled with Sarahs and Ashleys) I have always been aware of the desire to live a health conscious life – easier said than done, but the seed was planted at an early age.

As I entered adulthood, I began working on my mind/body connection and it quickly became apparent, in order to really live life to the fullest, I needed to make some drastic changes to the way I lived. I compiled my list of lifetime, ongoing, super annoying but not devastating, health issues and began seeing a rheumatologist since autoimmune disease runs rampant in my family. After several comprehensive blood tests, I was told I had indicators of an unknown autoimmune disease and the best advice they could give was to take medications for my current symptoms and wait until I had a “full-blown” autoimmune disease to treat specifics.

I wasn’t sure what to do, but you would know within an instant of meeting me that waiting around is not my style! So I researched. I researched while I was at work eating lunch at my desk. I researched on my phone while I was in line at the grocery store. I researched on the couch while my husband made popcorn. I researched as the last thing I did before I fell asleep each night – hoping I’d stumble upon the golden ticket and dream all of the answers before I woke the next morning. All of this research led me down a variety of paths – supplements galore, apple cider vinegar will cure everything, even the things you didn’t know you had, acupuncture and Chinese herbs are the secret to long, happy (financially strapped) life. Like any good hobbiest research scientist I tested literally every single theory that I came across . My supplement cabinet and bank account are living proof!

Lots of the things I tried made a difference, lots of them did not do anything, some of them (I’m looking at you ACV) gave me terrible heartburn and made me question whether or not I was indeed human while so many discussion boards claimed miraculous recoveries. I eventually found my groove, became spontaneously obsessed and disenfranchised with cures as I saw fit and generally tried to live an overall healthy life. My health was not the best, but it was much better and my awareness had grown so much that I was able to catch most things before they were a big doctor needed situation.

And then…I had kids.

I feel like most lives can be categorized by the “before and after having kids” stages. Certainly for some people it’s a breeze and everything goes perfectly smoothly and life only gets better but I have yet to meet one of these wonderful unicorn, fairy-tale people and have only met other, mere mortal mothers, whose eyes instantly become wistful and faraway when they delve into their “pre-kid” life stories. This is not to say that children are a bad thing – oh no, my children have turned me into a super human both inside and out. I will be forever grateful but they make life more meaningful. What I mean when I say meaningful is difficult – because once something MEANS SOMETHING then you want to try really hard to not to ruin it, right?

Basically, once my kiddos started to display the same genetic signs of autoimmune disease that I suffered as a young child – I was back on my research mission. This time focusing on a new angle. Gut health. Probiotics are the bodies first line of immune defense and I wanted to ensure that we were getting a steady stream of them. After years of homemaking my own vegan cashew milk yogurt using store-bought probiotic supplements, I become discouraged at how many of the high-potency probiotics I was buying would not come back to life, after being fed with sugar water. I didn’t want to chance my health or the health of my children by relying on a placebo at $60/bottle, it didn’t seem like a win in either direction.

I decided to conduct my own experiment, purchasing different brands of high-quality, high-potency probiotic supplements from various, reputable retailers to determine how many were alive or totally dead. After over a year of trials, only one in every three bottles I tested was actually alive. The rest were fed varying forms of sugar, kept at varying levels of heat and there was absolutely no reaction. There also would not have been any physical health benefit from ingesting them.

I finally decided that I could do better. I found a source for LIVE, lab-documented probiotics and began testing them in different mediums. I wanted to avoid dairy, common allergens and the need to have added sugar. Also, I wanted the benefits of a fermented food rather than just adding in probiotics to sugar-water. Quite honestly, since I spent my days oscillating between caring for small children and delving into the Bermuda Triangle of Internet health articles, I also needed the solution to be inexpensive. I learned early on that “love don’t pay the rent”, as the saying goes.

After much experimentation, I created “The Ether Elixir” that you can find in stores today. It is an evolution that has been all over the fermentation spectrum – from probiotic laden hooch to fancy vinegar. I have set alarms in the middle of the night to change fermentation times and temperatures. I have sent samples to labs to test for probiotic count, ethanol content and nutrition facts to not only ensure what I was giving my family was safe, but – you guessed it – MEANINGFUL. And as I said, when I say meaningful, I mean difficult, because I have worked too hard not to get it right.

I am overjoyed that now other health conscious, health struggling families can benefit from my hard work. I am humbled to share it and hopeful it will make the same difference in the lives of your loved ones that it has in mine. And well, if nothing else, it’s sweet and bubbly and just overall fun to drink.

You can find more information on where to purchase this product on their website.

In light & love & billions of friendly bacteria,

Autumn

Creator & Owner of Ether Elixir

www.etherelixir.com