10 Years of Flourishing
Ten years ago we started a company on a stubborn idea: that if we would not give a product to our own children, we had no business selling it to anyone else’s.
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In September 2015, Entegro Health was founded with a simple and fairly ambitious mission: to help people live a healthier, more productive life so they may fulfill their God-given purpose. We wrote that down early, and we have not needed to change it since.
Ten years is long enough to find out whether a company means what it says at the start. So this is partly a thank-you and partly an accounting — what we set out to do, what we learned, and what has stayed exactly the same.
The rule we started with
From the beginning our team worked to a golden rule, and it was not a marketing line. We wanted to make products clean enough that we would proudly give them to our own children. Anything less would have been a compromise — not only of our standards, but of the trust people place in us when they hand something to their family.
It is a demanding rule precisely because it is so simple. There is no committee to hide behind and no clever wording that gets you out of it. You either would or you would not.
Ten years on, that is still the test every batch has to pass before it leaves the building.
Why we started
The reason we set out to bring Flourish Living Probiotics to more people was a number that stopped us. In the largest survey of its kind — 71,812 Americans, using validated questionnaires rather than a marketing poll — 61% reported at least one digestive symptom in the previous week1. The most common were heartburn or reflux (30.9%), abdominal pain (24.8%), bloating (20.6%), diarrhea (20.2%) and constipation (19.7%)1.
Nearly two-thirds of us are carrying something, and most of us never mention it.
Those are the study authors’ own words — they concluded that gastrointestinal symptoms are “highly prevalent, as nearly two thirds of surveyed Americans are burdened by these symptoms”1. It ranges from a bit of discomfort after dinner to genuine trouble getting nutrition out of food. Most of it goes unmentioned, which is part of what makes it worth talking about.
What we did not expect
Digestion turned out to be only where the conversation started.
Over the past decade, the messages that have moved us most were often not about digestion at all. People wrote to tell us they felt more like themselves again. Parents wrote about their kids. Someone sent a photograph of a family dinner. We are not going to tell you what Flourish will do for you — nobody honestly can, and we are not in the business of pretending otherwise. What we can tell you is that those notes are the reason there is still a company here to write this.
Our standards have not changed
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We have always believed that good health starts in the gut, and that belief still shapes everything we make. Fermentation is one of the oldest things people do with food — humans have been culturing what they eat for thousands of years, long before anyone could name a single organism responsible2. We are doing an old thing carefully, not a new thing quickly.
How a bottle actually comes together
Flourish is a living ferment. Eleven kinds of bacteria and yeast, grown together in blackstrap molasses — or sorghum, for Flourish Junior — until the whole culture settles into balance. It is not a powder assembled from separate jars and pressed into a capsule. It is a community that grew up together, bottled in the liquid it grew up in.
A small point of accuracy while we are here, because we would rather be exact than impressive: those eleven organisms span nine genera under current bacterial taxonomy3, and they include a beneficial yeast as well as bacteria. We identify them at species level. Any company that tells you its published research transfers to its own bottle should be asked which strains it declares, and so should we.
Tested, and we mean every batch
Every batch of Flourish is fermented slowly, tested for potency and purity, and packaged by people who know exactly whose hands it passed through. Not a sample of batches. Every one.
That is a deliberately boring sentence and it is the one we are proudest of. It is also, we think, the whole difference between a company that would give a product to its own children and a company that says so.
Living cultures, and everything they made
When you take your daily dose, you are getting more than live cultures. You are getting the whole ferment — the organisms and the compounds they created while they grew. Under the fermentation definition of the term, those compounds are postbiotics: “functional bioactive compounds, generated in a matrix during fermentation,” an umbrella that includes short-chain fatty acids, cell fractions and functional proteins4.
So Flourish is a probiotic and a postbiotic, and it is both for the same reason — because we bottle the ferment rather than filtering it down to a powder. We have written about that terminology at more length in Flourish Probiotics and Postbiotics, including the fact that scientists are still arguing about the word and which definition we use.
A decade of gratitude
We owe this milestone to our team, and just as much to you. To our customers, our Consultants, our Business Partners, our Affiliates, and to the alumni who helped build this and have since gone on to other things — thank you. Genuinely.
There is a metaphor sitting right there in the bottle, and we are going to use it, because ten years of watching ferments has taught us something about people.
What one organism cannot do alone, a community can. That has turned out to be true of this company as well.
Every person on this list played a part in something none of us could have done by ourselves. Your trust, your encouragement and your patience with a small company figuring things out are the reason we are here. We have had the honor of being part of your life. You have certainly become part of ours.
And please keep writing
Above all, your reviews and your before-and-after stories keep us going. Please keep them coming — the good ones and the honest ones. You can leave a review here, and we read all of them. You remind us daily why we love this work.
Ten years in
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We are a small company in Sioux Center, Iowa5, making a living liquid in glass bottles, one batch at a time. That was the plan in 2015 and it is still the plan now. The rule has not moved, the ferment has not changed, and the reason for doing it is the same as it was on the first day.
Let’s keep flourishing together. That, truly, is pretty special.
About this article
Written by: Lynn Haak & Carlos Bahena, Entegro Health | Originally published: September 2025
Important information
This article is for general education and isn’t a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Nothing here diagnoses, treats, cures or prevents any condition. If you have a health concern, please speak to a qualified health professional.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Sources
- Almario, C. V., Ballal, M. L., Chey, W. D., Nordstrom, C., Khanna, D., & Spiegel, B. M. R. (2018). Burden of gastrointestinal symptoms in the United States: results of a nationally representative survey of over 71,000 Americans. American Journal of Gastroenterology, 113(11), 1701–1710 — “Overall, 71,812 individuals completed the survey, of which 61% reported having had ≥1 GI symptom in the past week. The most commonly reported symptoms were heartburn/reflux (30.9%), abdominal pain (24.8%), bloating (20.6%), diarrhea (20.2%), and constipation (19.7%)… GI symptoms are highly prevalent, as nearly two thirds of surveyed Americans are burdened by these symptoms.” Source
- Marco, M. L., Sanders, M. E., Gänzle, M., Arrieta, M. C., Cotter, P. D., De Vuyst, L., et al. (2021). The International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) consensus statement on fermented foods. Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology, 18(3), 196–208 — the consensus review of fermented foods, including the archaeological and historical record of human fermentation practice. Source
- Zheng, J., Wittouck, S., Salvetti, E., Franz, C. M. A. P., Harris, H. M. B., Mattarelli, P., et al. (2020). A taxonomic note on the genus Lactobacillus: description of 23 novel genera, emended description of the genus Lactobacillus Beijerinck 1901, and union of Lactobacillaceae and Leuconostocaceae. International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, 70(4), 2782–2858 — the reclassification underlying the genus count for the organisms in Flourish. Source
- Wegh, C. A. M., Geerlings, S. Y., Knol, J., Roeselers, G., & Belzer, C. (2019). Postbiotics and their potential applications in early life nutrition and beyond. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 20(19), 4673 — “Postbiotics are functional bioactive compounds, generated in a matrix during fermentation, which may be used to promote health… postbiotics can include many different constituents including metabolites, short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), microbial cell fractions, functional proteins, extracellular polysaccharides (EPS), cell lysates, teichoic acid, peptidoglycan-derived muropeptides and pili-type structures.” Source
- Sioux Center News (13 October 2023). “Entegro Health, Klass Law Firm find new homes” — independent local reporting recording that Entegro Health was “founded in 2015 by a team of individuals, including founder Carlos Bahena of Sioux Center,” and that the company moved to 20 Third St. NE, Sioux Center, Iowa in October 2023. Source
