From NACD’s Director of Health Dr. Julian Neil: GREENLIFE

What exactly is a Nutraceautical?

In the last ten years the nutraceutical industry has become a multi-billion dollar industry with projected sales exponentially growing even larger in the next few years. If you’re wondering exactly what is a nutraceutical, they are, as defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary, foodstuffs which provide health benefits in addition to their basic nutritional value. These may include fortified foods as well as dietary supplements that can be sold in capsules, tablets or powders.

The idea behind the use of nutraceuticals is that certain organic extracts can have positive benefits on both the mind and body. From cancer to vertigo, claims of nutraceuticals' effectiveness in combating or altogether curing a long list of ailments are abundant. The term "nutraceuticals" is a combination of the words nutrition and pharmaceutical, coined by Stephen DeFelice, a doctor and the founder of the Foundation for Innovation in Medicine (FIM) in 1989. Since then, the popularity of nutraceuticals has soared; due in part to increasing suspicions and concerns about chemically over-processed foods and their impact on society at large.

The benefits of nutraceuticals

The idea of using nature’s best to cure the body’s problems sounds promising. After all, why should one involve synthetic chemicals—ones with long-term effects that are uncertain—in fixing that which is not synthetic? Unfortunately, natural is not synonymous with safe. Plenty of naturally derived items have a negative impact on the mind and body, and experimenting with the unknown, or little-known, can be risky. Even more to the point, the term nutraceutical as commonly used in marketing has no regulatory definition and very few of these products have sufficient scientific evidence proving health benefits to consumers. Consequently, few have FDA approval for making health claims on product labels. Yet millions and millions of people are consuming nutraceuticals daily in the form of supplements in the hope they can balance out everything from eating processed foods to downright poor eating habits based on the effective marketing plans of products that are mostly ineffective to inconsequential at best and possibly harmful in the worst case scenario.

As a successful Holistic practitioner and Naturopath in the last thirty years I’ve been the recipient and target for nearly every new dietary supplement and nutraceutical product to come along. At the end of the Nutrition Seminar conducted by phone in 2004 (available on CD), Bob asked me about supplementation and I replied that I don’t rely on supplementation in my practice, but on good functional food sources and that only life can produce life, and only life can sustain life, so we want food that is alive because it is still our best source of nutrition. Having said that, I then briefly discussed glandular cell therapy from Standard Process in the form of protomorphogens -–Latin meaning “life to life”, and a product from the V.E. Irons company called Greenlife. Protomorphogens are actual cell therapy designed to strengthen the body’s specific organ and glandular function.

I mentioned these products because often we do need to balance out body chemistry by helping our bodies function better to enable us to utilize good food sources—these are the protomorphogens; and as anyone with children knows it is often very difficult to get proper nutrition let alone specific healing nutrition into our children—this is Greenlife.

As I stated earlier, it is certainly understandable to seek out supplementation to aid us in either healing or maintaining optimal health. One of the main issues I have with the nutraceutical industry aside from the unsubstantiated claims purported by their marketing campaigns, is even when they follow scientific truths and have even conducted sound scientific experimentation, those trials have not been tested by any significant amount of time to be of unquestionable value. During my twenty-five year tenure with FACT (Foundation for Advancement in Cancer Therapy) I often saw trials that when conducted for a year or a year and a half produced tumor reduction showing great promise, but the same trials extended to two years or more resulted in the death of the host. In my experience in order for nutraceutical claims to have merit they must stand the test of time. Both of the products I mentioned have been proven to be outstandingly effective for more than 50 years.

Why Greenlife?

The most powerful healing tool in the world, aside from our minds, is food. There is nothing on the planet that will rebalance the body and grow healthy cell tissue like food. As stated earlier, the nutraceutical industry has grown in part at best to meet the overwhelming demand of nutritional deficiencies developed from eating devitalized and processed foods as well as poor dietary habits which is precisely why I have unequivocally recommended Greenlife for the past thirty years. And while there are a plethora of green products on the market and more entering the field daily, none can remotely compare to Greenlife.

Greenlife has been produced since 1953, and is the original and pioneer of organic cereal grass products. It is a naturally complete food concentrate made from the dried extracted juices of organically grown, young, green cereal leaves of barley, oats, rye, and wheat. Cereal grass is used - not the grain - so there is no gluten, making it safe for those with wheat allergies! The leaves are cut at the first joint stage, the stage proven to provide the most nutrients.

In 1934 a US Patent was granted covering a discovery that as the first joint of a cereal grass emerges through the ground the young, rapidly growing green grass leaves have reached the zenith of their nutritional power and contain much greater potencies of enzymes, amino-acids, vitamins and minerals than they will contain even a week later. This is because the first joint contains the embryo of the future culms. As the kernels develop they gradually absorb the valuable nutrients from the green grass, leaving only stalks of straw. Only by harvesting at this stage (which lasts 4 days) is it possible to obtain the high potency of nutrients balanced by nature. The grasses are then ground up with most of the fiber removed; the juice is then extracted and chilled. It is next dehydrated by a quick roll-vacuum dried method, which retains a maximum of the enzymes, coenzymes, minerals, mineral activators and amino acids. Immediately after drying it is ground into a fine powder—some of it being tableted while the rest remains powdered.

Greenlife is 92% dried extracted juice and 8% papain, beets and sea kelp, made without the use of fillers, binders, or synthetic drying agents such as maltodextrin (sugar). Generally competitor grass products use a freeze-drying or spray-drying method. The grass juice is too thin to be freeze-dried and requires a thickener and filler such as cornstarch or rice. Maltodextrin a concentrated sugar is used in the spray-drying method, which requires a distinct digestive work from the pancreas.

Greenlife is grown on a 510 acre farm in Missouri on organically and biologically enriched soils. No chemical fertilizers are used nor are poisonous insecticides or pesticides used or needed. The organically nourished soil produces grass that contains 25 to 35% protein. The cereal grasses are a complete food in themselves and need no other food to complete them. In fact, every vitamin, amino acid, enzyme, and mineral needed to support animal life that has been discovered in all other vegetation in the world can be found in the grasses. The grasses also are the one food that is non-toxic in any quantities as demonstrated by its creator Victor Irons in numerous experiments where chicken heart cells were kept alive for many years (the experiment was terminated eventually) having only the cell waste removed, and being fed many times their weight in Greenlife.

Greenlife is bottled in inert amber glass bottles to block light and prevent nutrient reactivity with plastic, and sealed with nitrogen to prevent oxidation. The oxygen is actually removed from each bottle and replaced with nitrogen. In this state the vitamin and enzyme loss without refrigeration is infinitesimal, so the product is as fresh when you open it as it was when bottled. All other green products, however they are manufactured, have suffered from a continuing loss of potency from the moment they were packaged in oxygen.

An easy way to tell if any grass product contains “live” vital enzymes such as Greenlife, is to expose the product to light, air, and moisture. This can be done by placing the product onto a plate and leaving it overnight. The next morning it will become black or dark brown indicating there is no “life” left. With many products you will find results that indicate no change in the original color, even after weeks. This is an indication that there were no live enzymes in the product to begin with.

Another important factor to consider is the way Greenlife will breakdown or dissolve to deliver the micronutrients compared to other products. A simple test is to place the product (tablets) into a glass of room-temperature water. After several hours the tablet should dissolve and dissipate. If the product after a day has not begun to dissolve, it is safe to say the product will not likely dissolve very well within the body. Greenlife will easily dissolve within a few hours to be assimilated and utilized by the body even if there is insufficient HCL in the stomach, which is a common malady of poor digestion.

Greenlife is available in three different forms: #22 Greenlife—92% cereal grasses in tablet form with 8% sea kelp, papain, and beets: #21 Greenlife Fortified—52% cereal grasses in tablet form with 48% consisting of fish liver oils, brewer’s yeast, papain, bone meal, lecithin, protein (bovine source), sea kelp, and beets. #23 Greenlife—95% cereal grasses in powder form with 5% beets and sea kelp. I generally recommend the powder form for children as only very small quantities are required and it can easily be sprinkled on food or dissolved in liquids.

You may order these products along with the entire amazing Vit-Ra-Tox line through your local Vit-Ra-Tox distributor or E-mail me at drneil@nacd.org or healing@drjulianneil.com.

TO YOUR CHILDREN’S HEALTH!!

WARNING: Prior to initiating any dietary or nutritional change or program it is important for families to understand that each individual may have their own unique response or responses. Families are encouraged to investigate and evaluate any dietary change or recommendation prior to its implementation and should understand that they are incorporating these recipes, protocols or supplements at their own risk. As with anything that may effect an individuals well being a physician should be consulted prior to its implementation. It is in no way a medical prescription but based upon personal experience.