Want to lose weight and stay healthy?
Super pill could lead to Super problems?
 Thought provoking article from William Faloon of the Life Extension Foundation. While not a super duper pill LEF has a supplement that will help to lower weight by helping to burn calories when we are resting like when we are watching endless TV at night. But as Faloon warns without a sensible diet and exercise very little will get accomplished. Moreover, "the deadly effects of people chronically overeating (since they would not have to worry about weight gain.) would cause a long-term health catastrophe greater than the epidemic of overweight and obesity does today." What he is saying is if you consume garbage and don't exercise you may be slim but you won't be healthy.
Safely Burn away body fat
Did you know that we have to much white body fat and not enough brown body fat and that's why we are fat. The product needed to address this problem is a revolutionary product that will help people to lose weight. But don't read this article unless you have read the above article. Remember you have been warned.
The Seven Pillars of Successful Weight Loss
For those looking for simple solutions LEF offers way to many complexities but if weight loss and good health were really simple we would all be slim and healthy. Maintaining the correct weight and maintaining a healthy lifestyle are not separate problems. The sooner you acknowledge that the quicker the weight will come off.
Even Supermodels get fat and unhealthy.
Great interview that shows how a super supermodel still does it. She went raw. How raw did she go? Well, you will have to read the article to find out.

Open letter to our viewers: Like most people my effort to lead a healthy life was mostly trial and error.  All right it was mostly error. The first supplement I took was a One a Day Multi-Vitamin. I thought I had fulfilled my commitment to lead a healthy life.  Today after some 30 years of reading books and magazine articles about health and nutrition I can’t take such a simplistic view about my health. Today I know that good health is a complicated process that starts at the cellular level and affects a lot of your body organs. Supplements are needed but you also have to eat nutritious whole food (if you are reading this page you already know what foods I am talking about.) and exercise both cardio and strength training. In between you have to get the best out of your doctor and take the usual tests.  There is no miracle pill you can take, because most of the individual supplements you take depend on other vitamins, minerals, hormones, proteins, carbohydrates and essential acids to make them work.  Unless you are big time expert most of this stuff is confusing and complicated.

For example Vitamin E which is routinely denounced by TV anchors, your so called health experts, as either useless or dangerous, but they never tell you what type of Vitamin E they are talking about. Yes Vitamin E has several forms. First there is synthetic Vitamin E and Natural Vitamin E (usually made from a base of wheat germ oil-my preference.)  Most health experts say the natural is usually more potent.  Most Vitamin E supplement are fat soluble vitamin which means it stays in the body a lot longer than the water soluble version of Vitamin E. Vitamin E has 8 compounds:  four from the Tocopherol family(alpha, beta, delta and gamma) and four from the Tocotrienol family(alpha, beta, delta and gamma). I could go on and on about how the often ignored Tocotrienol’s are becoming cancer fighters (who knew) and how the alpha’s - no respect brother - gamma is becoming a star in its own right. 

The point of all this is when your favorite announcer tell you that Vitamin E is either useless or dangerous what type or what form of Vitamin E are they talking about. Your TV announcer usually lets you think that Vitamin E and A are the only antioxidants on the market when the truth is that Vitamin E and A are the weak sisters of the antioxidants.  I think you have to demand from your TV announcer/Celeb the following if you want to believe what they are saying.

1.                          Where is an expert expressing an opposite opinion? They do it for political viewpoints why not for supplements. You might also want to ask who is spending big-time money to advertise on their network (hint it’s not the supplement companies.).

2.                          What were the conditions for the study and how strictly were these conditions followed.  For example did they give those lab rats enough stuff to kill them a hundred times over? A lot of things that are good for you like cholesterol can also kill you if you get too much of the stuff. If you write the conditions the right way you can prove almost anything.  

3.                          Where did the money come for the research? A variation of this would be are some of the researchers getting money from the drug companies on the side. Do you really believe that a drug company which orders up a research to find out which is better their expensive pill or some cheap non-drug alternative is really going to let the non-drug alternative come out on top?  If you do, I can give you the exclusive rights to the Brooklyn Bridge for just peanuts. 

4.                          In studies about Vitamin E what form and type were they talking about? Were things like selenium and gamma (the other form of E) used to increase the potency? If they were testing for a complex problem like some form of cancer or heart condition, did they expect a single supplement to do all the miracles by itself?

The sad truth is health and nutrition is a complex subject consisting of thousands of little interactive processes like oxidation, inflammation, glycation and methylation that happen at the cellular level.  Most of us, myself included, will never fully comprehend these terms and what they do.  The most we can do is figure out the bottom line. What do I have to do to improve my health so I can lead the type of life I want to lead?

I am a 63 year old male who tries to exercise regularly eat more good food (fruits, vegetables, lean protean, whole grains) than crap (sugar, white bread, tran-fats, saturated fats and fried food) and yes I take a whole lot of supplement. I am not an expert on health and nutrition. I leave that to the people at The Life Extension Foundation(Yes it really is a foundation.) who interpret the latest research, do their own research and sometimes sue agencies like the FDA (should really stand For Drug Agenda)  They also offer extensive lab tests and offer free consultation to their members. Yes they do sell you supplements but all of their supplements are backed by research that usually appears in their monthly magazine. The supplements aren’t cheap but though out the year you can get a good deal if you wait for the specials.  LEF is constantly changing the formulas as new research comes in. (they also sell the old formula at a greatly reduced rate.)  I depend on LEF to give me the other side of the story that the media and medical profession aren’t giving me. I call this, "getting a second opinion".

If you depend on your HMO doctor to save your butt, because you see him for five minutes every couple of months you are living in a dream world.  Yes sometimes you need to see a doctor but they are only part of your health picture. The worst part of making your doctor your only health option is that you may develop a false sense of security.  The next time some rich person dies prematurely from cancer or a heart attack or whatever, I want you to ask yourself the following question.  If someone who is getting the best healthcare in the world dies prematurely- what chance do I have?  If your doctor tells you , “You have disease X” you better find out about disease X and what is the best way to treat the disease before you go along with your doctors usually means of treating things: Drugs and slicing you up.

My association with “Life Extension Foundation” started when a friend of mine gave me a copy of “The life Extension Revolution” to read. After I read the book he told me to keep it. That book led to LEF and it turned out to be the best gift I have ever received.    Since that time I have given 20 copies of this book ( Health Letter  ) to people I know.  To me giving the book was giving them a wake up call about their health. All of us are worried about terrorists and serial killers doing us in. But trust me on this, before those lunatics get to you, your unhealthy life style habits will kill you first unless you put health on the front burner. The older you get the more time you have to devote to leading a healthy existence.

Yours Truly
     Richard Hemingway