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The fierce rivalry these days in the vitamin supplement business is a war between retailers who struggle to differentiate themselves through style rather than substance. Mainstream brand name vitamin supplement companies usually assert that their products are vastly superior to their competition, with superior ingredients used to manufacture their products.
But in reality, these mainstream vitamin supplement companies all purchase their essential ingredients from a core group of wholesale sources that operate behind the scenes and are generally unknown to the public. So while there may be hundreds of vitamin and supplement companies, there is really a relatively small number of primary sources manufacturing the critical nutritional ingredients. In short, most vitamin and supplement companies purchase from the same source. They amount to the same product in different packaging.
This is common in the retail industry. General Motors, the once great American car company, has subdivisions like Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac, and used to have Oldsmobile (not your parents Oldsmobile). Many people who drive Chevys don’t know that the guy driving the Cadillac next to them is driving a car made by the same company. These private label manufacturing companies often supply the packaging and [...]
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Researchers of one study found that “CoQ10 is an anti-aging substance under normal physiological conditions.” This was under testing in mice using doses that would be the human equivalent of 500 mg to 1700 mg per day. Although their research suggested that 1700 mg per day may induce cognitive impairment, these researchers admitted that, “it would be fair to comment that the upper safe limit of 1200 mg per day recommended by the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) is lower than the estimated 1700 mg per day that would lead to cognitive impairment in humans.” In other words, use in moderation like everything else.
Ubiquinone, another name for coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) comes from the word “ubiquitous,” meaning “everywhere” – a fitting name since it is found in and essential to every cell of the human body. Unfortunately, levels of CoQ10 produced by the body decrease with age by as much as 70%, and with the development of certain diseases such as Parkinson’s , asthma, and heart disease. Scientists have been studying CoQ10 for many years, and it is now one of the most popular health supplements in the world due to [...]
It’s a little humorous to find a new article by Natural News “Features writer”
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S. L. Baker, writing in a Friday, September 11, 2009 column, where he seems to have made a new discovery in colloidal silver, a substance that has been around for over a century. WikiAnswers says,
“the process for making colloidal silver was discovered in the late 1800′s, shortly after Edison harnessed electricity, it immediately became a popular natural infection-fighting agent, used both topically on cuts, burns and infections, and internally as a remedy for a wide variety of infectious diseases. Numerous medical studies were conducted on colloidal silver throughout the early 1900′s, and the substance was used in hospitals and laboratories around the world, in a wide variety of forms, to help fight infection and disease. Studies documenting its phenomenal infection-fighting qualities were written up in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the British medical journal Lancet, and many others. Indeed, as far back as 1919, Alfred Searle, founder of the giant [...]
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Alpha-lipoic acid is considered one of the most powerful antioxidants manufactured by the human body. It has been called the “universal” antioxidant because it boosts glutathione levels in cells, and is both water and fat soluable. Alpha-lipoic acid is found in every cell of the body, a cofactor in several multi-enzyme complexes where it helps turn glucose into energy.
Alpha-lipoic acid is an essential co-factor in energy metabolism in organisms from microbes to humans. A nutritional coenzyme that participates in the energy metabolism of proteins, carbohydrates and fats, with a particular role in blood glucose disposal, alpha-lipoic acid is necessary for the mitochondrial energy production of the cell, which keeps us alive; it can also help reduce the aging process which reduces wrinkles in the skin and inhibits the disease process.
The therapeutic potential of alpha-lipoic acid is just beginning to be explored, but holds great promise. Alpha-lipoic acid can be found in foods such as organ meats, spinach, broccoli, peas, brussel sprouts, and rice bran. The richest natural food source of alpha-lipoic acid is red meat; other sources include, spinach, broccoli, potatoes, yeast (particularly brewer’s yeast), and certain organ meats (such as [...]
SAM-e. What if I told you there was an all-natural health supplement on the market – like a vitamin – that in scientific studies has proven to be more effective at treating and alleviating depression than the best pharmaceutical antidepressants on the market, without the harmful side-effects?
One way it does this is to boost and balance neurotransmitters in the brain that are responsible for mood and energy – for example, serotonin and dopamine. Dopamine is integrally linked to feeling energetic, and one of the only ways ever discovered to extend lifespan is by maintaining youthful levels by protecting dopamine cells in the brain. More about that in another article.
Scientific studies have shown that people who take pharmaceutical anti-depressants for long periods of time are 7 times more likely to develop cancer than those who don’t. This should be a major concern for people people who are taking pharmaceutical antidepressants on a long-term basis.
SAM-e is not only great at reducing depression and elevating your mood, but is also one of the best health supplements you can take for your joints – building and protecting the soft tissue, cartilage, tendons, etc. that allow you to move easily and fluidly, [...]
Calcium is the most abundant and important mineral in your body. While it is mosly found in your teeth and bones, it performs vital functions throughout your metabolic, nervous, cardiac and circulatory systems. Heart attack patients are often found to have low calcium levels.
Calcium also helps to stimulate enzymes that assist in the absorption of nitrate and nutrients from your food, assist in cell division and proper formation, the breaking down of starches and blood-clotting.
Even plants lose their color and produce less fruit when lacking calcium in the soil!
In fact, many diseases will result from too little calcium in the body, causing low pH levels, or an “acidic” rather than an “alkaline” condition to result. This is a new theory of aging which holds that it is the loss of calcium from our bones that causes a lot of disease and aging. Calcium prevents the blood from becoming too acidic and helps maintain a normal pH balance of about 7.2.
An alkaline diet, which helps preserve the calcium in the bones where your body can retrieve it when necessary, is high in fruit, vegetables, legumes, and nuts, and lower in grains, carbohydrates such as bread, [...]
Colloidal silver results when the molecular structure of silver is altered. The substance is then suspended in a liquid solution. [...]
Vitamins are an essential part of nutrition and vital for the proper functioning of our bodies. Vitamins play an important role in most body processes and other essential molecules and nutrients are derived from vitamins or produced by using them. Vitamin K is one of the most important vitamins in the body, and it is necessary to get adequate quantities through our diet and supplementation.
Vitamin K was discovered by Henrik Dam in 1929 when he realized that a compound in cholesterol could prevent bleeding. Vitamin K is “fat soluble”, which means that it is better absorbed when ingested with fat. The “K” is derived from the German word “koagulation.” Coagulation refers to the process of blood clot formation. While a normal healthy body can produce vitamin K, supplementation is advised for those with poor diets or as a general insurance.
When vitamin K deficiency does occur, it is most likely to happen in newborns, especially if they are premature, breastfed, or their mother was taking anticoagulant medication. Babies are born with sterile intestines; therefore, there’s no bacteria in the gut to produce vitamin K2, making them more susceptible to vitamin K deficiency if their diet has inadequate amounts.
Deficiency [...]
Great news for you vitamin lovers.
A new study published in the International Journal of Cancer by researchers from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center found that higher levels of the alpha-tocopherol form of Vitamin E resulted in a 53% reduction in lung cancer. Cancer of the lung is the most common and deadliest form, from which more people die than any other type. Only 25% of people diagnosed with lung cancer live for more than a year.
There are two main groups of vitamin E – tocopherols and tocotreinols – both of which contain the 4 varieties alpha-, beta-, gamma- and delta. This study examined the tocopherol group. Unlike alpha-tocoferol, the beta-, gamma- and delta-tocopherol forms of vitamin E failed to show significant benefits when considered by themselves.
This is thought to be the first study of its kind to distinguish between the different forms of Vitamin E with respect to lung cancer. This is important as most people don’t realize there are so many different forms of vitamins, including natural vs. synthetic. Many studies of vitamin E, for example, may only use one of the sub-optimal or synthetic forms and then generalize the results to all [...]
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As you may know, Vitamin D has been making headlines lately, and for good reason. Scientists are beginning to discover the tremendous health benefits of this long neglected vitamin, and unfortunately, how deficient most people are in it.
If you don’t get much sun, odds are you don’t get enough vitamin D.
African-Americans and others with dark skin, as well as older individuals, have much lower levels of vitamin D due to less creation of the vitamin from exposure to sunlight. A normal African American with dark skin color has a sun protection factor of 15-30. They can stay out 15-30 times longer in the sun, but the downside is that an African American who is dark skinned would need approximately 7-10 times the amount of sun exposure as a light skinned person. If you put a sunscreen on with an SPF of 8, it reduces your ability to make vitamin D in your skin by more than 95%. A sunscreen of 15 reduces vitamin D production by an astounding 98%.
Worldwide, it is estimated that more than 1 billion across all ethnicities and age groups have insufficient amounts of vitamin D in their blood. In [...]
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