Founded by Dr. Joel Wallach, Youngevity is dedicated to helping people with their health and wellness by providing products which help the body help itself. What makes Dr. Wallach’s view so unique is that he’s a veterinarian as well as a physician. He has over 23 years of experience working with people and diseases. While working on a 7 ½ million dollar grant with Marlin Perkins (Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom) from the National Institute of Health, Dr. Wallach performed over 17,500 animal autopsies and over 3,000 human autopsies for comparison.
During his comparative analysis, one fact stood out: The more complex an organism, the more nutrients it requires. During his years as a veterinarian, Doc learned that most diseases could be cured or prevented through nutritional formulas. There is a high correlation with diseases found in animals and those found in humans. The causes and treatments of these diseases are identical. However, without health insurance programs to help cover the costs of expensive medications and treatments, farmers learned long ago to find less expensive means to not only cure but actually prevent these diseases in their livestock. It only makes sense that the best way to cut down on medical bills is to not get sick in the first place. This “not so secret” secret that farmers have understood for years is that nutritional supplementation is the most effective way to raise healthy livestock. In fact, the method of using nutritional supplementation has worked so well over the last 75 years, that over 900 diseases that still plague people have been virtually eliminated in animals. Even with all of our medical breakthroughs over the last 60 years, the lifespan of human beings has remained largely unchanged while the life spans of dogs and cats have doubled. The only real difference is that over the last 60 years, we have made great strides to ensure that our animals are eating a perfect diet fortified with over 40 essential minerals. The same fortifications have not been introduced into our food.
As a veterinarian, it always seemed odd to Dr. Wallach that this technique was being used so successfully for animals, but nobody was doing anything for people. He lectured to doctors for many years at their Continuing Education Programs and wrote some 75+ scientific articles sighting data that clearly showed the tremendous benefits of mineral supplementation. However, doctors are people and people are motivated through incentive programs. Plainly stated, there is no incentive program for doctors, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies that motivate them to help cure and prevent disease through nutritional means. It’s a shame but the fact is that the entire Health industry can’t be successful unless we as a general population remain unhealthy!
Have you ever read the label on a can of human infant formula and seen how few minerals there are in it? Our dogs and cats are getting over 40 minerals, and our babies are getting less than 12. It’s pretty frightening, really. We treat our dogs and cats as if they were more advanced and complex creatures than we are!
So Dr. Wallach went BACK to school and became a physician and since 1978 has been using these nutritional formulas, founded on sound veterinary medicine, on his human patients. It wasn’t long before the word got out that “If you’re not happy with your doctor, you can go see Dr. Wallach. He’ll treat you like a dog, but you’ll get better.”
There are over 77 minerals found in the human body. Seventy-seven! Sixty of them are ESSENTIAL for health. The fundamental problem is that we are not getting the minerals, the basic building blocks of our bodies, through our everyday diet. The reason we are not getting these minerals is that the plants we eat no longer contain these minerals. Plants have an amazing ability to manufacture vitamins, but they do not manufacture minerals. Plants are dependant on the soil they live in for their minerals. Plants can combine water and the nutrients from the soil through a process called photosynthesis to produce vitamins and amino acids. Minerals, however, CANNOT be manufactured by the plant. In essence, the minerals must already be present in the soil to be absorbed by the plant.
Another important thing to understand is that minerals do not occur in a uniform blanket over the face of the earth. They occur in veins like gold, or silver, and tend to accumulate in locations like ancient river beds or glacial runoffs where the soils of multiple locations have congregated over time.
The basic thing that people need to know about supplementation is that essential nutrients are called essential nutrients for two reasons. 1) Our bodies can’t manufacture them. In order to stay healthy, we must consume them every day – either as food or as supplements. 2) If we don’t consume them every day, we’re going to get (not maybe get, not perhaps get, and not could possibly get) we’re GOING to get many horrible deficiency diseases. These diseases have significant negative effects on our quality of life and many of them are life threatening.
The problem we face today is that our food is no longer grown in mineral rich soils. Large farms have been growing crops for decades and their soils are now depleted of these vital minerals. Farmers only supplement their soils with the limited minerals (NPK) that are needed to make their crops grow in abundance. They do not supplement their soils with the minerals we as more complex organisms need to stay healthy and disease free. We have historically been told that we can get everything we need by eating a balanced diet from the four food groups. Today people are beginning to realize that this simply isn’t true.
A study by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) shows that the drop in vitamin and mineral content in our foods has been significant. If the minerals are not in our foods, we need to supplement to maintain good health. According to USDA estimates, many diseases could be reduced significantly if we were simply taking the minimum RDA of nutrients.
Youngevity is not the only company striving to enrich people’s lives by providing mineral supplements. However, as you research your options for better health, there is one very important fact you should consider. The value and benefit a mineral has to the body varies largely based on the type of mineral it is. Minerals are categorized into three basic classifications; Metallic, Chelated, and Colloidal.
Metallic minerals are found in their pure elemental form or as salts such as sodium chloride and zinc sulfate. They are generally the least expensive form to extract and are therefore the most commonly used form in the majority of nutritional supplements. Their primary disadvantage is their extremely low degree of absorption by the human body. The human body simply has a very difficult time processing minerals in their metallic form. That’s why so many people who supplement with name brand mineral products see very little benefit. The vast majority of the mineral compound consumed is simply passed through the body without absorption or benefit.
Chelated minerals are processed into a more absorbable form for the human body. In this process, a metallic mineral is "chelated" with an amino acid. That is, the amino acid actually surrounds the metallic mineral like a claw and helps to solubilize it, making the "mineral chelate" more bioavailable or useful to the body. In many cases, chelated minerals are about 40% more efficient in regards to absorption and assimilation into the body than metallic minerals.
Colloidal minerals occur in nature in the colloid state. They are minute particles that either are or can be easily dispersed in a medium such as water. Because they are made up of such small particles, there is a significant increase in surface area compared to the same amount of metallic or chelated minerals. This results in increased solubility, bioavailability, absorption, and usefulness to the body. Plant-derived colloidal minerals provide the very best of all forms of minerals not only because of this increased solubility but also because they are associated with natural plant tissue. There is no question that plant derived colloidal minerals are far more absorbable than metallic or chelated minerals. That means that a gram of mineral in its plant derived colloidal form is far more potent and beneficial than the same mineral in its metallic or chelated form.
While many nutritional supplement companies have the right idea in helping people live healthier lives through the use of mineral supplements, their products, which are formulated using metallic or chelated minerals, simply can not provide nearly as much benefit as the plant-derived colloidal minerals used in all of Youngevity’s products.
The bottom line: Minerals are critical to maintaining good health and it is essential that we get these minerals in their plant-derived form. Dr. Wallach and his wife, Dr. Ma Lan knew this, and felt compelled to get this message out. That’s why Dr. Wallach went back to school and operated a private practice for over 12 years. As a physician, he treated human patients with these high mineral content supplements that gave them the building blocks their bodies need to heal themselves. After thousands and thousands of people had received positive results, they felt it was important to take this message to the masses. They needed to reach more people than they could with their private practice. They turned to the power of word of mouth. They formed the company Youngevity with the purpose of changing lives.
Youngevity’s plant-derived colloidal minerals are attained from an ancient plant deposit found in the pristine mountains of Utah, far away from pollution and human corruption. These ancient plants lived during a time and in a location where more than 70 minerals occurred naturally in the soils. These minerals were taken up by the plants that grew there. These mineral rich plants, having never fossilized or turned to stone, have been entombed and preserved for hundreds of thousands of years. There are many stories that have been told of the mountain springs found in this area where the minerals from these entombed plants have seeped into the water. American Indians speak of the magical healing benefits they experienced when drinking from them. Early prospectors included stories in their journals about how these waters helped ease joint pain and other illnesses. Now, modern science has been able to explain the amazing stories that surround these mountain springs.
Youngevity is a flourishing, multi-million dollar company. Passionate about spreading the message of good health, they’ve designed an extensive line of nutritional products based upon the science of plant-derived minerals. They’ve put together a team of scientists and doctors, respected around the world, that recommend these products to their patients for good health.
Youngevity is all about educating people. It takes a lot of people to pass on Dr. Wallach’s message. As passionate as he is about it, one person can’t do it all. When forming his new company, he decided to financially reward the people who help him spread the message of good health and nutrition.
Youngevity doesn’t just help people with their health; it is also a way people can increase their wealth and financial well-being. Youngevity’s commission structure was designed to pay out more to their distributors than any other network company in theory AND in reality! Youngevity was established FOR distributors BY distributors. The company is very receptive to distributors’ input and ideas.
Being an Youngevity distributor is about more than just making money. It’s about making a difference in people’s lives. The products are there. The quality is there. The financial support is there. The integrity is there. And now the powerful tools of doing networking marketing over the internet are there.