Benefits Of Yoga
One of the most surprising sights I have ever seen was walking into a senior citizen center [at the time I was a driver for FedEx] and seeing a “physical fitness” class in session. I kind of chuckled to myself until I saw the actual class in session and began realizing the benefits of yoga.

I was amazed to see people in their 70’s and 80’s going through a Yoga class. And that age, I was amazed to see how nimble and healthy these people truly were.

And it wasn’t …

For many, sugary foods are not consumed as occasional treats but rather on a regular, if not daily, basis. According to the USDA, Americans consume 156 pounds of added sugar on a per capita basis each year! Besides being a threat to the waistline and cause for some to become high-risk for obesity and related conditions such as diabetes, too much sugar has been shown to lead to aging of the skin.

She kissed your owies when you were a child and dried your tears when your heart broke for the first time. She told you how smart and beautiful you were when you felt the opposite, and encouraged you to go after all of your passions—whether you wanted to be a ballet dancer or a doctor. No one knows you better than your mom, and you wouldn’t be the person you are today without her.
After all these years it’s still a challenge to think of the perfect gift for her, but when it comes to showing your appreciation, it really is the thought that counts. Here are a few simple Mother’s Day gift ideas to help you do just that:

Fresh flowers are the classic Mother’s Day gift. Make your bouquet unique by hand selecting each flower yourself. Choosing the colors, scents, and varieties she likes best will make this traditional gift even more thoughtful.
Who doesn’t love a day at the spa? Treat mom to a hot stone massage, a mani-pedi, or a facial—many specialty spas actually include a Clarisonic cleansing as part of their treatment now.

Give her a brand new Clarisonic Opal Sonic Infusion System with Anti-Aging Sea Serum, so she can have the spa treatment at home whenever she wants. She’ll feel refreshed and energized with skin that looks brighter, younger, and more beautiful than ever.
Spend an afternoon together. One of the best gifts you can give a loved one is your time, so take mom wine tasting at a local vineyard or offer to help her out in the garden for a few hours.
What’s the one thing your mom has always wanted to learn to do, but never found time for? Making pottery? Figuring out what it takes to bake a soufflé? Find a local class where she can do just that. If she’s nervous, offer to take the class with her!

Potted indoor plants are a lovely, longer-lasting alternative to fresh flowers. If your mom likes to cook, pick out a few potted herbs (rosemary and basil are great options) to put on her kitchen windowsill.  If not, try a succulent or two. They come in all kinds of charming varieties and are easy to take care of.
Find an old photo of the two of you and put it in a nice frame. Set it by her bed when she isn’t looking so she’ll be surprised to find it in the morning. Who wouldn’t love to wake up to that?

What other great Mother’s Day gift ideas do you have? Share them in the comments!
Photos licensed through Creative Commons by Susan NYC & Satrina0

With this past year’s mild winter, experts predict it’s going to be a long, hot summer. All that heat means more exposed skin. And, for many, that means ramping up exercise routines and cutting back on calories to slim down. Have fun with exercise. Luckily, longer hours of daylight in the spring and summer seasons allow [...]

The Sweet Potato
Ah yes, the sweet potato. The broccoli of root vegetables, the sweet potato eludes the diets of most people because of a poor marketing campaign.

It’s terribly misunderstood, which is quite because it’s one of the healthiest tastiest foods available. Many people associate sweet potatoes with the holidays either in a candied form or whipping into oblivion with cream.

But there are far better ways to cook this tuber, and you’d do well to include it among your meal stables. I know, I know: it seems weird to treat a …

Over the years this question has constantly come up. Just yesterday it was raised on the Blog by a reader/customer. This is what was asked: “Hi, I noticed your products are not covered or reviewed by ConsumerLab.com (the most famous/trusted provider of independent test results and information to help consumers and healthcare professionals evaluate health, wellness, and nutrition products) May I know, is there any specific reason? I emailed ConsumerLab.com and they requested I suggest to you that your company participate in ConsumerLab.com’s testing. Thanks.” Because it is a question in many customer’s minds I thought that I would put the time into giving a detailed explanation to clarify the situation. So, the following is our response to this question: Yes, we would like to do something with Consumer Lab but it is not practical to do so as I will explain further. I would make the comment though that the assertion that Consumer Lab is ‘the most famous/trusted provider…’, is somewhat off the mark and they have been very controversial over the years. Some of the work they do is very good…but, quite a bit is questionable. Consumer Lab is a very effective marketing business, and they are there for a single reason…profit!! They are not a consumer organization as it seems at first glance. In fact, they are not actually a laboratory at all. We understand that their lab work is contracted out to various laboratories but a list is not supplied identifying whom these labs are and as such it is not known if those labs are GMP compliant. Consumer Lab provides services to manufacturers for a fee and they also sell information to consumers on the basis that it is independent. It is unclear if many consumers are aware of this. In other words they have a business model which creates revenue from consumers and industry alike and as such there sometimes appears to be some bias in what they do. There have been many complaints by industry that if they do not pay to have their products reviewed that they may find they get a negative one if selected for testing, but if they do pay and Consumer Lab gets a negative finding that they are not published. I have no first hand info about these issues and I make them as an observer from reading many news articles about Consumer Lab over the years. I actually met Ted Cooperman the President and Founder of Consumer Lab about 8 years ago in Washington and discussed the possibility of having Consumer Lab do testing of our products. I was told that this could have been done for a fee which at that time was around $35,000 for just one product. However we did not pursue this with Consumer Lab for several reasons which I will allude to shortly. The random tests that Consumer Lab conduct on a regular basis and publish to consumers on a subscription basis, are usually only for a very small number of actives in each product and this is generally done without each manufacturer being involved in the validation of the test methods. Because of this, the results can sometimes be suspect and this does from time to time trigger off legal action because of the damage it can do to the affected company. There is much more to testing a supplement product than just purchasing a product off the shelf and sending it to a lab and asking for an analysis of certain ingredients. Let me give you some background… You are probably aware that we are compliant with the FDA cGMP code for Dietary Supplements, and we are members of the Natural Products Association of the US. We also have a HACCP program which is audited by the NZ Food Safety Authority, part of the NZ Ministry of Health. We work with a range of GMP labs in New Zealand, Australia and the USA. In reality it generally costs between about $5000 – $15000 to do the method development and validation for each marker (ingredient) in the case of the complex products which Xtend-Life produces. The reason for this is that the marker has to be identified and quantified based on an active compound within anywhere between 30 – 90 other ingredients, all of which have the potential to either mask or magnify the test results. This means that a test method that works for an ingredient in one product may not work for the same ingredient in a different product. In the case of some ingredients it is impossible to test for them in a complex finished product. This is one of the reasons that Consumer Lab can have problems with manufacturers as it is sometimes impossible to get an accurate result unless the expensive method development and validation steps are first carried out. So, to put our Xtend-Life’s situation into perspective if it was possible to do this with every ingredient and Consumer Lab was to develop a protocol for all 85 ingredients in our Total Balance mix the costs to them would be in the order of around $750,000. An accurate analysis simply could not be done for $35,000. We have had to invest heavily in developing the protocols for ingredients but it would not be commercially sensible to share this info with others. One of the many reasons that we test the activity of every raw material we purchase along with using detailed SOP’s (standard operating procedures) is to control every process and every step of production, and there are dozens of pages of paperwork that follow every batch through production, with every step being signed and then checked and signed off by QC & QA staff. Finished product testing is important, and we do it not only for our own satisfaction but also to comply with our GMP program, but, it is only through following the rigorous procedures that I mentioned that we can be completely certain that every product is true to label. End product testing can never give a 100% reliable and accurate result.
Our processes how we achieve this will become more apparent to you as the posts explaining how we make our supplements are made over the next week or two.

We all know ADHD is characterized by hyperactivity, impulsivity, and inattention. However, not much focus is put on the cause. Unfortunately, a simple, definitive answer is not fully known or understood. While no one truly knows, evidence strongly points to genetic factors.

Do you find that you’re highly sensitive to physical and/or emotional stimulation, becoming easily overwhelmed by things that others may just pass by? It’s possible that you suffer from hypersensitivity, not classified as a disorder, but rather a condition where the body has an exaggerated response to stimuli. For example, allergens are an example of [...]

As I mentioned in an earlier blog posting, I would give readers a simplified summary of how we make our supplements. To save time I have copied the main points out of a presentation that I did about three years ago to the A4M Anti-aging Conference in Bangkok where I was a guest speaker. This will be a series of blog postings in which using that presentation I will outline some regulatory background, the QA process and then the manufacturing steps through to when the product is dispatched to our customers.
Before I start, the photo that you see is where we are based in Christchurch New Zealand. This photo was taken before the series of earthquakes which started in Sept 2010 with the most severe one last February. The city skyline is a bit different now in that the high rise buildings that you see in the background have all now being demolished along with another 1000 buildings in the CBD. Some of the houses you seen in the foreground are no longer there as large pieces of the cliff ‘shaved off’ in the last big shake last June. Fortunately the quakes have now settled down and with a bit of luck will be stable for the next 1000 years or so. As I have mentioned in earlier blog posts, we were lucky in that our factory, offices and warehouse although damaged were all repairable so we had minimal disruption. OK, let’s start! The objective of the A4M presentation was: "To present an overview of how supplements are manufactured"
This will consist of the following: 1. Regulatory Overview
Overview of GMP Myths about the US FDA
2. Manufacturing: A Step By Step Process Regulatory Overview Some countries have strict regulations, some don’t. Those Countries with clear cut rules and enforcement are: Australia, Canada, USA. New Zealand has regulations and subject supplement companies to standards and audits. However, some of the regulations are somewhat dated and new regulations have been prepared and are currently going through the select committee process before being submitted to Parliament. Because the majority of our customers are in the USA we operate under USA FDA guidelines (cGMP). Some background about US GMP
When it was first proposed some years ago there was a lot of opposition from manufacturers because of the extra costs it would impose. The GMP code is very comprehensive and in our opinion reasonable and necessary. On the 28th June, 2010 every company wanting to sell products in the US or to the US market should be GMP compliant. Sadly as at 2011 apparently about 70% of US manufacturers will still not compliant. US FDA started visits to inspect foreign manufacturers facility as from October 1, 2010 Is a US FDA registered facility GMP compliant?
There is a lot of misunderstanding about what an FDA registered facility is. Here are the key points: The US FDA does not approve any facility. The only time that a supplement manufacturing facility may get an ‘indirect approval’ is if the FDA does a surprise audit and the facility if found compliant in all respects and no rectification notices are issues. That does still not amount to approval but rather that the facility was compliant at the time of audit. As such there is no list of FDA approved facilities There is however a list of FDA registered facilities which we are on There is not a list of GMP compliant facilities The FDA Registration of facilities came about as part of the “Bioterrorism Act of 2002” I felt it was important that the above was made clear as there is a lot of misinformation about GMP and regulations, particularly on the internet. Also, contrary to what some media and others may say the US FDA is very active in policing the GMP regulations. We receive copies of notifications of non-compliance and rarely does a week go by where a manufacturer is not issue a non-compliance notice with a demand for rectification. This will be enough for today. My next post will start on the manufacturing process. There are three vital components needed to ensure that supplements are of high quality and effective.
1. The Formulation. This is a very complex process and will not be addressed at this stage as the methods that we follow are commercially sensitive.
2. The selection of ingredients. This is critical and will make or break a supplement. I will explain not so much as to how they are selected but rather what is done to ensure that what is selected is what we get and use.
3. The manufacturing process itself which guarantees that the supplement contains what is says on the label.
NEXT post: The first step…

For people who have type 2 diabetes, there is good news. The more studies that come in, the more it seems real that you don’t have to commit to expensive, debilitating and sometimes deadly (in the case of the Actos cancer lawsuits) prescription medications.

You can aggressively combat your condition with nothing more than proper nutrition, exercise, stress management, and insulin balancing supplements. Combined, these efforts can reverse your diabetic condition without any side effects.

In fact, the only consequences will be positive, life-changing improvements to your life, such as better sleep, …