From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris123@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition
Subject: Re: LEF For Real?
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 14:27:10 -0600

"Will Brink" <WILL@BrinkZone.com/NOSPAM> wrote in message
news:WILL-0509011006340001@bstnma1-ar1-190-214.bstnma1.dsl.gtei.net...

> > >The LEF makes very good products and is spot on 90% of the time. They
> > >do good work and all in all fight the good fight (while making
> > >money).
> >
> > Well, yeah and no.
> >
> > From all appearances, their products are high quality and well
> > manufactured. But the disease protocols I've consulted (those for
> > conditions I'm well read on) are woefully inaccurate and out of date.
>
> According to you of course.
>
> >
> > One would have to assume that kind of sloppiness can crop up elsewhere
> > in a business.
>
> I suppose it can, but I know their  products to be of the highest quality.
>
> >
> > Susan
>
> --
>  Will Brink


LEF supports my research on resuscitation, so you should keep that in mind
when reading the following. However, I really have no good reason to spin a
cock and bull story-- it won't make a bit of difference in LEF's profits,
and I'm not expected to, nor paid to, do it.

As a curious tourist (and because I know the owners) I've recently (Oct
2000) been through the LEF analytic, mixing, and encapsulation facilities on
Long Island, NY. I know enough about analytic chemistry to be able to say
that they are indeed first class (I suppose the rabbis who go through to
certify them kosher every so often agree with at least part of that). LEF
buys its primary components (like individual vitamins) in bulk from other
manufacturers. But they chromatograph every batch of every ingredient they
get, to ensure standards and purity before they mix. That's a double check
on the manufacturer. They run shelf-aging and high temp accelerated aging
studies on their own products, and do the same analysis on the results. The
QC in the mixing and encapsulation facility is very nice--reminds me of ISO
9000 opperations.  I think you'll have a hard time finding anybody who does
it better. Tours of the LEF analytic lab and the mixing and packaging
facility are open to public, if you're really interested.

As for the LEF disease-treatment protocols, that's a mixed bag, and I have
no way of talking about it so definitely. It's easy to agree on standards
for what's in a pill, and how you tell, and how you make sure. OTOH, what
that stuff will do to YOU when you take it, is a whole other ball of wax. I
agree with some of the LEF recommendations, disagree with some, and am
rather agnostic on most. If there was more than preliminary data on a lot of
this stuff, it wouldn't be controversial.  Nor will we find out about the
impact of most mega-nutrients on most diseases any time soon, due to the
lack of anybody who is willing to pay for, or fund, the studies. So you read
the animal studies, and the small human studies, and you take your chances.
Remember that the LEF recommendations are written by some guys who took a
look at all the literature they could find, and then took their best guess
as to which nutrients might help which conditions (I didn't write any of
them). The folks at LEF also get uncontrolled feedback from members who are
treating their own diseases. That's it, but that's all they claim. A Zocor
pill doesn't cost more than a vitamin pill because Zocor is harder to
synthesize than (say) biotin or folate. It costs more because you're paying
for a lot of human study data. With a nutrient pill, you aren't. And you get
what you pay for. At LEF you get exactly what it says on the bottle, and
nothing else, plus some shmuck's advice which may or may not be good, which
you can ignore or not. But it's still a pretty good deal, I think.

SBH

From: "Steve Harris" <sbharrisREMOVECAPS@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition
Subject: Re: LEF For Real?
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 17:38:53 -0600

> Was this at the Twinlab facility in Bohemia?  I know that their
> operation has always run stringent quality controls.

So I've also heard, and I've long also been an admirer of Twinlab for the
thought that goes into their product formulations. If you know your vitamins
and minerals you can read the label and see that they have some people who
know what they're doing. But they have a different facility (Bohemia?
Thought it was in Ronkonkoma), and they aren't the LEF. LEF does, however,
sell a few Twinlab products.

As for CFIDS, I'm still waiting for somebody to come up with a good and
reproducible objective pathological problem, let alone a diagnostic test.
Until they do, I suspect that CFIDS is a syndrome that represents a pot
pouri of actual pathologies, not unlike "depression", "gulf war syndrome,"
and "post traumatic stress syndrome" and so on. Yes, I know that some CFIDS
patients have swollen lymph nodes. I also know they're in the minority, and
some of the worst hit people I've seen had NOTHING objective. You couldn't
distinguish them clinically from people with major depression, except
sometimes by history (some of them had been happy people all their lives,
and their families agreed; it's mainly these people who make me think this
is not just depression). But sometimes even that isn't the case, so who
knows what you have. So it's a mess.  And more than half of females over the
age of 40 who have any chronic disease, including depression, anxiety, and
CFIDS, also have fibromyalgia. Another mess.

SBH