American Fork, UT—Xlear Inc. is celebrating 25 years of helping patients deal with persistent upper-respiratory issues. Since 2000, the company has been providing oral and nasal hygiene solutions that look at managing the oral and nasal microbiome to improve oral and respiratory health outcomes. Today, Xlear has grown into a powerhouse company that produces, markets, and distributes a wide of range of products, including Xlear Sinus Care and Spry Dental Defense. We sat down with company CEO Nate Jones to discuss the brand's history, what he expects the future to hold as they enter the next era of business, and what happens now that the company's legal issues with the FTC have finally been put to rest.
The early days of Xlear
Developed by Dr. Lon Jones, Xlear's xylitol nasal spray was intended as a solution for his patients suffering from upper-respiratory issues and as a treatment for his granddaughter’s ear infections. The results were undeniable, leading to the product's distribution to more of his patients that had been unable to find lasting relief from other pharmaceutical interventions. In 2000, Nathan Jones, Dr. Jones’ son, founded Xlear, paving the way for the nasal spray's commercial availability. Since then, the company has grown its Xlear and Spry brands, developed several unique drug-free, over-the-counter (OTC), hygiene solution products focused on providing upper respiratory and oral hygiene care, all backed by scientific studies.
This is why, when the FTC came knocking in 2020, the company was confused by the agency's allegations. They alleged that Xlear had violated the COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act by falsely advertising its xylitol nasal sprays as effective solutions at preventing and treating COVID-19. "When the government came after me, that was a big eye opening moment," Jones tells WholeFoods Magazine of his initial reaction to the lawsuit. "They sent us a letter, a warning letter, without ever having talked to us. That was incredibly outside of the norm. But I've never backed down from a challenge."
Pending litigation
After four years of battling the federal agency, in March 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the United States District Court in Utah to dismiss the FTC's lawsuit with prejudice. The clash and ultimately the victory opened Jones' eyes to the shortcomings of the agencies put in place to oversee not just his company's products, but manage the industry as a whole.
Fast forward a few months, and Xlear has just filed a lawsuit against the FTC and its authority to require substantiation for marketing claims, specifically health claims, under the FTC Act. "Under the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024) a Federal agency applying a statute is limited to what the specific language of the law says on its face," explained Xlear's lead lawyer, Rob Housman. "And, Loper goes on to require that if the agency is interpreting the statute, its interpretation must be the ‘best’ reading of law. The FTC Act says nothing about requiring substantiation. And, for a host of reasons—most importantly violations of the First Amendment and Due Process Clause—the FTC’s interpretation of the FTC Act is far from the ‘best.’ As such, we are petitioning the Utah District Court to invalidate the FTC’s substantiation requirement."
When discussing the new lawsuit, Jones shared: “We agreed with the Government to drop the prior lawsuit because we wanted to get back to the business of helping Americans get and stay healthy through great oral and nasal hygiene products. However, we very much wanted our day in court. We wanted to stop the FTC’s illegal misuse of the FTC Act to censor science. The effect of this is to stifle health innovation—which benefits Big Pharma over cutting-edge smaller companies with new approaches. We wanted to protect the right of all Americans to have access to science-based health information. By filing this lawsuit, we are pushing ahead with combating the Government’s censorship of science.”
One-on-one with Nate Jones
With news of a special press event to honor the company's Anniversary celebration, we reached out to Jones to get his thoughts on the commemoration and what was next for Xlear. "We, as a country, need to go and focus on our oral and respiratory hygiene, the oral microbiome, the nasal microbiome, that is where our first line of defense is and we're completely ignoring it," Jones told us. "You know it's all about hygiene, which is personal cleanliness and sanitation, which is communal cleanliness."
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s confirmation as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services has been trending news on our site, partially because the industry has been anxiously awaiting to see what impacts his MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) initiative will have on business. Jones notes, "Especially with the MAHA movement, I support Kennedy in doing it but I think that he does need to get someone in there that will talk to him about oral and respiratory hygiene. Because you can go and look at it, almost all of the chronic illnesses that he's trying to find an answer to have roots in the mouth and the nose."
To help usher in this next era of focus on oral hygiene, Xlear revisited some past ideas to develop its next offering. "This next product that we're introducing, it's not even an introduction," Jones shares. "It's a reintroduction because we actually put it out about 15 years ago. It's a dental probiotic. We're still gonna have to do a lot of educating to get people to understand that. But now people understand probiotics. And we just think it was 15 years ahead of its time. That should be out on the market within the next three months."
On Tuesday, June 24, Xlear held a Silver Anniversary event at its headquarters in American Fork, UT. Stakeholders and select members of the press joined members of the Xlear family for a live-streamed press conference, facility tour, and lunch celebration for its employees and special invited guests. When asked about the company's founding and its growth, Jones shared: "We started 25 years ago and we hoped it would actually take off faster than it has because the idea of nasal hygiene, washing your nose as a way to be healthy and stay healthy is just as simple if not even more common sensical than washing our hands as a way to stay healthy through hygiene."
