This issue highlights two recent articles from the media on children’s health. Are Our Kids the Sickest Generation? looks at some disturbing health statistics and our second article, Body Burden is a new phrase you’ll be hearing about that measures the toxins and unwanted chemicals in the body. To help you combat these growing threats to your children we share four ways you can reduce the unwanted chemicals in your home and five Shaklee supplements to improve your children’s health.
We’ll also share news about Shaklee’s Landmark Study getting published in a peer-reviewed journal. This independent, clinical study shows how taking Shaklee supplements long term can improve your health and extend your life. And we share news about Shaklee’s Get Clean household product line being highlighted on the Oprah Winfrey show….yet again!
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In This Issue:
1) Are Today’s Kids The Sickest Generation?
2) Five Shaklee Supplements to Improve Children’s Health
3) Body Burden: Chemicals in the Body
4) Four Ways to Reduce Unwanted Chemicals in Your Home
5) Shaklee in the News: Landmark Study Published and Get Clean featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show…again!
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1) Are Today’s Kids The Sickest Generation?
Are today’s children becoming the sickest generation? Looking at the statistics on children’s health, across the board, paints an alarming picture…
ADHD – up a whopping 400% over the last 25 years.
Bi-Polar Disorder – 40-fold increase among children over the last decade.
Allergies – 40% of children now have allergies.
Asthma – up 160% in children under the age of 5 since 1980.
Autism – dramatic gains since the 1980’s with estimates now of 1 in 150 children in America today having an autism spectrum disorder.
Sleep Disorders - 25% of children have sleep disorders, which is also a precursor linked to obesity, asthma and allergies. Researchers have found that every additional hour per night a third-grader spends sleeping reduces the child's chances of being obese in sixth grade by 40 percent. If there was a magic number for the third-graders, it was nine hours, 45 minutes of sleep.
Jean Weiss of MSN Health and Fitness reports on the state of children's health:
“More kids are getting diagnosed with bipolar, ADHD, allergies, and asthma in this decade than in previous decades. Some attribute this increase to improved diagnosing, others to over-diagnosing. Still others view the sick-kid trend as the proverbial canary in the coalmine: More children are getting sick because they are fragile and affected by an increasingly industrialized world.
“I do think we are in the midst of an epidemic of these child disorders,” says Dr. Kenneth Bock, co-founder of the Rhinebeck Health Center and author of Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma, Allergies (Ballantine Books, 2007). “I don’t believe it is all due to better diagnosis.”
Bock suggests that children predisposed to these medical conditions are more likely to manifest them after cumulative exposure to pollutants such as heavy metals, chemicals, pesticides, flame retardants, and chemicals from plastic additives to name a few. “All those kinds of things together are increasing the toxic load on children,” he says.
The simplest thing parents can do for their child is decrease their exposure to toxins, Bock says, whether it means eating pesticide-free food or avoiding heavy metals and harmful pollutants found in myriad products such as toys, computers, and clothing. “This is a recent phenomenon over the last 20 years,” says Brock. “We are living in a chemical soup, and it’s the kids that are the most susceptible.”
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2) Five Shaklee Supplements to Improve Children’s Health
Later in this newsletter we’ll talk about removing toxins in the home that can make a big difference in your children’s health. Right now, there are five Shaklee supplements that can go a long way in improving your children’s overall health, especially for children that are suffering from the issues highlighted earlier.
1) Incredivites: It’s the most comprehensive children’s multivitamin and multi-mineral on the market and also the most tooth friendly! These chewable tablets featuring dolphin, sea horse and fish designs come in three kid-friendly flavors: orange, grape and mixed berry. Incredivites provides the essential vitamins and minerals children need to build healthy bodies, without any artificial flavors, sweeteners, colors or preservatives. For more information on Incredivites and other Shakleebaby and ShakleeKid go to: See Here
2) Chewable Cal Mag Plus
While calcium is vital in building strong bones, it also supports cell membranes and aids the nervous system, especially in impulse transmission, which could improve a child’s behavior.
Magnesium also has a calming effect on the nervous system, helping to maintain normal muscle and nerve function, and is involved in energy metabolism and protein synthesis. Children diagnosed with ADD and ADHD have responded positively to supplementation from calcium, magnesium and other crucial minerals needed to build healthy bones.
Shaklee’s Chewable Cal Mag Plus comes in a tasty berry flavor and provides 1000 mg of elemental calcium, plus magnesium, Vitamin D and other critical nutrients. For more information, or to order it online go to: GO Here
3) Shaklee’s Meal Shake or Energizing Protein
Eating small portions of protein throughout the day can help even out a child’s energy. Shaklee’s Meal Shakes are a perennial favorite and a great tasting, easy to mix drink that packs extra nutrition into any meal or snack for kids. For those who want to avoid a milk protein product, Energizing Soy Protein delivers a tasty and healthy source of protein and provides critical nutrients to build good health that can easily mix into a fruit smoothie or in a child’s favorite juice. For more information on Shaklee Meal Shakes go to:
For more information on Shaklee’s Energizing Soy Protein go to:
4) Shaklee’s B-Complex
The B vitamins (also called “The Happy Vitamins”) have been linked to improved neural activity and are very helpful in reducing stress, mental confusion, irritability, mood changes, and insomnia. Shaklee’s B-Complex offers a complete B-Complex at the levels found in nature. Shaklee’s B-complex also has a patented folic-acid coating for best absorption of this critical nutrient. Getting a good healthy dose of B-Complex is important today as stress and sugar depletes B-vitamins in the body. For more information on Shaklee’s B-Complex online go to:
5) Shaklee’s OmegaGuard
Here’s a healthy fat that you want your child to have: Omega-3 fatty acids. Studies have found that children with learning disorders, including attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders, often have an essential fatty acid deficiency.
The right kinds of fat are needed to help the brain fire information efficiently from synapse to synapse. Essential Fatty Acids, like those found in Shaklee’s OmegaGuard, help brain cells receive the messages sent between synapses, thus eliminating the chatter and preventing the sending neuron from scooping up its own message.
Shaklee’s pharmaceutical-grade OmegaGuard provides a full spectrum of seven natural omega 3 fatty acids including EPA, DHA, ALA to support healthy heart, vision, brain and joint function. For more information on the world’s finest fish oil supplement go to:
The above five Shaklee supplements provide a good foundation for your children to enjoy better health, better learning, better sleeping, better energy and better brain function. For more overall information on children’s health go to:
Note for Sleep Issues: For sleep problems, a serving of Chewable Cal Mag Plus and an additional B-Complex to children before bed can promote restful sleep. And you may consider adding Shaklee’s Gentle Sleep Complex for more difficult sleep cases. If a child has trouble waking up in the morning, Energizing Protein right before bed can help balance their blood sugar levels for an easy morning wake up.
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3) Body Burden: Chemical Testing in the Body
“Body Burden” is a new phrase you’ll be hearing more about in the future. It’s a test that measures the levels of toxins and other industrial chemicals in the body (i.e. how much the body is burdened by chemicals). Below is an excerpt from a story on Body Burden that highlights the effects of chemicals on children and recently ran on CNN as part of their “Planet in Peril” series.
Most Americans haven't heard of body burden testing, also called biomonitoring in scientific circles, but it's a hot topic among environmentalists and public health experts who warn that the industrial chemicals we come into contact with every day are accumulating in our bodies and endangering our health in ways we have yet to understand. Many of the chemicals found are known to harm rats, but studies on humans are preliminary.
"We are the humans in a dangerous and unnatural experiment in the United States, and I think it's unconscionable," said Dr. Leo Trasande, assistant director of the Center for Children's Health and the Environment at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City
Trasande says that industrial toxins could be leading to more childhood disease and disorders.
"We are in an epidemic of environmentally mediated disease among American children today," he said. "Rates of asthma, childhood cancers, birth defects and developmental disorders have exponentially increased, and it can't be explained by changes in the human genome. So what has changed? All the chemicals we're being exposed to."
Trasande said children up to six years old are most at risk because their vital organs and immune system are still developing and because they depend more heavily on their environments than adults do.
"Pound for pound, they eat more food, they drink more water, they breathe in more air," he said. "And so [children] carry a higher body burden than we do."
For more information on body burden and chemical testing go to: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/22/body.burden/index.html
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4) Four Ways to Reduce Unwanted Chemicals in Your Home
Shaklee has always been about creating products in harmony with nature, whether that product is a multivitamin, shampoo, toothpaste, or a household cleaner. Changing brands to Shaklee is a significant move you can make to reduce the level of toxins and unwanted chemicals you and your family are exposed to everyday. Here are five Shaklee action steps you can do to greatly reduce your chemical exposure in the home.
1) Replace common household and laundry cleaning products with Shaklee’s Get Clean line of non-toxic cleaners. An easy way to do that in one fell swoop is to order the Get Clean Starter Special Edition Kit. Get Clean kit! For more information or to order it online go to:
2) Replace common personal care products with Shaklee’s healthier alternatives.
Popular toothpaste, deodorants, shampoos and body lotions all contain chemicals that accumulate in your body through your skin. In fact, check the warning label on your current toothpaste – it tells you to keep out of reach of children under 6 years of age! You won’t find that warning on Shaklee’s organic dentifrice toothpaste or other Shaklee personal care products - all of which are free from toxic chemicals & safe for you and your family. For a list of Shaklee’s personal care (Nutrition Therapy Skin Care products go to:
3) Add a Shaklee BestWater unit to your home.
There are well over two thousand contaminants found in U.S. drinking water since 1974, and most municipalities only test for a small fraction of those contaminants. Plus water treatment plants add chemicals to treat drinking water - like aluminum, chlorine and sodium. In addition to treating the water, contamination can also occur from lead in water pipes and/or bacteria and dirt from leaky pipes.
The best way to stop the inflow of chemicals and contaminants in your water is at the faucet itself. Shaklee offers three BestWater units to fit any budget that effectively remove chemicals and contaminants at the tap. The BestWater Pitcher Carafe delivers portable clean water you can put in the refrigerator. It reduces particles down to 15 microns, which is twice as small as what the Brita filter delivers. Shaklee’s MTS 2000 water filter or BestWater Reverse Osmosis water purifiers have consistently been rated a best buy over the years in leading consumer publications. And all Shaklee BestWater units will save you money over bottle water, not to mention that you won’t have to lug bottled water from the store! You’ll appreciate the convenience of your BestWater appliance. For more information on Shaklee’s BestWater units go to:
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4) Shaklee in the News
We're thrilled to announce the publication of the Shaklee Landmark Study in Nutrition Journal, an online, peer-reviewed international human nutrition journal. The direct link to the study abstract is at: http://www.nutritionj.com/content/6/1/30/abstract The study will also be indexed in PubMed Central, a free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature published by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), ensuring broad based availability of the study manuscript.
The study, entitled "Usage Patterns, Health, and Nutritional Status of Long-Term Multiple Dietary Supplement Users", is the first-ever study on long-term users of multiple dietary supplements. The study found these long-term supplement users (who were all Shaklee supplement users) comparatively to have markedly better health, as measured by higher blood levels of key nutrients and more optimal levels of key health biomarkers.
As a group, Shaklee users were 73% less likely to have diabetes and 39% less likely to have elevated blood pressure than non-users. Also, the Shaklee group was less likely to have suboptimal blood nutrient concentrations, and more likely to have favorable levels of key biomarkers including serum homocysteine, C-reactive protein, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triglycerides than either non-users of supplements or multivitamin/mineral users of non-Shaklee supplements.
This simply confirms what most of us believed already—that Shaklee long-term supplement users have better health than the two comparison groups—those who used just another company’s multivitamin and those who use no supplements at all.
We’re also excited to announce that Shaklee’s Get Clean was again featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show! This time featuring Dr. OZ, as part of their series on Aging. The segment showed how toxic cleaners in your home can contribute to the quickening of aging. Viewers were then encouraged to look for brands like Shaklee's Get Clean line. Oprah says she loves Shaklee’s Basic H2 all-purpose cleaner. She recommends it as a spot remover, too. For a picture of Oprah and Dr. Oz with the Shaklee Get Clean line of products go to: http://www2.oprah.com/health/oz/slide/20071105/oz_20071105_350_106.jhtml?promocode=HP13
For those who never saw Shaklee’s first appearance on Oprah during her Earth Day show, the link below goes to an edited 5-minute online video clip featuring Oprah talking about Shaklee, profiling our CEO's Shaklee story, and giving the Shaklee Get Clean products to her appreciative audience. http://www.shaklee.net/pws/library/flash/getclean-tv2.html
For another great article on Shaklee's leadership in the environmental movement, read "Shaklee: Green Before Green Was Cool" from CNN’s Money website go to: http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/17/news/companies/pluggedin_gunther_shaklee.fortune/index.htm
Also, the current issue (Nov. 13, 2007) of Women's Day also features the Get Clean Starter Kit as one of their giveaways in its Christmas 2007 issue to help readers get a clean start. We definitely agree with Women’s Day that the Get Clean Starter Kit would make a great Christmas present this year. As would a Shaklee AirSource or BestWater unit.
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Until then…
Yours in Health,
