Grace’s Blog

On May 4^th, 2010, GlaxoSmithKline announced they were suspending a clinical trial of their resveratrol drug because of safety concerns.

Some reports went so far as to say people should be cautious about taking resveratrol supplements until the safety issues had been resolved.

This needs to be clarified.

The “resveratrol” drug referred to is not resveratrol itself!

Several years ago, Harvard scientists started screening over 500,000 chemicals to find which would be most effective at turning on anti-aging genes.

They were looking for something they could patent and sell to a drug company for big bucks.

What they found was resveratrol, a nutrient found naturally in red wine.  It was the most effective compound out of those 500,000 they screened at turning on the anti-aging genes.

It was great news for people using resveratrol supplements, but it was bad news for the scientists, because they couldn’t patent it and, therefore, couldn’t sell it to a drug company.

But all was not lost. There is a time-tested process for dealing with this problem.

It is to make a chemically modified derivative of the natural compound and, if it works, patent the chemical derivative and sell it to a drug company.

That’s what the scientists at Harvard did. They made a chemical derivative of resveratrol called SRT501.

This chemical showed it also turned on the anti-aging genes, patented it and sold it to Sirtris Pharmaceuticals for $500 million.

Then Sirtris turned around and sold it to GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million

The process of making a chemical derivative is frequently used.  Many successful drugs have been obtained this way, but the process is also fraught with perils.

Chemically modified derivatives are often not metabolized in the same way as the original and are often toxic in unexpected ways.

It is not surprising SRT501 displayed unexpected toxicity which caused
GlaxoSmithKline to halt clinical trials of the drug.

SRT501 is not resveratrol and the toxicities of this drug have nothing to do with resveratrol.

Resveratrol is a completely natural nutrient found in grapes, red wine and other foods. SRT501 is a man-made chemical derivative of resveratrol.

For a natural resveratrol product, watch a short video HERE.

Shaklee Independent Distributor

Making the claim that your company has the “best supplements” on the market has been around for a long time.  So how can a consumer know which are the best?

Ask the question, who does the scientific research and proves the products work?

The Gold Standard for any product claim starts with the science.  Once a company makes a product and proves that it works, it submits its research for peer review. 

This means the scientific community looks at all the data, tries to disprove it, and if it passes their scrutiny and validation, it is submitted to a reputable scientific or medical journal for publication.

This is a long, expensive process. Most supplement companies have never had even one article accepted for publication.  Makes one wonder why?

 Why would they subject their product to a peer review?  Could it damage their reputation?

 Beware of who does the research, who will benefit, and if it is real science behind the product.

 What You Should Look For

Look for studies done on real people, not in test tubes, in culture dishes, or on animals.

Have double blind studies been done…that’s when a person doesn’t know if they are taking the real thing or not.

Have the studies been done by reputable companies or universities?

Studies should be done on the finished product as formulated by a particular company.

What are the product claims…have the clinical trials been done on their particular product or is a company using phrases such as “our product contains xyz ingredients proven to blah, blah, blah.”

Maybe the xyz ingredients have been proven to do “blah, blah, blah,” but were studies done on their particular product and proven to work?  Big difference.

One 50 Year Old Supplement Company spent millions of dollars to prove their product was better than others on the market.  Called the 50th Anniversary Study.  No one had ever done a study like it.

If the results were good or if they were bad, they would be published.  Big Risk?  Not to this company.  They had confidence in their products  because they do over 83,000 annual quality controlled tests.

 An interesting thing happened.  Other companies started using the 50 year-old company’s research to validate their products.  Ethical??  I think not! 

It was the largest study ever done with long-term supplement users. It was conducted in collaboration with researchers from the UC Berkley School of Public Health.

They found that people who took this 50 year-old company’s supplements had markedly better health than people who took either no supplements or other brands of multivitamins.

How can other companies validate their multiple vitamins with a study that produced these kinds of results?  The study was published in the Nutrition Journal, Oct. 2007.

From the study, new technology emerged, and smart pills were developed.  They know where to go, where to dissolve and where to absorb. 

An exclusive, breakthrough delivery system, clinically proven to create a foundation for a longer, healthier life.   

Shaklee Dist.