Gelatin has a long history of use in Chinese Medicine as a medicinal substance for a variety of conditions.  Let's take a look at some of the ways gelatin has traditionally been used.

• as a "blood tonic" to treat dizziness accompanied by a sallow complexion and heart palpitations.
• to stop bleeding of any type, including excessive menstruation, mid-cycle spotting, nosebleeds, injuries, or blood in the sputum (coughing up blood) or stool.
  
• to nourish and moisten the "yin" in cases of irritability and insomnia after illnesses with fever, and to moisten the lungs in cases of chronic dry cough

One traditional way of consuming the gelatin is to combine it with other herbs and cook the mixture into a decoction that is supposed to be sipped throughout the day.  The typical dosage is 3 - 15 grams of gelatin per day.  The other way of using gelatin is as a medicinal food.  In the Shandong province of China, gelatin is combined with almonds, sesame seeds, jujube dates, and wine, and eaten as an energy bar to supplement blood and yin.

The best quality of gelatin has traditionally been considered to be black gelatin made from the skin of the black donkey.  Gelatin made from beef, pork, camels, or horses is typically considered to be inferior.  This is likely because foods that are black in color have traditionally been considered by the Chinese to be highly nourishing to what they call the jing or essence, which is related to fertility and longevity.

It is also typical in Chinese Medicine to assign a temperature and taste to every herb or food as well as an energetic meridian and organ that the herb enters more readily than other parts of the body.  Gelatin is said to be of neutral temperature (neither warming nor cooling) and sweet taste, with a tendency to enter the kidney, liver, and lung meridians of the body.

Bones and bone broth have also been used medicinally in Chinese Medicine for thousands of years, but they are not used for the same conditions as indicated for gelatin.  Tomorrow, I will write more about the Traditional Chinese Medicine usage of bones and bone broth as a medicinal substance.  If you don't want to miss a post, sign up for the newsletter.  I hate spam more than you do, so I promise you will not receive any spam from me!  Click this sentence to sign up.

This is part 2 of a 2 part series.  To read the first part of the series, click here: 11 Diet Mistakes You Don't Know You're Making (Part 1)

6.  Avoiding salt

While avoiding highly processed iodized sodium chloride is definitely a good idea unless you intend to go around retaining water and looking bloated all the time, a mineral-rich salt from land or sea can be beneficial to you in many ways.  Salt can actually help pull your body out of a fight-or-flight stress response by causing you to increase levels of the "feel-good" neurotransmitter and hormone, dopamine.  Increasing your dopamine levels can reduce pain, high blood pressure, anxiety, fibromyalgia symptoms, and apathy, among other things.  It can also cause you to feel more social and extraverted.

7.  Eating only egg whites and avoiding the egg yolks

Egg yolks contain a rare nutrient known as phosphatidylcholine, which is needed by your brain and liver for optimal function.  A deficiency in this nutrient can cause lowered IQ, ADHD, fatigue, eye diseases, liver cancer, and a variety of other undesirable illnesses.

8.  Overeating and then trying to burn off the excess calories with lots of cardio exercise

Chronic cardio exercise can cause your stress hormones to stay elevated, which will cause you to lose muscle in your arms and legs while depositing fat on your abdomen, back, and neck.  You may also experience hair loss,  infertility, heart disease, osteoporosis, and extreme weight gain (despite doing lots of exercise).  It's best to avoid situations that may cause you to overeat, and don't do types of exercise that involve prolonged strenuous activity.  That means choosing to run a 5K instead of a 10K, or doing high intensity interval training and yoga instead of spending hours at the gym.

9.  Skimping on sleep

Lack of sleep not only elevates your hunger hormone and reduces your ability to make smart choices at mealtime, it also directly slows down your metabolism!  If you have to choose between getting up an hour early for a trip to the gym and getting at least 8 hours of sleep at night, by all means skip the gym and choose getting enough sleep!  The work you get done at the gym by skimping on sleep will not be enough to cancel out the ill effects on your blood sugar, metabolism, and hunger hormones caused by sleep deprivation.

10.  Quitting caffeine

While large amounts of caffeine found in energy drinks and some diet pills can be extremely dangerous, small doses of caffeine naturally found in coffee, tea, and chocolate can increase your mental acuity, physical performance, and motivation, and it can lift your mood.  More than just a substance to help you get things done, caffeine may also help prevent a wide variety of diseases from diabetes to Alzheimer's.  When you titrate your caffeine dosages throughout the day, consume 200 - 300 mg per 24 hour period, and put a stop to your caffeine consumption several hours before bedtime, you can reap the health benefits of caffeine while preventing the adverse effects of caffeine overdose.

11. Avoiding high cholesterol foods

Some of the foods highest in cholesterol include shrimp, oysters, liver, lobster, butter, and cheese, which are common foods in the Mediterranean diet.  People living in the Mediterranean region of Europe have long enjoyed low rates of obesity and heart disease, and high rates of longevity.  Dietary cholesterol supports learning and memory, production of sex hormones and adrenal hormones, and the production of vitamin D in response to sun exposure.  A lack of dietary cholesterol may be one of the factors behind age-related cognitive decline, hormone imbalances and infertility, cancer, and clinical depression. 

These are just a FEW of the diet mistakes you don't know your making!  In The Nourished Metabolism, Elizabeth Walling covers all the bases and gives clear guidelines to help you raise your metabolism by NOURISHING, rather than STARVING, your body.  If you have a goal to have more energy, lose weight, or put an end to yo-yo dieting, The Nourished Metabolism is the book for you.  Elizabeth explains how achieving your ideal weight is simply a side effect of having a healthy body and a healthy metabolism.

You can also enter to win a free copy of The Nourished Metabolism by signing up for the Superhero Healthcare mailing list and "liking" the Superhero Healthcare facebook page.  (Follow the instructions below to enter to win.)  The winner will be chosen and announced on June 1, 2013.

If you want to purchase a copy of The Nourished Metabolism, click here.

If you have ever read any book about health, nutrition, fitness, or weight loss, you are probably aware that the market is saturated with information about these subjects.  But frustratingly, every new book that comes out conflicts with the previous ones.  One day you read that carbs are bad, while the next day you read that carbs are good and fats are bad!  Then you pick up another book that says eating too much protein is bad and we should all become vegetarians if we want to be healthy, lean, and live a long life.

It is exceptionally rare for me to pick up a book, read it from cover to cover, and actually agree with 99% of the content.  It is even more rare for me to find an ebook that I would actually recommend to my friends and family.  But The Nourished Metabolism, written by Elizabeth Walling, is one of those books.

In the book, Elizabeth explains how common diet & exercise advice ultimately leads to failure by destroying your metabolism.  This is one reason why the diet industry is so profitable!  Instead of recommending all the tired advice that just doesn't work for anybody (calorie counting, measuring and weighing everything, avoiding fats, avoiding carbs, sacrificing sleep and rest for exercise, etc.), Elizabeth gives you a clear plan for healing your metabolism and becoming healthy.  When these means are achieved, you eventually reach your ideal weight as a side effect of having a healthy metabolism.

In this 2 part series, I will outline just a few common mistakes many individuals make in trying to achieve a healthy diet.  Elizabeth explains these and more in her book, The Nourished Metabolism.

1. Choosing whole grains

Whole grains are difficult to digest and are high in enzyme-inhibitors and anti-nutrients. This terrible combination can wreak havoc on your metabolism by causing chronic inflammation, slowing down your body's ability to metabolize fats, and blocking absorption of nutrients your thyroid needs in order to function properly.  Choose a baked potato, white basmati rice, or butternut squash instead of that "healthy" bran muffin or cardboard-tasting "whole grain" bread.  Your body (and your skinny jeans) will thank you later.

2.  Eating veggie burgers

Soy protein in veggie burgers blocks production of thyroid hormone, which can leave you with a sluggish metabolism, low body temperature, infertility, and memory problems.  Real beef hamburgers, on the other hand, are packed with B vitamins and other nutrients that promote athleticism and optimal brain function.  Most people would probably also agree that real beef hamburgers are very satisfying and keep you feeling full longer than a veggie burger.  (Without the need to snack between meals, you'll probably end up eating fewer calories overall by indulging in the beef burger instead of the tofu burger!)

3.  Cooking with olive oil

Olive oil is a very healthy anti-inflammatory oil that is high in heart-healthy monounsaturated fatty acids.  However, exposing olive oil to high heat causes rancidity which can slow down your metabolism, contribute to heart disease and cancer, and even make you age faster by gunking up your system with free radicals.

4.  Replacing real butter with margarine

Butter is the slimming secret of slender French women!  Real butter made from grass-fed cows is high in a rare type of fat known as CLA or conjugated linoleic acid.  This is not only a heart-healthy fat, but also one clinically proven to raise your metabolism and burn belly fat.  Margarine, on the other hand, is high in polyunsaturated fats which can contribute to chronic inflammation

5.  Cutting out sugar or going very low carb

While high fructose corn syrup, excessive amounts of fruit juice, and agave nectar are no good because they are metabolized by your liver in the same way as alcohol (which puts you at risk for developing fatty liver disease or cirrhosis of the liver), natural sugars found in whole fruits, sugar cane, organic (non-GMO) sugar beets, milk, vegetables, mushrooms, maple syrup, coconut water, honey, and kombucha, for instance, are beneficial when used wisely and in moderation.  If your diet is too low in sugars and other forms of carbohydrates, your body will sense that you are in a famine.  Even if you are consuming enough calories from fats and proteins, if you are not eating enough carbohydrates your body will slow down your metabolism to "protect" you from a famine.  Elizabeth explains in The Nourished Metabolism exactly how you can calculate the optimal number of grams of carbohydrate that is right for YOUR body.

These are just 5 of 11 common mistakes that I will be outlining in this 2 part series.  Check back later for the second part of the series!  You can also enter to win a free copy of The Nourished Metabolism by signing up for the Superhero Healthcare mailing list and "liking" the Superhero Healthcare facebook page.  (Follow the instructions below to enter to win.)  The winner will be chosen and announced on June 1, 2013.

If you want to purchase a copy of The Nourished Metabolism, click here.

A variety of health conditions including hypothyroidism, seasonal allergies, asthma, fatigue, depressed mood, infertility, low back pain, and high or low blood sugar are often associated with having alow basal body temperature.  A low basal body temperature is usually a result of an imbalance in one or several hormones (low thyroid, estrogen, testosterone, LH, and FSH), a nutritional deficiency, or both.  The good news is that oftentimes you do not have to know exactly which hormones are out of balance or exactly which nutrients you are missing to correct the imbalance, raise your basal body temperature, and restore optimal health.

How to Raise Resting Metabolic Rate and Basal Body Temperature

If you incorporate these 5 foods into your diet, and strive to eat at least one of these foods at each meal, you will likely notice a rise in your basal body temperature within a few weeks.  If you have had an imbalance for a very long time, expect that it may take longer to see any results. 

What is the optimal basal body temperature?

While the optimal basal body temperature for you will not be the same as the optimal temperature for someone else, most people tend to feel their best when their basal body temperature (measured as soon as you wake up in the mornings, before you even get out of bed) is AT LEAST 98.0 F.  To see what a basal body temperature thermometer looks like, click here.

Now on to the list of 10 foods that raise basal body temperature...

1.  Trout
Trout is a freshwater fish high in omega-3 PUFAs, DHA, EPA, and purines.  According to East Asian Medicine, trout is considered both a qi tonic (energy booster) and a yang tonic (body temperature enhancer).

2.  Oysters
Oysters are also a good source of omega-3 PUFAs, DHA, EPA, and purines.  In addition, oysters are a rich source of iron, zinc, calcium, vitamin A, B12, selenium, cholesterol, and amino acids, which are all vital for optimal steroid hormone production and thyroid health.

3.  Egg Yolks
Egg yolks are high in the rare nutrient choline, which is used in the process of methylation to remove dangerous homocysteine from the blood and "turn off" promoter regions of genes that cause inflammation.  Choline is also used to make phosphatidylcholine and sphingomyelin, two fat-like molecules that make up the majority of your brain's mass.  Therefore, if you are deficient in choline, you may suffer from high homocysteine and chronic inflammation, and that means you're at risk for developing heart disease, diabetes, chronic pain, brain shrinkage, dementia, obesity, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (cirrhosis), and other postmodern diseases.  Over 90% of Americans are likely choline deficient, mostly because our main source of choline is egg yolks, and we've been lead to believe the myth that egg yolks contribute to heart disease.

So what does all this have to do with raising your metabolism?  Chronic inflammation is known to cause adipocyte dysfunction. Dysfunctioning adipocytes (fat cells) slow down metabolic rate and ultimately lead to problems with appetite regulation, metabolic syndrome, and obesity.

4. Durian Fruit
Durian is a large, spiky fruit that grows throughout Southeast Asia.  It is very high in fat, carbohydrates, and calories, and a durian fruit can make a person feel warm immediately after eating it.  Eating an entire durian can cause intense sweating!  The taste of a durian is often described as either addictive or repulsive.  With a smell similar to a mixture of stinky cheese, garlic, and wine, and a firm, buttery texture, you will either love it or hate it!  You may be able to find fresh durian fruit at your local Asian foods store, or you can order vacuum freeze-dried durian online.

5. Cod Liver Oil
Cod liver oil is very high in vitamin D, which is important because low vitamin D may cause low thyroid function, as well as low production of steroid hormones.  If you don't live in the tropics, or spend most of your days outdoors in the nude, you are probably deficient in vitamin D if you don't use a supplement such as cod liver oil.  Raising your vitamin D levels to the optimal level for you will raise your metabolism and body temperature.  You may also experience relief from seasonal allergies, chronic fatigue, pain, and other conditions since vitamin D affects every body system and at least 200 different genes.

If you tend to feel too warm in a room in which everyone else seems comfortable, sweat easily, or get overheated during exercise, a simple change in the foods you choose to eat can make a real difference.  Try the foods listed below before or after exercise, at meals, or as snacks to cool you down and stop excessive sweating.  These are also the foods you need to avoid if you are trying to raise your basal body temperature.

1.  Banana
Mash up a banana with a dash of vanilla extract or a tablespoon of cocoa powder, and freeze in an ice cube tray for a healthy frozen treat.

2.  Avocados
Blend a slice of avocado into your breakfast smoothies, or make homemade guacamole to put on sandwiches, burgers, burritos, chips, or salads.  Even if you eat guacamole with spicy salsas, it will help you stay cool on a hot summer day -- especially if you add a squeeze of lime to your drink or dish!

3. Lemon/Lime
Add a squeeze of lemon or lime to a liter of cold water, sweeten to taste with stevia and/or about 2 ounces of orange juice, and drink any time you feel overheated, dehydrated, or unsatisfied by plain water.

4. Mango
One of the tastiest ways to enjoy a mango is to slice it up and season it with sea salt, cayenne pepper, and lime juice.  This blend is great for lunch to help cool you down on a hot day!  Eat it with some cottage cheese, soft goat's milk cheese, or a white fish such as cod or hake.

5. Dandelion Greens
Throw these in a blender with a banana and frozen berries for a fruit smoothie, or add to a salad just as you would spinach or lettuce.  Dandelion greens are also great steamed with a little lemon juice.

6.  Coconut Water
Drink coconut water instead of sports drinks to help replenish your electrolytes and lost calories after an intense workout or a day of sweating under the hot sun.  Coconut water is also an excellent choice if you've lost a lot of fluids due to illness.

7.  Asparagus
Asparagus has been used as part of the dietary treatment of inflammatory bowel conditions, hot flashes, and diabetes in Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic Medicine.  You can eat young asparagus stems raw and saute the more mature stems in broth.

8. Watermelon
Enjoy a slice of watermelon to stay cool on a hot summer day.  Watermelon can lower your blood pressure while also replenishing lost electrolytes.  It has traditionally been used as a treatment for a condition known as "summerheat" in Chinese Medicine.


To learn more about how to balance your body temperature and improve your health using traditional wisdom and enticing recipes, read this book written by my teachers at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine called Ancient Wisdom, Modern Kitchen: Recipes from the East for Health, Healing, and Long Life.

Did you know that how long you will live (and whether you will be mentally and physically healthy up to age 100 and beyond) is largely a result of social, environmental, and lifestyle factors?  Genetics plays a role in whether you will live to the age of reproduction, but beyond that, you can actually control how quickly (or slowly) you age.  Here are some quick tips that will help you to look, feel, and perform as if you were years or even decades younger than your chronological age would suggest.

1.  Get 7 - 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night and fight cognitive decline with time-releasemelatonin supplementation.  (Melatonin is a hormone that your body begins producing less of after around age 25.)  If you are getting enough sleep at night, you should be able to wake without an alarm and feel alert for the duration of the day.

2.  Walk 4 - 5 miles (around 10,000 footsteps) per day and avoid sitting for longer than an hour at a time without standing up and contracting the muscles in your glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves.  When these muscles are flaccid for long periods of time, deleterious changes occur that are not reversible by exercise.  These changes can increase your risk of death from all causes of disease.

3.  Activate the longevity gene (Sirtuin 1) in your own body, regardless of what kind of genetic code you inherited.  Some rare plant compounds such as resveratrol (found in small amounts in red wine, cocoa, and black mulberries) can change the way genes are expressed in your body (a growing area of discovery known as epigenics), thus preventing a wide variety of diseases that are often associated with aging.  Buy 3 bottles of resveratrol, get 1 free.

While conventional nutritionists and sports trainers tell athletes to carb-load before a race to optimize their performance, you might want to ignore their advice and leave the pasta to the competition.  The truth is that the actual sports and nutrition science clearly shows that a high-fat race training diet -- including a high-fat meal four hours before athletic performance -- is the key to achieving your personal best.

This study on 12 male and 13 female runners found reduced performance when the athletes consumed a low-fat diet of 16% fat, and increased performance on a high-fat diet consisting of 44% fat.  Both the high-fat diet and the low-fat diet contained the same number of calories and about 15% protein. 

And this study found that athletes on a 70% fat diet had an enhanced resistance to fatigue during low to moderate intensity endurance exercise.

Yet another experiment found that time to exhaustion increased by 21% in athletes consuming a diet of 44% fat during a 1 month period, in comparison to their time to exhaustion when consuming a diet of 18.4% fat for a one month period.

Some skeptics argue that without enough carbohydrates in the diet, moderate to intense endurance exercise will deplete glycogen storage in the muscles.  However, this study conducted on duathletes found that when the athletes were consuming a low-carb diet consisting of 53% fat, muscle glycogen storage was not depleted after a half marathon and 20 minutes of high intensity cycling.

So what percentage of fat is optimal for endurance training and performance?  One recent study conducted in June of 2012 compared performance results of a high-fat meal of 55% fat to a low-fat meal of 20% fat (both meals containing the same amount of calories and protein).  These trained athletes ran to exhaustion, and each athlete was able to run longer on the diet of 55% fat.

To spare you from having to do the calculations to come up with a pre-race meal with the optimal ratio of macronutrients, I came up with a couple of meal ideas with approximately 55% fat and 18% protein in each meal.  Both meals have 630 calories with the portion sizes given.  (You can increase or decrease the portion sizes if you need more or less food than this for your meal.) 

*Note that both of these meals are classified as anti-inflammatory by nutritiondata.com.  To learn more about how chronic inflammation affects your body, and how anti-inflammatory foods can prevent disease, see this link.

Bacon & Eggs with Baked Sweet Potato

• 4 strips of bacon
• 2 eggs
• 1 large sweet potato with skin (about 1 cup or 200 grams of potato)
• 1 tbsp butter
• Optional: cinnamon, nutmeg, sea salt, and stevia for the potato
  
  

If you are a fairly health-conscious person, you are probably already aware that a bad night's sleep can lead to grogginess, poor work performance, driving accidents, moodiness, headaches, and sugar cravings.

However, the consequences of sleep deprivation go far beyond fatigue and diminished performance. Decades of clinical research document that a good night's rest supports nearly all systems of the body, including:

• Skin health and youthful appearance (J Invest Dermatol. 2005 Mar;124(3):587-95.)
  
• Healthy collagen formation (Nat Rev Neurosci. 2009;10(3):199-210.)
  
• Insulin levels/trim waistline (Science. 2010 Dec 3;330(6009):1349-54.)
• Lean body composition (Obesity (Silver Spring). 2009 Apr;17(4):767-71.)
  
• Blood sugar levels (Int J Obes (Lond). 2009 Jan;33(1):46-53.)
  
• Blood pressure (Am J Hypertens. 2010 Dec;23(12):1286-91.)
• Cancer prevention/healthy cell division (Chronobiol Int. 2011 Feb;28(1):76-80.)
• Cardiovascular health (Prog Cardiovasc Dis. 2009 Jan-Feb;51(4):294-302.), and a good mood (Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2003 Jun;57(3):265-70).

Scientists attribute sleep-related difficulties to the unprecedented levels of stress most of us endure in today's fast-paced world. And to add insult to injury, sleep quality and duration decline as we grow older — at a time when we need the health benefits of a good night's rest more than ever.

Enhanced Natural Sleep® with Dual-Action Melatonin helps promote optimal sleep and youthful appearance. It contains these three clinically validated, natural compounds shown to support healthy, restful sleep, promote healthy response to stress, and target sleep debt-related factors associated with skin aging:

1. Bioactive Milk Peptides (Lactium®) are a cutting-edge nutrient complex consisting of patented bioactive peptides found naturally in milk. Used widely in Europe to promote sustained and restful sleep patterns, published studies reveal that these bioactive milk peptides also promote relaxation, help with stress, and support daytime cognition. A group of 63 women reporting a variety of sleep-related difficulties experienced as much as 65.6% improvement in their symptoms with just 150 mg per day of these bioactive milk peptides. In another study, the same 150 mg dose induced substantial improvements across 27 markers of sleep quality and stress response in 165 healthy adults. And in a third study, a group of healthy men and women taking 150 mg per day of these bioactive milk peptides for one month experienced a 50% improvement in sleep quality after two weeks and needed 30% less time to fall asleep after 4 weeks. (So Ken Study: Effect of Lactium® on sleep disorders. October, 2006.)
2. Melatonin (very low dose). A compound produced in the brain to regulate the sleep-wake cycle, melatonin levels naturally decline with age and adversely affect sleep patterns in many people. In both immediate and time-release form, melatonin has been shown to support sustained and restful sleep. So much so that time-release melatonin has been licensed since June 2007 in Europe and other countries for promoting optimal sleep. (BMC Med. 2010 Aug 16;8:51.)
3. Sendara® is a proprietary nutrient complex consisting of ashwagandha and Indian gooseberry extracts. Prized in traditional cultures for their ability to promote healthy skin function and appearance, these plant-based compounds have since gained substantial clinical validation. Indian gooseberry provides broad-spectrum antioxidant support and has been used to preserve youthful skin health and appearance in many skin care products. (Skin Pharmacol Appl Skin Physiol. 2002;15(5):374-80.) Ashwagandha also promotes a healthy response to stress, yielding 62% relaxation support compared to placebo with just 125 mg per day in one clinical study. (JANA. 2008;11(1):50-6.)

If you find it difficult to get in the bed on time, stay asleep all night, and wake up on time feeling refreshed without the need for an alarm clock, Enhanced Natural Sleep® with Dual-Action Melatonin will dramatically change the way you look, feel, and perform on a daily basis.  Because you will be increasing the amount of time you stay in the deep restorative sleep stages, you may even discover that you require a shorter amount of total sleep time in order to feel refreshed.  If you are an athlete, you may notice that you need less recovery time from tough workouts.

Enhanced Natural Sleep® with Dual-Action Melatonin is non-addictive, non-habit forming, and free from the harmful side effects of dangerous sleep drugs and over-the-counter cold/allergy drugs.  Just take it 30 minutes before bedtime and feel it going to work to restore your body's healthy circadian rhythm.

Enhanced Nat. Sleep w/Melatonin 30 caps

Dietary Supplement

Read the entire label and follow the directions carefully prior to use.

Directions: Take one (1) capsule daily 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime, with or without food, or as recommended by a healthcare practitioner.

Supplement Facts
Serving Size 1 Capsule
Amount Per Capsule
Sendara® [proprietary blend of 200 mg
Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera)
extract (root and leaf) standardized to
withanolide glycoside conjugates and
Amla (Phyllanthus emblica) extract (fruit)
standardized to low molecular weight
hydrolysable tannins]
Casein decapeptide† (Bioactive Milk Peptides) 150 mg
Melatonin (immediate release) 0.75 mg
Melatonin (timed release) 0.75 mg
Other ingredients: microcrystalline cellulose, vegetable cellulose (capsule), silica, vegetable stearate, vegetable oil. Contains milk (casein decapeptide).

Store tightly closed in a cool, dry place.

CAUTION: Consult your healthcare provider before taking this product if you are being treated for a medical condition (especially autoimmune or depressive disorders). Use caution if combining with alcohol. This product is not intended for children, pregnant or lactating women, or women trying to become pregnant. Do not attempt to drive or operate heavy machinery after taking this product.

WARNINGS:
• KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN.
• DO NOT EXCEED RECOMMENDED DOSE.
• Do not purchase if outer seal is broken or damaged.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.