You can say you’re the best all day long, but when Better Nutrition says it, then you know it’s true! I’m happy to say that the magazine’s elite panel recently awarded CleanseSMART™ and Ultimate Flora Critical Care 50 Billion™ Best of Supplements Awards based upon reader feedback and surveys from experts in the medical and nutritional supplements industries.

In the Cleansing and Detoxification Category, Renew Life’s CleanseSMART™ was recognized among the best, while Ultimate Flora Critical Care 50 Billion™ received a Best of Supplement Award in the Probiotics Category.

Here’s how they won them: Surveys were conducted that included questions about quality, ingredients, formulation, price points, customer satisfaction, popularity, and widespread availability. The results led to 76 winners in 31 categories that spanned everything from fish oils and antioxidants to multivitamins and herbs. In the Cleansing and Detox and Probiotics Categories, we are among the top three products in each category.

It’s not surprising to me since CleanseSMART advanced total body cleanse has also been voted the #1 Cleanse by health food retailers for the last 7 years. It’s combination of 23 natural ingredients help support the body’s natural detoxification processes. Like all Renew Life products, it doesn’t contain any added ingredients or fillers. Ultimate Flora Critical Care 50 Billion probiotic is also a huge favorite among customers, and is formulated specifically for people who are engaging in or have recently completed a course of antibiotics to help them re-establish a healthy balance of good bacteria in the digestive tract.

So thank you to everyone who chose CleanseSMART and Ultimate Flora Critical Care 50 Billion. Renew Life will take such high praises any time!

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When you’re pregnant it seems like everyone has some important bit of advice to give—do this, eat this, stay away from this—but really the keys to good health during pregnancy are a lot like any other day: follow a healthy diet and lifestyle, and the benefits are sure to follow. So the other day when I came across a story about how probiotic supplements could provide added benefits for pregnant women and their babies, I wasn’t surprised at all.

Scientists in Finland recently followed more than 250 expectant moms to look at how taking probiotics during pregnancy (and afterwards while breastfeeding) may help with healthy blood sugar and preventing gestational diabetes. Gestational diabetes is another name for women who experience high blood sugar levels during pregnancy even though they’ve never had diabetes before, and it affects over 100,000 women in the U.S. every year!

All of the women in the study were considered healthy and had no history of chronic disease, and their daily diet was closely monitored by a nutritionist. But now for the really interesting part: about half of the women received a daily probiotic supplement with a combination of Lactobacilli and Bifidobacteria (those important L’s and B’s!), and those women had improved blood glucose control, which translated into fewer cases of gestational diabetes as well as healthy fetal and infant growth.

Now, I know I talk about probiotics all the time and how all those good bacteria in your gut play a BIG role in keeping your whole body healthy, but this just goes to show that the benefits of probiotics go way beyond just better digestion and a strong immune system. Because there’s been such a drastic rise in obesity and obesity-related disease in this country, researchers are excited about these study results and hope that starting probiotics early on in life will help to ensure a healthy body and weight in later years. More kudos for probiotics!

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Nothing makes me happier than seeing the scientific community finally start to confirm what I’ve been saying for years, that natural remedies like probiotics, fiber and Omega-3 oils provide some pretty amazing health benefits. Just thumb through the headlines and you’ll see what I mean—study after study talking about better digestion, a stronger immune system, heart health and more… it’s some pretty good stuff!

Sure, some of the information gets distorted, and a lot of companies developing products as a result of all that attention end up missing the mark entirely, but on the whole this mainstream recognition is a good thing. People are (finally) starting to pay attention to their digestive systems and are looking for natural alternatives, instead of conventional medications that often cause more side effects than the symptoms they treat.

As for probiotics, I’ve been telling folks for years that if you’re going to take just one natural supplement every day, it should be a probiotic. Establishing a healthy balance of good bacteria in your intestines (so that they greatly outnumber the bad bacteria) is absolutely crucial to your digestive health, which ultimately affects the health of your whole body. Why? Because more than 70 percent of your natural immune defenses are in your gut, folks!

Take for example a recent study that talks about how good bacteria living in the digestive tract work to “prime” the immune system, which means get it ready to fight off infections. But when you take antibiotics, this “priming” shuts down. Well, of course it does! I mean, sure antibiotics are good and sometimes we need them, but along with killing the bad bacteria we’re trying to get rid of, they also kill a lot of the good bacteria. Are you starting to see why probiotic supplements are so important?

I won’t get into the details, but basically mainstream medicine is trying to figure out just how probiotics communicate with our immune systems to improve digestion and overall health. The bottom line, though? It works. Probiotics interact with the immune system in a way that prepares the body for unwanted invaders, plain and simple, so isn’t it about time you started taking a daily dose of good bacteria? I think so!

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Notable News – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that we don’t need our appendix and that it has no function. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand removing the appendix if someone has appendicitis (a potentially fatal inflammation of the appendix) but the appendix isn’t completely useless! Did you know that it actually plays an important role in digestive health?

Recently researchers have determined that the appendix acts as a safe storage area for good bacteria in the body—you know, the kinds that help with digestion and immune function? So after a case of diarrhea, or a bout of antibiotics, both of which wipe out populations of good bacteria, the bacteria hidden in the appendix can actually repopulate the colon and bring balance back to your digestive tract! 

It makes perfect sense, really. The appendix is a narrow tube that sits at the bottom of the first part of the large intestine (also called the cecum). A bacterial infection or antibiotics would easily bypass the appendix because of its small opening, so the beneficial bacteria inside would stay protected. But inside the appendix are still enough bacteria to repopulate the gut when needed… which is pretty important when you consider that chronic dysbiosis (or a lack of enough beneficial gut bacteria) can contribute to infection if bad bacteria reach the appendix and multiply. And what happens then? You guessed it! Appendicitis!

So take it from me, your appendix is important, and so is making sure you take probiotics every day to keep your digestive system in balance!

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