Posted by Thorp on May 22, 2005, at 21:47:48
In reply to Re: Original Limu » Thorp, posted by Larry Hoover on May 22, 2005, at 11:26:56
Hi again, Lar, 2005 05 22
I am very much enjoying the exchange, Lar, and I truly appreciate your helping me along in getting into the technology with definitions regarding the seaweeds. When two people are simply trying to sit down without trying to hoodwink one another but are simply after the truth, how could the debate not be productive and, especially between two of similar base training, even friendly. Now, as a chemist, I assume of some experience (what venue, industrial or academic and how many years?), you appreciate the value of sophisticated research and development over a period of time (15 years in the case of Original Limu) by an expert in the field of extraction of natural products. Why would such a person waste such time if all he had to do was to dry up some seaweed, grind it up, bottle it and sell it? And, look at the date that dried kelp was first put on the market, May 2, 2003 according to the website you reported, well after the first introduction of the extract product that is present in Original Limu in early 2001. Finally, I have observed a presentation by the developer of the extract in Original Limu and he was very much the detailed, boring to the layman kind of presenter that you and I see over and over again at our ACS (American Chemical Society) conventions. He is for real and not some con artist working in the back woods with some kettles and grain products to produce moonshine. Original Limu ain’t no moonshine! Finally, I ask, Lar, if simple dried up kelp were comparable to Original Limu, why haven’t people been put onto this product long ago instead of letting people suffer the horrors of our pathetic Western diet?
Don’t you think that this expert whose extract is the base used in Original Limu would have had better things to do with his time than create an extract if chopped up dried kelp was sufficient? Another consideration about dried kelp would be the presence of any active enzymes. Yes, the developer of the extract could also have come up in a much shorter period of time with a simple dehydration process for creating a product? That is what I read when NEI promotes its product as being 80% fucoidan in that the raw product having 2.5% to 4% by weight fucoidan is concentrated 40 fold. Actually, this seems fishy to me in that a 40-fold concentration would mean that all that is left after the concentration is fucoidan if only 2.5% only were present in the raw stock. They should be claiming with usual content being 2.5% to 4% accordingly between 100% and 140% fucoidan with the product being so concentrated and assuming as it appears through their report that all there is to concentrate is fucoidan. And, who wants only the fucoidan? The whole product including the minerals, trace elements, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, enzymes, etc. is critical to the value of Original Limu. Well, maybe there is some kind of extraction first and some fucoidan is lost in the process thus accounting for the mathematics inconsistency. Who says, that the extract going into Original Limu is not 80% and with 15 years of R&D behind it. This 80% hype is simply a deception.
Another perspective rings true regarding NEI when one takes a quick look at the website you recommend. It reveals a taletell sleight of hand that we are seeing with increasing frequency as others try to jump on the bandwagon with Original Limu. We have seen it with the copy-cat product called Limu Plus as reported in the analysis website I gave you in my last posting: http://www.limu-analysis.com/index.cfm/go/Analysis.Letter/. How many times will The Limu Company have to go out and hire a laboratory to expose the charlatans?
Limu Plus promoted their product as being the same but better than Original Limu in that they couldn’t be content to present the best uncontaminated by anything else. They instead said that they not only had the same great limu but something extra. As I understand it, they added a Russian supplement that they had tried to peddle in several different products before they pushed it with their Limu Plus product. Now, I see the same kind of deception with NEI where it has to contaminate its product with colostrom! That tells me that they cannot compete head to head with Original Limu regarding the real value of the limu moui in their formulation.
There are problems with this kind of marketing trickery. It may sound great that Limu Plus has a “plus,” an additional “wonderful” added ingredient. So typical it is of man that he thinks he can improve upon the natural from the Creator, but what kind of problems might be generated by this kind of Tomfoolery? With a simple food without any herbs, there is removed the concern of the herb interfering and having adverse effects with medications. Why is this risk taken with Limu Plus? It was not to make it a better product but simply a technique of deceiving the public and perhaps of recouping losses from a bad investment into a Russian supplement. Also, who knows what the effects of contamination will have upon the strength and efficacy of the natural limu moui? What tests have been performed to reveal an actual advantage of contaminating the limu moui? I don’t know about you, but I want a contaminant-free limu moui product when I know that it is the ultimate supplement and I resent those who try to trick me with marketing schemes to shift me from the best to a poor substitute as Limu Plus, and I strongly suspect also NEI, has tried to do in regards to the one, the only, the original, Original Limu.
The public can be easily led by the unscrupulous. As Abraham Lincoln said, some people can be fooled all the time and all people can be fooled some of the time, but all people cannot be fooled all of the time.
There is no product that can compare to Original Limu. Where is the side-by-side analytical comparison of NEI to Original Limu? Limu Plus tried to confuse the public using an analysis themselves that promoted their product but did not tell the truth about the effective fucoidan in their product as noted in the above analysis (http://www.limu-analysis.com/index.cfm/go/Analysis.Letter/). Their analysis they hyped up was a size-exclusion chromatography analysis that doesn’t say a thing about the key characteristic of effective fucoidan, the sulfate content. The analysis of Original Limu is the accepted and well-regarded analysis of the sulfate content of the fucoidan conducted by a reputable, independent analytical laboratory. It appears to me that the same sham will unfold over and over again with many other copycat products and to me, most likely also NEI. No other company has 15 years of R&D behind it!
The marketplace needs to sort out the chaff quickly of exaggerated and/or misleading claims that try to hoodwink the public. I see a strong case of déjà vu with NEI when they promote the following:
We then add the 6-Hour Miracle colostrum or “mother's milk from the land". The 6-Hour Miracle contains:
Over 95+ Immune Factors, which work with the body’s own defense system against disease.
All 87 Natural Anti-Aging Growth Factors, which work with the body to help maintain youth and vitality.
All of the Essential Amino Acids, the building blocks of the body.
Essential Fatty Acids, maintaining vitality and viability of our cell membranes function and structure.
There are many more components, much, much more!My question is whose colostrum is this? My mother’s? There is no definition at all given here. This is just like Limu Plus. It is pure hype trying to delude people to give up the best for a poor substitute.
Now I could be jumping the gun, Lar, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Let’s see a side-by-side, apples-to-apples analysis using the appropriate analytical tests in a reputable, independent laboratory and see where NEI actually stands. I suspect that you will be thankful that we have had these exchanges before you wind up falling for their deception hook line and sinker.
OK, Lar, let’s pretend there is some legitimacy to NEI and that, the side-by-side analysis, by some stroke of remarkable luck of bypassing 15 years of R&D, passes muster. What do we have then? According to NEI, there are 150 mg of their extract provided in each serving. At 80% fucoidan, that is 120 mg. Now, Original Limu comes in a liter bottle, 1000 ml. The analysis said that there were .14 grams of fucoidan in 100 ml or 1.4 grams in the liter bottle. That is the same as 1400 mg in a bottle of Original Limu. Well, the recommended dosage of Original Limu is one ounce in the morning and one at night. That is two ounces a day. So a liter bottle, just over an ounce more than a quart bottle or a 32-ounce bottle, should last 16 to 17 days. Or let’s be generous and say that a person should be consuming two bottles a month of Original Limu at the recommended dosage. And, with 1400 mg of fucoidan per bottle of roughly 33 dosages, 42 mg fucoidan is ingested twice daily at the recommended dosage or 84 mg per day. Now, NEI is claiming 120 mg per day of what they purport to be comparable to the fucoidan of Original Limu. For a 30-day period, NEI purports that it is providing 30 time 120 mg or 3.6 grams of fucoidan for a customer per month. The Original Limu provides two bottles of 2.8 grams of fucoidan per month or slightly less if strictly proceeding with only two ounces per day.
Now, Lar, this is not the impression you gave in your posting that there was any comparison between the two:
Original Limu has 0.14% fucoidan. The bulk of your product is water.
Compare that to: http://www.betterherbs.com/limu_nei.htm
This is a dried product, claiming 80% fucoidan by weight. Nobody is buying water with this product. I have no reason to believe its anything more than kelp powder, though.
Your remarks suggested a wide discrepancy in fucoidan content of NEI vs Original Limu with your implication that Original Limu is simply selling water. My point is that, although the medium for Original Limu may be water (actually mango and papaya juice puree along with a small amount of a natural preservative, grapefruit extract), Original Limu still holds a comparable amount of fucoidan content as is reported for NEI. Lar, guys like us with scientific backgrounds need to do the computations ourselves and not rely of the marketing con artists to lead us astray!Again, all of this is based on the hypothetical assumption that has not been tested by a side-by-side independent laboratory analysis. Nevertheless, let’s go further with this basis of comparison. NEI charges $40 plus $6 shipping or $46 per month at its best price. Original Limu costs $30 a bottle plus $3.45 shipping at its best price thus for two bottles, $66.90 at the best price. So, NEI with its colostrums costs only $46 a month providing supposedly 3.6 grams of fucoidan and Original Limu costs $66.90 a month (actually a 30 day month would require only 60 ounces instead of the 67 ounces available in two bottles) providing a proven and publicly available for review by an independent laboratory of 2.8 grams (somewhat less if two bottles are not completely consumed).
On this basis, if the two products were comparable in quality regarding the limu moui content and the fucoidan content associated with such, one would be gleeful over the price of the NEI at about a 35% savings. But, again, these two products are not at all the same. One is contaminated with colostrum and also some effervescent additive. The other is pure and the result of 15 years of research and development. Nevertheless, your implication in your posting was that Original Limu was way more dilute than NEI that reports 80% fucoidan content without showing calculations of the amount in each dose as I have performed roughly above. In fact, they are really quite comparable in the amount provided in the daily dosage. It was just the hype of NEI stating 80% fucoidan content standing side-by-side with your statement of 0.14% for Original Limu suggesting that Original Limu is simply selling something little different from water that is deceptive. It really boils down not to what the fucoidan content of one product is to another but what is sufficient for the body to do the exceptional nutritional value that I know for a fact for myself and observations of many others to be the case with Original Limu. I wonder how effective NEI would be in ridding me of the throbbing pain in my arm the way Original Limu did! With just a brief review of its website with a discerning eye for the telltale hype and deceptions so prevalent since the introduction of Original Limu, I have extremely serious reservations about the value of NEI.
I take it that my last posting satisfied your other questions regarding the following:
1. Selecting limu moui, actually sphaerotrichia divaricata according to the label on Original Limu, over other fucoidan-containing seaweeds for Original Limu
2. Testing fucoidan in over 600 studies in the National Library of Medicine database at www.pubmed.gov not requiring that the fucoidan come only from the plant source limu moui or sphaerotrichia divaricata or any other brown seaweed to reflect the value of the fucoidan in any brown seaweed in the health of people and animals
3. Trying to help people in desperate need even if it means telling them about something they can buy that in some small way could eventually profit me and letting them make up their own minds and not having a forum moderator exercise tyrannical control through censorship and rude commentary
4. Selling Original Limu not taking place at an exorbitant price for all the value associated with itI hope your doubts are receiving satisfactory responses. I strongly encourage you to take a break from endless pursuit of trying to find something wrong and just prove it to yourself by buying some and start getting relief from whatever is holding back your health and general well-being.
Thorp
poster:Thorp
thread:469333
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20050510/msgs/501453.html