William Li and Danielle Chang, co-founders of The Hao Life, join Cheddar Innovates to discuss how they're shaking up the $71 billion supplement industry by putting a modern spin on traditional natural Chinese remedies.

Cheddar Innovates

A New-Age Twist on Millenia-Old Remedies

Welcome back to cheddar innovates brought to you by curiosity stream. The supplement industry is estimated to be worth about $71 billion and that number is only growing but oftentimes when we look at the supplements, it's not clear what exactly we're putting into our bodies and our next guests are looking to change. Just that joining us now is William lee and do yell chang co founders of the how life, a modern chinese remedies company Daniel, I'm gonna start with you how translates as we know it too good in chinese. I imagine that also translates to your mission. But what exactly is your mission? Our mission really is to bring the traditional chinese medicine that we grew up with and that is used by the majority of the population around the world to um, to, to everybody in the west. So we're modernizing these traditional formulations, super charging them with adopt genic herbs and elevating them into this new realm of wellness, basically bottling chinese heritage and in uh in wellness, wow, I love that William. In terms of what kind of products you offer? You know, what's the variety there and what, what are these kind of remedies for? Uh, so right now the how life has six proprietary super blends and they target the five key organs in chinese health. Um, that is the lungs, the heart, the liver, the spleen and when I say spleen it's really kind of the overall sort of stomach uh, gut infrastructure and the kidneys, we have two formulas. Um, one for men and one for women because the kidneys actually are the center chinese people believe that the kidneys are the center for both sexual and reproductive health and as men and women get older and they experience hormonal changes of menopause or andropause. We have two formulas that sort of deal with that. Um, the super blends are pair time tested plant based herbs have been part of the canon of traditional chinese medicine for millennia. But then what we've done is we've added uh superfoods adapted genic herbs to kind of supercharge them for today's lifestyle. Daniel, you said a moment ago essentially. This is kind of capturing, you know, chinese heritage or a tradition in a bottle. How did the, how life come about in terms of wanting to do that? I think it's really inspired by our heritage. You know when we were growing up, our parents would always go to the kitchen cupboard and find um food or medicinal herbs that would cure a cough or a cold or allergy as opposed to going to the medicine cabinet. And so when William and I met in our thirties over a dozen years ago, he was actually a publisher conde Nast Traveler and I was starting Lucky Rice, which is um magazine, which is I'm sorry um a food festival. So it celebrates asian culture through the lens of food and drink. Um that's burned into luck each hour PBS series which William and I co host. We were able to learn a lot about traditional chinese wellness um through just traversing the country and really realizing how misunderstood it is and yet how healing it can be when used in the right dosage is. And so we came up with these proprietary blends that as I said, are built off of millennia of research but with newfound ingredients that help us live our best life. So fascinating William these ingredients that she was just talking about. They're all the natural ingredients with superfoods that most of us have heard of. I'm curious though, what are some plants that can be used as natural remedies that that may actually surprise people well. Um so an example would be like dandelion leaves. So the same dandelions that you see growing in your yard. Those actual dandelion leaves which are used for salads in Italy china etcetera actually are powerful detox. If they have powerful detoxifying properties, they reduce water attention. Um and they're really good for detoxing chrysanthemums. Again, the same flowers that we see in gardens every fall when people are planting mums, those moms are proven to reduce blood pressure, they cool and calm the body. They reduce inflammation. Um and that's found in our detoxification formula as well called come clean and then everyone's talking about the power of mushrooms now and we um Source some of the best mushrooms in the world. One of the ones that we you really used as a hero ingredient is racially mushroom which has been known to enhance the immune system, increased respiratory health. It's really good with cognitive function which is something that you mentioned in an earlier segment um lowers cholesterol. So it's it's interesting like these are just you know these plants foods, herbs have been around for thousands of years and it's just starting now that people are really understanding the power of plants and how that can can can offer you know well being. Yeah and our understanding of that, I imagine it would continue to grow and adapt, really appreciate your insight and the work that you're doing. It's a pretty cool company, William lee and Danielle chang, co founders of the How Life.