My Amazing Shaklee Clients!

"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have some amazing Shaklee clients! Here are a few of their stories...

Even though I have a small Shaklee business, because of my decision to start a business 18 months ago:

• Shaklee has planted 50 trees.
• 110,656 bottles of Windex have been saved from the landfills through the sales of Basic H! And I'm not kidding on that number. Every household should have a bottle of Basic H. You'd probably save $100 a year just by switching to that 1 product, and the earth would thank you for it. The White House even uses it.
• One client went from 5 insulin shots per day to 2 shots per day within just 10 days of starting Cinch!!! Her fasting blood sugar was around 260 when she first started the program on September 2nd, and it became normal in 5 days! She says, "I am so excited to have started this journey to change my health. It is so easy and I am not hungry anymore." Her blood sugar continues to be normal, and she'll be going off more medication soon. This client is my aunt!
• Clients have gotten off medication for cholesterol, blood pressure, depression, allergies, and Ambien. And some clients have seen cholesterol changes between 20% to 40%.
• One client went from diabetic to prediabetic all without the use of medication. I'd like to say he exercised and ate super healthy as well, but he didn't. He's my dad! I'm still trying to convince him to exercise at least a few days per week...
• One 9 year old boy has gone 1 year without steroid creams for his eczema. He used to wish for his sister's skin. Now he's got it.
• One 4 year old boy as gone 15 months without a fever and went to the pediatrician just once last year for his well check up.
• One mom's Shaklee business will have grown so large by next summer, she will quit her 60 hour a week teaching job in order to spend more time with her children.

All of this was not just the result of me. Most of this was from me telling one person who told another person, etc. and then that person was serious about improving their health.

Just imagine the impact will be over the next year!! There will be quite a few more people getting off medication, improving their health, and just feeling better.

Not bad for a small business!

"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." ~ William James

Vitamin D & Children's Allergies

Spring and pollen is in full bloom! Does you child suffer from allergies? Well read below what a professor from one of the top universities on nutrition has to say about children and allergies.

Vitamin D & Children's Allergies

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

With the beautiful Spring flowers comes a whole new allergy season.

And, of course, not all allergies are seasonal. Allergies to foods, animal dander, mold and dust mites occur all year around.

If your children suffer from allergies, here is something that you should know:

Dr. Michal Melamed and colleagues have just reported a major clinical study (Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, published online February 16, 2011) showing that children and adolescents with low blood levels of vitamin D are much more likely to suffer from allergies than those with adequate blood levels of vitamin D.

They looked at vitamin D status (as measured by 25- hydroxy vitamin D levels in the blood) and sensitivity to 17 different common allergens in 3136 children and adolescents aged 1 to 21 in the NHANES (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) database from 2005 and 2006.

The data were adjusted for age, gender, ethnicity, obesity, socioeconomic status and hours spent watching television, playing video games or on the computer (a measure of activity level - or more strictly speaking inactivity level).

They found that children and adolescents with low blood levels of vitamin (< 15 ng/ml of 25-hydroxy vitamin D) were significantly more likely to suffer from 11 of the 17 allergies tested than those with adequate blood vitamin D levels (> 30 ng/ml of 25- hydroxy vitamin D).

For example, they were significantly more likely to suffer from allergies to peanuts, ragweed, oak, dog dander and dust.

This is an important finding because previous studies by Dr. Melamed and others have shown that up to 70% of children in this country have low blood levels of vitamin D and that the incidence of vitamin D deficiency has increased significantly in recent years - perhaps linked to all the video games & computer use of today's children.

Dr. Melamed suggested that it is perhaps no coincidence that many children suffer from allergies and that the incidence of allergies in children is also increasing. Around 16 million children (16% of the population) suffer from allergies, and the incidence of children suffering with allergies has increased by 18% in just the last 10 years.

So, if your children suffer from allergies, one thing that you could do for them is to make sure that they are getting sufficient levels of vitamin D in their diet.

Dr. Melamed states: "The latest dietary recommendations calling for children to take in 600 IU of vitamin D daily should keep them from becoming D deficient."

Of course, vitamin D is not a magic bullet. It is just one of many things that you can do to reduce the risk of allergies in your children.

A holistic approach to allergy reduction would include a good diet that provides all of the essential nutrients and a supplemental source of friendly bacteria to support a healthy intestine and immune system.

It would also include non-toxic cleaning products to reduce environmental allergen exposure.

My Valentines is now 4 years old!

Dane is officially 4 years old now. He turned 4 on Valentines! Jeff and I won't probably celebrate Valentines on the real day until Dane no longer wants us around. Maybe that won't be until he's 18, but my guess is it will be sooner.

He's had a great year! No more pull ups - that saves us around $40 a month. I had no problem finding something else to buy with the extra money. :) Dane is very independent and ready to be a big boy. He shuts his door while he picks out his clothes and dresses himself. His room is now all about star wars except for the baby jungle animals I still have hanging on the wall. I don't want to part with those, but I guess it's time to take them down.

He's also very healthy now compared to last year. He still gets colds, but usually they are mild. Of course he didn't look so good on his birthday, but Jeff and I both had some type of cold as well. The last antibiotic he had was in April 2010, so the pediatrician was very pleased. For Dane to go that long without an antibiotic is a BIG deal. In previous years, he would have about 8 antibiotics a year (and I'm not joking). And we no longer have the $100 a month doctor/medication bills. He only went to the doctor once this year, and that was in June for having a rash. He still gets his multivitamin & immune booster (to help with allergies) daily. And by watching his diet VERY closely, I've gotten him off Miralax!

Jeff and I have learned that having a real Christmas tree is no longer an option for us. Dane has outside allergies, and I forgot about that when we bought a real tree. It took me most of December to figure out why Dane's nose looked like it used too (green and runny). As soon as we took the tree out of the house, his nose started clearing up. Not one of our shining parent moments.

Now if only I could get Dane to eat vegetables!!! He takes after his daddy...

Notes from the Professor - Tune Up Your Immune System

I've been busy, so I haven't posted in a while! So instead I've decided to repost an article written by Dr. Stephen Chaney, whose research I follow.

He teaches medical students nutrition at the Univ. of North Carolina at Chappel Hill (one of the top schools in the nation for nutrition), and he holds the UNC Medical Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professorship. Besides teaching at UNC, he's also run a cancer research laboratory there for 34 years. He is the author of 100 peer reviewed scientific journal articles & the author of the nutrition chapters of the most widely used medical school biochemistry text book.

So if you want to know about nutrition and your immunity, you're getting advice from one of the top experts!

Notes from the professor - read below...

~ Ashley

Tune Up Your Immune System

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

Many of you have been saying to me:

"All I hear about in the news is shots and drugs. Is there a holistic approach for strengthening my immune system?"

My answer is yes! Here are my suggestions:

1) Start by eating a balanced diet composed of whole, unprocessed foods without a lot of fat and simple sugars. A great place to start designing a balanced diet that is perfect for your age, gender and activity level is www.mypyramid.gov.

2) Get plenty of sleep. The experts recommend 8 hours of sleep a night, but a majority of Americans get far less than that.

3) Exercise on a regular basis. Both too little and too much exercise can weaken the immune system (You might have guessed that the problem for most of us is the "too little", not the "too much"). The experts recommend at least 30 minutes every day.

4) Maintain ideal body weight. Those excess pounds really zap our immune system.

5) Minimize your reliance on medications. Many common medications weaken the immune system (Just listen to the disclaimers in the TV commercials for examples). But you must work with your physician on this. Once your physician knows that you are willing to take personal responsibility for your diet and lifestyle, they will generally be willing to minimize the number of medications that they prescribe.

6) Focus on the positive. Studies show that optimists are healthier and life longer than pessimists. And the good news is that anyone can cultivate an attitude of optimism. For most of us it is a lifestyle choice – not something that we were born with.

7) Add a supplement program to assure that your immune system is functioning optimally. In the ideal world supplements wouldn't be necessary, but there are very few "saints" who do a great job in all 6 of the areas that I mentioned. A well designed supplement program fills in the "gaps". We want to make sure that we are getting adequate:

- B vitamins and protein because our immune cells need to divide very rapidly when we have immune challenges.

- Antioxidants because our immune cells create lots of free radicals.

- Trace minerals, especially iron and zinc, because they are required by important enzymes of the immune system.

- Vitamin D because it is vitally important for a strong immune system and most of us are not getting enough.

- Probiotics (healthy bacteria) because "bad" bacteria and yeast in our intestines can weaken the immune system.

- Omega-3 fatty acids to modulate the immune system once it has taken care of the invading bacteria or viruses.

We don't need megadoses. We just need enough.

One final thought: A holistic approach to strengthening our immune system is not an "either - or" proposition.

I've seen estimates that the flu shot is 66% effective in preventing the flu for people with a strong immune system and only 33% effective in preventing the flu for people with a weak immune system.

P.S. My personal recommendation for the supplement component of your holistic approach to a strong immune system is the Vitalizer Wellness Program (Vitalizer, Cinch and Nutriferon) with Defend and Resist Complex in your medicine cabinet for when you first sense that you are "catching" something.

The Dieting Dilemma

(image from freedigitalphotos.net, photographer Michal Marcol)

The Atkins Diet, the Beverly Hills Diet, the Grapefruit Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, sound familiar? They all promise short-term dramatic results, but fad diets like these are often too restrictive and monotonous. Plus, they don't teach you how to permanently change your lifestyle to promote long-term healthy eating and regular physical activity. Dieting, done the wrong way, can lead to:

• A reduced metabolic rate - If you reduce your calories below 1,200 a day, your body's metabolism slows to conserve energy so you use only that amount of calories a day to maintain your weight. It's a survival mechanism we have inherited from our ancestors who experienced periods of "feast or famine." And I don't know anyone who could be happy eating less than 1,200 calories a day.
  
  
• Lost muscle mass - Your body will hold on to fat until you absolutely need it for survival. With most diets, the weight you initially lose is typically from the loss of muscle and water. This loss of muscle mass is absolutely detrimental to your weight control efforts, because muscle is metabolically active tissue. It requires energy for its survival so when you lose muscle, you slow down your metabolism even further. In fact, for every pound of muscle you lose, you lose the ability to burn about 50 calories. Last time you dieted, you may have lost 15 lbs, but it's likely that six pounds of your weight lost was muscle. That means you may have lost the ability to burn 300 calories per day.
  
  
• Regain of fat weight - Because you've slowed your metabolism down by cutting calories and losing muscle on an unhealthy diet, when you stop dieting and return to your usual eating habits, weight regain is inevitable. And the sad part is not only have you gained the weight back, but you've gained it back as all "fat weight". Yes, you've actually made your body "fatter" as a result of dieting.

What Can You Do??? You must make sure you do something when you're dieting to preserve your muscle! Otherwise, all your hard work will be for nothing.

• For me, I strength train twice a week at Trinity Fitness. I'll have no problem keeping my muscle! I could easily do the workouts by myself at home, but I do much better working out with a group. If I leave it up to myself, I'll never get around to it. :)

• For my mom and my aunt who do not strength train, they consume Shaklee's Cinch products once a day. It's got extra leucine which spars muscle while you lose weight from fat. Holding on to your muscle mass while you lose weight also helps protect you from the drop in metabolic rate that typically occurs with most diets. And keeping your metabolic rate from dropping can help you break the cycle of perpetual dieting.

What Do Moms in Europe Know that We Do Not??

Did you know that 70% of our immune system is found in our digestive tract? That's why the foods you eat and the chemicals they contain/don't contain have a big impact on your health. Poor Dane - I must have been feeding him a lot of bad stuff! Or maybe he just wasn't getting enough of the good food. :)

1 in 3 American children now has either autism, ADHD, allergies, or asthma. Did you know that austim, diabetes, and obesity is often referred to as American epidemics?

Here's some wonderful statistics about what's happened in the past 20 years in the US:

• 400% increase in food allergies
• 300% increase in asthma, & 56% increase in asthma deaths
• 400% increase in ADHD
• 1,500% to 6,000% increase in autism

Mothers in most developed countries are told to avoid chemical toxins during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The only thing I was told to avoid when I was pregnant was lunchmeat!

What Moms in Europe Know

• 75% of processed food contains unlabeled genetically engineered chemical toxins
• 91% of all soy contain these toxins (organic soy is okay)
• 60% of all corn contain these these toxins

Genetically modified food (aka GMO) was introduced in the US in the 1990's. The theory was that genetically modified food would be healthier than food sprayed with pesticides. When these products were introduced, the US did not require it to be mentioned on the label. However, 45 other countries and governmental agencies in Europe, Australia, Asia, and Japan require food labels to mention if it contains GM food. Some of these countries even ban GMO food.

Since studies have not yet proven these products are safe for children, most developed countries will not allow genetically modified food. The US is the exception, so we are allowing a giant experiment on ourselves and on our children.

So What Can You Do?

Just start by doing 1 thing! That's easy! For instance, if you love cereal for breakfast, just switch to an organic version.

Check out this website from a former Houstonian mom for great tips: http://www.allergykids.com/

But Will It Really Make a Difference in My Child's Life?

Yes, considering what your child eats right now will have an effect on his life years from now. During childhood, cells rapidly divide, and the body is very vulnerable to damage from toxic substances in unhealthy foods and the environment. Even the beginning of heart disease starts in childhood!!

For More Research, Checkout These Studies:

Maynard M, Gunnell D, Emmett P, Frankel S, Davey Smith G. Fruit, vegetables, and antioxidants in childhood and risk of adult cancer: the Boyd Orr cohort. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2003 Mar;57(3):218-25. Erratum in: J Epidemiol Community Health. 2007 Mar;61(3):271.

Fuemmeler BF, Pendzich MK, Tercyak KP. Weight, Dietary Behavior, and Physical Activity in Childhood and Adolescence: Implications for Adult Cancer Risk. Obes Facts. 2009;2(3):179-186.

Michels KB, Rosner BA, Chumlea WC, Colditz GA, Willett WC. Preschool diet and adult risk of breast cancer. Int J Cancer. 2006 Feb 1;118(3):749-54

Berenson GS, Wattigney WA, Tracey RE, et al. Atherosclerosis of the aorta and coronary arter- ies and cardiovascular risk factors in persons aged 6 to 30 years and stud- ied at necropsy (the Bogalusa heart study). Am J Cardiol 1992;70:851-58.

Part 3 - Lead and Cadmium in Vitamins?? What's Up with That??

How do you find a good supplement?

Dr. Mark Hyman mentions in his "UltraMetabolism" book that the supplement industry is "a sea of poor quality and lowered standards" due to the limited regulation. And he notes that "all brands are not created equally."

So how can you find a good supplement? You can find safe AND effective supplements!! Things to look for are supplement companies that have published clinical studies (this is not a requirement for the industry & most companies do not publish their studies) as well as whether or not the company conducts quality control tests on their ingredients.

Why is it important for you to view clinical studies?

First of all, if a company does not have ANY clinical studies, then they are purely in the supplement industry to make a profit. Secondly, if a company does conduct their own studies, then wouldn't you want to flaunt it?? Sadly, I have yet to hear back from Centrum on their studies!

Why is it important for companies to conduct quality control tests on their ingredients?

Because they need to know if the ingredient is contaminated! There are a couple of companies being sued right now for having PCBs (causes cancer & reproductive problems) in their Omega 3 supplements. That's why you want to make sure the company tests their ingredients for contaminant

An extremely alarming example of lack of quality control regarding ingredients is when the FDA found lead in 320 out of 324 children's and women's vitamins they tested. Yes, you did read that correctly!!! My kids used to take one of the vitamins on the lead list. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, there is NO SAFE LEVEL of LEAD in children.

Is what's written on the label always accurate?

No, it's not! Tod Cooperman, the president of ConsumerLab says "it's shocking how many products really don't have what they claim on their labels. The buyer has to be careful."

Other questions to ask yourself:

Do I feel better taking the vitamin? If you don't feel better after 4 months, then you it might not be helping you.

Does the vitamin contain artificial sweeteners, colors or flavors? Avoid these. Some artificial colors that are allowed in the US are actually banned in other countries.

Does the vitamin contain trans fat? That would be anything with the word "hydrogenated." It's a manmade fat that can block metabolism, cause weight gain, and increase your risk of diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. The super yucky thing is that trans fat products stay stable in land fills for generations!! My kids and I used to take vitamins that contained trans fat. :(

Does the vitamin contain aspartame? Look for words like NutraSweet, neotame, acesulfame potassium, saccharin, sucralose, and dihydorchalcones. This causes an increase in insulin. 92% of independent research shows adverse effects from aspartame. My children's old vitamin used to contain this ingredient!!! I didn't realize what I was given them until I read the ingredient label.

What should I do?

If you want something that's safe and that works, you must research the company. Wish it was easier than that...

To Better Health!

~ Ashley