How do you know it works??

Question: from ‘keepitsimple’

Warren. You stated the following:

"We are also doing a premium version which will have everything in the standard version of TB plus a lot more. Whereas the main function of the standard TB will be as a general health anti-aging supplement with extras for men and women, such as it is at the moment, the premium version will go quite a bit further. In addition to it containing everything that the standard version has it will also have additional powerful anti-aging nutrients and boost overall DNA health."

I like the idea of having "a lot more" but only if it helps ME. How can you know that this helps the general population and interacts well with the other ingredients? They aren't just vitamins and minerals; they are herb extracts and we don't have a formula to analyze like we do for Vitamin C.

Supplements are such tricky business - much more complicated than traditional pharmaceuticals. We often don't even know what the active ingredient actually is. Additionally, many of these herbs have not had reliable double blind controlled clinical studies and their long term effects are unknown or unclear.

Total Balance already has so many ingredients that I don't see how one could reliably eliminate any potential interactions and guarantee that all the ingredients are a net positive. After all, supplements are hardly regulated and there haven't been any studies on Total Balance as far as I know. Its efficacy basically comes down to trust and testimonials (which might be placebo or paid for).

Even if some ingredients have been proven to be beneficial, unless the whole product is tested together with its many other components, there is no proof it works. If there were clear and objective proof, I'd jump on this right now. When it comes to health, I'm skeptical and like to err on the safe side. I might not take advantage of some new breakthroughs, but I might also avoid some "breakthroughs" which turn out to have problems in the long run.

Answer: from Warren

I understand your point but supplement formulation is not quite an unknown science as what you may think.

A good bio-scientist can examine these nutrients at molecular levels and understand the interactions between them.

In the case of our supplements we are endeavoring as much as possible to mimic potent health giving foods which are lacking in today’s modern environment.  This is an entirely different situation to that of pharmaceuticals who are using novel synthetic molecules and which have no place in the normal food chain and work by interrupting a normal biological function...hence the high levels of side effects.

Actually all the nutrients that we use do have strong scientific data supporting their use and efficacy.  If they don't we won't use them.  As a general rule we never include ‘breakthrough’ nutrients in any of our products.  We require a history of efficacy and safe use for a minimum of 5 – 7 years before we will factor them into a formulation.

Determining the type of nutrients and the amounts of each in a formula is an extremely exacting and detailed process.  This is why it can take us 1 - 2 years between each generation of TB because every ingredient and its reaction with others has to be examined in minute detail.  I don't fully understand it all but Prof. Dr. A Munem Doaud who directs our R & D certainly does.

If you were to examine foods you will find that most are much more complex than our Total Balance.  With regard to herbs it is not just the active ingredient component that is important but the rest of it as well which is carefully considered as the non active parts also have a role to play.  All of this is factored in when developing the supplement.

In other words, in our case nutrients are just not all 'tossed' in together in our formulas just to make the product look good.  Every single ingredient plays a role, both singly and together with others.

In so far as double blind placebo trials are concerned this is not practical because you would have to do so many of them to be meaningful.

When you have a supplement that addresses so many issues in the body where do you start?

Measuring free radical action?  What about glycation?  How about methylation?  Inflammation is also crucial and so is measuring regeneration of DNA.

The most promising option in the future may be to measure the impact that the supplement has on DNA but at this stage there are no practical tests to measure this.  Hopefully in years to come there will be.  This would be perfect for us as we may be able to measure effectiveness by this method. 

Remember also, that unlike a pharmaceutical we have no patent or market protection as Big Pharma enjoys.  Also, we only have a small fraction of the profit margin that pharmaceuticals have.  They have the biggest margin of any industry.  This is why they are one of the few industries who can afford to spend 35% of their gross sales on marketing although they spend less that 15% on R & D.

It is also easier for a pharmaceutical company to carry out clinical double blind placebo trials as they are only looking for a few markers.  However, most pharmaceutical clinical trials are somewhat suspect and only a few of them are published.

At the end of the day an individual has to decide which path they want to tread in their quest for sustainable health.  Either one believes that science can triumph over nature in which case you go the pharmaceutical way or, you work with natural methods and go the traditional natural way.

If you go the natural way I would concede that there are many ‘natural’ products on the market today that are indeed questionable and many products are put together using ingredients based purely on the strength of good media reports or consumer acceptance and as such have not been painstaking formulated using sound evidence.  If you go back almost 9 years ago when XtendLife was first established you will find that we have never produced products based on media hype.

For example, years ago we investigated Hoodia before it became all the rage but decided against using it as an ingredient as the evidence for its use was not strong enough.  Combined to that the majority of the raw ingredient on the market was counterfeit!  

By the way none of our customer comments (testimonials) are either solicited or paid for directly or indirectly.