MTE & Foundational Wellness: Because Feeling Your Best is for Everyone

6 Minute Read

Ever thought about how pervasive the idea of dragging ourselves through the day is? Think about media: “that 2:30 feeling”; high-powered execs falling asleep under their desk; being so tired from studying you take a handful of caffeine pills (that’s a ‘90s reference, by the way). And what’s been the result of this idea that it’s super cool to be tired and that fatigue is just reality? The energy drink market.

And the specialty coffee market… and the 0 calorie drink powder market… The point is that society also touts caffeine and sugars as the solution to your exhaustion. But caffeine is like an abusive boyfriend: it love bombs you with exactly what you want (energy/focus), but then pivots (spike), makes you panic (jitters/stress), pisses you off (irritability/low mood), and leaves you exhausted (crash) but still somehow losing sleep knowing you’ll never get out of the cycle (tolerance/habituation).

MTE set out to find a solution to all this. A real solution that doesn’t love bomb you, make you feel insane and then hang you out to dry – Brett. Because you can’t have healthy energy without the foundation of health: quality sleep and a healthy gut. Sleep is the key to energy, focus, mood, and performance, and your gut is a major player in immunity, inflammation, mood, and more.

How did we do it? A lot of research, formulations, taste tests, and a never-ending process of learning more and improving our product with the latest healthy solutions for energy and wellness. Because despite what society tells you, you can have both.

An Energized Approach to Wellness: Paraxanthine Replaces Caffeine

The first question: how do you boost energy in a way that supports wellbeing instead of stress? We’ve gotta nix the caffeine. But we still need something that will help us wake up, focus in and feel good. Enter: paraxanthine. Despite its unintelligible name, it’s actually a very simple little compound with many talents, zero of which include making you feel angry with an upset stomache, tossing and turning all night.

Paraxanthine is one of the three major metabolites of caffeine, meaning when caffeine is broken down in the liver, paraxanthine is produced. It accounts for over 80% of metabolized caffeine. Like caffeine, it provides an energy and focus boost. Unlike caffeine, it doesn’t provide jitters, irritability, IBS vibes, or a crash. It’s all the good things about caffeine (and more) without the bad.

An Informed Ingredient Certified compound exclusively made by enfinity®, paraxanthine’s unique metabolic pathway avoids those other two caffeine metabolites, which are largely responsible for the bad vibes of caffeine, and stay in your system longer, which can disrupt sleep.

If it sounds too good to be true, it’s really not – the studies are quickly stacking up to support these claims, including studies and reviews that observed paraxanthine:

You can see why we went caffeine-free with our wellness drink powder – we don’t need it.

Foundational Benefits: Support for Sleep & Gut Health

There is no such thing as healthy energy without healthy sleep – change our mind. Our society almost admires people sleeping 5 hours a night to get 2 hours in the gym before they spend 10 hours at work, come home, cook dinner, help the kids with homework, send those last emails and finally sit down well after sunset. But besides being insane, it’s super unhealthy.

Sleep is integral for your mind and body to perform at their best. Just a few messed up consequences of basic sleep deprivation include:

Hampering your body’s ability to produce cancer-fighting cells
Increasing your risk of heart attack or stroke
Compromising your body’s immune system
Injuring your ability to regulate your emotions
Causing problems with focus, attention and memory

And then there’s your gut health. More than just wanting to create a healthy coffee alternative that doesn’t upset your stomache or strip your gut of its good bacteria, we wanted something to support gut health. Your gut is semi-literally a second brain – it even has its own nervous system that interacts with your actual brain. Clinical research has observed:

Stress-induced exhaustion improve by over 40% with the introduction of probiotics into the system.
Probiotic yogurt consumption result in improved mood.
Symptoms of common mood disorders improve with a probiotic supplement.

On the other side of the same coin, studies have shown that a poor/disrupted microbiome can:

Impair synaptic transmission, especially in the hippocampus
Promote neuroinflammation, diminishing the immune system
Disrupt/damage the body’s ability to maintain healthy stress response

And so another question arose: How can we support energy, gut and sleep at the same time? Sleep and digestive health are foundational to wellness, no matter who you are. You can’t really say you’re providing a healthy alternative to coffee if it’s still going to ignore those things. So we decided three things:

No caffeine
No added sugars or fake sugars
No weird chemicals

By starting here, we ensured that MTE wouldn’t overstimulate, upset the stomache and ruin your sleep. So we looked for nootropics and adaptogens that would support sleep, as well as a companion ingredient to support gut health:

L-theanine: promotes relaxation without drowsiness, reduced time to fall asleep and improved sleep quality in research settings
GABA: promotes calm focus, reduced sleep latency in studies
Chicory (Inulin): digestive support, immune system support, anti-inflammatory actions
Spirulina: increases healthy gut bacteria, reduces inflammation, lowers cholesterol

Jitter-Free Energy: Feeling Focused, Not Overwhelmed

We discussed why we chose paraxanthine as our key energy booster: it bypasses all the crappy parts of caffeine and also performs better at the good: energy, attention, cognition, and mood. To support paraxanthine, we researched nootropics and adaptogens known to promote these processes without triggering a stress response or causing spikes and crashes.

You can already see how GABA and theanine support focus by being anti-stress and pro-sleep, but so do several other ingredients in our paraxanthine energy drink:

Ashwagandha: Ashwagandha is an adaptogen that kind of does it all. In studies, it’s been shown to boost cognitive performance, energy levels, metabolic function, decision-making, recovery, digestion, and more.
Amaranth: In studies, active compounds in amaranth have demonstrated anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activity, lower blood pressure and cholesterol, support cell health
Maca: In studies, maca has been observed to boost libido, improve athletic performance, increase endurance, reduce the physical effects of stress

Most of the natural energy boosters out there don’t affect energy support directly, but indirectly. Think about it like a car that’s desperately in need of a tune-up: you can put the highest-quality fuel you want in there, but if the brakes are worn and the oil’s turned to sludge and the timer belt’s about to go, it’s not going to run well.

Likewise, you can drink all the caffeinated energy drinks you want, but if your gut health is hurt and you’re not sleeping well, that energy isn’t going to feel clean or calm or clear. That’s why drinks that rely on caffeine, stimulants and sugars don’t result in pro-focus, feel-good energy: your system is messed up. To get what you’re looking for, you’ve got to make sure your machine is actually running smoothly first. Then the path is clear for natural, innate energy support.

Mood Support: Fighting Stress & Reactivity

In addition to the energy and focus-supporting ingredients that use multifaceted paths to free up and generate energy in the body, we also wanted to include nootropic mood support with adaptogenic stress support, because these would also contribute to better energy, better sleep and just better wellbeing overall. In our research, we landed on:

Eleuthero: In laboratory settings, eleuthero was observed to increase resistance to infection, improve sleep duration and quality, decrease effects of stress on the thymus and spleen, and suppress stress-induced gastric ulcers.
Holy Basil: In research, holy basil (aka tulsi) consumption reduced stress and reactivity while improving low mood. In addition, consistent use has been associated with mood improvements, lower subjective stress ratings, lower blood pressure, buffered stress response, and improved sleep quality.
Saffron: Studies have shown saffron’s potent and diverse bioactivity, including neuroprotective effects, especially in the hippocampus, reduces symptoms of disorders with chronic low mood, suppress various physical effects of chronic stress, and free radical scavenging.

These ingredients support your body’s natural defense mechanisms, scavenging and eliminating harmful toxins, protecting brain health, and promoting healthy sleep and gut. Just like energy is a consequence of other systems functioning correctly, so, too is mood and anxiety a byproduct of the effects of stress. Supporting a healthy stress response supports your day-to-day affect, experiences and emotions.

11 Ingredients: No Room for Weird Chemicals or Artificial Sugars

Here’s the thing about MTE: it’s the science-backed version of an immunity tonic. In fact, many of MTE’s ingredients, like ashwagandha, amaranth, eleuthero, saffron, and more, have been used in traditional medicine (and even some mainstream) for centuries – even millennia. Cultures around the world using a plant or plant-based compound as an energy-booster or stress-drink for 800 years is a decent indication there’s something to it, yeah?

Couple that experiential evidence with the empirical data accumulating in clinical settings, it’s just a no-brainer that – if you look hard enough (and test enough formulas) – you can find a better way to wellbeing. And that wellbeing will be accompanied by sustained, feel-good energy that doesn’t mess with your sleep, your mood or your gut.

But we’ve gotta make it taste good, too, especially because many of these adaptogens, nootropics and superfoods don’t taste all that super. The compounds that make their bioactivity so potent also tend to taste really bitter. So bitter that in our initial taste testings, we had to take breaks. Don’t worry – we suffered so you wouldn’t have to.

Obviously, we couldn’t turn to sugars, fake sugars or artificial flavors to cover those bitter greens – it’d be kind of like dropping the ball at the 1 yard line: what are all the healthy ingredients for if you’re just gonna stuff in some synthetic sugars and carcinogenic colors at the end? No thanks. Because, just like the science is clear on our ingredients, the science is also clear on why sugar bombs, fake sugars and artificial flavors and colorings are nasty:

Artificial Sugars Aren’t So Sweet

Fake sugars are gross – periodt. Let’s just give a quick rundown of the reality here. Research indicates:

Sucralose: One of its hydrolysis products mutates genes. Cooked at high temperatures, it releases toxic chloropropanols. Alters insulin activity and blood sugar. Increases risk of weight gain, diabetes and heart disease. Disrupts the gut microbiome.
Aspartame: Increases risk of overall cancers, breast cancers and obesity-related cancers. Increases risk of hypertension, cardiac events and metabolic syndrome. Increases risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, multiple myeloma and leukemia.
Acesulfame: Impairs hippocampal function (learning and memory). Decreases cellular activity and viability. Reduces protective activity in neuronal cells. Similar increases in cancer(s) risk as aspartame.

Fake Flavors Fall Flat

Despite the FDA approving several thousand food additive compounds as safe, they also include restrictions on them. Which, to us, would indicate they’re actually not that safe. And in fact, academic literature in modern food bioengineering indicates food additives like artificial colors, flavors, stabilizers and preservatives can increase risk of:

Learning disabilities
Tumors
Migraines
Kidney damage
Sleep disturbance
Digestive upset

So obviously, synthetic stuff just wasn’t the way to go when it comes to accomplishing the refreshing flavor of our final product. But then the question was, how do we accomplish making MTE taste awesome without sugar bombs? Sure, sugar’s natural. But not everything that’s natural is good for you – look at caffeine!

Sugar Bad, Stevia Good

The CDC says sugary drinks are the biggest culprit of added sugar in US diets. Drinking sugary beverages regularly is associated with weight gain, obesity, diabetes type 2, liver disease, tooth decay, heart problems, kidney disease, and gout. Besides that, sugar stacks empty calories on your day and often upsets your stomache.

MTE is sweetened instead with stevia leaf extract. It’s a completely natural, 0-calorie sweetener that’s chocked full of antioxidants, has not been shown to raise blood sugar, and doesn’t have a CDC page about how horrible it is. In fact, it may even prove a support in prevention and treatment of obesity and metabolic syndromes. The good without the bad – just like paraxanthine vs caffeine.

If you’re interested in the details of MTE’s formula, click on any of the ingredients named above to be taken to the deep-dive article on each one. You’ll find information on the background, biology, experience, and research that led us to choose them for our proprietary wellness drink powder.

A Science-Backed Formula that Supports Way More Than Energy

So that’s us! Out here trying to disrupt a several-billion-dollar industry with a simple caffeine-free energy and wellness drink. It’s about clean ingredients, science-backed adaptogen stacks, natural energy boosters, and a focus on foundational wellness: that’s what makes the best healthy drink for energy and focus. And just like feeling great and being healthy is for everyone, so is MTE; whether you’re looking for a killer preworkout drink without the weird stuff, or simply something that makes a day at the office more productive and somehow also more chill, MTE’s got something to offer everyone. There’s a better way to unlock more than energy, and you’ve found it.