Posted by Larry Hoover on May 23, 2005, at 10:04:35
In reply to Re: Original Limu, posted by Thorp on May 22, 2005, at 21:47:48
> 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.I'm going to heavily edit, again, dude. Although I fully recognize your enthusiasm, and belief in the efficacy of this product, those are not matters for debate. Anecdotally, the stuff works. Scientifically, I can't find a single reference to that species used in Original Limu. That's a problem for me.
> 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?
You raise a straw man argument. We simply don't know the answers.
> 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.
I caught the inconsistency immediately. That's exactly what I meant by my quip about, "How can I get people to pay $80/lb. for kelp powder?" Just because you read a claim, does not mean it is valid. The math used to promote that product simply cannot be true.
It's like real estate advertising. "Easy access to commute" means "backs onto noisy interstate highway". Ya know?
E.g. all the claims about nutrients. They are *incidental* coextractives. If you process *any* fresh vegetable matter by means of *any* non-chemical extraction process, you'll get the nutrients in the product. Without further processing, it would be impossible for them *not* to be there. You could take weeds from the side of the road and extract those nutrients. Making a big deal of their presence is deceptive. It makes me skeptical.
At this point, I fail to see why similar skepticism ought not to be levelled at Limu. We had noni juice a couple of years back. Before that, kava. Now it is Limu?
Where is the evidence? The only claim to active ingredients I have seen is to fucoidan, and fucoidan is far, far, far from being a substance exclusive to Limu.
> Another perspective rings true regarding NEI when one takes a quick look at the website you recommend.
I didn't recommend it in any way. I was using it for comparison purposes only.
> 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.....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.
Hmmm. The Original Limu label says it contains spirulina and chlorophyll.
> My question is whose colostrum is this? My mother’s? There is no definition at all given here.I wasn't trying to make a point by point comparison of content. I was comparing fucoidan.
Colostrum is usually bovine, but others are available. I can't speak to this product, and I did not "recommend" it in any way.
When I said:
"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."....there were two distinct comparators I wished to consider.
You correctly deal with the first issue, and conclude that the dried product is cheaper, on a fucoidan content basis. I make no claims for efficacy. I was comparing fucoidan content and cost.
>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....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
Okay, the "alternative" product is clearly cheaper.
The second comparator was more hypothetical. How does this expensive powdered product, Limu Nei (based on Laminaria japonica), differ from a readily available generic product, called kelp powder (also Laminaria, probably japonica)? One obvious difference is unit price.
If all brown algae contain fucoidan (and it's looking like they all do.....you can't prove that, unless you test them all, of course), and brown algae products are readily available and quite inexpensive, and drying does not alter fucoidan (trust me on that, but I believe this to be a very stable molecular structure), then why pay such a price to obtain it?
It boils down to your saying this stuff (Original Limu) is special (without a side-by-side comparison to show that other products *are* less efficaceous), and my not seeing the evidence to conclude the same thing via a priori analysis.
> 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.
> Your remarks suggested a wide discrepancy in fucoidan content of NEI vs Original Limu with your implication that Original Limu is simply selling water.I'm an environmental toxicologist. It makes no sense to ship water from place to place (energy and pollution costs), unless there is no reasonable alternative. "Live enzymes" is one argument against dehydration, but the sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate denature the enzymes. That's what they're for. To stabilize the product against auto-degradation.
> 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),
I see the mention of the fruit puree in the literature, but I do not see it on the label. That concerns me.
The actual preservatives are sodium benzoate (incorrectly described as a polyunsaturated fatty acid in the company literature) and potassium sorbate. The grapefruit extract is antioxidant.
> 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 LimuQuite contrary to your supposition, I can see no reason whatsoever to support the selection of this specific form of brown algae over all others (many thousands of species).
Okay, this came as a surprise, the species identified. There is a substantial issue of translation between different languages. Just as kelp is better thought of as a generic common name, so it seems we must consider "limu". In fact, rather than limu, mozuku seems to be the more appropriate descriptor. Whatever.
I used google to track the meaning of limu, and it leads to the genus Laminaria, and more specifically, three species in that genus, especially japonica.
There is not a single mention of Sphaerotrichia divaricata on all of google, with respect to the identifier limu, save for two references to the Original Limu product. There are only 135 mentions of Sphaerotrichia divaricata in any sense, and many of those are duplicate pages. Just a bunch of botanists babbling on, generally.
> 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
I disagreed with that specifically. If you make claims to the specific source of fucoidan, as you seem to recurrently do (paraphrased as "only Original Limu has these special properties"), then I would expect to find something in the literature to back that up.
I said, "And how many of those 600 articles are specific to Laminaria japonica? Eleven. Not a single one mentions Limu."
The evidence is not there for Sphaerotrichia divaricata, either. It is not found in Pubmed, period. The genus does not appear, either.
There is not one scientific link to the source species of this product. That doesn't confer some special property, or confirm the potency of Original Limu. It makes for unsubstantiation of conclusions.
> 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
Oh boy. What rude commentary? What tyranny?
If the need truly is desperate, then I suggest they start with the more affordable options. I did not investigate dried brown seaweed products in any substantive way. Yet, with a simple google search, I turned up a product at $3.60/lb
> 4. Selling Original Limu not taking place at an exorbitant price for all the value associated with it
The value vs. cost is a personal attribution. I try to do my best not to argue those issues. You exhibit great faith, and I do not mean to challenge that in any way. Your faith is not subject to debate, and nothing I have said was ever meant to challenge it.
> I hope your doubts are receiving satisfactory responses. I strongly encourage you to take a break from endless pursuit of trying to find something wrong???
I never said there was anything wrong. I am trying to contextualize your information. That is how my brain works.
> and just prove it to yourself by buying some and start getting relief from whatever is holding back your health and general well-being.
>
> ThorpThat is indeed the height of the bar.
There is something in this last clause that troubles me. It implies that "buying some[Original Limu] (would allow me to) start getting relief from whatever is holding back your health and general well-being".
That claim is rather broad. And I am a skeptic. A skeptic with a tight budget.
What you have done for me is to introduce me to a new aspect of dietary management. What I will do with that is to obtain some dried brown seaweed of some sort, and give it a shot. I am too far from the sea to obtain anything fresh.
I do not suggest or imply that my trial will be equivalent to or representative of a trial of Original Noni....errrr....Limu.
Lar
P.S. The last sentence included a typo (braino?) that I caught on edit, and I decided to show the correction explicitly. It reveals my own faith in this product, I suppose.
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:469333
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20050510/msgs/501642.html