USANA's Creditable Testimonies - Dr Ray Strand, Dr Christine Wood & Dr Regina Hamlin

This posting is a bit of an extension for my previous posting Why I prefer nutrition from MLM companies over the pharmacies. To quickly recoup what I have posted earlier, I mentioned that I chose to purchase nutritional supplements, the ESSENTIALS™, from USANA, a MLM company, because of (1) recommendation from creditable parties such as doctors and (2) real experience of real people who has been continuously taking the nutritional supplements.

In this posting, I will share a video clip that has been acquired from USANA's introductory DVD that I received after I joined USANA. It is an interview with three creditable doctors that are highly recommending USANA's products to their families, friends and most importantly patients.

Now, here's a little bit background about the doctors.

Dr Ray Strand: Has been using USANA products for his patient's nutritional treatment. If you would like to know a recommendation of USANA's nutritional supplement specific for your health problem, you may get the advise from Dr Ray Strand online at his website at www.bionutrition.org. Dr Ray Strand will recommend which USANA's nutritional supplement that you should take, how much and how many times a day, for both minimal and optimal recommendations. Being a nutritional treatment experts, I think, that is one of the best advise we could get. Also, at the bottom of this posting, I have provided a recommended reading which is a book written by Dr Ray Strand himself.

Dr Christine Wood: Originally skeptical when a physician encouraged her to take a look at USANA in 1996. Not anymore when her allergy is gone after taking ESSENTIALS™ and Proflavanol and when her pharmacist's friend recovered from asthma after taking the product. Today, she is the chairman for USANA Medical Advisory Board and has become the USANA's spokesperson.

Dr Regina Hamlin: Is a dermatologist expert. To be honest, I don't have much information about Dr Regina Hamlin because I am not really into skin care stuffs. But for the sake of the readers, I will dig further. Check this section again for updates some later time.

You see, this is to support my previous posting regarding how I would like to see doctors recommendation on a certain nutritional product. I mean not just any doctors. It has to be doctors that are taking similar product for himself or herself and then recommending it to his or her patients.

Again, this is one strong reason why I am willing to pay my money for USANA's ESSENTIALS™ and that, if you compare the price of the ESSENTIALS™ against any other products in other MLM companies, you would agree with me that the ESSENTIALS™ pricing is highly competitive.

With such a highly competitive pricing, I believe, since ESSENTIALS™ is also a top rating high quality nutritional supplement, it is, by far, the only nutritional supplement that gives the best value for our money and provide the best investment for our health.

Recommended Reading:
Amazon.com: What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutritional Medicine May Be Killing You: Books: Ray D. Strand:
"When Dr. Ray Strand found himself in a losing battle, unable to successfully treat his wife who had suffered chronically with pain and fatigue, he agreed to try the regimen of nutritional supplements that a neighbor suggested. Much to his surprise, his wife's condition began to improve almost immediately. That amazing turn of events led him to dedicate himself to researching alternative therapies in medicine, particularly in the arena of nutritional supplements.

Dr. Strand's illumination of the body's silent enemy-oxidative stress-will astound you. But, more importantly, his research will equip you to protect or reclaim your nutritional health, possibly reversing disease and preventing illness."

Also, click here to read my previous post on Why I prefer nutrition from MLM companies over the pharmacies.
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Why I Prefer Nutrition From MLM Companies Over The Pharmacies

For a start, let's watch this funny video from USANA -- "A car with all the features, at a quarter of a price". *sigh* :)

Okay, why would I prefer nutrition from MLM companies over the ones that we can find on the pharmacy's shelves?

Well, it's not like the products that's being sold in the pharmacies are lack of quality. They do have products that have good quality as well. I too went to pharmacies to buy Panadol, Listerine and several other health care products. We still need the presence of pharmacies to give service to the people, in which area many MLM companies are lack of. The fact is, they are still needed to provide a positive competition in health care and wellness industry.

But when it comes to nutritional supplements, I'd be much more cautious. I would always prefer to purchase it from an MLM company than a pharmacy. The reason is, unlike Panadol, I would take the nutritional supplements 3 intakes a day, on the daily basis, for the rest of my life! I would not risk taking the advice merely from the pharmacists to decide what I am about to feed into my body. Most of the time, I don't know the level of their knowledge in nutritional supplements -- so I just don't feel safe & quite skeptical.

For me, in order to take a reliable nutritional supplements, what I'd need is two simple requirements:

1. Recommendations from credible parties, such as a doctor's advice, AND
   
2. The real story or experience of many many human that have already taken that nutritional supplements.

But how about the technical information about the products itself? I do care about that too, but not too big into its details which could results myself becoming my own doctor. I'd say, let the doctor does his job.

To demonstrate how I use the two requirements above to select ESSENTIALS™ as my daily nutritional supplements, let me share my USANA's experience.

Recommendation From Credible Parties

This is one of USANA's greatest strength -- support from many medical professionals. This is an area that I wouldn't have to worry about. It's because USANA's ESSENTIALS™ is highly recommended by Dr Ray Strand [1] and Dr Christine Wood [2].

Dr Ray Strand is a medical doctor who has focused his practice on nutritional medicine. He has also written several books about health such as Living By Design, Preventing Diabetes, Death by Prescription, Healthy for Life, and What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutritional Medicine May Be Killing You.

Dr Christine Wood, on the other hand, is a practicing pediatrician who focuses on healthy nutrition for children and the environmental and nutritional impact on health and disease. In the same line with Dr Ray Strand, Dr Christine Wood has also written several books on nutritional medication such as How to Get Kids to Eat Great & Love It!, Challenges to Children's Health, ADHD: Environmental Factors & Nutrition and Marketing Health To Families.

You see not many pharmacy-based nutritional supplements out there that would have this kind of strong recommendation from doctors who have been devoting their medical career into nutritional treatment. For me, these recommendations are good enough to qualify my first requirement.

Real Experience From Many Many People

This type of information is much much easier to access from the MLM based nutritional products than the pharmacy based nutritional products.

When I said real experience from real people, what I mean is I literally see these people swallowed the ESSENTIALS™. They really eat it. Every month, when they depleted they ESSENTIALS™ supply, they will get new ones and start consuming again and again and again.

I am not talking about people who have try it once, then said, "hey it's really good, you know.." I am talking about people who have continuously taking USANA's ESSENTIALS™.

And then I asked them about USANA's ESSENTIALS™. One person said, "I don't feel tired anymore after taking ESSENTIALS™". Another one said, "I don't know how to say it, but I just feel so much better". Then the next one said, "I used to have flu and fever so frequently, now after taking ESSENTIALS™, I'm healthy, always". And it even go to a point where ESSENTIALS™ has helped them, their families and their friends to recover from health problems. The only person who mentioned ESSENTIALS™ is bad for me, is a person who happened to sell a competitor product. And worst yet, she never took ESSENTIALS™.

At this point, if I've guessed it correctly, some of you might argue that those people are saying ESSENTIALS™ is good because they have already joined USANA and are actually promoting the ESSENTIALS™ to generate profit from their MLM business.

I would disagree with that point.

The reason is, if you take a health product which turns out to be harmful to your body, would you continue taking it, then promoting it to your friends, and families and the rest of the people for the sake of money?

I know I won't.

But pharmacy's nutritional supplement is much cheaper than the MLM's one!

Yes, I agree with you on that point -- no doubt about that. But, would you compromise your health for cheaper nutritional supplements?

You see, I would buy cheap shoes. I would buy cheap watch. I would buy cheap television. I would buy cheap DVDs. But I will never compromise my health against CHEAP nutritional supplements which have a lot of unknown factors!

Now pricing is really not a question when it comes to buying nutritional supplements. Let me give you a scenario to prove my point. Here's the scenario:

For a moment, let's just assume that MLM never existed in this world, that we only have pharmacies. Now you surveyed several pharmacies and came out with a long list of nutritional supplements, sorted from the cheapest one to the most expensive. Given that you don't have doctor's recommendation on each of the nutritional supplements and that you don't have people's experience over each of the nutritional products, which one would you pick? The cheapest one?

References:
[1] Dr. Ray D. Strand, Specialist in Nutritional Medicine: "Ray D. Strand, M. D. is a graduate of the University of Colorado Medical School in 1971. He finished his postgraduate education at Mercy Hospital in San Diego, California.

He has been in private family practice for over 30 years and over the past 7 years has focused his practice on nutritional medicine. He is quickly becoming one of the leading authorities in nutritional medicine in the world. He has lectured on nutritional medicine across the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and England."

[2] Kids Eat Great - Picky Eater - Nutrition for Kids - Childhood Obesity - Meet Dr. Wood: "Christine (Ito) Wood, M.D., C.L.E. is a practicing pediatrician and certified lactation educator with interests in healthy nutrition for children and the environmental and nutritional impact on health and disease. She is a compelling voice on the subject of children's nutritional and environmental issues."

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The Trillion Dollar Wellness Industry Impacts ALL (non-specific to USANA)

This is a good general knowledge that I'd like to share among us. It is not specific to USANA -- it's for everyone. Whether you are with other MLM companies, or even if you hate MLM companies. It is applicable to anyone who concerns about your own personal health. This is going to be something for you to put your thought on.

What I am trying to highlight in this posting is more towards the alarming health symptom of the Wellness Industry than its impact to the economy.

For a start, watch an interview with Mr Paul Zane Pilzer, an economist and also the industry expert, about the emerging of trillion dollar wellness industry. He is also the author to the bestselling book, The Wellness Revolution, How to Make a Fortune in the Next Trillion Dollar Industry [1].

Watch the video now -- click the rectangular play button.

Mr Paul Zane Pilzer research mostly revolves around the Wellness Revolution that is currently taking place in the United States of America. As for our country, Malaysia, we are unfortunately not left far behind -- probably we are at worst.

The reason is, Malaysians currently are 'imitating' the eating habit of American as most of our fast food chain, such as KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King and several others, that we 'enjoy' in Malaysia, originate from the Unites States itself.

Another threat to our health is processed food. Some example of processed food are Ayam Brand Tuna, 2-Minutes Maggi Noodle, Kimball Chili Sauce, Coco Crunch Cereal, Dutchlady Full Cream Milk (my goodness! these are all my favorite food!) -- and these are only a very tiny chunk of all other processed foods that we can find in Giant, Tesco, Carrefour and thousands of other grocery stores in Malaysia. God knows what the manufacturer put inside those processed foods.

Then what put us in worst situation than the Unites States is that most of us are already having stressful enough lifestyle. This is something that our local newspaper has been reporting since the last two years. For example, in April 24th 2007, News Straits Times reported that the stroke cases in Malaysia have increased 300% [2] (from 17,909 cases in 2005 to 52,000 in 2006) in just 1 YEAR! And 30% of Malaysian adult population suffer from hypertension.


We may not have enough 'babyboomers effect' [3] to really drive our local wellness industry, but the needs for the emerging of wellness industry in Malaysia is no less that what the United States needs.

We need to open our eyes wide. Put the goal to achieve good health as one of our priority in life. We can start with an exercise. Eat less fast food or processed food -- the latter is almost impossible to be done. Start taking nutritions to protect your body as well. Learn about how to be healthy. And always put a smile on our face -- always!

As for me, I've already started reducing the frequency to going to any fast food restaurant once every 4 months. I am also doing some gardening activities during the weekends. And I've started protecting my body by consuming my ESSENTIALS™. Smile? Yes, even on my Monday morning!

References:
[1] The Wellness Revolution: "In 2002, The Wellness Revolution was the 'shot heard round the world' for the wellness industry. It defined wellness as an industry—linking tens of thousands of disparate service and product suppliers with a single cause. It showed scientists, fitness providers, businesspeople, food manufacturers, doctors, and others focused on disease prevention and anti-aging that they were part of a worldwide revolution—rather than merely lone iconoclasts inside their chosen professions or industries." Also, click here to visit www.amazon.com to read the review on the The Wellness Revolution book.

[2] News Archive (1991 - 2007) Search Results List: "Nation's No. 4 killer disease By Annie Freeda Cruez (536 wds) (Main Section) PETALING JAYA: At least six Malaysians are hospitalised with stroke every hour. But the news gets grimmer. There was a 300 per cent increase in the number of people with stroke between 2005 and last year."

[3] Baby boomer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "A baby boomer is anyone born between 1946 and 1964 in a country that experienced an unusual spike in birth rates following World War II, a phenomenon commonly known as the baby boom. In the United States, the term is iconic and more properly capitalized as Baby Boomers. The terms 'baby boomer' and 'baby boom' along with others (i.e., 'boomies' or 'boomers'), are also used in countries with demographics that did not mirror the sustained growth in American families over the same interval."
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