We've Moved: Swanson Vitamins Blog Has a New Home

Epicor Jr.—New Immune Supplement to Keep Your Kids and Grandkids Healthy

Posted by Ben:


Finally, Epicor Jr. has arrived and is “on the shelves” at SwansonVitamins.com. Ever since you figured out how great the immune supporting benefits of Epicor were for you and your body, we’ve been deluged with requests to develop a formula for kids (and grandkids!). We wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t listen. So we went to work and Epicor Jr. was born.

New Omega EFA Supplement Shows Why “Purified” Doesn’t Mean Pure

Posted by Ben:

It’s been a while since I talked about any of the new products we are bringing in every single month over at SwansonVitamins.com, but a new one just came in that is definitely worth a closer look. It’s a new omega essential fatty acid supplement from New Chapter, and I am pretty excited about it. It’s called Wholemega (what a great name!), and it may be my new omega supplement of choice.

“Flame-worthy” Way to Clean Your Ears

Posted by Kayla

I like feeling like I have clean ears. Who wouldn’t? Well, maybe my younger brothers. My mom said when they were little they had enough dirt in their ears to grow an acre of corn. So with the exception of boys who think sprouting corncobs out the side of their head is cool, most people want to feel good about their ears.
 

The problem with keeping ears healthy is how to do it. It’s not like you can just take a washcloth and take care of them while you’re washing your face. Don’t think about reaching for those Q-tips, either. Cotton swabs are not made for cleaning the ear. In fact, they can cause more harm than good by pushing wax deeper into the ear canal instead of getting it out. Fear not, there is a good method, and we made a video showing you how it works...

Organic Coffee – Ground and Delicious

A lot of us here at Swanson Vitamins have been begging for some organic coffee, mostly for selfish reasons. Like 99% of all offices across this great land, we’ve been choking down the Folgers “premium roast” blend day after day, year after year.

Sure, we could have pitched in, pooled our money and gone out to get some of the good stuff like Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, or my personal favorite, Caribou coffee. But, we didn’t. We sucked it up and poured “Folgers in your cup” and pretended it was a fresh vanilla latte. But no more! We just added Swanson Organic Coffee to our product line – a medium House Blend flavor and a dark French Roast (both ground).

What Can Ayurveda Do For You?

"Ayurveda" has been the buzz word around here all month long. I haven't sat in a meeting since the beginning of 2009 and not heard the word at least once. Landing pages, new product emails, videos, you name it...they're all about ayurveda. The next time I go into the break room, I wouldn't be surprised to find the vending machines stocked with coconut milk, curry cashews and microwaveable dal. We're in the midst of debuting our new line of Swanson Ayurvedic supplements, which was developed in partnershhip with Komal Herbals, a big name in Ayurvedic health products. In fact, before the partnership, I used to buy PRAAS bars directly from their website. In my opinion, Komal is top of the line when it comes to ayurveda. (Learn more about ayurveda, our new line, and the partnership on our website.)

Since we've been talking about ayurveda so much, I can't help thinking about Courtney (not her real name, but it's a perfect pseudonym for her), who was a health-counseling client of mine during my internship at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Without any hestitation, I can say that ayurveda was a big part of her overall health success! I never go into these counseling sessions with the idea that an ayurvedic regimen is the answer for everybody. But by session #4 (the 12 Hours to Better Health program consists of 12 one-hour sessions), I could see a clear picture emerging. Evidence strongly suggested that Courtney was showing an imbalance in the Vata dosha. Right away she described trouble with constipation and frustrating headaches. She had been to a number of medical doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists, even acupuncturists, and none of them could pinpoint the cause of her headaches or relieve the pain. I began to notice slight anxiety in her voice as we chatted, and she confirmed that she didn't rest well at night. She revealed a pattern of often falling asleep after 1 in the morning, then dragging herself out of bed by 7:30 to be to her bank job by 8. That left her no time for herself--to wake up, to eat breakfast, and to get dressed without being rushed. Her diet consisted almost exclusively of cold and dry foods like cereal, popcorn, chips and other snack foods. She even had the lean physique of a balanced Vata type. Altogether, I counted 31 symptoms during our first three counseling sessions that indicated a Vata imbalance.

At first, I thought she was just nutritionally deficient, especially in magnesium. But when she completed an assessment to further pinpoint her dosha, I was convinced that she could experience improvement in her health simply by balancing the vata dosha.  I sent her Deepak Chopra's "Perfect Health" book to help her understand the concept of ayurveda, and to my delight, she absolutely devoured it! I also drew up meal plans and created recipes for her that emphasized specific warm, creamy and cooked foods like oatmeal with cinnamon, sugar & warm milk, blueberry pancakes with maple syrup, sweet potato soup, asparagus & cheese omelet, and chicken lasagne. She could eat all the stuff that my kapha dosha craved, but couldn't have. I was jealous of her every time we discussed food!

Courtney was a model client. She did the homework and prepared the foods. I explained up front that I'm not a doctor so I can't "treat" her constipation and headaches. But I assured her that if she practiced lifestyle suggestions and made changes in her diet, her body would likely heal itself. After every session, she diligently did her assignments and made the necessary adjustments. And by the following session she would always notice improvements that only fueled her hunger for more! I recommended several supplements and products, including Kyoto Chlorella, Swanson Natural Sleep Formula, Swanson Coconut Oil and Swanson Coconut Flour (plus a few others). Self-massages and relaxing baths were introduced to her daily life. Much to both of our amazement, her health turned around by applying the ayurvedic principles we discussed. At a college reunion this fall, her friends asked her what the doctors diagnosed to be the cause of her headaches. She told them it wasn't the doctors who figured it out, and one of them interrupted to shriek, "don't tell me it was the 'spinach lady' you told us about!" Not long ago, Courtney sent me a present and in her card she wrote, "I can't even tell you what a positive impact you've made in my life. I've gotten excited about life again and come to better terms with who I am and what I'm capable of. You're so good at radiating encouragement and excitement." Clearly, ayurveda worked wonders for Courtney. So now the question is, what can ayurveda do for you? If you want to learn more about the 12 Hours to Better Health program, please contact me at Jani.Paschka@swansonhealth.com. And by all means, check out our line of Swanson Ayurvedic supplements today. Then you'll be talking about them, too!

The Easy, Pleasurable Way to Detoxify

Have you have ever started a detoxification regimen and actually finished it? The kind in which you don't eat real food for days and drink only distilled water mixed with fresh-squeezed lemons and maybe a little maple syrup? If you nodded your head "yes," please know that I am in awe of you! What you accomplished was superhuman, at least in my opinion. I've tried the aforementioned regimen, otherwise known as "The Master Cleanse," on more than one occasion, and my story has a different ending than yours. Oh, I begin the day with rousing optimism, envisioning a leaner, healthier me in just 3 to 7 days. The cheerleading lasts no more than four hours--tops, though. By 10:00 a.m. it has ebbed into "I'll stick with this torture if it's the last thing I do," as I imagine the pleasure of sipping a cup of aromatic coffee from Starbuck's. Murphy's Law guarantees a lunch invitation that day, but sheer stubbornness forces me to say "no," despite stabbing pangs of hunger. By mid-afternoon an ever increasing headache invades my body, severely sapping my motivation, and by 8:00 p.m. I'm so tired, owly and in pain that the iron will rusts out completely. I usually end up ripping into a loaf of bread and smearing it with butter--organic, of course--just before bed, feeling like a failure once again.

Imagine my excitement when I saw a photo of a woman soaking in a tub with the caption "A 30-minute sole (so-LAY) bath has the cleansing effect of a three-day fast" from page 168 of the book Water & Salt: The Essence of Life. If you're like me and can't endure more than 12 hours of a fast, you'll have to buy this book by Dr. Barbara Hendel! It's full of fascinating information about the health benefits of Himalayan Crystal Salt on the human body. Yet another post and I'm about to mention again the guru-of-gurus--David Wolfe. (Well, no one can accuse me of being fickle.) David Wolfe oozes good health. His skin is brighter and clearer than I thought possible without airbrushing. He's a walking testimonial to whatever he's doing. So, the fact that he likes Himalayan Crystal Salt, too, citing Dr. Hendel and the book I just mentioned on his own website, sealed this regimen as reliable, from my vantage point, anyway. Her book details how to prepare the sole bath and why it works, but I'll outline the abbreviated version in 7 super-simple steps:

1. Pour two pounds of Himalayan Crystal Salt, either the granulated version or the large crystal stones, into an empty, plugged bathtub

2. Cover them with warm water

3. Let the salt dissolve in the water for half an hour

4. Fill the tub with warm water no hotter than 98.6 degrees F

5. Immerse yourself in the water and relax for 30 minutes. Ahhh...

6. Dry off. Do not put lotion or any other topical preparation on the skin immediately following the bath

7. Relax for at least another 30 minutes or go to bed

Does it work? Ask anyone who's tried it, like our email customer care agent Crystal, and you'll most definitely get an impassioned nod of the head. Crystal said it not only works, but you'll be very tired after the bath. Aside from the relaxing aspect of it, minerals in the salt pull toxins from the body through osmosis into the bath water, and the process takes a lot out of the body--quite literally. Her advice? Do not skip step #7. Try the sole bath on a Friday night and rest the entire weekend, if possible, to regain strength.

I'm still in awe of anyone who makes it through "The Master Cleanse." But unless their skin looks like David Wolfe's, I won't ever be tempted to try it again. Not when I can go to bed at night feeling detoxified and successful.

Itching for a Miracle

How many of you have had an itch so bad that you could barely stand it? I'm not talking about the "seven-year itch" or "itching" to go on vacation, or those kinds of metaphorical feelings. I mean a real itch that you scratch to the point of injury. The kind that tortures you all the more so as you try to alleviate it with light and gentle strokes of your fingernails. The kind of itch that incessantly drives you to find any object with a sharp edge—the blade of a scissors, the flip-top of a soda can, the edge of your driver's license—to avenge its assault on you, often tearing the skin and swelling the surrounding area of your body in the process. For a brief moment, you believe you're on your way to insanity.

I began to regularly experience this kind of itch years ago as a young woman just out of school and beginning a career in the financial world. Five years prior to that, a well-intentioned dermatologist had prescribed tetracycline (an oral antibiotic) to rid my cheeks and forehead of the acne that dotted it during my late teen years. My skin immediately cleared up, and I am grateful to him for that. But those same antibiotics, which he approved for five years straight, would negatively impact my life to this day. I know this, because on that day in the brokerage firm when the tops of my feet began to drive me crazy, I made an appointment with an allergist to find out why I couldn't get rid of this persistent itch. He's the one who broke the news to me that my dermatologist had forever altered my immune system with antibiotics. I was now overly sensitive to many things that entered my body, the mast cells firing off histamine at practically anything that moved just like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in that final scene of the movie before they were killed by the Bolivian army. The news was I would have to take antihistamines from then on. OK. I could do that. As the years progressed, however, even the antihistamines began to fail me. After reading Dr. William Crook's book, The Yeast Connection, in the mid 1980s, I realized that the antibiotics had allowed yeast to overrun my body, and I had a condition known as candidiasis. Now I was starting to hate my dermatologist and, by association, the entire medical profession.

Since then, I've tried to rid my body of the yeast with all kinds of stuff, from acidophilus to caprylic acid to pao d'arco tea. They do help a bit, but until I conquer my love for sugar, which the yeast feeds on, I'll never completely solve the problem. I am more than excited about a new product that we just introduced called High Potency Australian Fresh Olive Leaf Complex in the Swanson Ultra line, however. It's a liquid formula—a thick extract from olive leaves mixed with glycerin and nothing else. Olive leaf extract has an impressive history of combatting the kind of pathogens that have claimed my intestinal tract, boosting the immune system at the same time. I was anxious to try it, but was more than taken aback by the strong taste of it. Yeah, no doubt it kicks butt in the gut (hey, there's a headline), but I wasn't sure how I was going to get it to the battlefield in my body. I tried chasing it with tomato juice, and I have to say, this does make it a lot easier to take. But the inspiration for this post was my discovery of an entirely different way to use it.

I was getting ready to leave for work one morning when the tops of my feet broke out in the familiar and maddening itch. I could barely stand it. I don't really know what possessed me to do this, but I grabbed the olive leaf extract, poured about a teaspoon of it on a paper towel, and spread it across the tops of my feet. Wow! I could hardly believe it. Instant relief. The olive leaf extract went right to work on the culprit.  Was this just a coincidence? Maybe the skin was simply dry and the glycerin soothed it. Not a chance. I've used it on numerous occasions since then on other parts of my body, too, and it works every single time. This stuff is great! I hate it when marketers use the word "miracle" to describe a new product. It just sounds so hokey. But in contrast with the scourge I've put up with for the last 25 years, I view this olive extract as a bona fide miracle. Which makes me a feel a little bit like Moses himself.

Aboca Scores Big with Herbal Knowledge and Supplements

Today we’re introducing twelve new herbal products on our website made especially for Swanson Health Products by an impressive Italian company called Aboca (accent on the first syllable), one of Italy’s leading cultivation and manufacturing companies for medicinal herbs. What’s so impressive about Aboca, you may ask? Well, for one thing, rather than foolishly discarding the centuries-old traditions of herbal healing as many of today’s manufacturers have done, the people at Aboca have immersed themselves in these ancient practices. Very smart! They have painstakingly sifted through volumes of information to learn about the specific plants that were used by physicians like Dioscorides, who practiced medicine at the same time the Apostle Paul was alive, and Galen, the physician to Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, and to gain a deeper understanding of how these individuals provided health and wellness to the world of their day. Aboca even has a vast array of books and historical artifacts on display in a breathtaking museum located in the medieval walled town of Sansepolcro. If you can’t book your flight for Tuscany today, you can still fill the good part of a Saturday afternoon by visiting the museum online. (It’s actually quite fascinating!) Aboca then integrates this wisdom of the past with the science of modern technology to produce truly high-calibre herbal supplements. 

Not to be left out of the process is the art of presentation, and Aboca excels here as well. The first product I tried in the Aboca line was the Swanson Digegas Tea. It’s specially blended to provide relief from gas and bloating, but unlike many chalky and unpleasant-tasting antacid tablets, this tea is smooth and velvety. You have to like the taste of licorice, but if you do, you’ll sip it for pure pleasure. The naturally sweet combination of fennel and star anise make it good enough to be called dessert, yet it definitely lives up to it’s intended use (personal stamp of approval, I’m chagrined to say). The best was yet to come, however. When I saw the packaging for three of the products—Energo, Drenaslim and Depura Mix Herbal Detoxifier—I knew this was a very special line. Call me Hyacinth (“Keeping Up Appearances”) or Martha Stewart, but I think beer tastes much better served in a frosty glass rather than straight out of the can, and cheesecake is far creamier and richer when eaten from a Royal Doulton dessert plate than a styrofoam carton. So I was enchanted with the individual glass vials that encase the contents of these three liquid supplements. Not only are they convenient to carry in a purse, they’re just cool! They conjure up images from movies like “Death Becomes Her” of magic potions that grant one eternal youth upon consumption. (Wouldn’t it be lovely?) And while I didn’t go so far as to believe that splendid notion, I did feel very special tossing back the vial of Drenaslim. I may not have erased any fine lines from around my eyes, but I didn’t simply imagine the 4-pound weight loss that greeted me the next morning—the product does indeed perform.

What more can I say? To me, Aboca is downright alluring. I hope you’ll find it to be the same!

Have You Used Your Imagination Today?

How many times have you purchased a product with anticipation that it’s just what you need for an intended purpose, only to discover it’s not going to work after all? No doubt we’ve all experienced the ensuing disappointment that rolls in on us like a grey cloud. But as always, there is a proverbial silver lining. If and when we find another use for the product, we’re ten times happier than we originally were because a) we didn’t waste our money after all, and b) we get that good feeling that comes from our use of ingenuity.

The preceding discussion simply leads into what I did yesterday afternoon. Among the many items I bought on employee order day, I wanted the walnut oil that we just introduced in our Swanson EFA line (SWE037). Essentially, it’s billed as an Omega-3 and Omega-9 EFA oil that can be used to make healthy salad dressings. It does indeed do this, but I bought it with the idea of using it as the carrier oil for my cypress and lemon essential oils to rub on my body after a bath or shower. In theory, it lends itself to this purpose quite nicely. The aroma of the oil is very light and rather inert much like almond oil (which I now use for this purpose), and the texture is so light that it sinks into the skin rather than clinging to it like Saran Wrap. I carefully peeled back the foil seal on the bottle and rubbed a bit of the velvety oil across the back of my hand, confident that I had purchased a better skin product than anything offered at the Estee Lauder counter. And then the storm cloud moved in as I watched a red patch develop on my hand. In disbelief I checked the ingredients on the label but found no evil chemical insidiously lurking in this oil. It’s just plain ol’ walnut oil, and obviously my fair, delicate skin is just plain ol’ allergic to walnuts.  So my next thought was, “What on earth am I going to do with 16 ounces of walnut oil?” One look at the old scuffed up closet doors hanging in my bedroom, and I was inspired…

Since I couldn’t use the walnut oil on my body, what could I put it on? How about those closet doors? Walnut oil is often used in furniture polish because not only does it clean the wood, it also moisturizes and protects it, giving the wood a beautiful sheen and enriching its natural patina. What if I added the same essential oils that I love to burn as candles into the walnut oil and then rubbed my closet doors with it? Excitedly, I mixed together 2 drops of patchouli oil (I have a zillion of these oils at home), 3 drops of clove oil and 5 drops of orange oil, then I combined them with one tablespoon of the walnut oil. I dipped a clean rag into the oil and applied it to the wood doors, buffing every inch of it with amazement. Not only did the doors look like new again, the room smelled heavenly! I went downstairs to the laundry room, and when I returned to the bedroom…pure enchantment! The oil sunk into the porous wood, which slowly releases the fragrance of the essential oils into the air. My closet doors had become a pomander! The true test came when my husband Ronald and I went to a meeting last night. Would the spicy sweet aroma greet us when we arrived home after three hours? Our whole house smelled faintly like Claire Bourke Original scent potpourri that I used and loved back in the 70s. This is better than candles. The fakey, synthetic smell of Glade plug-ins can’t even begin to compare. The Walnut Oil is a winner afterall!

So what ideas have you come up with? Any versatile ideas for our products? I have some rather unorthodox uses for coconut oil, brewer’s yeast and tea tree oil, too, that I’ll share some time, but now we’d love to hear from you. J

Aging Gratefully with Cysteine Peptide

The subject of aging is on my mind today. This morning I filled out a questionnaire that asked for my age range, and it hit me that I can no longer truthfully check the “18-49” box. I am 50 years old. This makes me pretty much worthless to the marketers on Madison Avenue, I’m told, unless I’m buying denture cream. Well, that’s fine with me…if they don’t want my money, I’m perfectly happy to buy what I please with no coercion whatsoever from Leo Burnett Worldwide. I just don’t want to feel like I’m 50! And I don’t want to look like the 50 of my grandmother’s era, either, which I kinda think I would if I wore no makeup, set my hair with pin curls and Dippity-Do, and donned a floral house frock that zipped up the front like she did—bless her heart! That’s why sephora.com gets at least $200 from me a month, and a good chunk of my discretionary income goes right back to Swanson Health Products, too!

We’re launching a new product in a month or so that will surely be one of my next supplement purchases. It’s a cysteine peptide that’s supposed to be the ideal way to get more glutathione into the cells. You probably already know what that means for anyone concerned about aging. Glutathione is the body’s natural antioxidant. The liver makes it from the amino acid cysteine, but like practically everything else in an aging body (except facial hair growth), glutathione production slows down with each passing year. If glutathione levels remained high, our cells would not oxidize and age so quickly. Unfortunately, glutathione supplements aren’t particularly effective, since our cells don’t absorb the glutathione very well. A better way to up the glutathione in your body is take in more cysteine and let your body convert it to glutathione right inside the cell. But that hasn’t been ideal either, since cysteine is rather unstable and much if it gets oxidized before it is assimilated. This new cysteine peptide supplement is bonded to an amino acid peptide from whey so it is more stable and readily assimilated. It gets through digestion unharmed so your cells can convert all they want into glutathione. Although we’re targeting it for liver health (glutathione detoxifies this organ), I noticed in the manufacturer’s studies that about 3.5 grams of cysteine peptide per day also resulted in better skin for the test subjects! (Hmmm...this interests me.) The words used to describe their skin are “moist,” “velvety,” “silky” and “smooth.” I’m not surprised, though—or even skeptical. I already wrote about the undeniable link between the liver and the skin on our Liver Health page, stating “Because both the liver and the skin are the organs most involved in toxin removal, many herbalists connect clear, luminous and even-toned skin with healthy liver function, so anyone concerned about their outward appearance should pay strict attention to liver health, too.” I just can’t wait for us to get Cysteine Peptide in stock! I’ll be checking the inventory every day…