Natural Products Expo West is absolutely one of the big highlights of each year for me. "Expo West", as it's called in the industry, is now up to around 120,000 people and is the largest event at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA each year. This event brings together the best and the brightest of the natural products industry to share new research, new products, and new ideas for the future of healthy living.
First person I interviewed was the CEO of Ultra Labs. I often suggest their multivitamins and B-vitamins. I asked Rick to explain what made their B-vitamins so much better than all the others on the market.
Transcript:
Hi, my name is Rick Simpson, I'm the CEO of Emerald Laboratories. Now, this product B-Healthy, this is our B complex product. Now some people will ask me why is your product different or better than other products. There are actually a number of different reasons why it's better, but a couple of things are it's a coenzymated B-complex product. People don't always understand what that means, but effectively a coenzymated B is in a form in which your body has to convert it to in order to be properly utilized in the bloodstream, so we effectively do is we give you a pre-digestive forms of the B2, the B6, the B12 and the folate.
Now I want to talk about those specifically just for a minute, the B2 and B6 in particular, coenzymated B2 is riboflavin 5-phosphate or R5P. B6 is pyridoxal 5-phosphate. Those are both the coenzymated forms. They are generally about 6 to 14 times more expensive than conventional forms of B2 and B6. We simply use them because as you age, your body's ability to be able to coenzymate declines and somewhat more dramatically as you get older and older. So you really want to focus on those coenzymated forms.
Now probably the biggest issue in this product is the coenzymated folate. A lot of people know what is folic acid, truth is folic acid is the synthetic form of folate. So we're going to refer to it as folate because that's the natural form. But what people don't know is that it is now known that about 46% of the population has a genetic defect and they cannot properly metabolize folate into its methylated or coenzymated form. So that means almost half the population cannot properly coenzymate folate.
Now what that turns into and forms of risk factor, your risk of schizophrenia, depression, brain development, certainly pregnancy issues goes up dramatically, if you have one or two of those gene expressions, either you've got the gene defect from one parent or both parents. If you got it from both parents, you have a dramatic increase in risk for those things I mentioned. We are one of the only companies that use the methylated form of the folate. Technically, it's referred to as 5-methyltetrahydrofolate. It is a product that is manufactured in Italy. There's only one of a company that manufactures this raw material, standard folate costs about 100 bucks a kilo, this product costs over $25,000 a kilo, and no we don't give you just a fairy dusty amount, we give you a therapeutic dosing level in here, because Dr. Mark Stengler, this doctor back here, he utilizes this product and many of our other products in his clinic, where he sees patients every day of the week. So there's really nothing to touch this product as it is a coenzymated B complex.
The last thing is the vitamin B12, a lot of you all use cyanocobalamin, which actually comes from cyanide, no it won't kill you, but it does come from cyanide, and we use methylcobalamin which is definitely the superior form, the coenzymated form of B12. And then some people ask me why we don't use coenzymated B1 or coenzymated B5, the truth is Dr. Stengler does not feel those two have any issues with conversion. He said in his clinical study, he really hasn't seen any issues that people converting B1 or B5 effectively. The B2, the B6, the folate and the B12, those are the biggies that you need to have as coenzymated forms. So anyway that's basically it for the Be Healthy products today and thank you for your time.