Natural

wellness

Natural. It’s a word you might take for granted. But since we live in a world of chemicals and toxins, we can use some more natural.

You can’t get rid of all the chemicals in your life, but you can bring more natural into your body and your home.

Here are some of the things you use every day that have natural alternatives. You may not realize that there are chemicals in skin care products, personal care products, home cleaning products and more.

Face cream

Body Lotions

Cleansers

Shampoo and other Hair Products

Toothpaste

All-purpose Cleaners

Laundry Cleaners

Laundry Softeners

Laundry Brighteners or Whiteners

Window Cleaners

Bathroom Cleaners

Scouring Cleaners

 

pure wellness

How about your drinking water. Do you drink pure, natural water? If you’re not filtering, then probably not. Even bottled water is not always pure.

Natural Supplements

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.

sports nutrition purity

Purity and Safety

The brand we recommend here for natural food supplements and sports nutrition supplements are Shaklee products. Dr. Shaklee invented the word vitamin when he first discovered his vitalized minerals back in the 1920’s. There’s a lot of longevity with this company, along with safety and purity.

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.

Shaklee is the #1 Natural Nutrition Company in America, but this brand is more than natural supplements because natural is also what you put on your skin or on any part of your body and also what’s in the air that you breathe. Shaklee is total wellness and so there are natural products for your body and natural products to keep the air in your home environment clean too.

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