An ulcer and spoonfuls of cayenne pepper were at the origins of a kitchen-table business that is now Nature's Sunshine Products Inc., an international business with 500 employees.

In 1972, Kristine F. Hughes watched as her husband, Gene, would eat spoonfuls of cayenne pepper and chase the powder down with a drink of water. Someone had told Gene the cayenne would help his ulcer. Even though it was very difficult to swallow the cayenne this way, Gene began to see a noticeable improvement in his ulcer.Kristine suggested they buy some capsules to put the cayenne pepper in to make the remedy easier to swallow. Soon, Kristine thought that if the regimen worked for Gene, other people might benefit from it as well.

The family began encapsulating herbs by hand around the family's kitchen table. They began selling their products through multilevel marketing in 1974. Nature's Sunshine Products Inc. now has its headquarters in Provo and a distribution facility in Spanish Fork.

The company was called Amtec Industries when it went public in 1976 and began trading on the NASDAQ exchange and became Nature's Sunshine in 1983. Officials moved into corporate headquarters in the East Bay Business Park in 1992.

Nature's Sunshine herbal products and vitamins packaged in capsules and tablets are sold through a multilevel marketing network of more than 660,000 distributors in the United States and 16 countries.

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Kristine developed the company and has been back at the helm as its president and CEO since 1996. The company has as its credo "A Legacy of Caring and Sharing."

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