Why are the Amazonian herbal products
broken down by country?
Although there is considerable crossover in the variety of medicinal
plants used and knowledge connected thereto within the countries
of South America that share the wealth of the Amazonia, there are
some differences. These differences correlate to the country
of the herb's origin.
Brazil, by far, is the most influencial country
in this respect, largely because it holdest the largest land mass
within the Amazon. (You will note that we break the formulas down
into Peru, Brazil, and Equador).
However, Brazilian herbal traditions are not the only ones
worth scrutinizing or utilizing. There are important distinctions
to be made. The herbalists
we work with in Peru, for instance, use very traditional methods
of extraction that leave their finished product with a high
alcohol content. Since the people with whom we work have a
high regard for the efficacy of these products, our
attitude from the inception of our work with them was,
"Should we really mess with success?" Despite the fact that as
formulators we would chose to use far less alcohol if we were
designing the products from scratch, we chose
to retain the Peruvians time-honored techniques. In this sense,
we were acting as true empiricists without necessarily understanding
the purposeful character of every element of their manufacturing
processes. We have followed their tradition to the letter. The Brazilian products
are made using modern Western techniques since the traditions
we studied in Brazil did not require such rigid tradition.
All but one of these products is capsulated, and most of them
carry a protocol of two capsules a day. The Equadorean products,
as of this writing, are still being developed in our labs,
and we will provide information on them as soon as we have
had time to compose them. How do the Amazonian products, as a whole,
compare to that of the Cansema products?
We've received this question repeatedly,
and I suppose it's only natural. Cansema
Black Topical Salve, for instance, is reported by our users (from 1989
to the present) to work better than 98% of the time. Could our Amazonian
products work that well? The answer is no. They work in the
majority of cases, or we wouldn't carry them. But their efficacy, from our
experience, does not approach the 90's in percentile. This is why we are quite
to note that these are "nutritional support products." It really would be
less than honest to promote them as outright cures for diseases -- regardless of the
drug laws in any particular country. Moreover, these are products you use over
a period of time -- some of them one week, some of them a month, and some of
them over weeks that well exceed one month. The beneficial effects for most
of these products is accrued. Now compare this to Cansema -- where most users
apply the product just once, and forget about it. This is not to say that some of
the products do not bring immediate benefit. The
After Insect Spray, for instance, or
Peruvian Arthritis Program have
gotten high marks from a variety of users. Nonetheless, you will find
these products right next to another line of products called
the 21-Day Cleaning Program.
We don't need to tell you how long it takes to complete the optimal
(and recommended) usage for that line of products. Other products in this line-up, however,
represent ethnobotanical traditions that, in the view of the indigenous
peoples who use them, have provided the ultimate, perfect solution to
particular areas of health concern. Two products that come to mind are
the Gallbladder Cleanse and the
Kidney Cleanse. When we
described to certain shaman that many Americans, as they age, had
problems with gallbladder and kidney stones, we would get stares of
amazement, as if to say, "You mean... Americans don't know how to
take care of these organs?" Products such as
Cat's Claw (una de gato, or
"Uncaria tomentosa") reflect this wisdom: that health care requires
that the body be maintained -- not just attended to when it gets sick
and needs repair. Our view is that every single product
in our Amazon group is effective for the majority of the people who use
them. We get miraculous stories from end users all the time. We feel
this is amazing, too, because we deal with people from a variety of
genetic pools, and it has been well-established that certain herbals that
work for one group of people, may not work as well for another.
Genetic predisposition plays an important role in herbology and may
help explain why certain herbal preparations, for example
neem tree oil are honored as
miracle cures in some cultures (in this instance, many villages in
India and Eastern Africa) and given little attention in others. It would be impossible, in our
line of work, to separate each of our end users into the right
genetic category and recommend the perfect product. What we can
do, however, is provide as much information as possible, including
the ethnobotanical history of each herbal product, and let our users
decide. In addition, we always provide our
unconditional, moneyback guarantee if not
pleased with a product's performance. And in a situation such as this,
with so many of our users choosing to self-administer their herbal
products, this is probably the best we, or anyone else in this business,
can do to bring relief to their customers.
How much has been done by way of clinical studies on these herbal formulas?
Clinical studies are spotty. Some popular
herbals, such as
Cat's Claw, have been considerable
attention and there is a sizeable body of research in the public domain on
the efficacy of these herbs. Some have received considerable attention
only quite recently, but are providing extremely encouraging, some would
say conclusive, findings on their efficacy:
graviola comes to mind, a primary ingredient in
Cansema Tonic III. Nonetheless,
we must admit that the majority of the herbals we work with from South
America have not been given their due by the clinical research community,
and if they have, the published findings are quite lacking. Our
confidence in offering them to our users rests not on the amount of
clinical data that any given formula, or its ingredients, have garnered,
but on the test-timed, honored medical tradition in the culture from
which they have come. Most of the herbals and formulas we work with
come from traditions where the use of the product goes back well before
the dawn of modern medicine. In the same way that British sailors,
called "limeys" would prevent, and even cure, scurvy by consuming
citric fruits, well before the actual discovery of Vitamin C in
1928 (and this is well before the
currently accepted position of Vitamin C
as not only a necessary nutrient, but one that was critical to
the evolution of man), so to do we follow empirical evidence. Our view is that a person who
has a health care challenge could care less whether the solution to
their ill comes from their local pharmacy, or from a 200 year-old
herbal formula
from half-way around the world. Safety and efficacy are what matter,
not the source. This is the common sense,
empirical thinking
that forms the philosophical underpinnings to everything Alpha
Omega Labs does. Why do some of these formulas work so well for some individuals, and not for others?
We touched on this issue a little
bit in Question 312 above. But genetics predisposition
alone is only one factor. Each person has a unique makeup:
in terms of genetic makeup, diet, environmental surroundings, as so forth.
Many factors go into why you can find a particular formula that will work
on one group of people, and fail miserably on another. Over this myriad
of factors, we, from our side, have no control. We can't always predict background
factors that can limit the effectiveness of a product. What we CAN
predict is that if a person doesn't have a state of mind, a mental
condition, that they can overcome their health challenge AND/OR they do
not exercise the discipline to follow the instructions (i.e. protocol)
we provide, they are not going to get relief in the majority of instances.
This is not a cope-out answer: we cannot begin to relate the number of
people we deal with, mostly by email, who are struggling with emotional
issues, for instance, that are hampering their recovery. Cancer
patients, in particular, quite often have complex emotional issues that
retard their success -- so say many alternative health care practitioners
we have worked with. We also cannot begin to relate the number of people
who START a regimen, and then two days into the program, slack off and
end up contacting us to see if their is an easy way to deal with their
life-threatening illness. We could probably make these
statements about any product line we carry, but in the case of the
Amazon herbal products it is especially worth emphasizing, simply because
most of the products require the user to take them religiously over
time. In fact, if a customer tells us they are looking for something
that will work "right away," we are likely to discourage them from
purchasing these products. The majority of these products will not
work in one or two days. Several weeks of usage are required to
assist a condition that may have taken many years to create.
If we had to give only three rules to success, they would be:
follow instructions, follow instructions, follow instructions. Otherwise, go somewhere else. If we didn't have such a liberal
moneyback guarantee, we might not be so
blunt. But anything short of this only ensures that we are wasting
the time of our customer/client, as well as our own. If, after carefully following
a protocol, our customer does not get the intended result, they
need to email our company, so we will have
the opportunity to provide a prompt, cheerful refund. It is especially true on these
products that we cannot guarantee an outcome. But we can guarantee
a responsible, corporate response. Every single time.
Are there any contraindication or toxicity issues? There are no contraindications,
but as a precaution, we do have warnings concerning women who are
pregnant or lactating. None of these herbs, in the quantities we
use them, is a known
abortifacient; nonetheless, they are potent medicinal herbs,
and we feel the extra precaution is warranted. What is the shelf-life of products
in the Peruvian line - since they are, after all, in liquid form? These products are made using
traditional methods of choosing, picking, and preparing the herbals -
and preserving them. The items in this line, true to the way
that many herbal tinctures are prepared, are between 35 and 40%
grain alcohol. Like fine wines, they can sit for many years,
and still be as potent and effective as the day they were made.
