Living Nourished Lives

A topic that is strongly on my mind today is the Landmark Study I & II. I felt a difference from using Shaklee without even knowing about these studies. However, if you are like I was, you may be pretty content with what you are doing to care for and support your health. In 2009 I wasn’t thinking I needed anything else or anything different. And let’s face it, change is not always that easy for us to embrace. We do get comfortable sometimes. Usually when we encounter a health challenge, we get thoughts of making some changes, but to actually do something different, we often have a built in resistance. This was especially true for me. I preferred a natural approach, but diving in and sifting through an ocean of supplements at the health food store, just overwhelmed me. It was much easier to say, I’m taking something, hopefully it’s good and if not, “Oh Well, What else can I do?” Plus, I also thought, “I only take this multi because I’m pregnant and have been advised to. I don’t even know if it does any good. God made us to eat food.” That was the end of my story until I ran into the extreme fatigue that extended past my first trimester. I had been so looking forward to my second trimester, because that was when I had always felt more energy again.

After I realized that the extreme fatigue that I had been feeling during the first trimester was not going away in my second trimester, I reluctantly decided to try a few Shaklee Supplements that I had heard helped a friend through a recent pregnancy. I figured I had nothing to lose. And I didn’t even know about Shaklee’s amazing money back guarantee. But that ultimately that didn’t matter because I felt like my old self after about a week of taking a few Shaklee Supplements. I couldn’t believe it.

But there was another thing that I did not know about back then and that is the Landmark Study done by UC Berkley. Four years before I started using Shaklee, 300 Shaklee Supplement long term users (using Multiple Shaklee Supplements for 20-40 years) had key biomarkers studied and compared with a study of 20+ year non supplement users and 20+ year single multivitamin users of any brand. The Shaklee population that was studied were on average 5-10 years older than the other subject populations and yet their biomarkers were significantly better in all categories tested. Why would this be? Again, I did not know this at the time, but Shaklee tests all botanicals used in their products for 350+ contaminants. In fact it was Shaklee’s quality testing that led the way and inspired the testing for 80 contaminants that is done for GMP products (80 contaminants is what pharmaceutical grade tests for a well.) On top of that, I did not know that Dr Forest Shaklee pioneered natural nutrition research by building a state of the art research center in California so that today Shaklee Corporation can say that they have more than 140 published clinical research studies (at least 90 are peer reviewed studies.)

It was probably about four years later at a homeschool PE coop group that my children and I participated in that I met another Shaklee user that shared some about the Landmark Study. It sounded pretty impressive, but I still hadn’t seen anything visually and I’m such a visual person. Then about a year after that, I had decided that I should give back by sharing more about Shaklee’s products since I’d gotten such benefits from the products. And it was at this point that I started learning more about their quality standards. I must admit that many things I heard sounded so above anything else I’d ever heard about any supplement company and in those days Shaklee didn’t have a very robust website, so the studies and quality assurance that Shaklee practices was not readily available on their website, like it is today, so a lot of the things that I was hearing from other Shaklee users, I actually thought seemed like they would be exaggerated. It really wasn’t until Frank and I attended our first Shaklee Convention that we got to hear first hand from the CEO and Shaklee Scientists about the impressive research. We attended the Medical Professionals special talk that year and wow! I wish they still included a scientific talk at the conventions, but they actually go into more detail about the science in the general sessions now, so the deep dive Medical Professionals Science Talk is not needed as a separate talk.

Now there is even more proof because Shaklee has now participated in what is called Landmark II studies. They revisited the same Shaklee users 10 years later to confirm healthier biomarkers and lower prevalence of disease. In the Landmark II studies, they added new biomarkers related to Type 2 Diabetes (HbA1c, insulin, FBS,) comparing medication usage, and added more comparison groups to include biomarkers of other brand, multiple supplements users. They also added a second cohort of younger Shaklee consumers that had been using Shaklee 3-5 years. These studies were done by Tufts University. In addition, they looked at Shaklee user’s Omega 3 index and found that Shaklee’s population fell between 8.5-9 and anything greater than 8 is considered optimal and a good indication of good health. Only Japan, Alaska, Greenland, and a few other costal areas were above 8. If Shaklee were a country, it would be a country with a very healthy Omega 3 index.

There was also a Telomere study that was conducted and compared the length of the telomeres of a cohort that was using multiple Shaklee supplements, including Vivix for 5 years and compared them to the telomere length of a cohort of healthy non-smokers in San Francisco. The preliminary findings were very impressive. The 5 year Shaklee users had significantly longer telomere length. The rate of shortening in the Shaklee users was 40% lower than those in the healthy control group. In fact, a statistical analysis projected that a normal healthy 41 year old would have the same telomere length as an 80 year old Shaklee user.

I experienced good results on a personal level but knowing the science and attention that Shaklee puts in to their products, along with all the research results, gives me peace of mind that I am not a guinea pig or just blindly grabbing for something off the shelf, hoping it helps. If you would like to see the main products that the long term Shaklee users were taking, the Vitalizing Plan is based upon what the Shaklee Landmark constituents were taking and you can take a look at it here.