Making the Brand with Chervin Jafarieh, Part 3: What Our Bodies Need
Wellness, peace, environmental consciousness: These are three core tenets which Chervin Jafarieh embraces. The founder of Cymbiotika and wellness industry superstar walked a long
CELEB Magazine
Wellness, peace, environmental consciousness: These are three core tenets which Chervin Jafarieh embraces. The founder of Cymbiotika and wellness industry superstar walked a long path to get to where he is now. CELEB sat down with Jafarieh to ask about his life and what his path looked like. In part 1, Jafarieh shared stories of his childhood and what made him the person he is today. In part 2, we talked about the transformative moments that changed the course of his life forever. In part 3, we examine how Jafarieh embraced wellness and started on the path to sharing that opportunity with others.
If you missed the first part, check it out here: Part 1: The Journey.
If you missed the second part, check it out here: Part 2: Through the Death Portal.
Deciding on Wellness
Jafarieh explains, “After the snake bite, I went through a moment in time where I was reflecting on life. It was around that time because of what was going on with my dad, I was focused on health. I was researching, calling every colleague, doctor and alternative health practitioner in the world to try to figure out anything I could.”
Around 2018, Jafarieh was getting fed up with the nonsense out there in the health world. “I said, ‘wow, there’s so much junk out here in terms of health advice and supplementation, and what people have access to. I could see how someone could search their whole life for an answer that they never receive. I felt inspired to be a part of the solution and from that, Cymbiotika was born.”
Making Cymbiotika
Jafarieh explains, “I started researching what are the main things that people are missing in their diet. I knew from that point on, I wanted to do things transparently. The majority of supplement companies are marketing companies with no vested interest or expertise in designing and creating formulations that have high efficacy.”
But that’s not what Cymbiotika does. They want their products to be of the highest quality, designed specifically to help customers and not just make a quick buck. “We operate with precision and implement a design. We develop things based on clinical and scientific research and we are directly involved in the sourcing of our raw materials. I’m excited to get on a plane and fly to Iceland to see how our algae is being extracted and cared for. I love to show the process to people and explain why we do things the way we do. In the beginning, I wasn’t thinking about business. I was thinking about karma. No matter how big we got, I was able to keep the focus there.”
Around the end of 2018, Jafarieh’s brand and reputation began growing. Around that time, he became head of nutrition for world tennis star Novak Djokovic. Shortly after other athletes and health enthusiasts came to him for mentorship and guidance all while Jafarieh was spending a lot of his time caring for his dad.
“I got this beautiful home in San Diego, 21 acres. We called it The Sanctuary. I moved my dad there, but it was a very trying time seeing my dad’s health deteriorating in front of me. My girlfriend and I filled this home with love. My mother, sister, niece and nephew came together and we all spent most of the year there caring for my father and making beautiful memories. Cymbiotika was my medium for expressing my love as well as providing a solution to my fathers condition and giving it back to the world. It’s really what kept me going. If I didn’t have that, I would have been in a tailspin.”
About six months before his father passed, Cymbiotika gained a CEO, Shahab Elmi came to Jafarieh and asked to be a part of it. “He’s like, ‘I want to be a part of it. I don’t want anything, just let me help you.” “He came in as my friend and my CEO, but quickly became my support in all things life and business partner in Cymbiotika. It was such a beautiful experience being able to surrender the business side and be able to focus on what I love to do, which is the development, the fun part.” Elmi and Jafarieh shortly after discovered that their grandfathers were business partners in the ’60’s back in Iran; so call it fate.
Despite fighting the greatest battle imaginable, Jafarieh’s father’s health continued to deteriorate. “I never believed that he was actually going to leave his body until a week before. At that point, I was building this company and juggling everything with my dad, and it was just not part of my belief system. It was hectic to say the least. I was really out of body, staying strong for my dad. He did eventually transition February 28, 2019, at our home, in my arms. It was a very cathartic surrender. I felt relief for him, I knew how much he was struggling.”
Even though it’s been two years, the grief lingers. “I still haven’t come to grips that his ashes are here on my mantel. I’ve done a lot of soul-searching, but it’s a fact, there’s a hole in my heart, so now I’m learning how to navigate life with that.”
After his father passed, Jafarieh experienced many moments of feeling like his father’s spirit was close, or his memory was touching his life. At one point, he had a lucid dream where his father was in the car with him, and gave him a smile that reassured Jafarieh all was well. As Cymbiotika grew and Jafarieh journeyed through his grief along the way, the company became a family.
Magnesium
Part of Jafarieh’s drive to bring the best products to customers comes from his appreciation of Magnesium, and its role in overall wellness. “Magnesium seems to be at the core of just about every cellular biochemical process in the body. It’s at the root of everything, everything that transcribes information onto a cell to tell it what to do. Enzymatically you can’t do it without the magnesium. Neurotransmitters can’t develop without magnesium, we can’t fluctuate insulin without it; it’s just a cornerstone of our body.”
Magnesium and calcium orbit one another in function inside of the body, and balance each other out. Jafarieh explains, “We are over-calcified as a society. You can see it’s the leading cause of heart disease, the number one killer in the world. What is heart disease? It’s not cholesterol, it’s calcium buildup in the heart, which causes sclerotic disease, and ultimately something breaks down. All the other neurodegenerative diseases, calcium. Because we are so depleted with magnesium, the body can’t balance. That’s the situation, a lack of magnesium. That’s why it’s at the heart of our supplementation with Cymbiotika.”
The soil in our country has been over-farmed and is lacking in a lot of vital nutrients that our food then can’t absorb. And because society is so entwined with alcohol, Jafarieh shares, “Alcohol depletes the body of magnesium. People are drinking several drinks a night, or a week, and it’s pulling from their magnesium reserves. It’s just one of those things that can make such a huge difference in someone’s health. Irregular heartbeat, lack of sleep, anxiety, Reynaud’s Syndrome, hair issues, skin issues; this is your body signaling to you that something is wrong.”
Jafarieh doesn’t want to just mask the symptoms the way he feels a lot of modern medical practitioners do, he wants to heal it from the inside out. “Certain drugs serve a purpose, I’m not so extreme in my thoughts as to be against all prescription drugs. But our whole thing is, let’s find out what’s causing the problem and let’s heal the system. Let’s get to the root cause. To give you an analogy: If you drive a $5 million car off the lot and the check engine lights come on, what do you do? Do you keep driving? No, you pull over and call the dealership and have it taken care of. But we’re not doing that with our bodies which are infinitely more valuable than some $5 million car. Could you imagine driving that car with those check engine lights on and you just take scotch tape and cover the light? That’s what we’re doing with our health.”
Jafarieh has spent years focusing on ways to improve health and maximize wellness, and in part 4 we will explore what his tips are for living a more healthful life.