Hunter Decaro — Founder, Nature’s Journey

Hunter founded Nature’s Journey after his own family’s struggle with mycotoxin exposure exposed the gap between supplement marketing and what the gut microbiome research actually documents. Every article on this site is reviewed against the brand’s editorial standards before publication.

About Hunter

I’m Hunter Decaro — entrepreneur, gut-health research advocate, and the founder of Nature’s Journey. I live and work in California. The short version of how I got here: a few years ago my family went through a long, frustrating stretch of vague symptoms — brain fog, digestive disruption, fatigue that didn’t lift — that we eventually traced back to environmental mold and mycotoxin exposure in a home we were living in. The longer version is on the Our Story page.

I am not a doctor. I am not a dietitian. What I have done is spend the past several years living inside the gut-health and mycotoxin research literature — reading the ISAPP consensus statements on probiotics, the Cochrane reviews on S. boulardii and antibiotic-associated diarrhea, the AGA and ACG guidelines on probiotics in clinical practice, the published work on dietary mycotoxin exposure from the EPA and IARC, and the human clinical trials behind every strain that ends up in our formula. That is the work a founder does. It is not the same as a clinical credential, and I will not pretend otherwise on this page.

Before Nature’s Journey I built and operated small businesses outside the supplement industry. Coming from outside meant I had no incumbent assumptions about how a supplement brand “has” to be built. It also meant I had a lot to learn. The advisory board exists in part because I needed one — not as a marketing badge, but as the layer of clinical oversight a founder without a medical degree should have when the content on the site can affect real health decisions.

Why Nature’s Journey exists

The honest version is short. When my family was working through the mold situation, I went looking for a single, comprehensive daily supplement that addressed what the research said actually matters for gut and microbiome support during that kind of recovery: a multi-strain probiotic that included Saccharomyces boulardii (the most-studied probiotic organism in mycotoxin and antibiotic-associated contexts), a real prebiotic fiber to feed those organisms, gut-lining support, and the bioactive cofactor vitamins that methylation and detoxification pathways depend on.

It did not exist. I found products that did one or two of those things well, marketed loudly. I found stacks of three or four supplements that, when combined, approximated what I wanted — at a cost of $80–$140 a month and six pills to remember. I found capsules with twenty ingredients at homeopathic doses, formulated more for the label than the body. What I could not find was a single product that took the published research seriously and put it in one capsule, at clinically meaningful amounts, with a price tag a real household could sustain.

The decision to build Nature’s Journey was a decision to build one really good product, not twelve okay ones. That is still the company’s entire philosophy. We sell Complete Gut Defense. That is the catalog. Single-SKU companies do not get to hide a bad formula behind a wide product line, and we have no interest in trying.

The mission is narrower than “wellness.” It is: build the most honest, research-grounded daily gut supplement we can build, sell it directly, document everything publicly, and treat readers like the intelligent adults they are. Nothing in that sentence is therapeutic. We are a supplement company, not a medical practice, and that boundary is enforced everywhere on the site.

How I research what gets published

The research process behind every article on naturesjourneyhealth.com follows a fixed order. Peer-reviewed sources come first — specifically, in this rough priority:

1. Cochrane systematic reviews and meta-analyses. When Cochrane has reviewed a question, that is the starting point. The Cochrane Collaboration sets the high-water mark for methodology in evidence synthesis.
2. Professional society guidelines. ACG (American College of Gastroenterology), AGA (American Gastroenterological Association), NICE (UK), ESGE (European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy), ATS (American Thoracic Society where relevant). These are written by panels of subspecialists weighing the same evidence we read, with explicit grading systems for the strength of each recommendation.
3. Consensus statements from research organizations. ISAPP for probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, synbiotics. These define the terms the field uses.
4. Original randomized controlled trials in peer-reviewed journals, particularly those with adequate power, pre-registered endpoints, and strain-level specificity. Strain matters enormously in probiotic research; we cite at strain level whenever the evidence allows.
5. Mechanistic and observational research as supporting context — clearly labeled as such, never used to imply clinical effect.

Articles that touch any clinically sensitive topic — IBS, SIBO, mold illness, postpartum, pregnancy, medication interactions — are reviewed by a member of our advisory board before publication. The names and credentials of those reviewers are on the scientific advisory board page. Their job is to flag anything that overstates the evidence, drifts into therapeutic territory, or misses a safety consideration.

I am also explicit about the limits of the evidence. When the research is preliminary, I say so. When the human data is thin and the mouse data is interesting, I say that too. The fastest way to lose a reader’s trust is to phrase a tentative finding like a settled fact — and the fastest way to keep their trust is to be honest about how strong the evidence actually is.

Expertise and credentials (honestly)

Here is the honest, unvarnished version of my qualifications, because anyone who is going to base health decisions in part on what they read on this site deserves to know exactly who is writing it.

• I am not a physician. I do not hold an MD, DO, or any clinical degree. I do not diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure anything. Nothing on this site does, and nothing on this site is allowed to imply that it does.
• I am not a registered dietitian. I do not write personalized nutrition prescriptions. Articles on diet topics describe what the published research has explored — never what any specific reader should eat for any specific condition.
• What I am is an entrepreneur who has spent several years immersed in the gut microbiome and mycotoxin research literature, the founder of a supplement company, and a reasonably good explainer of what the science says — including its limits. I read primary sources, I cite them, and I am honest when I do not know something.
• The clinical layer comes from the advisory board. Every pillar article on this site — the long-form guides to IBS, SIBO, leaky gut, mycotoxin exposure, postpartum recovery, anything that touches a medical decision — is reviewed by at least one board-certified physician on our advisory team before publication. They are listed by name and credentials on the advisory board page.
• I do not pay for endorsements. No undisclosed sponsorships. No affiliate placements written to look like editorial content. No paid reviews. The site monetizes by selling Complete Gut Defense and nothing else.

The reason I am this explicit about what I’m not is that the supplement industry is full of people who imply credentials they don’t hold. I refuse to be one of them. A reader who finds out later that a founder padded a bio loses trust in everything else on the site — and they should.

Contact and corrections

The single best signal that an information source takes itself seriously is a working corrections policy. If you find a factual error on any page on this site — a misquoted study, an outdated guideline, a strain attribution that doesn’t match the original paper, anything — please email me directly: hunter@naturesjourneyhealth.com. The general corrections inbox is corrections@naturesjourneyhealth.com if you prefer that route.

I read corrections personally and respond. When a correction is warranted, the page is updated, the “last updated” date moves, and material corrections are noted in the article footer. The full standard is in the editorial standards page.

A few standing commitments I’ll put in writing here so they’re easy to hold us to:

• I will never make therapeutic claims about our product on this site, in email, in advertising, or anywhere else. Nature’s Journey Complete Gut Defense is a dietary supplement. It supports normal physiological function. It does not treat, cure, or prevent any disease, and the FDA disclaimer at the bottom of every page is not legal boilerplate — it is true.
• I will not invent reviews, ratings, or testimonials. Every review count on the product page reflects verified customer feedback. Negative reviews stay up.
• I will not hide conflicts of interest. Founder-written content is labeled. Advisory board members’ relationships with the company are disclosed on their bios. Any research the company funds (none, currently) will be disclosed explicitly on any page that cites it.
• I will publicly correct mistakes rather than quietly editing the page. If a correction is substantive, the page will say what changed and when.