I was reading an article about delaying dementia with brain training and then came across the article I link to below that discusses how longevity is controlled by the brain. Current research on the brain and aging is not only fascinating, but essential because of how many people are getting some form of dementia or Alzheimer’s. It is a scary and devastating illness.

The August 4, 2009 issue of Neurology discussed a study that found people who engage in brain exercises, or brain training, can delay memory related issues.  Activities like reading, writing and playing card games may especially delay how quickly memory can decline when you do develop dementia.

Now the study cautioned that people far advanced in age may not benefit the same. So the takeaway is to keep your brain active from a younger age. Personally, I believe it is beneficial to be interested in always learning new things (reading or some other form) and keeping your brain active. It makes even more sense when you think about the high rate of people suffering with early cognitive decline and if you look for ways to prevent that from happening to you.

Here is a link to an article this week about new brain research and how the brain affects longevity:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/115245307109878604647/posts/8t958zwS7QJ

Learning more about inflammation, and how to prevent it, appears to be very important in terms of overall good health. As the article stated, different diseases have their origin in inflammation. What hurts is that many of our foods are associated with causing inflammation in our bodies. The good news is that we can get educated very easily these days, with information about targeting good health virtually at our fingertips:  what to do (lifestyle choices), what not to do, what to eat, what not to eat.

Natural Supplement for Brain Health:

Ginko Biloba

Omega 3′s

Lecithin

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It’s Spring cleaning time and chemical sensitivities can often surface when we are cleaning our homes with toxic products. Chemical sensitivities may bother you due to chemicals in personal care products as well.

Earth Day was celebrated in late April, but there are healthy benefits we can enjoy year-round when we practice Earth Day or being more ‘green’ or ‘chemical-free’ every day of the year.

Would you agree that your home should be the safest place on earth?

We just listened to a podcast about chemical sensitivities and it was really interesting. Cleaning, especially Spring cleaning after a long, dusty winter, should make you feel good right? Unless it doesn’t! If you’re bringing more toxins into your home than you’re getting rid of, chances are you’re feeling it.

Here is a recording of the podcast that you can listen to (I have highlighted a good bit of the info in this article):

(If this audio will not play for you here on this site, go here:  http://antiagingbydesign.com/Chemical_Sensitivities.mp3)

People who develop chemical sensitivities can have different symptoms from headaches, allergies or asthma, to skin issues – or if the liver gets involved, more serious illnesses. Chemicals and toxins in your everyday environment can trigger all kinds of sensitivities.

3X more people have asthma today than in 1980. Young children are especially vulnerable to chemicals and toxins in home cleaning products and laundry products for several reasons:  they put things in their mouths, they have smaller bodies that can be more sensitive to toxins that get in their system, and they don’t detoxify the same as adults.

The EPA says that the air inside our homes can be more toxic than outside – a situation that is hurting our health. You wonder why companies are allowed to sell products with these chemicals, and on top of that market to us in a way that makes us believe we need harsh chemicals to get our homes and our belongings clean. That’s really not true, and Shaklee has proved it.

Clinical tests for cleaning performance verified that natural cleaners will clean as well or even better than store brands with chemicals and toxins that are nasty and/or offensive to be around. We have a sheet on this – just email back or call us and we will send it to you.

When is the last time you sneezed when cleaning windows, or nearly passed out when cleaning your bathroom?

If you spend 15 minutes cleaning scale off of your shower walls, you can inhale 3X the safe one-hour exposure limit for glycol ethers that the Dept of Health and Human Services says can cause irritation of the eyes, nose, or skin, and even anemia.

Many tub and sink cleaners contain chlorine-releasing compounds that are linked to reproductive, endocrine and immune system disorders. And toilet bowl cleaners contain chemicals that are irritating to your eyes and skin and can even burn your throat.

When you have smells in your cleaners, these are chemicals to create the pine or other scents – and so it’s like putting chemicals on top of the chemicals that are already present in store bought cleaners.

There are chemicals in the soaps you use to wash your dishes by hand and in the dishwasher.  And they’re in your laundry products as well.  Scented laundry soaps along with scented dryer sheets combine to create even more toxins (found when gases from dryer vents were tested).

Carpet cleaners, oven cleaners, air fresheners, and pretty much every product used to clean your home exposes you to more chemicals. Most of these toxins are known to be potentially harmful on their own, but have not been tested when combined (the way we use them) so the risk is probably greater than we even realize.

In regard to commonly used scented personal care products like cleansers, lotions, hair products, deodorants, and facial skin products, there are chemicals in these as well – unless you use all-natural products.

The long-term, cumulative exposure we have to all of these toxins and chemicals is unknown. We certainly can’t eliminate all of them from our lives because we live in a world of chemicals, We can, however, do certain things to limit exposure.

Ways To Live More Chemical Free

Thanks so much for reading to the end.  Here is a new pdf on chemicals and the green cleaning solutions from Shaklee Get Clean home cleaning products.  Click the link below and it will open in a new tab, or you can download and print.

Chemicals and Green Cleaning

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I always thought it was funny when you say to someone that they can live till 100 years old and they laugh at you and say they would never want to do that. Why not?

Is it because you associate growing old with getting sick. Or having more aches and pains. Or simply thinking that you wouldn’t be enjoying life at that age?

Today we have the opportunity to live longer AND healthier. It doesn’t happen by chance, but it can certainly be reality. That reality includes taking care of yourself, making good choices, and targeting a healthy lifestyle all of your life.

Today our AntiAgingByDesign.com family would like to share a post from Dr. Jaime McManus from Shaklee who recently wrote about Living Longer.

Doctor Jamie McManus, M.D., FAAFP
Chair of Medical Affairs, Health Science, & Education

I recently read a report on longevity in the Untied Stated by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine and couldn’t believe what I was reading.

The report said that the United States ranks around 40^th in the developed world for longevity (that means people in places such as Cuba, South Korea, and Hong Kong can expect to live longer than us).

Something even more surprising is that the gap between the U.S. and other developed countries is getting LARGER, according to the report. The reason the U.S. is falling behind is because younger people (people under 50) are dying at a faster rate than their peers in other developed countries–this is despite the fact that the U.S. spends more on health care than any other country (by a long shot).

There is a video that summarizes the findings that you can watch here: U.S. Health in International Perspective.  So, what is going on?

When compared with the average of peer countries, Americans fare worse in at least nine health areas:

• Infant mortality and low birth weight
• Injuries and homicides
• Adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases
• Infections
• HIV and AIDS
• Drug-related deaths
• Obesity and diabetes
• Heart disease
• Chronic lung diseases

Many of these conditions have a particularly profound effect on young people, reducing the odds that they will live to age 50.

While there are many things on this list that we can think of changing, the one area that jumps off the page at me is obesity and diabetes. Diabetes alone is associated with around 230, 000 deaths every year and costs around $174 billion dollars. Not to be outdone, obesity is estimated to cost around $147 billion.

The key to understanding why obesity and diabetes are such a problem is to understand that most people don’t actually die from either condition but from the diseases associated with these conditions, such as heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and certain cancers—and the numbers here are even more astounding.

But the real point I want you to take away from reading this is that both obesity and type 2 diabetes are almost completely avoidable if you eat right, are at a healthy weight, and exercise regularly. You have it in your hands to make changes that will impact your future health.

I don’t like being last in anything—how about you? We have access to all we need to lead healthier lives and move up that longevity list! So make a pledge with me TODAY to put you and your health on the right path. Put on your walking shoes—and take an apple along for your snack. See you out there.

Source:  Shaklee:  Creating Healthier Lives

I agree that we certainly don’t have to be last in anything in our great country, and with all of the information that we have available to us to help stay healthy. As Dr. Jaime mentioned, a healthy weight solves a lot of problems from feeling more energized and youthful to healing various illnesses and preventing diseases.

Losing weight and/or maintaining a healthy weight is not easy to do for most of us. But it is do-able for sure. It’s about making a choice and then getting the mindset to help you stay focused till you reach your goal.

I challenge you to do just that today! And it’s right in time to see positive changes by the beginning of summer.

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Did you know that setting goals can help your life run smoother, help you eliminate stress, and help you feel a whole lot better about yourself and the direction your life is going.

What are some tips to help you set goals?

• Be Specific When You Set Goals
• Make Goals Measurable
• Make Goals Achievable
• Make Goals Realistic
• Have Goals Be Time-Driven

Setting goals is fundamental to succeed at anything, especially at achieving a healthier lifestyle. Creating your own individual goal will help you to keep motivated and focused, in addition to meeting your own unique needs.

After setting your goal, it is very helpful to display it somewhere visible at home, or work to reinforce it every day. Put it all over the place if that helps you. Do what resonates – you have to figure out what works for you.

Having a clear vision of what you want and a solid plan of action will help you get closer to your goal.

Let’s look closer at each tip that will help you set your goals the right way because that can be the difference between success and failure.

Be Specific When You Set Goals

The more specific, the better. Instead of saying you want to lose weight and be healthier, specify how much weight you want to lose and the amount of time you want to lose it. For example, “I want to lose one pound a week for the next 90 days.” Or “For the next 90 days, I will eat at least two servings of vegetables every day.”

Make Goals Measurable

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Choose a goal in which you can actually see the changes occur. For weight loss, you can measure your progress with a scale, a measuring tape, and the size of your clothes.

Make Goals Achievable

If your goals are too lofty—for example, I will work out every day for two hours (for someone who usually does not exercise)—you’ll never accomplish them. Rather, set goals that stretch you just enough to where they’re still attainable, but not so much that you set yourself up to fail. For example, “The next 90 days I am committing to exercise 30-40 minutes a day”.

Make Goals Realistic

This doesn’t mean easy. It means do-able. For example, if you have a sweet tooth, don’t say you’ll never eat sweets again. Instead, commit to eating a serving of fruit a day in place of a sweet treat.

Have Goals Be Time-Driven

If you don’t set a timeline or an end point, chances are, you’ll keep putting this off. Set a clear, realistic target date and take action! Better yet, have little checkpoints along the way to make sure you’re on track.

Daily Tip to Help Keep Your Goals

Turn the goal into a positive affirmation. For example,

“For the next 90 days my body will feel strong and full of energy because I am exercising 30 minutes a day”.

If you’re having trouble honing in on your goals, don’t worry. Take a moment to ask yourself these questions. Your answers will help guide you in the process.

What does achieving this goal mean to me?
What are the rewards of achieving this goal?
What do I hope to gain?
What would happen if I don’t achieve the goal?
Am I being realistic?

Remember that you have to set your goal before you can accomplish it. Having a strategy and staying focused on the end result will help you get there.

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Do you have trouble sleeping – on a regular basis? What keeps you up at night? Is your dream to sleep like a baby?

Or is it only occasionally that you lay awake and stare at the ceiling, wondering why these kinds of nights drag on forever when all the nights you sleep soundly seem over in a flash?

Personally, I don’t have much trouble sleeping. My biggest complaint is that I stay up too late and don’t like to get out of bed in the morning.

I have tried to re-set my clock more times than I can count. I would like to go to bed before midnight and get up between 7:00 and 8:00 AM. As much as I’ve tried to make that happen, most of the time it doesn’t.

What feels better for me is to stay awake until at least 2:00 AM – I am usually wide awake until then and actually work in a more focused way in the evening up until this time.

It stinks that everyone in my family who works a regular ‘day job’ is not on this time schedule. That’s the reason why I would like to change up the way I work.

Back to the question of the day.

What Keeps You Awake At Night?

Do you know what is causing your sleeping issues? Are you under a lot of pressure or stress during the day? Have you changed your diet or used a new medication? These can all affect sleep patterns and cause insomnia.

It can be difficult to properly wind down from a busy, stressful day. Have you tried any relaxation techniques that can help you transition into a more relaxed state and prepare you for sleep.

3 suggestions to help you relax before bed:

1. Meditation. You can practice this in bed before you sleep and it will help you drift off. You’ll be able to forget about your day and allow your mind to fully unwind.?
2. Yoga. There are a number of gentle yoga styles that focus on light stretching and breathing techniques. These only take 10-15 minutes and can be done just before bed.?
3. Relaxation Music. You can also listen to relaxation music to help you get to sleep. These range from soothing music tracks to the sounds of ocean waves. These sounds have a particularly relaxing effect and will also help you sleep more soundly.

Is your lifestyle during your evening hours affecting your sleep?  Certain food, drinks and other factors can be associated with you being stimulated instead of relaxed before you go to bed.

3 quick changes to help you get a better night’s sleep:

1. Avoid eating too close to bedtime. Your body needs ample time to digest your food before you sleep. The best time to eat your dinner is about 4 hours before your bedtime.?
2. Avoid caffeine. Tea, coffee, and most sodas are full of caffeine, so avoid these drinks after lunch.?
3. Avoid television and video games before bed. These are far too stimulating and you’ll find it much harder to fall to sleep afterwards.

Next look at your sleep environment. Do you go to bed in a quiet bedroom, away from any other activity in the house? If not, this could be your answer.

Creating a relaxing environment where you sleep is very important. You may need to transform your room into a more relaxing environment to help you sleep better.

3 Tips to help you relax

1. Keep your room uncluttered with minimal distractions. Don’t watch TV or work in your bedroom. Instead, assign another room in your house for these activities.?
2. If you have a ticking clock or an alarm with a light up display, get rid of it. Rid your bedroom of as many electrical items as possible or switch them off.
3. Set your thermostat for a comfortable temperature that’s conducive for sleep, and wear comfortable, loose fitting bedclothes.

A good night’s sleep helps to keep you healthy by giving your mind and body time to replenish. Follow these strategies to help you sleep well and wake up each morning feeling refreshed and ready for the day ahead!

One last idea:  It’s best to sleep in a quiet, dark room, but this isn’t always easy to achieve. If light and noise are an issue, a quick fix is to sleep with earplugs and a sleeping mask.

Natural Sleep Aid

Sometimes you try everything and still need a little more help. When that happens to me, I look at my choices for natural supplements that can either help to resolve a problem or aid in a temporary solution.

Here are 2 choices from the #1 Natural Nutrition Company in America – the only brand that I trust to build better health!

Gentle Sleep Complex – this is a unique blend of valerian, passion flower, and chamomile flower to promote restful sleep. It can be used safely to promote restful sleep and is a natural support for maintaining a calm state.

Stress Relief Complex – if it is stress that is keeping you awake, taking a Stress Relief Complex tablet every day keeps the calming ingredients working in your system both day and night. I love this product because, 1) it works really fast to relieve stress – within 30 minutes – so it is great for day time use as well as keeping you relaxed at night, and 2) it’s got healthy ingredients that give you side benefits for better health.

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If you have reached your magic number, congratulations! That number represents the days, weeks, months you have spend counting, measuring or portioning the perfect amount of calories.

It doesn’t stop here. When it comes to a healthy, happy, and in your case skinny, lifestyle, dieting isn’t a life long fix. Our bodies cannot survive long term on a decreased calorie diet. Nutrition is the key to life long dieting.

4 Wellness Tips

Dieticians and Nutritionists want you to know these tips about losing weight the healthy way:

1.  MAKE IT A LIFESTYLE, NOT A DIET

The key to weight loss success is to understand you are not on a diet. Your body lives off what you feed it. You must feed it good foods to have good results. Your weight loss journey should include goals to begin buying and preparing healthier foods in your home.

2.  SET GOALS

Setting goals is the first step to understanding what you want out of your weight loss journey. Maybe you’re doing this for another person, to see a better number on the scale or for your own health. Whatever it is, write it down and keep it somewhere you can look too whenever you need motivation. This will help you understand why you want to pursue a weight loss journey and keep you focused down the road. It’s also a good idea to set smaller monthly or weekly goals. When you accomplish a goal, celebrate with a shopping trip, manicure or maybe your favorite dessert; just remember to get back on track.

3.  KEEP A JOURNAL

Weight loss can be an emotional journey. Use a journal to keep track of what you eat and how you’re feeling. An unbalanced diet in any food group can lead to mood swings and irritability. Writing down what you eat will help you keep your plate balanced and your body feeling great. Your journal is also the perfect place to keep track of your goals!

4.  TUNE IN AND FILL UP ON THE GOOD THINGS

Distracted eating plays a major role in consuming excess calories. Turn off the television, the computer and maybe even your cell phone just in case. When it’s time to eat you shouldn’t be doing anything except eating. Focusing on your plate will bring your entrée to your attention. You may notice you have an extra large portion of pasta or too much butter and dressing. Dress up your plate with a variety of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and proteins in order to have a balanced meal. These foods will help you fill fuller longer.

If you want to stop the “yo-yo” dieting and put your self on the right track, remember these four simple concepts. To be a successful dieter you need a successful lifestyle. Find your motivation, make it visual and go after it. You deserve the happy, healthy life you’re waiting for.

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Wellness from the eyes of a college student! Guest post today by Kelly Vann.

Growing up with two sisters, I understood the “sharing” thing. One of the first things my mom taught us was not to share cups. My sisters and I each had our own cup, pink, blue and yellow. No matter where we took our cups we knew not to drink out of the cup that didn’t belong to us. Even to this day I never drink from a cup that does not belong to me.

Research shows three out of four times when one sibling is sick the others become sick as well. Moms, including my own, try their best to reduce this statistic.

My mom started with simple tasks like teaching us how to properly wash our hands. A two for one learning experience included learning the ABCs and how long to wash our hands. Learning proper hygiene from an early age reduces the risk of missing school and infecting others in your household.

I’m living proof. I claimed the perfect attendance award during my elementary school years.

A Nutritional Diet

We never used the word diet in my house but the word diet doesn’t have to mean cutting calories. It means being smart about what your family is eating. I never struggled to find food I enjoyed. My sisters were a different story. My mom made a game out of our eating habits. Each week she would set a goal. For example, a goal may be to try two new vegetables by the end of the week and when it was completed we could put a sticker on our chart. Who ever had the most stickers at the end of the week had the honor of picking what was for dinner that night.

This was a fun and easy way to get everyone in my family involved in making healthier choices. If dietary restrictions prevent one family member from enjoying a certain food group encourage them to find a supplement providing them with the same vitamins and minerals.

Rest and Relaxation

Soccer, gymnastics, basketball and track overflowed our calendar. Having multiple schedules to follow during the week made our house stressful. It’s important to focus on your family’s peace of mind as part of their health. My family set aside a part of the evening for family dinner time and Friday nights for game or movie night. This was an easy way to make sure we had time during the week to take a break from our busy schedules and get the rest we needed.

Chemicals

Living on a broke-college kid budget I started my first college semester buying whatever cleaning products were on sale. What I never knew was my budget was making me sick. I struggled through strep throats, colds, the flu and other bugs going around campus.

Then my mom stepped in, stocking my medicine cabinet and shelves with vitamins, teas and green cleaners. Needless to say I spent the spring semester  happy and healthy.

A Big Thank You!

Thank you Mom for teaching me the ABCs, how to share and how to take care of myself. It has been one of the most important lessons I’ve learned my entire life and quite possibly the reason I’m the strong, healthy, happy person I am today.

Thank YOU Kelly for a great post today and for sharing wellness tips from a healthy family.

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Did you know that heart disease – that is the #1 killer of men and women – is something like 80% preventable? This is what current statistics say and it’s good news for everyone who wants to target physical wellness.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention published statistics that 715,000 Americans have heart attacks each year and that 600,000 people die as a result.

If you can reduce your risk of having a heart attack or lower your risk of vascular disease, would you do it?

The first thing you need to understand is that the heart is not a single organ operating on its own in your body. It is attached to your vascular and lymphatic systems and is controlled by your nervous system.

If there is something wrong with your blood vessels, it is going to affect your heart. What kinds of things get into your blood stream?

• Food from your digestive tract
• Environmental toxins
• Anything absorbed through your lungs or skin

Heart Disease:  A Disease of Choice?

1. Are you a smoker?
2. Is your cholesterol high?
3. Are you overweight?
4. Do you have high blood pressure?
5. Is your diabetes out of control? 
6. Do you exercise on a regular basis?

All of the above are lifestyle choices. You have to choose to exercise. You have to choose to stop smoking. You have to do what it takes to lower your blood pressure or cholesterol or get to a healthy weight.

Cholesterol levels are usually the first thing assessed in evaluating heart health. WebMD states that:  ”Abnormal cholesterol levels such as high LDL cholesterol or low HDL cholesterol are a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke.”

Doctors use two primary indicators of heart disease:  homocysteine and C-reactive Protein (CRP) levels. High blood homocysteine can cause a sudden-death heart attack or stroke. CRP levels measure inflammation and high levels put you at risk for heart disease as well as many other diseases.

Your diet plays a big role in heart disease prevention. It can help you control cholesterol and your weight. Eating the right foods helps give you the energy for physical activity and can prevent diseases like diabetes.

So the food you eat and the lifestyle choices you make every day do matter. If you smoke, stop smoking NOW. And if you don’t want to develop heart disease, make the right choices.

Wellness Supplements and Your Heart

There have been many clinical studies of supplements and heart health. Most don’t provide conclusive results and many are what I call doomed from the start. That’s because the trials primarily use aged individuals who are already sick.

Diseased tissues and cells in your body lack nutrients that would keep you healthy. Every day your body replaces millions of cells – in your skin, muscles and organs. If you don’t feed your body all the nutrition it needs, the  new cells are going to be weak and unhealthy.

I believe pretty strongly in a multi-vitamin as a foundation supplement. It can help you fill the gaps in the food you eat every day and provide your body with the nutrition it needs in addition to the food you eat.

Other all-natural supplements associated with heart health are:

• Vitamin E
• Coenzyme Q10
• Selenium
• B Vitamins
• Omega-3 Fatty Acids
• Vitamin C
• Vitamin D3
• Carotenoids
• Bioflavonoids

You can find an abundance of data about how these nutrients help reduce your risk of heart attack, stroke, vascular disease and have cross benefits for preventing many different illnesses and diseases. Research shows a direct association with healthy nutrients and lowered health risks.

Heart disease is not the only disease that is more about lifestyle than it is about genetics. It is up to you to want good health, to make the choices every day to stay physically well.

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Wellness is going to be the focus of our April blogging here on AntiAgingByDesign.com and today we kick it off with Pure Wellness. We are participating with the fantastic group over at UltimateBlogChallenge.com to blog throughout the month and really like the idea of targeting wellness – making the choice to live healthy.

You really should expect to wake up in the morning and feel great. If you have health challenges, are you looking at any natural health, natural nutrition or other lifestyle changes to improve your situation? While your doctor is important in this endeavor, as well as any regimen he or she may have you on, natural health solutions can provide help and even healing.

Today let’s look closer at the word pure. When I think about pure, I think no chemicals and no artificial anything. When something is in its pure state, it is natural and doesn’t contain any of these man-made or extra things.

I also think about safety and about not being contaminated with bacteria or fungus or other toxins. On this blog we talk a lot about all-natural supplements. These are nutrients that do not contain fillers or chemicals or other substances that are not pure and natural.

There are definite troubles in the commercial supplement industry, as well as weaknesses in the oversight that should be provided by the FDA. In the mid-1990′s there were still investigative reports being conducted by newspapers.

Their stories provided the platform to review products and ingredients, and test the truth in packaging. It was discovered that around 40% of companies that claimed to guarantee the potency of their supplements actually contained less than half of the active ingredients that would result in said potency (some only 20%).

Another measure of supplements is contamination, also an issue that would negate the pure properties. When the FDA tested 324 vitamin products primarily consumed by pregnant women and/or small children in 2007, only 4 of them were found to be lead-free.

Lead can cause permanent brain damage, limited IQ development, and appear to contribute to behavioral and learning disabilities.  [The Daily Green]

More recently ConsumerLab.com did a review of multi-vitamins and the nation’s second largest retailer (Vitamin Shoppe) was forced to pull one of its leading formulations from shelves because there was lead contamination. Purity cannot be ignored.

Pure Sports Nutrition

How would you feel if you dedicated your life to training and excelling at a sport, only to have your career end in disgrace because you drank a protein or energy drink that was spiked with some kind of banned stimulant that you had no idea was present in the product?

I don’t know about you but I believe this is almost like criminal negligence, and certainly poor manufacturing standards.

While at our global conference this past year, we heard an Olympic Athlete tell the story about how Olympians are afraid to use sports nutrition due to the problems with contamination and potential interference with mandatory drug testing of athletes.

When you take a nutrition supplement with the goal to be healthier and stronger, better able to compete at the high level that is required of Olympic athletes, you should not have to be worried about negative consequences.

The reason why some of these sports careers have been destroyed is that there are manufacturers who add steroids or other growth hormones into their protein or energy drinks. The athlete is not aware because the ingredients are not advertised.

When 58 different brands of protein drinks were tested, there was steroid contamination in 25% of them and another 11% tested positive for other stimulants that are banned by international sporting authorities.  [Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab]

These issues with sports nutrition, and the information in our last post that was stated in the Rich Food Poor Food book, is disappointing. The fact that corporations place profit above ethics, quality, purity, and all of their customer’s overall good health is not good. And it’s certainly not the way the brand we represent, the Shaklee Corporation, does business.

Purity and Safety

What sets Shaklee apart from other brands in the supplement world is that the profit takes a back seat to quality. Yes, Shaklee does earn a profit, but safety, quality, purity and efficacy come first.

This has been demonstrated numerous times when products have been pulled because we can’t get pure ingredients. In one case, back in 1993, Shaklee was the only company to temporarily discontinue manufacture of their ginseng product until pure ingredients could be secured.

Even though the whole industry’s supply was contaminated, other brands allowed their products to be sold to people who had no idea of the problem. You have to be able to trust your brand for purity since the products are not regulated by any national governing authority. The individual brand sets the standard for quality.

You Need To Verify Pure

If you buy supplements, you need to ask the brand you use:  ”Why should I trust the products you make, and can you prove to me that they are safe, natural and effective?”

Sometimes we don’t find out until years after consuming a product that it has been contaminated. In 2009 there was the issue of contaminated fish oil.  Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are man-made chemicals and very dangerous environmental pollutants.

Eight different supplement manufacturers were called out for violations of a law that requires consumers be made aware of chemical exposures. Unsafe and illegal levels of these carcinogens PCBs were in the big-name brands of omega-3 supplements.

PCBs have been linked to birth defects and to cancer. Many pregnant women take omega-3′s for their growing baby’s brain health – so this is a serious issue. It puts a bad light on the industry and it doesn’t have to be that way.

A company can not take the word of the supplier that ingredients are pure. It is essential that brands do their own testing if they want to be able to verify safety. Quality control testing comes with a cost, and so if you are buying the cheapest supplement on the market chances are you are not buying from a brand that can verify purity.

When a brand regularly tests raw materials, they can immediately detect any toxin or chemical or any other substance that is not supposed to be there. I encourage you to pass the word about these issues to family, friends and other loved ones who may not be aware.

Vitalizer Safety

We will stick with our brand of choosing:  Shaklee. That’s because they have systems in place at every point from the research of a product and ingredients to the creation, manufacture, distribution and shelf life. Let’s look at just one products, Shaklee Vitalizer – a comprehensive, daily nutrition foundation system that has over 80 nutrients inside one strip of 6 tablets.

There are hundreds of pages of specifications to provide detailed instructions on how to create and test every batch of Vitalizer. More than 60 different quality checkpoints are performed before Shaklee will even accept a shipment of raw materials. Extensive tests are performed on ingredients, including over 640 on every one of the 69 raw materials that make up Vitalizer.

In production there are over 200 validation tests and another 500 or so physical tests for consistency. 110 tests are conducted on each batch of products to make sure the amount of each ingredient stated on the label is present in the right amount. 100 visual inspection are done to review the appearance of each supplement.

And then after production there is periodic testing during storage to make sure all tablets keep their freshness and potency. I like being able to know that the supplements I take for better health are safe and in line with my desire for pure wellness.

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We come to the end of Natural Nutrition Month and because of the fact that we can’t get all of the nutrients important to our health from our foods, and also because optimal nutrition should be part of our lives every day of the year, we thought it would be beneficial to you to discuss Vitamin Packs.  I like to think of all-natural, whole food vitamin supplements as nutrition insurance.

I like the word Vitamin Packs because it fits right in with our busy lifestyles. We are on the run. Our days are packed full. Easy is welcome in our lives. And a strip of 6 tablets that we can easily take every single day, that has been proven through a 20-year landmark supplement study to improve our health, is about as easy as you can get if you want high quality nutrition protection.

Before we get to details of the vitamin packs, let’s talk nutrition just a little more as we end this month long focus.

Nutrition in Our Foods

Let’s go back to a statement in the first sentence of this article: ‘we can’t get all of the nutrients important to our health from our foods.’ I mention that this is a fact because it is widely recognized now. I have heard it as far back as 30 years ago when I first started to get educated about nutrition. Today, what we learned about in natural health classes all those years ago, is catching on throughout the health industry.

Our soil is depleted so the nutrients aren’t there like they were in the past. Our food is picked early for transportation, often before all of the nutrients are peaked in our fresh fruits and vegetables. There are so many situations about why we don’t get enough nutrients in individual foods, and sometimes it’s more about the fact that some foods block nutrients from being absorbed in your body and other foods deplete your body of nutrients.

On top of that good news is the fact that if we are honest, most of us don’t make the healthiest food choices every day. We know that fast food, processed food, junk food, high sugar and high fat foods, high sugar or caffeine drinks – and lots more – are not nutritious choices. But we eat them anyway.

All the more reason we need our Vitamin Packs. Our nutrition insurance that we get the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that our cells need every single day. How healthy is it to figure that we can eat well sometimes and yet expect our cells to provide us with good health every day?

I was writing emails today and thought the content was worth including here as well since it was also a wrap up of Natural Nutrition Month.

Health News

Vitamin Packs

Vitamin Packs

That new research about cancer and the immune system makes me more happy than ever to have Nutriferon – the most unique and potent immune building, all-natural food supplement available in the world. Will see what I can find out about this new information and write more about it in April. I’ll post that here as well as on the site I am building around improving the immune system:  http://howtoimproveimmunesystem.com.

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