The 2021 Shaklee Conference was held during the last week of September and introduced 4 amazing new products.

Shaklee stepped in with a new technology, wherein we can use an online questionnaire to enter our personal data (age, sex, activity levels, dietary preferences etc.) along with more detailed concerns (our top health goals, our energy and daily stress levels, and how well we sleep, and about our memory and focus levels) along with a few other personal items.




Then we can add our health issues (Blood pressure, cholesterol level, bone or digestive health etc.), as well as any relevant family histories, doctor recommendations, or prescriptions that we might be taking.




We can even add certain blood test results, and/or DNA testing results from
23andMe or Ancestry, if they were taken within the last year.

NOTE: Those last 2 entries are completely optional, but they can help the software to create an even more personalized plan.

Meology

From all that qauestionnaire input, the software then makes up to 640,000 potential decisions, and reviews up to 110 million possible Shaklee supplement combinations, to create a truly personalized nutritional recommendation for you that is Meology. [1]

The results display the products that contain the exact nutrients YOU need. The software can even adjust for your allergies, and can easily adapt to personal preferences. All this helps to avoid potential prescription drug interactions.

Once your results are displayed, it also provides an explanation for each nutrient's role in the program, just below the results section, so that when you start to feel better, you will know exactly why.

You are also offered 2 options: you can select the basic “Essentials Plan” or the fully realized “Essentials Plus” program.

The Essentials plan focuses on the most important nutrients and products that you require to build a strong nutritional foundation. The basic plan may include up to 8 tablets per day, contained in an individual supplement packet, and the Meology box contains a 30-day supply. Simple and easy, a program that you can take with you on the run.

The Essentials Plus plan includes all the basic nutrients included in the Essentials plan, PLUS other targeted nutrient solutions, to help you achieve optimal health. The Essentials Plus plan may include up to 16 tablets per day, provided in two daily supplement packs. This all depends on the data you entered, and because you are unique.

Think about this: Meology may draw from more than 110 million possible product combinations, but it identifies the ONE precise solution, that is designed just for you!

When you couple that knowledge that Shaklee products are pure and potent, and are always tested for their bioavailability and purity, and created by a Company that never cuts corners, you know that you can feel secure that no other company could guarantee better results!

Shaklee also created a Meology Product Sheet [2] and a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) handout [3] if you would more information about the process.

Meology™ Kids

Not to be left out in the cold, our youngest and fussiest eaters can now join the club. We know that some children resist swallowing tablets, or eating their broccoli, so Shaklee developed new, delicious gummies that make up the Meology™ Kids program.

Their daily packet comes with 2 berry flavored Super Vitamin gummies, packed with 11 key vitamins and minerals to support healthy growth and development. The multi comes packed with 100% of 8 key nutrients including the vitamins A, C, D, E, B6, and B12, biotin, and pantothenic acid.

There’s also a cherry flavored Super Immunity gummy, filled with a powerful combination of immune-supporting nutrients including the all-natural vitamins C and D, zinc and immune-supporting antioxidants from elderberry fruit.

Elderberry fruit (Sambucus nigra) contains flavonoids like quercetin, and the powerful anthocyanidins, which are often recommended for immune stimulation. [4]

Researchers at the Franklin Institute of Wellness (2019) [5] reviewed all the studies on elderberry use, because upper respiratory infections are often treated with over-the-counter drugs, antibiotics, or antiviral medications.

Because of concerns about those drugs safety and efficacy profiles, there is a growing demand for a safe alternative approach. Elderberry has been used to treat cold and flu symptoms for centuries, but to date there have been no large-scale studies.

These researchers did a meta-review of all the known elderberry studies, to measure the effects of elderberry supplementation. The review included a total of 180 participants, and evaluated moderators, such as vaccination status, and the cause of the upper respiratory symptoms. [5]

Supplementation with elderberry was found to substantially reduce upper respiratory symptoms. The quantitative synthesis of the effects yielded a large mean effect size. Those findings present an alternative to antibiotic misuse for upper respiratory symptoms, due to viral infections, and a potentially safer alternative to prescription drugs for routine cases of the common cold and influenza. [5]

And to top off your child's day, there’s one strawberry lemonade flavored Omega-3 gelly, containing 300 mg. of omega-3 fatty acids (DHA + EPA) with no fishy aftertaste. That's 3x more DHA + EPA than other leading gummies provide.


Finally, there is no fear of allergies because Meology Kids is dairy & lactose free, and contains no gluten, wheat, soy, egg, peanut, tree nut, shellfish, and zero GMO ingredients.

The Meology Kids Product Sheet and FAQ [6] explains how this product supports your child’s healthy growth and brain development, healthy eye function, while also providing added immune support, all in one tasty package!

Meology Kids is recommended for children 4 years and older. It’s a clever and convenient, fully personalized package, and the children appear to LOVE it!

Dream Serene

As we reviewed in a previous newsletter on stress (32-6) one of the major contributors to the decline in physical and mental health status is because stress disrupts our sleeping pattern(s). That has contributed to the growing popularity of sleep aids over the last few decades.

The big winner of the Snooze Sweepstakes is melatonin. Last month I thought collagen was a big hit with one million Google hits, but that’s peanuts compared to melatonin’s 18 million hits.

Thank heavens that I did not need to rely on Google to locate accurate scientific studies. With all this “popularity”, Google swarms with all the usual snake oil companies, and endless “Best of 5 (or 10)” referral websites. That alone should keep the FDA busy for the next century. (LOL!)

Disrupted sleeping patterns are such an important topic that the British Journal of Pharmacology devoted a whole issue to the importance of melatonin for human health (that issue features 9 different articles) on melatonin. [7]

The article of interest from this issue explains that: “In mammals, a central circadian clock, located in [a portion of] the hypothalamus, tunes [our] innate circadian rhythms to the 24-hour light-dark cycle.” [8]

When it starts to get dark, our brain begins to produce melatonin, and several hours later we should start to become sleepy. That process worked perfectly until sometime during the 20th Century, when universal electrical lighting lit all our homes and streets, so that we could shop all night, or watch TV, or surf the web all night.

Their article [8] goes on to sum up all the melatonin studies for sleeping disorders associated with diminished or misaligned melatonin rhythms, including circadian rhythm-related sleep disorders, including jet lag, shift-work insomnia, and insomnia in children with neurodevelopmental disorders, and including their impact on Alzheimer's disease.

Although this article [8] includes a lengthy discussion of how melatonin deficiency contributes to the onset of Alzheimer's disease, it also clearly emphasizes the role of melatonin in the restorative value of sleep, and how that contributes to better physical and mental health.

A 2017 study by researchers from the University of Guleph in Ontario, Canada, tested 31 different melatonin supplements, including 16 different manufacturers. The products were all purchased from local groceries and drugstores, and included a range of formulations, including liquid drops, gel capsules, and chewable tablets. [9]

The Bad News?

• The actual melatonin content of those products ranged from 83% less to 478% more than the amount listed on the label, with most products (21 out of 31) failing to fall within 10% of the label claim.

• Variability within individual products was also very high; some products differed by as much as 465% in their melatonin content, from one package to the next of the same product!

• Worse yet, 26 percent of the 31 tested supplements contained serotonin, a hormone that may produce harmful effects, even at relatively low levels. [9]

According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the recommended safe melatonin dose for adults is somewhere between 0.5 and 5 milligrams of melatonin. [10]

This is why Shaklee used the conservative dose of 2 mg, while coupling it with a proprietary blend of valerian root extract, lemon balm leaf extract, and L-theanine, to promote safe and restful sleep. [11]

The onset of menopause is frequently associated with sleep disruption. For that reason, Iranian researchers decided to perform a randomized clinical trial to determine whether a combination of valerian and lemon balm might improve women’s sleep patterns. [12]

They worked with a group of 100 menopausal women 50-60 years of age. They were randomly assigned into 2 groups, one as the “intervention group” with valerian/lemon balm, and the other as the placebo (control) group.

This study is particularly noteworthy because a previous “safety study” had concluded that high doses of valerian (400-900 mg) were required to reduce sleep disorders.

However, this succeeded by used a much lower dose (160 mg) because they combined it with lemon balm, and the results far exceeded the earlier safety study results. [11]

It’s very easy to see why Shaklee emulated their results, to produce this new, safe and effective sleep product.

Interactions with medicines

As with certain other herbal supplements, people who are taking a prescription medicine should consult with their health care provider before using melatonin. In particular, people with epilepsy, and those taking blood thinner medications need to be under medical supervision while taking a melatonin supplement. [11]

Dream Serene also contains L-theanine, an amino acid found almost solely in tea plants (Camellia sinensis). A recent study by the United States Army Graduate Program, seeking ways to help posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) found that L-theanine reverses the effects of caffeine, thus providing relaxation effects. [12]

The authors state that, based on these research findings, L-theanine would be a useful addition to the treatment regimen for a variety of psychologic disorders, ranging from PTSD, to anxiety, mood disorders, and even for recovery from substance dependence. [13]

Herbal Blend Multi-Purpose Cream

Shaklee recommends this skin cream for addressing dry, chapped, callused, or roughened skin on the knees, elbows, and feet. To gather more information about this product, I interviewed friends who had been using Herbal Blend for 20 or even 30 years, and was stunned by the spectrum of complaints they had used it for, from calming and repairing the itchy skin of eczema and psoriasis, to soothing the pain of bug bites and sunburn.

It was after I began researching the natural herbs contained in this formula [6] that I discovered WHY it was being been used for so many different complaints.

Herbal Blend contains menthol, a crystalline compound with a cool minty taste and odor, and is derived from peppermint oil. A recently published study [7] reported on 96 pregnant women, who were suffering from pruritus gravidarum, an intense itching and associated rash on the abdomen, hands and/or feet. Pruritus is reported to affect somewhere between 8 to 20% of all pregnant women. Half this study group was treated topically, twice a day, for 2 weeks with peppermint oil.

The menthol group reported a dramatic decrease in their discomfort levels, from an average of 6 out of 10 severity, down to a 1 (no complaint) post-treatment. [7]

Considering that most pregnant women would prefer to avoid using synthetic drugs, this natural menthol treatment has proven to be an extremely effective natural alternative.

Two other new studies help explain why menthol is so effective for pain relief. The first study [8], conducted by scientists from the School of Pharmacy in the Shenyang province of China, helped demonstrated WHY menthol is able to enhance absorption through the skin, by easily penetrating the fat layer of our skin. They are now researching how menthol can help improve drug transport across the skin barrier.

The second study, by scientists at the Neurological Pain Research Institute in Germany, elucidated the mechanism by which menthol reduces neuropathic pain over a 4-hour period. [9] It appears that the menthol in Herbal Blend can reduce pain, while enhancing the absorption of the other herbs found in this amazing product.

Herbal Blend also contains sage (salvia officinalis), an herb which provides dramatic antioxidant protection, and also has been shown to halt and reverse oxidant-induced DNA lesions. [9] It was also shown to inhibit the proliferation of lymphoma and leukemic cancer cells by causing apoptosis (or death) of cancer cells). [10]

Herbal Blend also contains coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara), which has been shown to be a valuable compound for treating inflammatory conditions. [11] The flowering buds of coltsfoot is used in Oriental medicine for the treatment of bronchitis and asthma. A recent experiment by the Department of Pharmacology in the Gyeongju province of Korea revealed the powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of this extract, by exposing living nerve cells to a variety of different chemicals that cause oxidative damage and neurotoxicity. They found that this extract was so protective that they now recommend it for the management of neurodegenerative disorders that involve inflammation, toxicity, or oxidative damage.   [12]

Herbal Blend also contains rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis), an herb rich in phenolic compounds that provide both antioxidant properties and antibacterial activities. [13]   One of the reasons for the failure of skin transplants following severe burns, is the oxidative damage and necrosis that occurs to the skin flaps themselves during the procedure. Extracts of rosemary have been shown to dramatically improve skin flap survival, and increased vessel diameters in skin when it was treated with rosemary extract, at least a half-hour before the procedure took place. [14]

Herbal Blend also contains chamomile (Matricaria recutita), which has long been a popular herbal medicine treatment for sore stomach, irritable bowel syndrome, and as a gentle sleep aid. A recent study found that chamomile helped reverse the liver damage caused by paraquat, a widely used herbicide. This is especially remarkable because paraquat poisoning is an extremely frustrating clinical condition with a high mortality rate, and there are no other effective treatments for humans. [15] Recent lab testing in the Netherlands (2010) also revealed that chamomile contains essential oils that provide dramatic antibacterial activity, and have been shown to provide protection from many of the germs that cause nosocomial infections in hospitals. [16]

So ask yourself:   if your skin was damaged or inflamed, wouldn’t you love to have all of those herbs at your disposal, to speed up your healing time? The amazing news is that the price is right. You may want to acquire several tubes of Herbal Blend to position around your home and vehicles.

As an aside:   Every time I do a deep-dive into one of Dr. Shaklee's Legacy Products, I come back out stunned by what a herbal wizard he MUST have been. I spent several hours gathering all this research from reputable research websites. But, remember there was NO internet back in the 60s! There were probably not that many textbooks extolling the health benefits of natural herbs either, and simply locating reliable sources of that kind information involved developing extended relationship-building with a network of holistic practitioners. We are truly blessed to associated with Shaklee, a compamy steeped in a history of high science, ethical concern for our health and our environment.