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2008 Newsletter - EDITION 5

What's up?

Well this month I stick my neck out again and tell you what I think of ‘glyconutrients’. I have had dozens of letters in the last few weeks and can only put this down to these products being launched in South Africa officially.

I and still working on the skincare article so don’t despair, I will get to it.

Mark and I are so motivated by your stories and success, so please keep them coming. I don’t think you realise just how many people they help.

What's on?

In South Africa

Somerset West, Western Cape: Cooking demo and talk

21 June 2008

10.00am

Bev Wium Natural Way Consultant will be in Cape Town from 17 – 25 June 2008 for consultations, talks and cooking demonstrations. Should you be interested in attending or hosting a talk or cooking demonstration during this time contact Bev. (011 468 3931 / 082 888 7875 / bevwium@telkomsa.net). Talk topics include Monsters and Angels (inc. lunchbox demonstration) or Mood foods, Emotions and sugars. If you would like to book a consultation with Bev while she is in Cape Town she specialises in Mood swings, food cravings, depression, fatigue and low blood sugar disorders. She also does email and phone consultations.

Midrand Gauteng: A “Monsters and Angels” Health Talk & Lunchbox Ideas demonstration

Change their lunchbox – change their lives!

Saturday

31 May 2008

9.30 for 9.45am – 11.30am

R100pp

Book your space with

Bev: bevwium@telkomsa.net

082 888 7875

011 468 3931

In the USA

I have talks in Southern California on the following dates

Malibu: 4 June: merrilybright@yahoo.com

San Juan Capistrano: At Ocean Hills Church “Fit 4 God” Seminar. 6th & 7th  June mark@mary-anns.com

Las Vegas: 10-13 June (lianagk@yahoo.com)

Norfolk, Virginia: 21 June I will be speaking at the Aim Convention on Weight contact Aim on aimonline@aimintl.com

San Clemente: 23 June – Merrily merrilybright@yahoo.com

San Juan: 24 June – Merrily merrilybright@yahoo.com

Laguna Beach: 25 June – Toni at tonidanchik@cox.net

San Clemente: 28 June – Jane mydoggirl@yahoo.com

What's in?

OK so I know this may upset a few people, I have not intended to purposely do so. I have looked at this glyconutrient issue for 3-4 years now and have met people who have invested large amounts of money and lost it all. I have heard of someone who makes a lot of money from these products, but they have not told me that personally and it appears to be about the money more than anything else. I have no problem with people earning an honest living selling a good quality product or service, I do however have a problem (and so should you) when someone sells either with hype and misleading information so as to extract as much money from me as they can. (Please don’t send me info on scientists being awarded the Noble Peace prize in 1994. I have checked it out and firstly, why would someone in the scientific world be winning a peace prize, secondly that year it was won by, Shimon Peres (Israel), Yitzhak Rabin (Israel), Yasir Arafat (Palestine)!)

If you want to fully understand the role of polysaccharides then read a good nutritional biochemistry book or do our nutrition course. I have done my best below to explain the process of glucose molecules being digested in plain English.

Please don’t send me info you have ‘cut and pasted’ from a glyconutrient brochure or website, send ONLY genuine, double-blind studies done by/or real live people, or research not funded by a company that promotes these products.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Glyconutrient is a term used by the multi-level marketing company Mannatech, and other supplement vendors, to describe a particular class of dietary supplement.

As Mannatech uses the term in labeling its products, such as Ambrotose, glyconutrient refers to mixtures of polysaccharides, such as exudate tree gums and high molecular weight aloe vera extracts containing fermentable dietary fiber and plant extracts, as well as simple sugars or starch. Citation needed

In the marketing literature, glyconutrient is used to refer to 8 biologically active sugars, although there is no reliably documented evidence that people are generally deficient in such sugars. [1] The human body produces enzymes to interconvert among these sugars; only in exceedingly rare genetic diseases, such as leukocyte adhesion deficiency, have even single-sugar deficiencies been documented. Furthermore, there are no reliable, controlled studies to show that glyconutrients provide any improvement against any medical disorder.[1][2]

Many of the claims for the value of glyconutrients are unsubstantiated; a lawsuit was filed against Mannatech in September 2005 for violations of the Exchange Act related to material misrepresentations made by the company concerning its products' efficacy and uses.[3]

This piece below I cut and pasted off Mannatech’s own website last night and basically appears to sum up their approach. Yes most people do not eat enough fruit and vegetables, but why not educate people to eat better? One reason only… you don’t make money teaching people to eat healthily!

“You may not be receiving these beneficial saccharides in the right amounts from the food you eat. That's where Mannatech offers hope. Mannatech leads the industry in glyconutrient technology around the world and strives to offer better solutions for global health”

Let me analyse what they are saying..

Firstly they talk of saccharides and if you read the ingredients and web information they refer to polysaccharides. Saccharides are the correct biological or scientific name for sugars, of which there are many in 3 basic categories.

Polysaccharides – which means many (poly) molecules of glucose (saccharides). These are found abundantly in most vegetables  especially in carrots, yams, sweet potatoes and in all starchy foods like potatoes, rice, corn, all grains, millet etc

You cannot use polysaccharides at cellular level so the digestive tract has to break all polysaccharides down into;

Disaccharides (2 molecules) and then down to the basic building blocks of all sugars;

Monosaccharides AND ONLY IN THIS FORM can the human body use glucose. Monosaccharides are freely available in all fresh fruit, together with waters soluble fibre, and most vitamins, including many antioxidants and minerals (including calcium, magnesium and potassium) and protein in small quantities.

The process of digestion in the digestive tract is what breaks down polysaccharides into monosaccharides. Chewing well is the first stage of this process

If you take polysaccharides in capsules or powders how do you chew them? And if you cannot chew them how do you digest them? Oh it appears they also have a product that helps you digest them for quite a few more dollars.

So selling you some “patented proprietary polysaccharides” is in my opinion no different to selling you snake oil. It is scientific fraud to lead people to believe that they can be cured by a blend of special polysaccharides. The body uses a combination of natural known and unknown nutrients found in all natural whole foods; including saccharides, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals and unknown phytonutrients. Extracting 1, 2 or even 3 will not cure you. I keep hearing of people who have had miraculous cures but I have never actually met a real person who has experienced a cure. Just recently I met a woman who had used the products to get rid of her allergies; she said they made absolutely no difference even though she religiously used them for over a year. (I will ask her if we can interview her for one of our DVDs). Her allergies cleared with a changed of diet including essential fats.

The price of the product means that only extremely wealthy people can be healthy!

Health should be available to everyone, everywhere and should be easy for an uneducated person or a child to understand.

I suppose if you are paying $125 at the discounted price as a member you would want to believe that the products are doing something. Considering that many people believe that over 90% of all disease is psychosomatic, it is not surprising some people claim miraculous cures. If you are paying that much money you obviously believe seriously that the product will help you.

Health comes from healthy living, not by some magic ingredient that only wealthy people can afford.

I have seen people lose thousands of dollars, rands and pounds in many countries buying into the latest miracle substance and very few ever get and stay well, and I have seen hundreds and thousands of people get well and stay well eating natural God made foods.

The bottom line on this quote mentions solutions for global health; I am shocked that they think they can deal with global health with a $125 product. Teach people to grow and eat their own fruit and vegetables and you may have done something good and noble.

I am including some other opinions from 2 other people

Yes I do encourage people to drink barley grass juice, but you don’t need to buy it you can grow your own barley grass and make the juice, there is no secret, no proprietary process and $125 bill!

I am shocked when people tell me it is too expensive to be healthy, with these costs, I can see why some think it is expensive! It should cost you less to be healthy not more!

For Ambrotose in particular, we see an enormous popularity in publications by and for lay people but nothing listed in the standard medical literature to substantiate claims of health benefits, at least not under this particular brand name. To put it mildly, this isn't very reassuring.

I also searched for arabinogalactan, a prime ingredient in Ambrotose. This is a sugar derived from the wood of the Larix, or larch, tree. Larch arabinogalactan is in fact approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a source of dietary fiber. I had more success with this search. There were nearly 600 references to this topic in PubMed. But when I limited my search to articles investigating arabinogalactan in relation to cancer, there were only 17, mostly cell line studies.

According to PDRhealth.com, arabinogalactans mainly occur in the Western larch. It is not one substance but in fact a mixture of several different arabinogalactans with widely varying molecular weights. Arabinogalactans are water-soluble polysaccharides widely found in plants, fungi and bacteria. They may be involved in intercellular signal transduction pathways in plants.

Dietary sources of arabinogalactans are found in carrots, radishes, tomatoes, pears and wheat, among other plant foods. So whether we realized it or not, we all probably had some today. Gum arabic, a commonly used food additive, is also composed of highly branched arabinogalactans (from which the substance derives its name). Arabinogalactans are also found in herbs such as Echinacea and edible mushrooms such as Ganoderma lucidum (reishi) and may contribute to their possible immune-enhancing ability. But does this mean that Mannatech's products, taken orally, would be good for cancer patients?

I can find no hard evidence for this at all. While there is some indication that products derived from aloe, polysaccharides in particular, may possibly have a role in cancer treatment, the substantiation of such an effect is weak at best, and I can find no evidence whatever in standard sources that would point to the superiority of Mannatech's products. What's more, they seem quite expensive compared to other sources of monosaccharide sugars, such as generic aloe or plant gums.

According to a press release from a non-profit trade organization, the International Aloe Science Council, Inc.:

To assert, as several writers have done - seemingly with information obtained from the developers of Manapol™ - that aloe-based products not containing Manapol cannot offer the benefits associated with aloe vera - seems little more than product ballyhoo...

The main danger I believe is that patients will not only lose money but will also lose precious time. Cancer is a complex disease. It requires professional help. Regardless of the sometimes uncaring attitude of certain errant members of the medical profession, one should not reject everything that conventional medicine has to offer in favor of a regimen discovered on the Internet.

The answer is not simply to construct a do-it-yourself program, but to find expert and sympathetic guidance in the rapidly expanding realm of complementary oncology.

Chet Day

Glyconutrients by Ray Sahelian, M.D.  Honest information on glyconutrient products

I start suspecting that there is something not right about the promotion of a product - such as glyconutrients - when the meaning of the word is so ambiguous, and the word glyconutrient is created by a company that sells through multilevel marketing channels. There is hardly any mention in the medical literature regarding the term glyconutrients or glyconutrient supplementation and its effects on human health and cancer prevention and treatment, yet the internet abounds with websites promoting the concept or the products. I can only find two articles on Medline mentioning the term glyconutrients. Both of these studies have been done in vitro - basically a test tube study - as opposed to a live human study, and one study appears to be a fraud.

     A couple of years ago I had a friend ask me about glyconutrients and then we had several emails asking my opinion about glyconutrients. So, I decided to look into it. I checked the index of Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease, a textbook on nutrition, and could not find the words glyconutrient or glyconutrients in the index. I came across the accepted term glycoprotein but no glyconutrient. This glyconutrients web page discusses the merits or lack thereof of glyconutrient products sold by Mannatech that supposedly have eight ' essential ' sugars. This page does not refer to the benefit or harm of sugars in general or glycoproteins, glycolipids, polysaccharides, or other sugar related molecules.

   To me, the word glyconutrient has no scientific meaning and only serves to confuse matters. What if I made up a term called "aminonutrient" to refer to amino acids? How would this term help explain anything? What if I created the term "liponutrient" to refer to certain fatty acids? How would the word "liponutrient" add to our understanding of fats and lipids?

Mannatech and Glyconutrients
Glyconutrients is a term coined by Mannatech, a multilevel company. Mannatech, based in Coppell, Texas, sells its products through a global network-marketing system throughout the United States and the international markets of Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Denmark and Germany.

     According to their website, Mannatech claims, "Medical research has discovered that eight glyconutrient sugars are needed at the cellular level for optimum immune function. Considering that six of these glyconutrients are often lacking in modern diets, Mannatech sought new and better sources of the nutrients. The effort culminated in the Ambrotose (R) complex. Today, 20 patents -- including one from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office -- have been issued to Mannatech for technology related to the Ambrotose formulation. Mannatech has more than two dozen glyconutritional products for adults and children that address health and nutrition, sports performance, weight management and skin care."  Note by Dr. Sahelian: I have not seen research that indicates "six glyconutrients are lacking in the diet."

What is a glyconutrient, anyway?
What is the exact definition of a glyconutrient, anyway? Glyco means sugar, and nutrient means a substance that is useful to the body. Is a glyconutrient a sugar molecule attached to another molecule, or a group of molecules? Sugar chains (also called glycans) vary in length from one sugar, to extremely long chains found in glycosaminoglycans. Is a glyconutrient any sugar attached to any other molecule or is a glyconutrient a specific substance or a group of specific substances? Does the chemical structure of a "glyconutrient" sold by one company the same as another company or completely different? Do people include glycoproteins within the broader definition of glyconutrients? Is there a scientifically accepted definition of what a glyconutrient is just like there is for the words vitamins and glycoproteins? If there is such a standard and accepted definition for word glyconutrient, I have not seen it yet. To me, the word glyconutrient has no special medical or nutritional meaning. My degree in college was nutrition. I have a bachelor's degree in nutrition science and afterwards went to medical school. As an expert in nutrition science, I do not find the term glyconutrient helpful.

Someone email us a legitimate study in humans by a Mannatech glyconutrient product
Can the people who sell these glyconutrients email us the exact structure of these glyconutrients and email me actual studies done and published with Mannatech glyconutrient supplements in HUMANS. We would like to see a study where a specific Mannatech glyconutrient or a combination of glyconutrients was given as a supplement to a group of human beings for a period of time and actual laboratory blood tests or other tests were measured and evaluated. I'm not trying to be hard on these glyconutrient salespeople. I recognize that research in certain areas of nutrition is limited, but before claims are made that Mannatech glyconutrients treat or cure ADHD, cancer, immune dysfunction, etc, it would be helpful to see at least a couple of human studies. We are not referring to studies with various monosaccharides, polysaccharides, arabinogalactans, glycoconjugates and other molecules containing sugar chains such as in glycoproteins, glycolipids, and proteoglycans. We are referring to the Mannatech glyconutrients that are promoted as cure alls.

AG sues Coppell's Mannatech over health claims

Company accused of exaggerating benefits of its supplements

09:21 AM CDT on Friday, July 6, 2007

By JASON ROBERSON / The Dallas Morning News
jroberson@dallasnews.com

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott on Thursday accused Coppell-based Mannatech Inc., its chairman and chief executive, Samuel L. Caster, and other related defendants of operating an illegal marketing scheme.

The civil allegations, which carry penalties of at least $20,000 per violation, followed a large-scale investigation by state authorities into Mannatech's claims about the health benefits of its products.

Investigators said Mannatech exaggerated claims about the therapeutic benefits of its dietary supplements and nutritional products for people with cancer, Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis and other serious illnesses in order to increase sales.

Documents filed in Travis County District Court allege Mannatech's "deceptive practices" pose a health risk to seriously ill consumers who may forgo medical attention because of the company's claims.

In a prepared statement, Mannatech said it had not received or reviewed a copy of the complaint. However, the 57-page complaint is displayed in the news release section on the attorney general's Web site: www.oag.state.tx.us.

"Mannatech always advises consumers that the company's products do not treat or cure disease and should be used to supplement a proper diet and to complement standard of care therapy," Mannatech spokeswoman Erin Martelli Groover said in the statement.

Mannatech, a self-described "global wellness solutions provider," says it has scientific validation from the field of glycoscience, the study of sugars. Mannatech says its products' main ingredients – glyconutrients – enhance the body's cell-to-cell communication, improving overall health.

The attorney general said the lawsuit against Mannatech accuses its sales staff of using brochures, videotapes and personalized Web sites that exaggerate their supplements' effectiveness. Those marketing tools carried misleading "before and after" photos and testimonials from other customers, and substitute the name of its products with the term "glyconutrients," the lawsuit said. Only drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration can be marketed in that fashion, the attorney general's office said.

Among the testimonials Mannatech's sales force used was one from a man said to have non-Hodgkin's B-cell lymphoma – a cancerous growth in the body's disease-defending system, or lymph system.

The oncologist was reported to have told him the cancer had spread to eight places in his body and could not be cured; treatment would only give him a limited number of years. A friend told him of Mannatech's products, referred to as "glyconutritionals." After five months, his lab work starting looking better, according to the testimonial recorded by the attorney general's office; in June, his doctor told him that maybe he didn't have lymphoma after all.

The defendants are accused of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which carries civil penalties of $20,000 per violation. Mannatech also is accused of violating the Texas Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, under which defendants can face penalties of up to $25,000 per day, per violation.

For its first quarter, ending March 31, Mannatech reported a net income of $6.9 million, or 26 cents per share. That was up 16 percent from the $5.8 million, or 22 cents per share, reported for the same period a year earlier.

Despite Mannatech's growth – last year's sales of $410 million were up 39 percent from 2004, and its profits of $32 million were 66 percent higher than those in 2004 – not all shareholders are happy. The company's annual report on March 16 listed six pending shareholder lawsuits.

One accused the company of violating U.S. securities law by "artificially inflating the value of our common stock by knowingly allowing independent contractors to recklessly misrepresent the efficacy of our products," according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing by the company.

Shares of Mannatech closed Thursday at $16, up 10 cents. Its 52-week range is $11.47 to $19.89.

Mannatech sells its nutritional supplements in 10 countries, including the U.S., through more than 500,000 independent sales distributors.

 What's to eat?

Meredith’s potato salad

I grew up hating potato salad, because it was one of the few salads around then, and so never served it at home. Meredith, our youngest daughter on the other hand loves potato salad it and she came up with this recipe.

4-6 large baked/steamed potatoes cooled and diced with the skin on.

3 finely chopped spring/ green onion

1 finely chopped celery stalk

 ½ cup fresh parsley – chop finely

6 julienned radishes

Lashings of organic egg free mayonnaise like veganaise or make your own from my recipe books 1 & 2

1 tsp. readymade mustard or mustard powder

Toss gently and serve at room temperature

What's inside?

DO NOT boast of [yourself and] tomorrow, for you know not what a day may bring forth 

Proverbs 27:1