Not All Vitamins Are The Same...

Diane Petoskey, M.S.N.D. shares why she has found Shaklee nutritional supplements to be the best on the market. If you want results, the buck stops here!

When you deal with vitamins, you have to understand that if you're going to get your body balanced, you've got to do it with food or food based supplements. For the last 15 years that I've been doing my research in nutrition and working with people. I have had the opportunity to examine many, many different brands on the market and one of the things that I've been very aware of is that you can't trust the labels. A label can say that a product is natural or organic (I love that word) and by law, all the companies have to do is put 5% natural product in that to call it "natural". Now, the natural part could be a filler, or a binder; it doesn't even have to be part of the actual vitamin itself. So be aware that you could be buying a 95% synthetic vitamin, even if it is labeled "natural" and is very expensive.

Over the years I have had great experience and really good luck with Shaklee brand vitamins; they are the closest thing to the food source that we can get. When you take this particular brand of vitamins, you are taking vitamins that are prepared without changing the natural ratio in which vitamins naturally occur in the food.

A good example of how it works is with B vitamins. Many people that I work with around the country will say, "Yeah, I'm taking a high potency B-complex" or "I'm taking a B-50 or a B-100." When you look at the label of those B vitamins you'll see that there's 50 mg of all the Bs or 100 mg or let's say 30 mg of all those B's. Now that is not the way B vitamins occur in nature. If you take yeast or rice bran and break it down, look at the B vitamins (I have) you see that the natural ratio might be 1.2 mg of B1 to .02 mg of B2 to 30 mg of B3. Do you see what I mean? It doesn't all occur even all the way down the line and the only way that those vitamins can be in those proportions – 50 of each, or 100 of each – is if they are made that way, that means those are man made.

Well, your body was designed to assimilate B vitamins in their natural ratio, the way they occurred in food. In my opinion, the only logical way to take these nutrients to help your body become balanced is to take them in the natural form and that's what Shaklee Corporation does. They don't mix it up or change it; they just leave it the way they find it. Their processing system is the best way of any company I've ever found. They don't heat, harden or change them in any way. I really do feel that you'll get the best results with Shaklee vitamins.

Diane Petoskey, M.S.N.D.

Diane is a nationally known Nutritionist. She has been a practitioner in the field of nutritional medicine, a researcher and a lecturer for the past 20 years. Her education includes Nutrition, Herbology, Aromatherapy and Chinese medicine.

Folic Acid and Allergies

I receive nutrition updates from Dr. Stephen Chaney, Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I'd like to share this one with you, as so many Americans struggle with allergies and asthma. Do you know anyone who might benefit from this information? Please feel free to share my blog.

We're learning more and more about what folic acid can do every day. For years we have known that folic acid helps prevent anemia, birth defects and certain kinds of cancer.

However, recent studies have also shown that folic acid is important for reducing inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and heart disease.

The link between folic acid and inflammation lead researchers at Johns Hopkins (EC Matsui & W. Matsui, J. Allergy & Clinical Immunology, 123: 1253-1259, 2009) to ask whether folic acid might reduce the prevalence of asthma and allergies.

They investigated the correlation between blood levels of folic acid and circulating antibodies to common allergens, allergy symptoms, and with doctor-diagnosed asthma and wheezing in 8083 subjects from the 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).

The subjects had an average age of 38, were about equally divided between males and females and were representative of the American population with respect to both ethnicity and socioeconomic class.

The investigators didn't know what to expect and were rather surprised by the magnitude of the correlation between folic acid and allergic responses. Their data showed that:

- People with the lowest blood folate levels (below 8
nanograms per milliliter) had 40 percent higher risk of
wheezing than people with the highest folate levels
(above 18 ng/ml).

- People with the lowest folate levels had a 30 percent
higher risk than those with the highest folate levels
of having elevated antibodies to common allergens.

- People with the lowest folate levels had 31 percent
higher risk of allergic symptoms than people with the
highest folate levels.

- People with lowest folate levels had 16 percent
higher risk of having asthma than people with the
highest folate levels.

It would be a bit premature to declare that folic acid is a cure for asthma & allergies. Further studies will be needed to verify and extend these results. However, there is no risk in making sure that our blood folic acid levels are adequate.

So if you are one of the millions of Americans who suffer from asthma or allergies, my advice would be to make sure that you are getting adequate folic acid through diet and supplementation.

To Your Health!
Dr. Stephen G. Chaney

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