Amazon Vitality is a dynamic formula of 8 rainforest plants traditionally used as folk remedies for memory problems (such as Alzheimer's, dementia, etc.), skin problems (such as psoriasis, etc.), and as general tonics and anti-oxydants.
Amazon Vitality is a blend of:
- Calaguala (Polypodium leucotomos) and samambaia (Polypodium decumanum): their herbal estract is sold in Europe as a herbal adjuvant drug for the treatment of psoriasis, and more recently, for dementia and Alzheimer's Disease.
- Chanca piedra (Phyllanthus niruri), cat's claw (Uncaria tomentosa), and fedegoso (Cassia occidentalis): they're traditionally used as folk remedies to support liver and immune system
- Picão preto (Bidens pilosa), gervâo (Stachytarpheta jamaicensis, cayenensis), and tayuya (Cayaponia tayuya): they've been used among rainforest's tribes for antioxydant, antinflammatory, and antibacterial treatments.
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Ingredients: A proprietary blend of calaguala (Polypodium leucotomos) rhizome, samambaia (Polypodium decumanum) leaf and rhizome, chanca piedra (Phyllanthus niruri) whole herb, cat's claw (Uncaria tomentosa) vine bark, fedegoso (Cassia occidentalis) whole herb, picão preto (Bidens pilosa) whole herb, gervâo (Stachytarpheta sp) whole herb, and tayuya (Cayaponia tayuya) root
Suggested Use: As dietary supplement, take 1-2 capsules twice a day with meals.
Contraindications: None documented.
Drug Interactions: None documented.
Also Suggested:
- Brain Support, a proprietary blend of Rainforest botanicals (calaguala included) used by shamans to support brain functions
- Camu-camu, a nutritional supplement rich in vitamin C, and with anti-oxidant properties
- Calaguala Extract, a rainforest botanicals with a wide range of uses as folk remedies for psoriasis and other skin conditions; Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and memory problems; upper respiratory problems; and autoimmune disorders
Bibliography
On courtesy of Raintree Nutrition Inc.
Source: ©2005 The Health Science Institute
*****Secrets of survival and disease prevention from 8 jungle plants-in a single capsule
There's a difference between running a business and living it. By "living it," I'm not talking about the workaholic corporate executive sitting behind an enormous desk until 10p.m. every night, although I know a lot of people like that in the alternative health world. But over the years here at HSI, we've found that the best products usually come from people who don't mind getting their hands dirty-literally-to find and create their formulas. One of the best examples is HSI panelist and president of Raintree Nutrition, Leslie Taylor.
But Taylor doesn't just run Raintree: This freckled, blue-eyed blonde actually treks into the jungle to pow-wow with indigenous shamans and healers to learn first-hand the therapeutic properties of various remote plants.
Obviously not the most conventional business model. So when I spoke to Taylor recently, I asked her how she went from being the female Indiana Jones to entrepreneur of a successful company.
Fact is, she's a cancer survivor. Diagnosed in her mid 20s with myceoblastic leukemia, she spent two years enduring conventional treatments. "While the doctors gave up on me and sent me home to die, being the odd, determined, stubborn, rebellious individual that most people described me as, I didn't give up. Fifteen years ago, it was even harder than it is now to access accurate information on herbs and alternative therapies. But you might say that I had a 'dying need' to know, and I began studying alternative health with a vengeance. With a combination of herbal medicine, diet and nutrition, and other natural healing modalities, I was diagnosed as cancer-free 18 months later."
And not only was her cancer gone, but the damage that was done to her body by conventional treatments was healing too.
The success she had eventually led her to start Raintree-and to develop some of the most exciting and promising herbal therapies to date, including the cancer-fighting product Graviola, which we first told you about in the January 2001 issue of Members Alert.
Taylor's latest product is called Amazon Vitality. And its name couldn't be more appropriate. The blend of eight rainforest plants have all been shown to have protective effects on basically every part of the body-the skin, brain, liver, kidneys, gastric tract, heart, and immune system. The potential is almost limitless, but two of the most intriguing uses appear to be the possible prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's disease and the ability to reverse sun-related skin aging.
Immune booster turned brain booster
Amazon Vitality is a proprietary blend of cat's claw, calaguala, samambaia, chanca piedra, fedegoso, picão preto, gervâo, and tayuya. These eight plants have emerged from under the rainforest canopy with an adapted knowledge of basic survival in one of the world's most ruthless conditions. And those survival skills appear to translate to humans as well.
Taylor used cat's claw as the backbone of her own healing regimen. At the time, she found a source of the herb extract in Europe and learned first-hand the impact greed has on alternative medicine. The price for importing this cat's claw extract into the U.S. motivated Taylor to find her own source-in this case, the Amazon Rainforest of Peru, where she continues to work with indigenous, tribal shamans to document and learn what she describes as "their amazing empirical plant knowledge and natural plant remedies."
Another part of Taylor's job is to scientifically research and document these important medicinal plants so that she can teach consumers and practitioners how to positively affect their health with them. As for cat's claw, it has become known for its immune- boosting potential. But beyond this application, it is demonstrating potential in DNA cellular repair.1-3 And this action may make Amazon Vitality a potential preventative for Alzheimer's.
When oxidative stress causes disturbances in cellular energy (ATP) levels, it can result in the formation of plaque within the cell. Some newer research on cat's claw indicates that it might reduce a specific type of plaque, called amyloid plaque, normally found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.4
Herbal remedy prevents skin aging-and Alzheimer's
But cat's claw isn't even the primary ingredient in Amazon Vitality. Two other plants, calaguala and samambaia, make up about 50 percent of the overall formula. These two herbs originally found their niche treating skin conditions. As Taylor explained to me, in the mid-1970s, rhizome extracts of samambaia were first reported to decrease the over-growth of skin cells and skin thickening and reduce the severity and extent of skin lesions in psoriasis patients.5 Then, in the early 1980s, a company in Spain developed and marketed a product made from samambaia called Anapsos. Now, Anapsos is sold as a prescription drug registered by the Health Ministry of Spain for the treatment of psoriasis.
Recent research also shows that Anaposos has another skin application-protection from sunburn and skin damage, including the aging that often comes from too much sun exposure.6 Its protective effect is reported to be due, in part, to an antioxidant effect, as well as its ability to protect and increase the amount of elastin in skin cells.
A 1999 study of hairless mice conducted at Harvard showed that when the plant extract was applied topically it helped to avoid skin damage and sun-associated skin aging and reduced the number of UV-induced skin tumors in mice.7 And in 2004, Harvard researchers published a human study showing that samambaia demonstrates "substantial benefits of skin protection" to prevent sunburn and skin aging when taken internally.8 Other research reports that low doses may not only protect against sun damage and skin aging, but that higher dosages may actually "reverse the loss of normal elastic fibers associated with intrinsic aging of skin."9
These effects make sense when you consider that the extract was taken from a plant that grows in harsh rainforest conditions. It has developed specific techniques to protect itself and to survive its environment. And these actions seem to work for people too. But Anapsos also appears to have another, completely different benefit-one that the plant itself would never need.
Apparently psoriasis patients in Europe taking Anapsos who also happened to have Alzheimer's disease started reported an amazing side effect--improvement in their Alzheimer's symptoms. In response, the manufacturer funded a clinical trial on its use for brain disorders. In a double-blind placebo-controlled human trial, researchers reported that patients with senile dementia improved their cognitive performance, increased the blood supply to the brain, and also increased the electrical impulses in the brain.10 Results were better for patients with Alzheimer's or mild dementia than those with severe dementia and extensive brain cell degeneration.
And considering that the same ingredient in Anapsos, combined with the other brain-boosting herb calaguala, make up roughly half of Amazon Vitality, it didn't come as much of a shock when Taylor told me she's already getting reports from people who have tried Vitality that their thinking is clearer in as little as three to five days.
Liver supporting herb doubles life span in cancer-stricken mice
All the above effects are only based on three of Amazon Vitality's ingredients-there are still five more, all with equally impressive research and unique uses behind them. The next herb on the list is chanca piedra. You might recognize this herb from our September 2000 issue where we covered its benefits for breaking up kidney stones. It's also a potent cell protector-especially for your liver. And several animal studies suggest that it is effective against liver damage from chemically induced liver toxins. At least one human clinical study reports that chanca piedra provides liver protective, liver repair, and liver detoxifying actions in children and adults with hepatitis and jaundice.11
Plus, Taylor also told me about one animal study, which documented that chanca piedra almost doubled the life span of mice with liver cancer.12 A different research group tried to induce liver cancer in mice that had been pre-treated with a water extract of chanca piedra. Their results indicated the chanca piedra extract dose-dependently lowered tumor incidence, levels of carcinogen-metabolizing enzymes, levels of liver cancer markers, and liver injury markers.13 Both of these studies suggest that the plant has the ability to prevent cancer.
The possibility of cancer prevention may lie in chanca piedra's documented ability to stop cells from mutating. One study indicated that it inhibited several enzyme processes peculiar to cancer cells' replication and growth, rather than a direct toxic effect of killing cancer cells.14
Inoculation against cancer
Amazon Vitality also incorporates the herb fedegoso. According to studies provided by Raintree, fedegoso has been the subject of clinical research for applications involving the liver and immune system. Animal studies indicate that it has the ability to protect the liver from various introduced chemical toxins, normalize liver enzymes and processes, and repair liver damage.15 Some of this research has also reported significant immunostimulant activity by increasing humoral immunity and bone marrow immune cells in mice and protecting them from chemically induced immunosuppression.16
In other words, after treatment with fedegosa scientists could not give mice cancer-they had, in theory at least, become inoculated.
The next ingredient is picão preto, which has general antioxidant and cell-protective actions. One research group in Spain found that the extract reduced the amount of pro-inflammatory immune cells in human blood.17 Other research has demonstrated that picão preto extract can inhibit chemical processes in the body like the formation of prostaglandins and arthritis-inducing cyclooxygenase (COX).18
2 Amazon herbs offer defense and offense against killer conditions
Next up on Amazon Vitality's ingredient list is gervâo. This might be one of the formula's biggest powerhouses with the most wide-ranging potential. In laboratory studies, three of gervâo's primary phytochemicals-verbascoside, scutellarein, and hispidulin-have been documented with brain cell protective, antiviral, antibacterial, liver protective, heart protective, and antitumor activity.19-23
And finally we have tayuya, typically used for pain, arthritis, and detoxification.
There is some hype in Europe about this herb: Some manufacturers have claimed that tayuya can cure arthritis, but there is no clinical evidence of that. However, it does have evidence to back up its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and general pain-relieving properties, and, more recently, to have anti-cancerous potential.24,25
Researchers from the Kyoto Pharmaceutical University in Japan reported that five different chemicals, called cayaponosides, in tayuya exhibited significant anti-tumor activity in screening tests.26
New, but promising
Although the full Amazon Vitality combination of all eight herbs only hit the market a few months ago, in mid-December 2004, and there's no clinical research on its effects as a whole, Taylor told me that initial reaction has been very positive.
Many people who have tried it as a daily supplement report that in as little as three days they noticed a marked improvement in skin texture and tone. People over the age of 50 are reporting that they have more energy in the later part of the day. And some people have even reported weight loss, which may be due to the liver detoxification properties in several of the herbs.
And according to Taylor, there haven't been any reports of contraindications or drug interactions.
If you decide to try Amazon Vitality, Taylor recommends that you take one capsule twice daily if you weigh up to 150 lbs, and two twice daily if you weigh more than 150. In either case, you should take it with food-specifically a meal containing carbs, since the active phytochemicals from the plants found in Amazon Vitality are absorbed better with starch.
Member Source directory
Amazon Vitality, Raintree Nutrition; tel. (800)780-5902 or (775)841-4142; fax (775) 841-4022; www.rain-tree.com. HSI member price is US$24.95 plus shipping for a bottle of 120 capsules (650mg each). Regular retail price is US$29.95, so be sure to identify yourself as an HSI member. For online orders, use the coupon code "HSI."
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WARNINGS: Information, statements and products on this website have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, mitigate, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or health condition. The natural properties of the botanicals are only referred to their common uses among folk and herbal traditions. Our products are not intended to diagnose, cure, or prevent any disease as well. It's not meant to give any suggestion of diagnosis or disesase treatment. Please see a doctor when needed.