How Can You Differentiate Supplements That Work From Others That Are a Complete Waste of Money?

There’s a big problem because there is little-to-no oversight in the supplement industry, leading to many corrupt practices. In fact, in April of 2015, the Attorney General of New York did a sting operation on many major supplement retailers in New York City. They went in, and they took the supplements off the shelf and did DNA analysis to determine what was actually inside those bottles. Shockingly to most, what they found is that  80% of those supplements contained none of the ingredients that were claimed on the label. So, you buy something like a St. John’s Wort supplement, and 80% of those had no St. John’s Wort in them whatsoever. It’s not that they didn’t have enough or that the source of that ingredient wasn’t high-quality — it was just never inside the product to begin with. That comes down to plain fraud. You will never get results from the product if the active ingredients were never in that product.

We look at this and think, “how could this happen? How could there be products on the shelves of reputable retailers that are not what they claim to be?”. The issue behind this is that there is no supplement industry watchdog. People think someone is watching out for them, making sure that when they pick up a bottle of supplements that they’re safe, effective, that they’re going to do what they say they’re going to do, and that’s just plain not the case. The only real regulations that exist for the supplement industry are basic food safety regulations, meaning they’re no different than what you’d find in the kitchen of the burger place down the street. They try to determine that the products are being made in a relatively clean environment and that nothing knowingly harmful is being used in the products, but that is its extent. And when I say relatively clean, even those standards are laughable. In fact, there is an acceptable number of rodent hairs that can be found in a bottle of supplements, and it’s two. I don’t think anyone is okay with two rodent hairs in their bottle of supplements. I know I’m not, so let me tell you how we do things differently to make sure that our products are clean, they’re healthy, they’re safe, and most of all, they’re effective, and they’re going to do what you expect them to do.

The M’lis Difference

1. High-Quality Ingredients

Good formulations don’t begin in the lab. Many think that we take ingredients we bring them into the lab, and we create these products. I’ll tell you, if you’re waiting until you get to the lab to create a good supplement product, you’ve already lost. This is why we start with our ingredients, and we’re obsessive about the quality of our ingredients.

We deal nearly exclusively with suppliers and growers of ingredients inside the United States of America. Most of them are found here in our home state of Utah. There’s only one exception to this, and I’ll tell you about that in one minute. We need to deal that close to home with our ingredient suppliers because it gives us control over that supply chain. We no longer have to take the word of anyone that the ingredients being supplied to us have been grown in the healthiest organic conditions. We can actually verify this by getting our boots in the dirt, putting our lab personnel right there on the farm to watch everything from soil preparation, planting, harvesting, drying, and delivering those herbs. This way, we know by the time they show up in our lab that they’re the best quality, healthiest, safest, and most effective ingredients that we can begin with.

I mentioned there was one ingredient we did get outside the United States — that’s our whey protein. We use an organic, free-range, grass-fed, no hormones or antibiotics whey protein that is produced on the South Island of New Zealand. New Zealand is known as being the gold standard of dairy protein. We found the literal ‘cream of the crop’ of New Zealand protein suppliers. We bring in the best quality, the most digestible whey protein with no lactose or casein, with none of the things that normally cause people problems with dairy protein. All you get is the highest quality, most absorbable high branched-chain amino acid protein for rebuilding your body and rebuilding your health. We take opportunities to travel and personally inspect each of the farms that we partner with. Those here domestically in the United States regularly visit, and we even make trips to New Zealand to verify the quality and the purity of that New Zealand dairy protein, but the job’s not done here.

2. Triple Redundancy Testing

Once we get the best quality ingredients, in many ways, it’s only beginning. Once those ingredients do arrive at our laboratory, the first process that happens is we put them aside into quarantine and pull test batches off of every ingredient. We test the ingredients for cleanliness, we make sure there are no contaminants, nothing growing in there, nothing that shouldn’t be in the product, but we also test them for efficacy. For every natural health ingredient, there are certain phytochemicals (plant chemicals) that make them effective in your body when you take them within our formulations. We verify that the ranges of these healthy active phytochemicals are within a certain set of guidelines that will make them potent, effective, and safe for achieving the products’ purposes.

After that test period, everything that passes is put into a secondary quarantine. It’s tested again, quarantined again, and tested a third time. This process is redundant, but there’s a purpose behind the redundancy. We’re so careful about testing three times with two quarantine periods to ensure we haven’t missed anything. There can be no contamination of the product that has escaped our testing processes with that triple redundancy. More importantly, we can verify that the processing of the products and that the drying of our medicinal herbs has been done properly. We can verify that there is no degradation in those important phytochemicals’ values when we test that efficacy on the first batch and then test again and again over quarantine periods.

If we didn’t check in the way that we do, what happens is that the efficacy of those products degrades day by day as it sits in the lab, blends into formulas, and ships to our warehouse, and we ship it to you, and it sits on a shelf waiting to be consumed — every day that product would be less potent and less effective. So, we verify that will never happen with our products. We verify that the drying process has been done right.

3. Synergistic Formulations

Once we know that all our ingredients are of the highest quality with proper preparation, we get into the formulation. One of our keys is that we believe in synergistic formulation. We never do any ‘single herb formulations’. There are fundamental reasons for this because single herb formulations can be tricky. Sometimes you’re having to push the level of safety on a single herb to ensure you’re getting enough to create a result within an individual. We never like to push the limits of safety. Also, for each medicinal herb, there’s a certain percentage of the population who’s going to be genetic non-responders, and no matter how much of that herb they take, they will never achieve the desired results. By using a synergistic formulation, we use four or five different herbs in one formulation. Doing so allows us to use much less of each individual herb, so we never push safety boundaries. Additionally, synergistic multi-herb formulas enable us to ensure that if an individual is a genetic non-responders to one of the ingredients, we’ll get them with the other four or five. So what we’re left with our formulas that are much safer and much more effective for the entire population.

3. Absorption & Nutrient Delivery

From formulation, we move into encapsulation. This is as important as anything else we do in the process. You may think it’s not a big deal how we encapsulate these natural herbal formulas, but as a wise person once told me, “it’s not even that you are what you eat anymore. You are what you digest”. If you are not properly digesting the supplements you take, it doesn’t matter how good they look on the supplement facts panel.

I’ve always heard a picture’s worth a thousand words. Looking at the image below, what we see here is an entire handful of vitamin supplements sitting in the colon, where no more digestion will occur. Looking at these tablets, how much benefit do you think this individual got from taking them? None. The tablets still have sharp edges and haven’t broken down at all. No matter how good they looked on the supplement facts panel, they aren’t actually delivering any nutrition or health benefits to the person who took them.

There’s a reason that tablets are so difficult to digest. First of all, when we imagine what medicinal herbs are, it’s nothing other than dried powdered leaves, roots, and stems of plants. Imagine taking a walk upon the hillside in the autumn, and the pathway is covered with dried leaves. If you were to pick those dried leaves up, crumble them into a powder and pack them as tightly as you can into your hand, how well would they stick together? The answer to that is that they wouldn’t. There’s not much on earth less sticky than dried leaves.

To make a tablet and take these dried medicinal herbs and make them stick together in the consistency of a rock, much other junk has to be added to that tablet. Vitamin tablets are typically only about 25 to 40 percent active ingredients. The other 60 to 75 percent are fillers, binders, glues, shellacs, and all sorts of ingredients that their only purpose in the formulation is to hold those ingredients together into a tablet. None of these things are healthy.

The way that it works is that a big sticky tablet dough is created of this small percentage of healthy active ingredients and this large percentage of fillers and binders to make the tablet work. Afterward, this dough is placed into a tableting machine. When it’s put into the tableting machine, it’s plopped on top of this giant rotating metal disc filled with a quarter of this sticky tablet dough then passed through a hydraulic press. Then a hydraulic pin is pressed into that dough with tens of thousands of pounds of pressure, compressing that inch and a quarter down to less than a quarter-inch and the consistency of a rock. All of this allows these tablets to survive the manufacturing process, the bottling process, and shipping without breaking them up, but they make them very, very difficult to digest.

Imagine there’s someone whose health is not ideal — they generally have digestive problems as well. Many health professionals are giving these individuals vitamin tablets that are nearly impossible to digest, expecting them to help the very condition that makes digestion particularly difficult for them in the first place. This is why you will never see us use tablets in our formulation. If you can’t digest the ingredients, they do you no good. So, to the contrary, we actually use two-piece vegetable fiber capsules for all of our dried herb products. These break down within 60 to 90 seconds of contact with the salivary amylase in your mouth. You will never see one of our products show up on an abdominal x-ray.

I will take you back to the early 1940s when penicillin was introduced into the medical community. It was a lifesaver! Penicillin saved many lives and eradicated many conditions that previously had no answer. The health of the world had been compromised by the fact that in the early years, bacteria had been the greatest single cause of all human disease. The use of antibiotics substantially increased the life span by treating infections that were before considered “incurable”. Penicillin was dubbed “the wonder drug” of this time. In addition to pneumonia and blood poisoning, the major causes of death in hospitals during World War II was strep throat, scarlet fever, Diptheria, syphilis, gonorrhea, meningitis, tonsillitis, rheumatic fever, and asthma. These and many other diseases were successfully treated with penicillin.

My mother was a Registered Nurse in 1940, and at that time, she could stock our refrigerator with whatever drugs we needed. I remember opening our refrigerator as a child and seeing the top shelf lined with vials of penicillin and syringes. My brother had debilitating asthma as a child and had already missed an entire year of school before the third grade. Penicillin became the drug of choice in our home. It did solve the asthma, and because there was no knowledge of long term effects, it became the solution for all of our health problems. As children, we were very careful not to act like we were not feeling well or complain about health issues because we knew that any complaint led directly to a penicillin shot. I was the “poster child” for antibiotics for 20 years.

Today we know that antibiotics are the most widely misused group of prescription drugs available. It is estimated that between 25% and 50% of the antibiotics prescribed are unnecessary or inappropriate. Indiscriminate use of antibiotics has created serious problems that now affect us all. This is due to the fact that in the 1940s and 1950s, there was a total lack of understanding of the long-term ramifications of the overuse of antibiotics.

My antibiotic use continued until high school. By that time I began having many health problems. I was unable to sleep, had minor depression, the muscles in my legs clicked and ached, and I could not gain weight )being 6’7″ and weighing 102 pounds). I went through high school known as “Skinny Minnie” and “Olive Oil”. I began having allergic reactions to some foods and plants. For every symptom, I would have conventional medical intervention. I began on antihistamines for allergies, sleeping pills for sleep, excess calories of fats and sugars to gain weight, and eventually had muscles in my hip removed to decrease the pain.

I was not educated enough to see what was happening as I took each new drug. I now can see in retrospect that each drug solved a symptom, however, it usually caused other or several other symptoms. As I went away to college, my stress level increased and I began having pneumonia and bronchitis four to five times a year. These were addressed with more antibiotics and by now steroids and inhalers. My depression level was going up, my inability to sleep more severe and my aching pains and allergies became a constant health problem for me.

I graduated from college and began working and started a family, with the general feeling that I had to be a superwoman who could do it all. By 1976, I was pregnant with my third child and had multiplied all of my health problems and had new symptoms. My allergies were life-threatening and I carried steroids and antihistamines with me at all times. I was allergic to sounds, smells, and lights, as well as foods and plants. Depression was controlled by drug, sleep was controlled by drug, and pain was controlled by drug. Stress and anxiety relief and muscle relaxation were all being controlled by chemical means. Doctors said that I was a hypochondriac and that I needed mental health intervention. I was told that all my symptoms were in my head because medically they could not find an answer for me. I developed TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint Dysfunction) and had tremendous pain in my face and jaw. This symptom was solved by breaking my jaw and wiring it shut for six weeks with the hope that when it healed, the jaw would open and the pain would be gone.

My son was born in June of 1976. In the delivery process, I was given an epidural in the base of my spine. I was in the recovery room 48 hours longer than was typically necessary because I could not come out of the medication. The doctor joked about me being a cheap drug addict because it didn’t take much for drugs to work for me. In retrospect, the epidural was the final drug kicker for me. I went home from the hospital and never felt well again, (until later when I finally found the information that I needed to get well) but at that time I had no idea where to look for answers.

In hindsight, I believe that life had to fall into place for me and give me a window, creating an opportunity to get well. I had owned a chain of children’s stores for thirteen years. In 1979, interest rates rose to 18% and my enthusiasm for borrowing money every season for inventory lost all allure for me. It was around then that I was introduced to someone who had been detoxifying for health problems with the help of a Holistic Doctor from California. Because I had come from a conventional medical home, I was extremely skeptical of anything that I felt was “fringy”. I laughed at the thought because I felt that I was an educated person and that holistic therapies were too “far out” where I was concerned.

As I continued to hear about detoxification and the principles used in rejuvenating the body, I decided that I would give the new concepts a 30-day trial. I knew that I could do anything for 30 days. At that time, I felt very hopeless and helpless in everything that I had previously tried to improve my health. I had been on 30 different drugs within the previous year and was continuing to get worse.

The day my life began again was the day I decided to try to educate myself on how the body works and how my lifestyle determined my health. I had been controlling all health symptoms with drugs. I was hooked on sugar and caffeine. I drank very little water, did no conscious exercise, and was operating in stress mode full time. My life simply was not good! I was 37 years old and felt that I was falling apart.

I focused my energies on becoming educated in how the body works, what our organs are meant to do, and how to live a cleansing lifestyle and allow the body to rejuvenate and get healthy. I began a detoxification program and within two weeks felt my life returning! The following weeks and months brought ups and downs, but because I always felt progress and could see that my body was healing, I stuck with it.

As I began the long process back from fibromyalgia (though I did not know at the time that I had developed the chronic illness now known as fibromyalgia, or FMS), I experienced intensified pain in areas in which I had solved symptoms with pain relievers and steroids. I then went through more severe allergic responses, my TMJ returned and passed, and then I developed shingles. By then I was getting back to the beginning of my progression. I later went through pneumonia and bronchitis symptoms and finally was through the entire progression. This total process took me about five years. I had been rid of the symptoms of FMS for a long time, but every time I detoxified, I had a healing crisis and felt significantly better with each cleanse. To this day, my overall health continues to improve. The longer you live a cleansing lifestyle, the healthier you get.

This may seem like a long time for a body to restore to health, but the breakdown process may have taken 15-40 years. It took years to accumulate a toxic body, have the toxins invade every cell and tissue, develop the symptoms and in some cases develop organ failure. It takes a minimum of six months to regenerate new healthy cells. However, symptoms may begin to subside within two days to four weeks. Health improvement progresses through manifesting fewer symptoms when making lifestyle changes, to becoming symptom free within six months.

As my health was restored, I had a desire to change my life and my profession and share what I had learned with friends that were sick as well. I sold my stores and began to study. I returned to school and over the next several years received a Bachelors, Masters, and Ph.D. in Preventative Health Therapies. I then began my studies to become a Doctor of Naturopathy. During these years, my interest and studies were geared specifically to Women’s Health Issues. In working with clients, I have seen the M’lis Lifestyle Change Programs work for many people, experiencing many different types of degenerative disease. I know that preventive health works!

I am still free of the symptoms of disease that at one time controlled my life. Hang in there, and encourage your clients to do the same. The long-term results are absolutely worth the effort.

If you’re thinking about doing a cleanse soon, you’ve sure picked a powerful way to transform your health and beauty! While cleanse programs like our 7-day Total Body Cleanse Kit can do wonders for your skin and overall health, we also know it can seem a little intimidating for first-timers. So here are a few tips to help you stick to your program and ultimately reap the biggest benefits of detoxification:

1. Get Clear on Your Why

You can know all there is to know about how to cleanse – what foods to eat, how much water to drink, when to take your supplements, etc. – but that’s not what’s going to help you carry on when times get tough. That’s why it’s important to reflect on your current state of wellness and get clear on the reasons “why” you’re choosing to commit to a cleanse program in the first place.

Perhaps you’re feeling sluggish and want to restore your energy levels and develop better nutrition habits in your life or maybe you’re someone who’s ready to take the holistic approach with some larger health issues. Prepare ahead of time by writing down your unique “why” on a piece of paper, strategically place it somewhere you’ll revisit it daily, and allow it to carry you throughout the span of your cleanse program.

2. Schedule Your Cleanse Wisely

Part of your cleanse preparation should include scanning your calendar and scheduling ‘cleanse dates’ where you know you’ll be able to relax at home for a brief period of time and not overwork yourself. Try your best to avoid scheduling a cleanse over a major deadline, holiday, or when you know you’ll be gathering for social events to eat and drink with friends and family. If for whatever reason this isn’t possible for you, that’s okay too! Set yourself up for success by having a strategy in place to help you stick to the cleanse protocol during any pre-planned events.

3. Clean Swap Your Kitchen

Before you start your cleanse, get rid of all the junk food and overly processed food around you or at the very least, put it somewhere you won’t be tempted to indulge in it. (Out of sight out of mind!) Next, go shopping and stock up your kitchen with nourishing foods like fresh fruits, veggies, lean proteins, M’lis MRP Instant Meal Shake, and any other cleanse-approved groceries listed in your cleanse program. Be sure to read labels and research recipes to find good-for-you alternatives for your favorite ‘non-approved’ foods.

4. Pre-Cleanse if Needed

If your diet includes high amounts of caffeine, alcohol, sugar, or processed foods, take 3-5 days before you actually start your cleanse to begin eating only from the “cleanse prep” food guidelines (listed below). Doing so will gently ease your body into the 3-day liquid-nutrition days so that you may experience less discomfort during a potential healing crisis.

Foods to Enjoy

• Fruits
• Veggies
• Fish
• Poultry
• Raw, plain yogurt and kefir
• Quinoa and Lentils
• Nuts
• M’lis MRP-Instant Meal

Foods to Avoid

• Refined Grains
• Pasteurized Dairy
• Alcohol
• Refined Sugars
• Chemical Artificial Sweeteners
• Trans Fats
• Hydrogenated Oils

5. Have a Support System

Anything is possible if you have the right people to support you! Make a list of your “support team”, including an accountability partner or any other loved ones who share similar values and want you to succeed.

For additional guidance on your next cleanse, join our Full Body Reset private Facebook group! It’s a safe place to connect with our team of wellness experts and hundreds of other cleansers as we embark on nutritional and cleanse programs together, seasonally throughout the year.

6. Turn Cleansing Into a Lifestyle

Practicing a cleansing lifestyle is one of the most important steps you can take towards vibrant health and well-being. We all know that our modern lifestyle exposes us to literally hundreds of harmful toxins every day that, when left unchecked, can disrupt the natural functions of the body and make us sick. But while you can’t entirely control your exposure to them, you can help your body stay on top of toxic stress by practicing daily habits that support its own natural detoxification processes.

Here are our top five starter tips for making cleansing a lifestyle:

• Stay Hydrated: Since your body’s natural cleansing mechanisms are water-based, staying hydrated makes your body’s job of flushing toxins easier. Make sure you’re drinking at least 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water daily.
• Eat the Right Foods: A healthy diet provides a wide range of nutrients that help your body detoxify. To get the best cleansing benefits from your food and body, use the VitaVore approach, which focuses on building your diet around the most nutrient-dense foods and reserving highly-processed “lifeless foods” for rare occasions only.
• Supplement: While eating a nutrient-dense diet to support your body’s natural detoxification processes is the best approach, nutritional gaps aren’t uncommon. For nutrient shortfalls, fill-in nutritional gaps with smart, high-quality supplementation.
• Get Quality Sleep: Poor sleep impairs your glymphatic system, which can cause toxins to build-up. Practice proper sleep hygiene to ensure you’re getting  7 – 7½ hours of healthy sleep each night.
• Move, Move, Move: Sweating helps your body better excrete toxins, which is one more reason why it’s so important to find an exercise activity that you enjoy and practice it daily!

Sweaters, scarves, gloves, coats… The seasons are changing and with a cold fall chill, it’s more than just your wardrobe that will need to adjust! Cooler weather affects your skin in several ways: It lacks humidity and dries up natural oils in your skin, causing it to lose its moisture. Brisk winds also cause chapping and windburn, leading to rough, cracked skin that can feel tight and uncomfortable.

Although you can’t control the weather, the key to great skin throughout the fall and winter is to adapt your beauty care routine to the shifting weather conditions. Here is a list of products that will give your skin exactly what it needs to prevent becoming dry and flaky during cold temperatures!

APPLE STEM CELL Moisturizer

Keep dryness away and deeply nourish your skin all day long with APPLE STEM CELL Moisturizer. This dreamy skin-replenishing moisturizer helps revitalize dry or aging skin for a smoother appearance. Stem cells and anti-aging actives (such as anti-oxidants, anti-inflammatory botanicals, and UV protectors) work together to support collagen production helping promote a more smooth, youthful-looking complexion.

RENEW Ester-C Hydrating Serum

Supercharged with Hyaluronic Acid and a technologically-advanced form of Vitamin C, this fast-absorbing RENEW Ester-C Hydrating Serum revitalizes and improves the appearance of uneven skin texture, while replenishing moisture for softer, fresher, younger-looking skin. Use it on its own or underneath your favorite moisturizer.

HYDRATE Skin Hydrating Drops

Hyaluronic Acid, the main ingredient in HYDRATE skin hydrating drops, is a naturally occurring part of your skin (just like collagen and elastin) and a powerful liquid hydrator to lock in moisture, keeping your skin visibly hydrated and plump. It also possesses the unique ability to absorb 1,000 times its own weight in water when applied to the skin. To help carry any moisturizer’s active ingredients more deeply into the skin, apply HYDRATE to your skin before the use of your daily moisturizer.

NOURISH Nutrient Oil

The ultimate fast-absorbing oil for delicate or ultra-dry skin, NOURISH combines rich nutrient oil with bee pollen and carrying agents to hydrate ultra-dry skin without clogging pores or feeling greasy. Using bee pollen for skin rejuvenation has been found to offer effective protection against dehydration while smoothing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. Apply two-three drops to clean skin around the eyes, face, décolleté, and cuticles, or add it to a hot bath for an at-home spa indulgence.

TONE Skin Spray

Botanical extracts and Aloe Vera are combined in this TONE Skin Spray to enliven the skin while softening the appearance of facial lines. With each spritz, it invigorates and refreshes the skin while producing a smooth, soft feeling.  It’s perfect to use whenever your skin feels dry and dull or before moisturizing, providing additional moisture in your morning and evening routine.

REPAIR Tissue Repair Cream

Originally formulated to minimize scar tissue formation following surgery, REPAIR Tissue Repair Cream combines the most powerful natural tissue re-builders to help nourish the skin during the scarring process and improve the appearance of most types of newly formed scar tissue.  It helps with all types of dry and damaged skin, including burns, scars, eczema, psoriasis, stretch-marks, abrasions, poison oak, poison ivy, and sunburn.

Most Diets Are Abusive Dietary Practices, Designed to Fail

By the way, this isn’t an uncommon thing for people to start diets and fail on them. In fact, this is a sobering statistic, but it’s a statistic that is true. The average American woman begins eight diets a year. Let that sink in for a minute. That’s more than once every other month, the average American woman is starting a diet and searching for something that will get them to a better place in their health than where they currently are. These women start new diets because the ones that they’ve tried in the past aren’t working for them.

The reason why most diets fail people is that they’ve only been designed to be very marketable. It’s a really catchy fad and gimmick sales process to come out and say, “if you ever eat this, it’s going to kill you.” Right? And I know that sounds hyperbole and funny, but watch the ads for all these diets, and that’s exactly what marketers are doing — they’re out there trying to scare you with something.

You can probably back me up based on your personal experience because these diets are based on gimmicks, fads, or having a great marketing story rather than really trying to genuinely support your health and well-being. They’re built to fail because they were never designed to work in harmony with your body and move you towards better health and well-being. And that’s really all that we want to do — move you to a better place in wellness and all the quick fixes, all the fads, all the gimmicks. None of them will get you to a truly better place of well-being.

Designing A Diet That’s Built to Work in Harmony With the Human Body

The genesis of VitaVore really came from frustration and repeated heartbreak, if I’m being absolutely honest on it. After feeling frustrated for 20+ years at the lack of a diet that was truly built to work with the human body to create amazing health and well-being, I looked at everyone in the room thinking, “somebody else, please do this, so I don’t have to do it”. I did not want to do it, but it just wasn’t there. I could not find a diet to recommend to people that they follow to find good health and well-being. So essentially, over a long period of time, I sat down and designed a diet that truly works from the ground up to get along and cooperate with your body and to give your body what it needs from food to get you the results that you’re looking for — improved health and well-being, something you can follow sustainably as a lifestyle, not some short-term gimmicky diet.

In fact, I hate the very word “diet” because people assume that it’s going to be some short-term thing, right? People often think to themselves, “I’m going to go on a diet for two weeks or two months”. “I’m going to do this weird thing that’s not my ‘real-life’ to try achieving some little, short-lived improvement, and then I’m going to go back to whatever I was doing before that wasn’t working for me.” And that’s heartbreaking. So that’s why I believe that most diets are just abusive practices. They’re self-abusive practices that we step into again and again.

Food is More Than Calories and Macros

From a biological perspective, food is about one thing. I know that some foods are really fun to eat, and I know that eating becomes a big part of our social experiences, but the biological reason that we as humans eat in the first place is just to deliver nutrition to our bodies. Because when you think about it, everything we need in our physical being can only enter our system through one pathway — what we put in our mouth.

If we want to accomplish any health and beauty results with our physical bodies, like good hormonal health, lots of energy, stabilized mood, or beautiful skin; the only place to get the tools that will allow that to happen is in what we’re eating, and that is nutrition. Our bodies simply need nutrition. It needs protein, it needs fats, it needs carbohydrates, and it needs a wide array of vitamins, minerals, probiotics, enzymes, phytochemicals (plant nutrients). All of these things are fundamental building blocks that our bodies need to function properly and healthily in the way that it was designed to do.

When we know that diet is really just about nutrition and what we eat is simply about delivering nutrition to our bodies, the only thing that makes sense to focus on when we’re looking at what and how we should eat, is what provides the most nutrition that is ideally suited for human health. And that’s precisely what VitaVore is about. It’s not about some weird gimmick, telling you that “if you eat carbohydrates, they’re going to damage everything in your body and you’ll never get where you want to be” because those things are flat-out not true. Those things are just marketing gimmicks that are very compelling when we don’t know where else to turn for an answer.

You Don’t Have to Starve Yourself to Lose Weight or to Be Healthy

There’s something really cool that happens within our bodies when we prioritize the nutrition or quality of our food above everything else, and all of those other goofy things that go along with diets that you’re used to expecting, don’t matter anymore.

So with VitaVore, since we’re obsessively focused on making sure you’re eating predominantly (not excessively) highly nutritious foods, you don’t have to count calories. I don’t care what calories you eat, and you don’t have to count them. You don’t have to weigh your food. You don’t have to measure your food. You don’t have to count macros. ‘White-knuckling it’ to stick to the program does not exist in VitaVore because none of those abusive dietary practices are part of the diet.

All VitaVore does, is focus intently on supplying your body with foods that are most attuned to providing optimal human health. When doing so, you can eat when you’re hungry. Yep! That’s your new guideline. How outlandish is it to say that “if you’re hungry, eat something” and “when you’re full, stop”? That’s it. That’s all you need to do.

Once You Stop Fighting Your Body, You Will See Big Results Almost Instantly

What a lot of people don’t know is that your body actually has the ability to monitor the nutritional makeup of food as it leaves your stomach into your gut. So if you eat lifeless garbage foods or follow weird diet plans that give you the bulk of something but don’t have the actual nutrition that your body needs, you’ll feel full for an hour. However, once that food moves out of your stomach, your body looks at it and goes: “Where are my vitamins?” “Where’s my carbohydrate?” “Where’s my fiber?” When that nutrition is missing, your body turns the hunger back on and goes, “Hey, nice try. You ate a lot of food here, but it wasn’t the nutrition that I needed”. “Eat some more because I require specific nutrients so that I can do what I need to do to keep you healthy.”

Being told to eat when your hungry and stop when you’re full on a diet program may seem like a radical departure from what you’ve been told to believe in the past. But if you’re focusing on eating highly nutritious food, I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve said to thousands of people — I dare you to try to gain weight on highly nutritious food. It’s nearly impossible. Do you know how much broccoli and Alaskan salmon you’d have to eat to gain weight? I promise you don’t want to try because your body quickly figures out this is a nutritional powerhouse and signals, “I’m fine, I’m good. Don’t eat anymore.” You can’t really go past that point with your body.

That’s why VitaVore takes all the weight, stigma, emotional damage, and baggage that normally comes with fad and gimmick diets out of the picture for you. It presents you with the exact guidance you need to make sure you’re getting highly nutritious foods that your body craves and will enjoy eating, and then you don’t have to worry about it. You live your life, sustainably enjoying lasting, robust health and well-being from here forward.

In Japanese culture, wabi-sabi is a philosophy centered on finding beauty in imperfection and accepting the natural cycles of growth.⁠⁣⁠ This perspective ties into a Japanese art where broken objects are often repaired with gold or silver — embracing the flaws and imperfections to create a piece of art that’s more beautiful than it was to begin with.⁠⁣⁠

As many of us are facing ambiguous losses and stressors during the COVID-19 pandemic, wabi-sabi can be used as a metaphor to teach us an important lesson: ⁣⁠During the process of mending what’s broken, we can use this time as an opportunity to come out on the other side stronger and more beautiful than ever before.⁠⁣⁠

Ambiguous Loss

While studying families of pilots missing in combat during Vietnam in the 1970s, Dr. Pauline Boss coined the term “ambiguous loss” to define a particular type of loss that can happen to a person when they don’t receive closure or clear understanding. Some examples of ambiguous loss are divorce, miscarriage, military deployments, or when a loved one develops an addiction, or a disease like dementia, or a chronic mental illness. Since there’s no certainty that the person will come back or return to the way they used to be, it can leave us endlessly searching for answers and complicate the grieving process or even leave it unresolved altogether.

Two Types of Ambiguous Loss During COVID-19

Ambiguous loss can often cause symptoms that look similar to mental illnesses, like sorrow and depression. However, mental illness isn’t the problem. Rather it is the loss and/or stressors that the person has experienced, making resiliency-building strategies the key to living well despite feeling stuck or that the end is uncertain.

Six Guidelines for Fostering Resilience and Coping With Ambiguous Loss

1. Create Moments of Meaning

Meaning makes a great many things endurable – perhaps everything.

Carl Jung

Suffering without meaning is unbearable. But if you can find some beauty or purpose for your life during the suffering, it makes it more doable.

Being kind and giving to others can make our lives feel more meaningful. It also helps to create a connection with one another. Studies have proven interdependence and relationships increase physical health, mental health, resiliency, and longevity. Find opportunities to serve others while practicing social distancing, like calling or texting to check in on your neighbors, writing thank you letters/signs for front line workers, or donating blood.

Rituals help bring organization and meaning to our lives. Creating new ones helps us grieve old ones connected to our previous identity. It is harder to let go of rituals of the past without creating new moments to love.

Ask Yourself:

• What am I learning from this?
• How is my community coming together?
• How is my family coming together?
• What have I done to help?

2. Adjust to a New Normal

We all like to have certainty and control in our lives. Adjusting to a new environment means having less predictability and control. If you try to control too much, you’ll drive everyone around you crazy. If you don’t try, you will not be prepared to protect yourself and your family.

Finding the sweet-spot of control is the goal. It is easy to feel stuck, confused, and paralyzed when there is a season of change. Loss is real even if you are not receiving awareness or validation from others. In many situations, don’t expect awareness or validation. In order to grieve and move forward, assign words to your emotions, and recognize the loss.

Ask Yourself:

• What have I lost through this season of change?
• What am I doing to explore options and get informed?
• What boundaries am I setting while getting this information?
• Am I struggling for closure? Acknowledge closure is a myth.
• Am I blaming others? How can I let go of blame and hold onto my power?

3. Accept Ambivalence

Ambivalence is having contradictory attitudes or feelings at the same time. You can feel hopeful and hopeless, grateful and frustrated, love and irritation. Resilience happens when you learn to hold onto both of these ideas at the same time. You can increase tolerance for emotional discomfort. Doing this helps you to move past paralyzed decision making.

Examples:

• I want to go to work and I don’t want to go to work
• I love my spouse and I can’t be with my spouse right now
• I am excited to have my baby and I don’t want to deliver my baby

4. Find Connection With Others

Find a way to connect with your family and friends every day. Technology is so important right now. Try using online video chat software like Skype or FaceTime to see the faces of your family and friends. Brainstorm creative ways to talk with each other while practicing social distancing. Human connection is fundamental to our mental health. We are social creatures and not meant to be alone. Fight for new ways of connection.

Ask Yourself:

• Am I trying to go through this alone? Am I turning towards family?
• Am I open to connecting in new ways? Who is helping me make decisions?
• Who is my support team?
• What strengths and weaknesses do they have? How am I keeping my “cup” full?
• Do I have healthy boundaries? Am I able to be authentic and vulnerable?

5. Reconstruct Your Identity

Use this time as an opportunity to rediscover your passion and let go of what’s not working for you in your life. Letting go is a big part of this and so is embracing what does work. Try journaling or talking to someone who supports you to discover you strengths and use them as a foundation for your new growth and development in life.

Identity Do’s

• Recognize new roles.
• Recognize strength and family resiliency.
• Identify personal strengths.
• Increase spiritual sense of self.
• Separate your identity from what is going on around you, who is around you.
• In times of crisis, you must never forget and you must forget.
• Be curious

Identity Don’ts

• Stop discrimination, blaming others.
• Have compassion for yourself and others.
• Don’t isolate from others…you need community for a sense of self
• Don’t keep a role that isn’t working (ie: rescuer, organizer, enforcer, etc)

The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering.

David Whyte

Ask Yourself:

• Who am I? Does the way I spend my time reflect this?
• How have I changed in work, family, school, church?
• How have I adapted a new view of my sense of self?
• How have I shown up for myself and others?

6. Discover Hope

Hope brings us possibilities that life can change, we can change. We can adapt the attitude that “I don’t know what the future will look like, but I believe in myself and my community.” Switch from asking yourself “why” to “what am I going to do”.

Find humor and some time to be worry-free. Find something bigger than yourself, like God, nature, or the universe. We learn there is rebirth and can let go of trying to control life.

Ask Yourself:

• What gifts do I have from going through this change?
• What have I learned about myself?
• What possibilities or opportunities can I imagine?
• What new lessons have I learned?
• How can I practice patience in this season of change?

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms. To choose one’s attitude in any set of circumstances. To choose one’s own way.

Viktor Frankl

As we navigate uncharted waters with the impact of the coronavirus worldwide, one thing is certain — life has changed without warning. There have been disruptions in our daily routines, work lives, family dynamics, financial situations, and more. Facing these stressors and losses all at once can cause great emotional stress for many of us.

While everyone reacts differently to emotional stress, it is important to remember that your unique feelings are valid and that you are not alone in this. If you are not sure how to manage your emotions during this time, here are seven things that you can do to help protect your mental health as you forge through this global pandemic in a way that will empower and support your life journey at large.

1. Establish a Routine

As much as possible, figure out a routine for you and your family. Get up at the same time each day. Figure out mealtimes, homes-school times, work times, exercise times, etc. Stability and predictability are important to adults and children and helps us as we feel insecure during this time.

2. Practice Self-care

Self-care needs to happen EVERY DAY! Beyond sleeping at least 7-8 hours a night, eating well, and exercising — do something you enjoy, no matter if it is 15 min or 2 hours. Figure out what helps take your mind off stressful events and what you enjoy. What works for you may not work for someone else. If you do not know what works for you, experiment! This is the time to figure it out. You may find feel a sense of calm doing a puzzle, taking a bubble bath, reading, listening or playing music, creating art, knitting, etc. Investing time for yourself will make you better at everything you do.

3. Stay Social

Find a way to connect with your family and friends every day. Technology is so important right now. Try using online video chat software like Skype or FaceTime to see the faces of your family and friends. Brainstorm creative ways to talk with each other while practicing social distancing. Human connection is fundamental to our mental health. We are social creatures and not meant to be alone. Fight for new ways of connection.

4. Move Your Body Every Day

Most likely you will need to reinvent how you have done this in the past. It is so important to get the natural endorphins and keep up your strength. It helps with immunity, mental health, and basically, brings a brighter outlook on life. Stress is cumulative and builds up in your body. Do something to get your heart pumping at least 20 minutes a day. Releasing stress through exercise will keep you feeling GOOD!

5. Embrace Mindfulness

Mindfulness is learning to live in the present. You can do this by paying attention to your thoughts, sensations, feelings, and environment without judgment. This is a skill that will be easier the more you practice. There are hundreds of studies showing how mindfulness can have dramatic benefits on your mental health. If you find yourself ruminating over something in your past, or your fear of the future, gently remind yourself to focus on today. There are many free mindfulness apps online that will help you get started.

6. Notice What You Are Feeling and Name It

Naming your emotions helps defuse the intensity. Emotions related to stress and trauma will be easier to move through and process if you label them. “What I am feeling is loneliness” or “I am so frustrated by this lifestyle”. Common emotions are sad, happy, disgusted, angry, scared. Talk about feelings in your family. Help your children name their emotions. Notice where these emotions may be hurting your body.

7. Get Out in Nature

Do you have a backyard? Porch? Balcony? Get outside in fresh air several times a day. Notice Springtime and feel the sun on your face. This will release all those positive endorphins and remind you that rebirth and renewal are part of the great plan of the earth.

Skin that is dry, flaky, or cracked becomes an issue for many of us as we level-up our handwashing game to help save lives and flatten the curve of COVID-19. Not only can these damaged skin conditions be deeply uncomfortable, but they’re much more likely to allow riff-raff pathogens into our bodies. And while slathering on a rich moisturizer can help quicken your skin’s natural healing process, it isn’t always a cure-all… Read on to learn more!

What is Skin Immunity?

Our skin does a lot more than make us look presentable — it’s actually the body’s largest organ! Not only is it an active organ of elimination, but it’s also an active organ of immunity. Just like your personal bodyguard, your skin’s outermost layer is the literal first line of defense against viruses, bacteria, microbes, and toxins in your environment and their ability to enter your body.

Compromised Skin Barrier

Your skin’s protective moisture barrier is made up of lipids (oils) that hold skin cells together, maintain hydration, and protect you from external invaders. If this barrier is damaged, however, by things like consistent alcohol-based hand-sanitizing and overly-drying handwashing, invisible cracks may form in your skin, giving sneaky pathogens an entry point into your body.

Signs of a Compromised Skin Barrier:

• Persistent Dryness
• Flakiness
• Rough to The Touch
• Tightness
• Product Sensitivity
• Itchiness

Healing a Damaged Skin Barrier

While bathing your hands in a rich lotion may seem like a quick fix for your skin’s damaged defense, that isn’t always the case. Chances are likely that something in your day-in & day-out handwashing routine is compromising your skin barrier and once you remove the culprit, your skin can begin to heal.

How to Keep Your Hands Clean While Preserving Your Skin’s Protective Barrier:

• Switch from synthetically fragranced, overly-drying soaps to a gentle cleanser, like the M’lis Wash Herbal Cleanser, that preserves your skin’s protective barrier.
• Apply just enough product to remove pathogens, but avoid thick lathers as they can strip your skin’s natural oils.
• Wash with warm, not hot water.
• Pat hands dry with a towel, don’t rub.
• Apply a high-quality, natural moisturizing cream, like the M’lis Tissue Repair Cream, immediately after your hands dry and throughout the day as needed to naturally repair damaged skin faster.

By making positive changes in your handwashing regimen & using the right high-quality skincare products, you will not only be able to keep your skin calm and smooth but also support what it’s meant to do — avoid any infections from disease-causing agents.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, you may be considering ways you can help support your body’s natural immunity. The truth is, while you can’t completely change out the immune system with which you are blessed, there are a lot of different things that you can do to keep your immune system strong and healthy so you can have your best defense against any virus or infection.

Here are Dr. Wallace Vigo Nelson’s eight expert techniques to naturally support the healthy function of your immune system:

Try Your Best to Avoid Immune Suppressants

First of all, we want to really look at avoiding anything that might naturally suppress your immune system.

1. Systemic Toxicity

Systemic toxicity is one of the biggest suppressants to your immune system. When your body is overtaxed with toxins, it can result in inflammation and impaired immune function. This includes if you are eating a lot of processed foods and coming into frequent contact with modern-day plastics and petroleum-based chemicals. Each of those can actually suppress the healthy activity of your immune system. Try your best to reduce your overall toxin exposure and help your body rid itself of toxic build-up by undergoing a high quality cleanse program like the M’lis Detoxification Kit or M’lis Total Body Cleanse Kit.

2. Refined Sugar

If you consume just over 10 grams of sugar, it can suppress your immune system for up to three hours. This means if you’re drinking a can of coke once every three hours, you essentially are dealing with an entirely suppressed immune system pretty much all the time. By eating candy or processed foods that contain refined sugars on a daily basis, you may unknowingly be weakening your body’s ability to ward off disease. So if your goal is to focus on strengthening your immune system, it’s important to avoid those refined sugars as much as possible.

The NIH (National Institutes of Health) recommendation on refined sugars is no more than 25 grams a day, but that’s truly a good number to push as low as you possibly can. There is no dietary requirement for refined sugars. You can live just fine for the rest of your life without ever eating refined sugars. Nutritionally speaking, they don’t offer anything beneficial for your health, so cutting back as much as you can is actually just a good overall health strategy, but especially during a time where we’re more susceptible to catching a virus.

3. Excess Alcohol

Avoiding the consumption of alcohol to excess is important for your immune system. So this doesn’t mean you can’t have a glass of wine with dinner. At a very moderate level, there are a lot of studies that show a glass of wine with dinner is actually really beneficial to your health, but drinking excessively will absolutely suppress your immune system. It can disrupt your sleep patterns, negatively impact your digestion, impair the function of your natural antibodies called t-cells, and more. So drinking to excess ought to be avoided if you’re trying to make sure that you’re optimizing your immune system.

Practice Immune-Supporting Habits Daily

After cutting the immune suppressors out and helping your body detoxify, let’s talk about some effective techniques you can use to support the healthy function of your immune system.

1. Quality Sleep

Your immune system requires quality sleep to reset itself and operate at its maximum potential. If you struggle with falling asleep or getting 7-7 ½ hours of uninterrupted sleep each night, read this blog post for some simple sleep hacks that you can practice today, to help you get restorative rest back into your life.

2. Don’t Forget Nutrition

Since each nutrient that’s required by your body plays a role within the natural healthy function of your immune system, we advise you to build a diet based around nutrient-dense foods instead of empty calories. Make sure you’re building your diet around vegetables, fruits, healthy meats, fats, nuts/seeds, a small amount of quality healthy starchy carbs.

If you suspect that your diet isn’t providing you with all of your nutritional needs, supplement with something like the M’lis Daily Multivitamin/Multimineral or the M’lis M.R.P. Instant Meal Shake to make sure that you are filling-in any nutritional gaps that may exist. We always call that “the healthier and cheapest form of health insurance” —  simply making sure that you’re not nutritionally-deficient in anything by eating a healthy diet and using smart supplementation to fill in any of those vitamins & mineral gaps you may have.

Supplement Immune-Supporting Nutrients

Specific nutrients play specialized roles within your immune system. Supplementing with targeted nutrition during this time of year can help you ensure these key nutrients are at their optimal levels for the strongest immune response possible.

1. Vitamin D

This sunshine vitamin is the single most important nutrient for your immune system. It plays a factor in over 1,000 functions in your immune system just by itself, and if you are deficient in Vitamin D (which most of the population is), none of those thousand activities of your immune system are going to be happening correctly.

In a new coronavirus study, researchers looked at over 200 hospitalized COVID-19 patients and revealed that over 80% were found to have a vitamin D deficiency. Furthermore, these patients had an extended stay in the hospital while experiencing higher levels of inflammatory markers, which have been associated with worse outcomes in COVID-19 patients.

While the vitamin D and coronavirus connection is still an important research question to analyze, it doesn’t change one well-known scientific fact: Vitamin D deficiency is a global health issue, and unlike the pandemic, the solution is not a mystery that needs to be solved. Supplementation is an inexpensive and science-based answer to help fix it.

Since vitamin D is so popular, you’ll find many low-quality supplements produced with questionable standards. You can, however, feel confident with our M’lis Vitamin D supplement. Like all of our products, it’s formulated with only 100% organic, perfectly potent ingredients and has surpassed vigorous third-party testing to confirm they meet our high standards, and the feedback we’ve received is incredible!

2. Antioxidants & Phytonutrients

Antioxidants and phytonutrients act as fuel for your immune system and your ability to fight off infectious agents. Have you ever seen a space movie where they use energy “blasters” for weapons? Making sure you have plenty of antioxidants and phytonutrients is like recharging your immune system’s “blasters” against any internal invaders.

You also want to make sure that you’ve got a wide mix of antioxidants by including lots of highly-dense superfood fruits and vegetables during this time of year. The M’lis Daily Antioxidants Essentials and M’lis Essential Greens have 24+ organic superfoods and phytonutrients necessary to charge those immune system blasters and give them the maximum ability to fight off invading pathogens.

Many of us know the importance of “pH balance” for our skin, but have you ever considered pH as a crucial aspect to your overall health? When it comes to wellness, pH balance affects everything from your skin to your metabolism to the creation of new cells to the production of hormones and so much more. So let’s dive right in and debunk a few myths to ensure you have the truth and to make certain that you don’t have any problems with pH in your own body.

What Is PH?

PH is the term for an important acid, neutral, and basic balance that happens in your body. The pH scale runs from 0-14. Neutral pH is 7, anything below 7 becomes increasingly acidic, and above 7 seven is increasingly alkaline.

Does Maintaining a PH Balance Even Matter?

Put simply, your body has a very specific pH set point that it wants to be at. The reason that matters is that it’s strictly chemistry. At the base level, our bodies are nothing more than a big ongoing series of chemical reactions. Any process that needs to happen within the health of your body requires a specific pH balance to function properly, like your metabolism, the creation of hormones, the creation of new cells, etc. If our pH is wrong, proper chemical reactions that need to take place for the healthy functions of our bodies are unable to happen at the proper intensity. Sometimes they’re not able to occur at all when that pH is too far off. This is why it’s vitally important for your body to maintain a proper pH balance.

Your Body’s Role in Sustaining a Liveable PH

Your body will sacrifice near anything for its long-term health to maintain proper pH because it’s a matter of survival. There is less than a one-degree swing in pH that is sustainable for life long-term. So that means if there’s a wandering level within your pH, your body’s unable to function and essentially cannot survive it.

As you could imagine, your body has amazing defense systems, making certain that you’re able to sustain function if your pH balance is out of balance. In fact, it will sell anything out to maintain it. For this, it’s not a matter that your body gets too acidic (as far as a blood pH goes) because your body flat out won’t allow it. What happens is that your body has a system built-in called the bicarbonate buffer system that works hard to maintain a livable pH – no matter what’s going on.

How to Support PH Balance

The body pH measurement that matters is not in saliva; it’s not in your blood because, as we just mentioned, your body doesn’t allow that actually to move very much. The pH that we’re concerned about is actually when we measure at the kidney, called the renal acid measurement.

With foods, we can grade them by something we call the potential renal acid load or PRAL. The potential renal acid load tells us how much of food causes an acid load on your kidney that has to be rectified at the kidney by the bicarbonate buffer system. Some foods cause a net acidic reaction, some foods cause a net basic reaction, and some foods are pretty neutral. The goal is not to think of acid as “bad” and alkaline as “good”. We simply want to make sure that what we’re eating is providing enough balance of basic or alkaline foods to offset the acidic foods that we eat.

Alkaline vs. Acidic Foods

Most plant foods are alkalizing. Acidifying foods are basically anything other than vegetables and fruits. That’s the easiest way to conceptualize the differences. Processed grains are actually acidifying, so we don’t count those pH wise as “plant foods”. Animal proteins are great for your health in many ways, but they are net acidifying in nature. When metabolized, they have a net acidic potential renal acid load, so eat plenty of alkalizing foods so that your body can properly alkalize any of that extra acid load.

It’s important to understand that the potential renal acid load is entirely divorced from what the pH of the food is on your plate. For example, a lemon is acidic on my plate, but that does not mean it’s acidic for my body. Not true at all. In fact, lemon is very alkalizing. It’s basic in your body with its potential renal acid load because as it burns down to metabolic ash, that metabolic ash is alkalizing at the kidney. That’s where it matters.

Chronic Acidity Causing Long-Term Damage

If you’re eating too many processed foods, not eating near enough vegetables and fruits, and your body starts to run acidic, it brings in the bicarbonate buffer system into play. This system actually marries bicarbonate (which you have an endless supply of) with specific mineral salts within your body to produce an alkalizing effect. An example of this is when you were a kid and did your science experiment by combining the acidic vinegar and the alkalizing baking soda, which is bicarbonate that neutralizes the acid, right? Well, the same thing happens in your body.

The problem comes when we’re not eating enough of alkalizing vegetables, and thus your body has to take alkalizing mineral stores from elsewhere. It can pull them from your bones or teeth, but it’s far more common for your body to remove those from the bile salts that are held in your gallbladder that have been collecting for the purpose of digestion. It’s simply the quickest and most accessible source for these bicarbonate buffers.

This is an excellent example of how the body does a great job of immediate survival but it can also sacrifice its health long-term. By removing these salts, the bile falls out of suspension, which can solidify and become what we call gallstones. Gallstones are directly an issue of poor pH management.

The unfortunate thing is that many times, rather than looking at this for what it is and making some dietary adjustments to rectify the real issue, the gallbladder is taken out, which digestively disables you for life. We don’t say that to be harsh. There’s flatly no other way to look at it. Your gallbladder is a vital organ, and those who have had gallbladder removal surgery will tell you that there are specific things that have to happen the rest of their life, to digest normally.

We don’t want to see anybody have to go that route that doesn’t need to. So please pay attention to what’s happening with proper pH balance in your diet. It is SO easy to do. We’re not asking you to buy test strips. All you have to do is eat plenty of alkalizing leafy greens, vegetables, fruits, and cut down on acidic processed foods.

If you make sure you’re eating the right type of foods to maintain an excellent healthy pH balance, your body will thank you for it in both short-term and long-term, as it will be able to function at the proper pH level without having to rob your body of nutrients, using the bicarbonate buffer system.

Experience the Health & Beauty Benefits of PH Balancing With Essential Greens

Green leafy vegetables provide a wide range of pH balancing phytonutrients to help support detoxification, stabilize blood sugar, manage weight, support healthy digestion, and so much more. If you don’t get enough green vegetables into your diet, bridging that gap with M’lis Essential Greens is a convenient way to deliver 20+ organic pH balancing, leafy lovelies straight to your body. Simply tear, pour, and swig 1-2 superpowered packets on-the-go in a smoothie or glass of water daily for alkalizing health & beauty benefits that will last you a lifetime.