The study examined the body of published research for several nutritional supplement compounds – Lutein, Calcium, Vit. D, Fish Oil. Based on a well-described methodology, the study’s authors predicted the dollar savings based on preventive benefits that could be realized if people who were ideal candidates (based on health/demographic profiles) to benefit from these ingredients would consume them as recommended by manufacturers.

The most recent study update came out this summer. Total cost savings are now estimated to be $24 billion. Gosh, I wonder what would happen if an ingredient such as EpiCor were to be added to the study. Could there be a monetary metric applied to reductions in cold and flu symptoms that are evidenced in various clinical trials? Dollars saved through less sick time from school or jobs could be one measurement. Who knows?

findings from a laboratory study

The results of this study suggest that EpiCor delivers prebiotic benefits to the human gut. That means EpiCor helps promote the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut that experts say comprises around 70% of the the body’s immune defense arsenal. Beneficial bacteria do many things in the gut, from countering the populations of harmful bacteria,  influencing obesity and allergies, even communicating with the brain via nerve pathways. The EpiCor gut health observations, combined with earlier research showing its impact on balancing the activity of aggressive and suppressive immune cells, adds yet another layer of evidence to the body of science showing EpiCor’s fascinating role in improved, balanced immune health.

All I know is, it seems to work for me. I may not know exactly why, but I can feel it in my gut.

The result of immune balance? The possibility of fewer sick days, fewer “dragging” days, fewer physical problems due to chronic stress’s impact on immune cells.

So what simple things can you do to balance and maintain your immune system?  Here are five:

1. Eat smart. Reduce processed sugar, increase fruits and veggies. The Mediterranean Diet is considered a very good immune health diet.
2. Get sleep. Research shows lack of sleep increases stress levels and weakens immune function.
3. Get exercise.
4. Wash hands often.
5. Take supplements containing 500 mg dosing of EpiCor. Human clinical trials show EpiCor balances immune response.

There you go. The Immune Balance Five. Go forth and do them.

The mind is an immune health amazement

medication for my allergies since I began taking an EpiCor supplement each day. How I’ve not had any serious cold or flu episode in that time, at least nothing that required more than some extra fluids and rest for a day or half day. How my kids have experienced significant reduction in missed school days since taking EpiCor.

Now, as a responsible health communicator, I cannot say that such supplementation has cured or treated anything.  To proclaim that, my experience and my specific  immune cell function would need to be studied and documented by outside researchers who could show causal cell activity that proved a mechanism of action that produced efficacious outcomes, and then observe similar results among thousands of other individuals, and then compare those results to thousands who took a placebo during the past two years, and thousands who took nothing. That study would need to be structured in a way that the results would be repeated at least 95 percent of the time (or higher) to demonstrate a confidence level that is statistically significant.

So, my experience is just that, my experience, and nothing more. There are some smaller clinical trials in which a number of participants experienced reduced cold and flu symptoms, but small trials are not considered definitive.

And what about my experience? Is it the EpiCor? Or is it something else that I’ve done in my lifestyle to improve my allergy/cold/flu experience? Am I washing my hands more often? Am I staying inside more and out of the outdoor pollen? Am I eating more immune-friendly foods? Am I getting more exercise? Is my stress level changed somehow? Who knows? I sure haven’t kept a journal of all these things.

One study that’s really intriguing shows that immune-related conditions might be mitigated simply by the power of the brain.

…”Scientists recruited healthy men and women and had them watch slide shows. All of the volunteers watched a 10-minute slide show about furniture; this was deliberately boring, to act as a control condition. Then a bit later, half the volunteers watched a fairly disgusting slide show, with images of skin lesions and oozing pox, in addition to garden variety sneezes and coughs. The other volunteers watched a slide show about guns–not just guns, but people brandishing firearms, and mostly pointing the weapons directly at the viewer.

The guns were important, because guns are very threatening–especially when they’re aimed at you–but they’re not related at all to disease or infection. The scientists wanted to rule out threat–any threat–as the cause of any immune response they measured. And that’s just what they saw. They drew blood from the volunteers before and after each slide show, and measured the levels of a cytokine called IL-6, a major fighter in the immune war. Those who had viewed the depictions of sickness showed a dramatic jump in IL-6 production–more than 23 percent. These same volunteers had no biological response to looking at furniture and–more important–the volunteers who looked at brandished weapons also showed no significant immune response.”

Many studies show reduced stress can improve immune health. Now this one shows fear of germs might also gird the immune system to work harder. Just goes to show how the mind/body connection is more powerful and mysterious than many realize.

How does the body synthesize Vitamin D through sun exposure? Here’s a quick step-by-step summary.

How much sun should we get each day to produce enough Vitamin D?  This news summary recommends about 10 minutes a day outside during peak summer sun months, with no sunscreen, shorts and a tank top. The article says many dermatologists fear such regular exposure to intense sun may increase risk of skin cancer. Many health and immunology experts say the benefits of a full dose of Vitamin D outweigh the skin cancer risks. And during winter months, when bright, direct sunlight is not available north of Atlanta, eat Vitamin D fortified foods and take a daily vitamin D Supplement. Vitamin D3 is better absorbed by the body than other D forms.

And the benefits to your immune health? Almost innumerable.

Just remember this: there is no FDA approved cure or preventive treatment for the flu or cold. There may be a number products that are effective against symptoms, or may provide proven immune health support, but at this point that’s about as far as any product can go in talking about efficacy. And, those symptom improvers should have some legitimate published, peer-reviewed clinical trials behind them in order to talk to consumers about the topic.

Social media is a big and growing forum where non-prescription health products get discussed. Within several of the forums I’m active in, I’m constantly amazed at the conversations about things such as “cancer prevention” or treatment.  And of course weight loss is the king of the hill when it comes to wild health claims.  Sometimes, these treatment and prevention discussions are coming from natural health physicians or even M.D.’s (or those who claim to be such). Sometimes those claims are connected to a product promotion. Sometimes they are not. Either way, these  health experts should know better.

What is legit in the social media world?  I’m not a regulatory professional. My take is that if someone is taking a certain product and is experiencing certain benefits, by all means, that can be talked about on a blog or other forums.  But that person should not extrapolate his or her experience to the general population, inferring that because something worked for them individually, it will work for everyone.  And any discussion about efficacy across the board, if supported by research, should still be presented in terms of ”possibly reducing risk”  or “may be associated with…” blah blah blah.  And if a blogger or health community high-volume commenter is being compensated by a product company for their writing, that must be disclosed. The FTC has some relatively new rules about social media and health products.

Just remember, even the celebrated medical breakthroughs in our lifetimes were not preventive cures. Mumps,  measles, tuberculosis were illnesses that many thought had been eradicated from the face of the earth, only to show up again years later. The vaccines that helped change the health outcomes of an entire planet were products that greatly reduced risk of these diseases to an extraordinarily minuscule level, but did not absolutely prevent or cure them.  So any consumer health product that talks about disease prevention, treatments or cures–even if the spokesperson’s last name is Salk– should be highly questioned or possibly ignored.

Rebekah Winquest

I’m glad to present a post below from Rebekah Winquest, who runs a blog called Just Good Energy. She markets several natural food products, and also does product reviews by using the products herself.  And she does a fair amount of research about the product she’s taking. Right now, she’s taking EpiCor for an extended period. Posted below is her first review. I look forward to reading what she says about the rest of her EpiCor journey.

“I recently wrote an article on the top 20 most recommended and popular supplements for 2010. Included in that list is a product called Epicor. I had not personally taken this supplement but heard a lot of feedback that it helped people’s allergies, immune system, frequency of colds, etc. I have been in contact with the company Embria Health Sciences, who created Epicor, and have been taking it daily for the past 2 weeks along with researching and learning about the science behind Epicor.

Epicor starts off as the simple yeast saccharomyces cerevisiae, otherwise known as baker’s yeast. It is given oxygen to grow and is then put through a specific and unique fermentation and drying process, also known as “yeast fermentate”. It is the fermentation process that creates this unique product. The result is a superfood in my thinking – a whole food supplement that provides the body with not only extra nutrients but potent antioxidants and the ability to help balance the entire immune system. Nutritionally Epicor provides vitamins, minerals, aminos acids, antioxidants, and even beta-glucans.

What is interesting to me is that Epicor helps to “balance” the immune system compared to “boosting” the immune system. Keep in mind that autoimmune disorders, inflammatory disease and even allergies are overexcited immune systems that attack itself so obviously someone in that position could not take immune stimulating supplements. If you think about it, most immune-related products on the market are all about building the immune system but rarely have I found one that focuses on bringing it to an ideal balance or neutral state. We want our immune system to be ready at any given time to strengthen, as with the flu, or back down if needed, as with allergies. This balance is ideal and Epicor seems to have found a niche in this arena.

Now to my experiences… As most of you know I eat extremely healthy, drink green superfoods daily, consume plenty of antioxidant-rich foods and superfoods, stick to organic, and eat about 70% raw alkaline foods. I rarely get sick or catch colds and viruses from others. Here is the catch… From the day I got pregnant 2 years and 11 months ago I suddenly for the first time had allergies. I had a runny nose and sneezed daily until the day my son was born. It was so bazaar because I had never had an allergy in my life and now I had a very strong reaction to dust, and all environmental pollutants and even pollen! As soon as I stopped nursing my son the allergies kicked in really strong again. I tried all of the natural remedies that I had studied but nothing worked.

I began taking 500mg per day (1 capsule) of Epicor 2 weeks ago and suddenly realized a few days ago that I had sneezed and blew my nose maybe 4 times in the past 2 weeks, even with the pollen-rich air outside. I don’t want to jump too far down the road and say that I am 100% cured because of Epicor, but I do know that I feel better with my allergies and the only thing I have done different is take Epicor.

I have researched further that Epicor is not only great for helping to prevent occurrences of colds and the flu but can also help with inflammation. I am going to write about my experience with Epicor again in 2 weeks, after taking it for 1 month total and am curious to see if the inflammation that I often experience in my sciatic will improve (also started after having my adorable son).

For those concerned about taking Epicor while having a yeast infection or candida overgrowth: They claim that there is no similarity between the yeast used to make Epicor and Candida albicans, which is the unhealthy yeast strain that can flourish in the body causing infections and candida.

I would love to take it for the remainder of the year and see how I feel – it can be taken year round. Stay tuned for more updates.

Reference: “Epicor, The Key to a Balanced Immune System” by Larry Robinson, PHD, Vern S. Cherewatenko, MD, Med and Stuart Reeves, PHD”

Postscript from Craig: Thanks, Rebekah.  Since EpiCor is a nutritional supplement, I’m betting the people behind the product won’t assert that the ingredient will cure or prevent anything. But I do know that mulitple placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trials have demonstrated a reduction in allergy and cold/flu symptom severity and duration among healthy people who took EpiCor. Hope your experience is similar.  

Then, something got my attention and really woke me up. The radio sports program host said his wife and kids were all home and suffering in allergy misery. The show co-host had to call in sick this morning and miss the show, because he was too debilitated with allergies. The host said that he had heard (from where I don’t know or remember) that our state–Iowa–is at the pollen epicenter of the U.S. right now. We have the highest pollen counts of any state in the country.

I wasn’t able to verify that claim for this post today. I did see that Swisher Iowa, two hours away from me,  had the third highest tree pollen count in the U.S. for April 16 and 17, according to The Weather Channel. Swisher was even up to #2 earlier this spring.

Either way you slice it, it’s shaping up to be a severe allergy season, which we’ve discussed earlier. Some are saying this will be the worst allergy season we’ve seen in a long time, maybe ever. Some of the golfers at the Masters last week were wearing wrap-around sun glasses, not because of the sun, but to keep the pollen out of their eyes.

All I know is I’m slamming my EpiCor daily and using a mild nose spray periodically at night. So far, unlike in past years, I’m feeling great and breathing freely as though I’m living on a chilly mountain peak with no trees in site. I’m convinced my immune system, over the past two-plus years, has attained a balance level that has greatly mitigated my allergy condition. But I’m not in mountain country. I’m in corn country with lots of trees, grass and dust-swept fields waiting for planting. But am I gonna suffer all spring, summer and fall?  Hell no.

Dr. Stuart Reeves

Here’s a radio interview you’ll want to listen to. It’s an interview with Dr. Stuart Reeves of Embria Health Sciences, talking about the human immune system and how immune balance works. The interview was recorded on KSTE 650 in Sacramento. Stuart discusses how EpiCor was “accidentally” discovered as a natural immune balancing agent for human health.

Stuart goes into some interesting detail about the manufacture of EpiCor, and how it was essentially stumbled upon as a human nutritional ingredient after employees in a facility that was producing a more basic version of the material for entirely different applications realized they hardly ever got sick, compared to workers in other divisions of the company.

Give it a listen, and see what you think.

Wouldn’t it be great if they walked into the doctor’s office, and had their up-to-date Google Health profiles– their records of prescriptions, supplementation, vaccines–on their I-Touch ready for the doc to download and view. And any additional services the doc provides would be added to the record at the time of service. This very simple information transfer could reduce the chance for diagnostic errors, drug interaction hazards or misappropriated diet and exercise recommendations.

After taking a few minutes to finally peruse Google Health, I’m wondering if this health service platform could not only be a difference maker in preventive health, but also a difference maker in health care cost reduction, outcome improvement and service delivery efficiency (er…commonly known as health care reform).

Google Health is much more than maintaining Web-enabled health records.  It’s a suite of services ranging from personalized consultation with world-class physicians to competitive drug pricing options, doctors on demand, even clinical trial participation opportunities for testing new drugs.

I’m sure these added service options will only expand. Wouldn’t it be great if there could also be a supplement advisory service, helping consumers sort out the good stuff from the bogus material, and providing personalized guidance on total nutrition and lifestyle. “Hmmmm, let’s see Mr. Maltby. Your serum results indicate you have an active, balanced immune response, a low level of inflammation, but you need to get off the couch more often, especially now that March Madness is over, and work up some sweat and pulse rate by walking or jogging a few times a week. And lay off the chocolate. I know the research says it has health benefits, but you’re overdoing it, according to your food diary and your blood workup I just viewed on your account profile. I’ll see you again online in 6 months.”

I’m sure that can happen now in many online locations. But when it’s all packaged under House of Google and linked to Google’s growing, distributed health databases, it could take cost-efficient, preventive health to a new level.