XTEND-YOUR-LIFE Newsletter
17 March 2004
The biggest boost for overall health and wellbeing... ever! PART 1
Over the next two issues, starting this week I am going to tell you how you can...
Improve the quality of your life.
Increase your energy levels.
Protect yourself against viruses, flu's and colds.
Reduce the likelihood of getting cancer.
Reduce the possibility of a heart attack or stroke!
Slow down your aging.
There are three positive steps that you must take to achieve these things. One is to examine your lifestyle, another is your diet and the third is to implement a professional supplementation regime. I won't address lifestyle and diet at the moment as I have already touched on this in our special report on weight loss. I would suggest you read it even if you are not overweight. You can get it for free from the special reports page on our website.
What I will do is examine the issue of supplementation! This is a much more important subject than most people realize. If you do not supplement, then you can almost guarantee that your body is deficient in certain nutrients. The only people who are exempt from this statement are those who may be living in an area with pure air, grow their own organic vegetables and fruit in good quality soil uncontaminated by pesticides and herbicides, raise their own livestock on grass, get plenty of sleep and are free from stress! (Not many people around in this position)
You can get all your nutrients from fruit and vegetables... nonsense!
OK, I know that some 'authorities' say that you can get all your essential nutrients from 5 or 6 servings a day of fruit and vegetables. This is nonsense, because this is not possible for most people even if they do eat that many servings. The so called 'fresh' foods that you buy at the supermarket today only contain a fraction of the nutrients they once did. This is due to mass production farming practices, storage protocols, picking before being ripe and so on. Read the newsletter I wrote back on the 21st August 2001. The facts will shock you! You can find it by going to the newsletter page on the website and looking under the archives.
You may ask yourself, why do the 'authorities' suggest that you can get all the nutrients that you need from the food that you eat if this is not true? I certainly ask myself this question! I keep coming back to the same answer... many of the 'sources' from where some of these 'authorities' draw their information have a vested interest in the 'health care business' which is a misnomer for the 'sick' business!
Did you know that there are more people employed in the cancer industry than those who actually have cancer? Pretty sad, given that the greatest majority of cancer is avoidable!
Why are there more sick people today?
If these 'authorities' assertions were correct then how come there are more sick people in the 'civilized' world today than there was a 100 years ago? Oh, you may answer, this is because people live longer! True... and false... because they don't live much longer even though the statistics say so. But, these statistics are a gross distortion. They are distorted because they are based on averages and the average life expectancy many decades ago was artificially low due to high infant mortality rates that don't apply any more. I devoted an issue on this subject back on the 2nd April last year. Have a look at it and you will see what I mean.
Just reflect on this for a moment! Ask you parents or your grandparents what age their parents, grandparents and great grandparents died? You may be surprised that they lived longer than what you may have thought, and they did so without the help of pharmaceutical drugs, without hospitals and suffered less from 'elderly' diseases such as Alzheimer's that are so common today. This is because they were not subject to the environmental hazards that we are all faced with today and further, their food was wholesome and didn't come out of a packet full of empty calories.
Because of modern living we have no choice, whether we like it or not but to supplement if we seriously wish to avoid the diseases that are rampant in our community and are projected to get a lot worse. Therefore, if you are like the majority of people and consider supplementation as a desirable but low priority I sincerely believe that you should reconsider your priorities.
The reason why most people do not supplement is either they don't believe in it (in which case they are deluding themselves) or, they have more 'important' things on which to spend their money. But... are they saving money when they apply money which they could allocate to their supplementation program to perhaps a bigger house mortgage or a new car? Ironically no, because if you ignore your biggest asset... YOU... and your subsequent earning ability is affected through ill health then what you would have spent in quality supplementation pales in insignificance. Quality supplementation is the cheapest self insurance program you can implement.
Hopefully, I have made my point on the principles behind supplementation.
What works?
Now, we come to the next stage in which we face the question, "If I buy supplements how do I know that they are any good?"
This is a valid question given that there is so much hype in the market place, many 'fly by nighters' in for a quick buck particularly on the internet, outlandish claims for this and that supplement and so on. Because it tends to be a fairly complicated science there is no easy answer to this. It becomes even more complicated when you read about issues such as bio-availability of different products and so on. For example, tablets which pass through you intact and clog up the sewers!
With regard to the last point some MLM (multi level marketing) companies in particular have capitalized on this through a distortion of the facts. This is usually in support of a liquid supplement in which they claim 98% bio-availability... which I will come back to in a moment.
So, is it true that tablets will sometimes pass through the system with no absorption at all? Absolutely! BUT... this statement only applies to poor quality tablets that are mass produced, use cheap excipients and binders, and are hard compressed. These type of tablets are very common in supermarkets and they do nothing for you, and ironically at the end of the day are the most expensive tablets that you can buy!
But, good quality tablets do not pass through the body intact. Imagine if you went to the drug store and bought an OTC and it went through your body without breaking down! This doesn't happen, because they are designed to break down in a controlled and predictable manner.
However, the standards that apply to the pharmaceutical tablets are not enforced on the dietary supplement industry... at least not in the US... not yet! This is why there is so many substandard supplements on the market which tend to 'taint' supplements in general.
Bio-availability...
Before I get too far ahead of the liquid supplement issue let me address it. The marketers of liquid supplements play on the premise that being a liquid that their products are 98% bio-available. Sounds reasonable doesn't it? But, it's wrong! Wrong, because most nutrients are absorbed into the blood stream via the lining of the small intestine. The nutrients have to go through the stomach first before they can be absorbed into the blood stream. As soon as you swallow a liquid supplement and it 'hits' your stomach it is immediately attacked by your stomach acids and enzymes. Those nutrients that survive pass through to the duodenum which is the upper part of the small intestine and begin to be absorbed through the lining into the blood stream.
This is OK for some nutrients but devastating for others. This is why the liquid supplements are so limited because many of the nutrients that they contain are damaged by up to 80% when they arrive in the stomach. Therefore, it is impossible to achieve a 98% absorption rate! The same principle applies to good quality tablets and capsules. The active ingredients that they contain all meet the same fate... unless the ingredients are actually designed to be released in the stomach... which some are.
So, how do you overcome this problem and get the active ingredients into your blood stream? Not easily, but it is possible! The pharmaceutical industry has been doing it for years! This is how they do it.
Enteric coating!
Firstly they develop a tablet that will disintegrate at a certain pH within a specific time. This is based on the pH level found in the upper intestine. (Note: although the stomach is highly acidic, the upper intestine is slightly alkaline). Next they coat that tablet with a special acid resistant enteric coating that can withstand the stomach acid for the period of time that it takes to pass through the stomach. The tablet transit time and the average pH of the intestine have all been clearly established.
When a person swallows the tablet, it passes through the stomach unscathed, and within 10 - 20 minutes of entering the duodenum the enteric coating disintegrates releasing the active ingredients which dissolve within 30 - 60 minutes before it passes through the upper intestine. Each batch manufactured is required to be tested using specialized equipment that simulates the fluids in the stomach and intestine!
OK, you say, then why don't supplements all have this delivery system? Two reasons:
The equipment is very specialized and expensive and requires advanced technology.
Not all ingredients in dietary supplements are destroyed by stomach acids which mean some simple formulations are OK in capsule or ordinary tablet form. These are usually quite basic products.
I hope that this has given you a better understanding of the importance of the 'delivery' of active ingredients. The correct delivery system can have an impact of more than five fold on the efficacy of a supplement. But... there is much more to just the delivery system when it comes to producing a quality supplement. I will tell you more in PART 2 of this newsletter.
Finally (for today), I am going to let you know that we made the decision about 8 months ago to invest in this advanced delivery technology and we now have it successfully commissioned and operating and have just released our third generation Total Balance using this technology. (We follow all the same testing protocols as required for the pharmaceutical industry.) BUT... not only have we employed this delivery system which is a first for this type of supplement, but we have also increased the active ingredients in our Total Balance Unisex by 55%, and 40% in our Men's and Women's Plus... and the good news is with only a minimal increase in price.
Whereas the second generation product was at the 'cutting' edge of the supplement industry, the new generation pushes it way over the top and puts it in a class all on its own! It even prompts the body to create its own CoQ10 equivalent to a level more than a 100mg CoQ10 tablet! Also the metabolic pathways that the active ingredients follow can now be better controlled.
The feedback that we are now getting from our pre release testing already gives me deep satisfaction that the time and effort in putting this technology in place was worth it. My family, staff and I are all feeling the difference!
If you would like to know more about how this system works for Total Balance, please click here and be sure to follow the links to the ingredients and the enteric coating system.
Until next time,
Info about the editor.
P.S. Please pass this newsletter on to a friend. Thank you.
Important notice: All material provided within the newsletter XTEND-YOUR-LIFE is for informational and educational purposes only, and is not to be construed as medical advice or instruction. No action should be taken solely on the contents of this publication. Consult your physician or a qualified health professional on any matters regarding your health and wellbeing or on any opinions expressed within this newsletter. The information provided in this newsletter is believed to be accurate based on the best judgment of the editor but the reader is responsible for consulting with their own health professional on any matters raised within.
