Monthly Archive for January, 2010

Ketchup? Catsup? Whatever! Hang on to those Lycopene pills!

Published on January 28, 2010 in product news and supplement news. 1 Comment
Do you eat ketchup? What about tomato sauce? If so, you’ve probably noticed the word “Lycopene” popping up on the labels recently. Hmmm. Seems the large food companies have finally figured out the wisdom of promoting the powerful compounds found within their foods or beverages. We’re seeing the continued rise of the already gigantic category that’s come to be known as “functional foods”. Essentially, as we perceive it, at least in terms of the marketing, it’s the attempted marriage of foods with dietary supplements.
Unfortunately, many of these products, as fine as they might be in and of themselves, often fall far short in the “functional” part, because they typically don’t contain enough of the purported active ingredient to deliver a meaningful benefit to the user, despite what the label might imply.
Another potential problem is often with the consistency or regularity of usage. For example, a small dose of lycopene ingested once or twice a week probably would not deliver the same benefits as a therapeutic dose taken every day in supplement form. As far as I can tell, most of the research done on lycopene involved regular daily supplementation with doses much higher than you’d expect in your standard dollop of ketchup.
Bottom line- if you like ketchup, by all means, enjoy it. For sure, some Lycopene is better than none. Heck, we even have a best-seller that features a few milligrams as part of the mix (although we do not claim it will deliver the benefits of the full dose). But if you want to enjoy the full benefits of Lycopene, get a hold of a supplement with 15mg or more per day. In our view, the best brand of supplemental lycopene is LycoMato® – It’s the one we use (with the fill 15mg dose) in our Lycopene Omega-3 Super Formula.
- Jason Kam

Purestin – Suntheanine is great for sleep

Published on January 27, 2010 in product experiences and suntheanine. 0 Comments

I know a lot of folks have a little trouble getting to sleep, at least occasionally. Or maybe your issue isn’t falling asleep, but rather staying asleep. Typically I sleep like a baby (Quick interlude- why does the expression “sleep like a baby” connote deep solid undisturbed sleep?? My 2 kids, when they were babies, normally screamed half the night, either pooping themselves into a mud bath, demanding milk, or just hollering away for some inexplicable but highly interruptive reason!)…

Anyway, recently, for some reason, I noticed that I was consistently waking up in the middle of the night, and it wasn’t so easy to quickly get back to sleep. As you can imagine, I was waking up groggy, grumpy and asking myself “How many hours before I can return to my bed?”

So the first thing I thought of was that maybe I need to stick to one glass of red wine with dinner instead of two. Tried this for a few days and didn’t really help much, which was frustrating because it was the only obvious thing I had changed in my routine recently. Now while I bounce  up and down 10 or so pounds,  I’m not overweight. I run fairly consistently. I avoid sugar (most of the time). All my numbers are rock solid. I did not feel abnormally stressed out.

So I decided to call in the big guns- Purestin, our sleep supplement which features Melatonin and Suntheanine, which is just a fabulous evidence-based ingredient derived from green tea. And while I know you’re thinking “Wait a second, doesn’t this guy SELL this product? How objective can he be?” I have to say I felt the difference the first night.

We know Melatonin works. And Suntheanine is great for sleep because it basically helps you relax without having sedative properties. And Suntheanine is special because there’s actually data showing it helps you wake up feeling more refreshed.

Fortunately, it helped me here as well.  All in, it’s been 3 good nights, and mornings, in a row, and I’m excited about our future with this formulation.

- Jason Kam