02-28-2023

To Our Customers:
We are aware of a recent scientific study by Marc Witkowski et al. that has been published in a high-profile journal, Nature Medicine. The paper claims to show an increased risk of major adverse cardiac events (MACE, usually heart attacks or strokes) with the consumption of erythritol, one of the minor flavoring ingredients of Sweetamine.
Erythritol is one of the most widely used natural low-calorie sweeteners in the food industry. It has been recognized by the FDA for over a decade as "Generally Recognized as Safe" (GRAS). In fact, according to definitive research from 1996, the maximum safe level to consume is 1 gram per kg body weight. Those results mean that it has been viewed as safe for an 80 kg person (176 pounds) to consume 80 grams (16 teaspoons) of erythritol per day. For comparison, each full daily serving of Sweetamine contains only 0.8 grams (less than 1/4 teaspoon) of erythritol. According to these numbers, it would be safe to consume up to 100 times the erythritol per day as is contained in one daily serving of Sweetamine. [1] [2] 
In the authors own study they also gave erythritol to healthy volunteers and reported that there were still blood levels capable of increasing platelet aggregation two days later. Trouble is, they had the volunteers eat 30 grams of erythritol, 37.5 times the amount in a daily serving of Sweetamine; more than the erythritol in an entire month’s supply of Sweetamine!
It is unfortunate that such an alarm has been raised by the recent study because the science involved is methodologically flawed. Specifically, the authors of the latest study (Witkowski et al.) neglected to include blood glycine as a confounding variable, even though glycine is known to be a protective factor for major adverse cardiovascular events. https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-glycine
Moreover, two of the co-authors of the present study (one being the corresponding author, Stanley Hazen) also co-authored one of the studies that established this protective effect of glycine. [3,4]
It is also important to note that the recent study says that the way in which erythritol would increase the risk of thrombosis, the main type of MACE, is by increased platelet aggregation. In contrast, the way in which glycine protects against thrombosis is by decreasing harmful platelet aggregation. [5]
Witkowski et al., were therefore negligent in that they knew or should have known that a valid statistical model of the variables they were examining (MACE among those with chronic cardiovascular disease) would have to include adjustment for blood glycine concentration, a confounding factor with a known mechanism of protective action. By only adjusting for the "usual suspects", (sex, age, BMI, diabetes, hypertension, current smoking status, plasma cholesterol levels, etc.), and not adjusting for glycine, the authors of the study were ignoring the confounding effects that patients' glycine consumption would have on their heart health. I am certain that, if glycine measurements had been included in the set of relevant variables, glycine would have emerged as a protective factor in the recent study.
There is also a lack of transparency in the Witkowski et al. study, because important information reported from the clinical trial they cite (the actual amounts of erythritol consumed by test subjects) is unavailable.[ NCT04731363]. There is further confusion added to the information available to the public because the authors incorrectly referred to erythritol as an "artificial sweetener". In fact, erythritol is a natural sweetener, found naturally in many edible plants.
I am convinced that the present formulation of Sweetamine, which includes about 0.8 g of erythritol per serving (less than 1/4 teaspoon), will decrease the risk of MACE overall.

We at Natural Food Science LLC will continue to research the effects of the ingredients of Sweetamine, to ensure that Sweetamine will always be a supplement that can only improve well being by providing nutrients that will increase the overall level of wellness of its consumers.

Joel Brind, PhD
President and CEO
Natural Food Science, LLC

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[4]

[5]

A new study casts doubt on the benefits of anti-inflammatory drugs. The following article entitled

“Certain pain medications may make knee pain worse, new study suggests”

https://www.today.com/health/diet-fitness/provocative-new-study-calls-question-best-medicines-knee-pain-rcna58182?search=Linda%20Carroll

Appeared on today.com. It was based on a new study reported on November 21, 2022 at the Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. Lead researcher Johanna Luitjens of the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) expressed her surprise at the results her group obtained in studying drugs known as NSAIDS. Specifically, they tested the effectiveness of these “non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs” in reducing inflammation after up to 10 years of use by patients with osteo-arthritis. Contrary to their expectations, MRIs of patients who used these NSAIDS (ibuprofen or acetaminophen) actually evidenced more degenerative changes in their knees than those who did not take NSAIDS.

But while the researchers and doctors are scratching their heads wondering why “anti-inflammatory” drugs increase inflammation in the long term instead of decreasing it, it seems to me the answer is quite simple. The issue is actually rooted in imprecise language. Although the NSAIDS act, in part, as anti-inflammatory agents by blunting the recruitment of inflammatory cells, their main immediate pharmacological action is that of an analgesic. Analgesics act by directly reducing pain signals to nerve cells. That’s why these drugs are so popular: They reduce pain produced by the movement of a joint which is also suffering inflammation. And although inflammation produces pain, the typical pain of motion in osteoarthritis is not the direct result of inflammation, rather the result of moving a damaged member which directly irritates pain-sensitive nerve endings.

In other words, people take NSAIDS in order to be able to work through the pain by reducing the pain. Therefore, remaining active with joints already damaged by chronic inflammation will cause further damage to the joints, neutralizing or even exceeding the anti-inflammatory benefits of NSAIDS. That is only surprising because we call drugs which are primarily analgesics, anti-inflammatories.

So how does this all relate to glycine, the anti-inflammatory nutrient, and Sweetamine? For one thing, glycine (Sweetamine’s main ingredient) is not a drug of any kind. Rather, it’s the body’s natural “trigger lock”, stopping inappropriate inflammation before it starts. It therefore stops the pain of inflammation, but not pain due to direct nerve irritation. So for example, if there is an injury like a muscle tear (pulled muscle), while taking sweetamine you might forget you were injured while not trying to use the muscle, because there is no inflammation to cause pain. But then you remember the injury the moment you try to move the injured muscle, because it is directly painful to move it. Now if you need to move about using injured limbs or injured joints—whether from acute injury or chronic inflammation—you can take an NSAID to relieve the pain. But it is not working as an anti-inflammatory; rather as an analgesic.

So it is a matter of using the right word to describe what is going on.

We have just completed our program of donating 5% of proceeds to the CARE Ukraine relief fund, effective June 30, having donated a total of $5233 since March 1.

But we are still praying for the war to end soon.

We are all aware of the tremendous suffering of the Ukrainian people under the onslaught of the Russian military invasion, and their extraordinary courage in defending their country against overwhelming odds continues to inspire the civilized world.

This particular war is also personal to me. Like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, my dad was a Ukrainian Jew  facing the Russian army over 100 years ago. In 1917, during the Russian Revolution, he found himself—at the age of 9—behind a machine gun in the local militia defending his town of Mohyliv-Podilskyi in south central Ukraine. I rember the scar under his chin from a Russian bullet that fortunately only grazed him; I would not exist had it hit home. He later managed to escape the Soviet Union and immigrate through Ellis Island, bringing his mother with him. He was fifteen.

Due to my dad's courage, I have been greatly blessed to have a wonderful life in America, yet I have been ever mindful of the suffering of so many people elsewhere, and now those in my father’s country.

I want to do whatever I can to help these brave people endure and ultimately triumph over the evil that has been visited upon them.

Therefore, backdated to March 1st, 5% of all profits from the sale of Sweetamine will go to the Ukraine Crisis Fund of CARE, a well-established international charity known to distribute over 90% of its received donations to the intended recipients. 

Thank you again for your faith and trust in our product and our company.

To the health of all,

Joel Brind, PhD
President and CEO
Natural Food Science LLC

Dr. Steve Falconer, a longtime sweetamine customer and physician from Wisconsin, enjoying his sweetamine in 2019, before the COVID pandemic. Recently, he has been racking up many cases in which he has used sweetamine to get patients through a COVID infection without hospitalization (including himself!), and he has also demonstrated how sweetamine helps post-COVID patients--young and old--regain all their strength rapidly with sweetamine: sometimes overnight!

Listen to this recent Drew Mariani interview with Dr. Joel Brind about Inflammation

http://relevantradio-od.streamguys1.com/mariani/DM20200723h.mp3

It seems no one is talking about anything else these days besides the corona virus pandemic, and you may be wondering what that does or doesn’t have to do with sweetamine.

In fact, there is reason to believe that there is an important connection. You have no doubt heard that among the most vulnerable are those who are “immunocompromised”, and you might not even be sure what that means. It means those who may be on anti-inflammatory steroids (e.g., asthmatics and transplant patients), those with HIV infection, and those taking biologic medications (“MABS”, eg, Humira) for inflammation-related conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis.

But in my opinion, people who are glycine-deficient (which includes most people) are also immunocompromised in a very fundamental way. Of course, immunity is about the body’s ability to fight infection, and the key role of glycine is to prevent the immune system’s overreaction to infection or inappropriate reaction to non-infectious injury. In fact, sometimes what makes infections (e.g., influenza) really dangerous is the excess inflammation that develops in response to the virus or other infectious agent. That’s why steroids may be given to fight the potentially life-threatening inflammation that can develop in the lungs with the flu.

In my own experience, I had a classic case of shingles in 2015. Shingles is caused by a re-emergence of the chickenpox virus later in life, and typically involves a very painful and often debilitating rash. My case was classic (in the words of my neurologist who confirmed the diagnosis), except there was no pain at all. Of course, I had been taking my sweetamine every day!

An even more common example is gingivitis. Like many others, I used to have it. So my gums would often bleed if I brushed my teeth too vigorously, and I could not even floss without bleeding. Whenever my teeth were professionally cleaned at my dentist’s office, it was invariably a painful and bloody affair. But not anymore, once on daily sweetamine for some weeks. Of course, gingivitis is blamed on all those bacteria that live in our gums. But why should they cause gingivitis? After all, they are just the bacteria that form part of our “microbiome”; all the good bacteria that live in our digestive tract.

So what sweetamine can do is support a healthy functioning immune system; to prevent you from being immunocompromised in an important way. Will that prevent you from getting a corona virus infection? Not likely; after all, I still got shingles. But a healthy immune system that is not glycine deficient may make the difference between an illness that is a minor nuisance and one that can become life-threatening.

No drug claims here, of course: Sweetamine does not contain any drugs of any kind. But it can only help to keep your immune system as healthy as possible.

Joel Brind, PhD

President and CEO

Natural Food Science, LLC

A happy sweetamine customer--Elena in Los Angeles—just gave us a testimonial about how sweetamine ended the pain in her hips from doing housework, and also reported about sweetamine’s helping with her sister’s retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a genetically inherited, progressive degenerative eye disease:

“Since birth, she has had the eye disease retinitis pigmentosa. With this condition, she uses magnifying eyeglasses to address her bad vision which is just 2% of what normal vision is. After a couple of weeks of having sweetamine in her diet, here eyeglass strength went from 3.0x to 1.75x!”

So I wondered if anyone had linked this condition to inflammation and did a medline search. Well it turns out that just last month, a European research team, headed by Dr Josianne ten Berge and colleagues of Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, published a study that linked inflammation not only to RP, but also to "age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma and cataract." Their principal conclusion: "Increased levels of inflammatory cytokines in intraocular fluid of patients with originally noninflammatory ocular diseases show that intraocular inflammation is involved in their pathogenesis of these entities."

No wonder sweetamine is helping! It looks like all those common age-related eye diseases aren’t due to aging after all, but really to chronic inflammation, probably due to glycine deficiency, like so many other conditions that make people sick and die these days. Here’s the medline link to the medline abstract: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30298670

Joel Brind, PhD, President and CEO, Nov. 27, 2018

Listen to this recent Drew Mariani interview with Dr. Joel Brind, where they discuss recent research findings on the effectiveness of glycine in treating eye diseases and other chronic inflammation  HERE

Drew Mariani of Relevant Radio interviewed Dr. Joel Brind on the science of glycine, July 5, 2018. Listen to their informative discussion Listen HERE. 

Letter published at British Medical Journal (BMJ) blog by Dr. Joel Brind, responding to the clinical review published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ2018) titled:

Autism spectrum disorder: advances in diagnosis and evaluation

BMJ 2018;  (Published 21 May 2018)  READ HERE

Drew Mariani of Relevant Radio interviewed Dr. Joel Brind to discuss the results of a research study showing the role of inflammation in heart disease. May 24, 2018. Listen to their informative discussion Listen HERE. 

Part 2 consists of Dr. Joel Brind talking about glycine, the body’s most abundant non-essential amino acid and how it works to regulate your body’s inflammation, potentially preventing harmful diseases.

Watch Video HERE

Part 3 of Dr. Joel Brind’s interview about glycine, its unique characteristics and how it fights your body’s inflammation

Letter published in British Medical Journal (BMJ) blog, by Dr. Joel Brind, responding to the clinical review titled:

Increased cardiovascular risk in rheumatoid arthritis: mechanisms and implications

BMJ 2018; 361 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k1036 (Published 23 April 2018)Cite this as: BMJ 2018;361:k1036 READ it:  https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k1036/rr-0 

In compiling their extensive review England et al.(1) cast a rather narrow net, using only “the MeSH terms ‘rheumatoid arthritis’ and ‘cardiovascular disease’ or ‘cardiovascular system’”. Considering the common denominator that emerged as a major focus, namely, “shared inflammatory mediators”, and the fact that so many other widespread and devastating diseases such as diabetes and cancer are linked to inflammation, it would seem that looking upstream for causes of inflammation rather than downstream toward specific sequelae and treatment regimens for RA and CVD might be more fruitful in identifying common threads and hopefully, better prevention and treatment strategies.

Drew Mariani of Relevant Radio interviewed Dr. Joel Brind on recent research findings connecting inflammation to disease development. Learn about how glycine works to regulate inflammation at the cellular level, March 1, 2018. Listen to their interview in these two-part podcast.  Listen to part 1
Listen to part 2

Letter published at the British Medical Journal (BMJ) by Dr. Joel Brind responding to research article on factors influencing cancer risk.

Cancer risk associated with chronic diseases and disease markers: prospective cohort study

BMJ 2018; 360 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k134 (Published 31 January 2018)Cite this as: BMJ 2018;360:k134
READ it: https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k134/rr-1 

I was just interviewed on the Blaze radio network, specifically, on the Jacki Daily Show on Sunday, June 4. The show is generally about energy issues; including oil and petrochemicals. So this interview took the approach of how so many ailments are blamed on petrochemicals in some way, but the answer is really more about inflammation and glycine deficiency. Here's the link to the podcast:

https://soundcloud.com/jacki-daily/are-petrochemicals-to-blame-for-what-ails-you-an-alternative-theory-brind-phd-talks-sweetamine?fbclid=IwAR319EXSaPvvhDkoXku7Xwouh4l53SGT91DQwbJgC2xZAkTBop6hluzQD-o

Watch and listen as Dr. Brind teaches his biology class about the natural purpose of inflammation and the role of glycine in regulating it. See how supplementing the diet with glycine, inflammation does not happen unless there is an infection.

Glycine enriched diet allows for your body to properly fight inflammation.

Learn how feeding your body enough glycine can eliminate excess inflammation that causes the pain in shingles, gout, reflex sympathetic dystrophy and many other conditions

Watch the Video HERE

Matt Stone - 180degreehealth.com
Glycine & inflammation, cancer and glutathione

Although they haven’t been posted on this NFS blog site, Dr. Brind has been busy writing up a storm about nutrition and health, and posted 6 articles since the summer on Matt Stone’s 180degreehealth.com. You’ll note that in addition to the articles themselves, there is a very lively dialog following each of those posts with the well-informed readership of 180degreehealth, so many health and nutritional questions that have come up in real peoples’ lives are discussed and answered in depth.

So enjoy the articles and feel free to jump right in on the discussions!

• http://180degreehealth.com/diet-inflammation-part/
• http://180degreehealth.com/diet-inflammation-part-2/
• http://180degreehealth.com/diet-inflammation-part-3/
• http://180degreehealth.com/diet-inflammation-part-4/
• http://180degreehealth.com/glycine-cancer/
• http://180degreehealth.com/glutathione/

Glycine supplementation in mice. Followers of this blog are no strangers to the idea of glycine supplementation—as with sweetamine—to eliminate excess inflammation. And there is also plenty of peer-reviewed research to back up glycine’s anti-inflammatory role. Then again, even if most of the conditions that make people sick and die these days—heart disease, cancer, etc—are now know to be tied to chronic inflammation, no claims as to glycine’s ability to prevent such diseases can yet be made, because this must be proven through peer-reviewed published studies on lab animals over years and on real people over decades of time. Toward that end, the National Institute on Aging—one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—has just decided to give us a good start by setting up a multi-center study on glycine supplementation in mice, using a protocol designed by yours truly.

Last September, I submitted an application to the NIA’s Interventional Testing Program (ITP). It is like submitting a grant application to the NIH, except that the Sponsor (myself, in this case) does not involve his own institution in the research directly: The entire study is performed at 3 study centers: at the University of Michigan, the University of Texas, and the Jackson Labs in Maine, by NIA-funded scientists, according to the protocol proposed by the sponsor. Every year, the NIA selects up to 5 dietary interventions that are hypothesized to extend the lifespan of the mice and/or delay the onset of age-related diseases. The Sponsor, however, has access to all the data generated, participates in the analysis of the data and is a co-author on resulting published studies.

Of course, the NIA’s decision to run the glycine supplementation experiment does not mean there will results overnight. Even intermediate results on the delay of age/inflammation-related conditions are likely at least two years away, but it’s a great start!

READ it HERE

Last month, at the annual New Jersey Senior Olympic Games in Woodbridge, NJ, Proglyta/sweetamine customer Lester Darmstadt of Long Beach, NY, took the silver medal in the men’s 65-69-year-old 200-meter dash, and the gold in the 100-meter dash.

The annual state Senior Games are run by the National Senior Games Association, which holds its nation-wide competition every other year on odd years. I started feeling so good myself on daily Proglyta (now daily sweetamine), that I signed up and started running the 200-meter dash last year in the NY and NJ games. (That was my event the last time I ran track in school; Junior high school that is, literally a half century ago!) I didn’t really keep in training, but I did complete the races last year and at this year’s NJ event on September 7. (For those of you who know about track and field, I ran the 200-meter dash in 37.45 seconds; respectable for my age, but nothing to blog about.)  READ it HERE

Shark cartilage is one of the staples among nutraceuticals, on the shelves of health food stores for quite a few years now. It is touted for its anti-inflammatory benefits in treating arthritis and other inflammatory conditions and especially, cancer.

The use of powdered cartilage to treat wounds was originally popularized by John Prudden, a surgeon from New York, in 1954. Prudden used powdered cartilage from cows, finding it effective in the acceleration of wound healing, the treatment of arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and even advanced cancer.

Cartilage from sharks was popularized by the 1992 bestseller by William Lane and Linda Comac: “Sharks don’t get cancer”, followed by “Sharks still don’t get cancer” in 1996. The point of the claim was to imply that there is something unique about cartilage from an animal—like a shark—whose skeleton is entirely made of cartilage—not bone, and that there are curative powers which can only come from that type of animal. Of course, convincing millions of people that only shark cartilage will do is not particularly healthy for shark populations around the world, and shark populations have indeed suffered, as the commercial market for shark cartilage has skyrocketed.  READ it HERE

Summer’s here again, and these days, health-conscious Americans wonder whether to go with the traditional slathering on of sunscreens and sunblocks to avoid sunburn and skin cancer, or to back off those butterings at least enough to avoid the consequences of Vitamin D deficiency.

The following scenario is likely familiar to you—If you have light skin and are prone to sunburn, that is: You spend maybe an hour or two in the sun. Then, feeling extra warmth on your skin coming from the inside, you look down and notice that all your exposed parts are bright red (the “boiled lobster” look). Then you get that sinking feeling of having totally forgotten about the sunscreen and knowing that, even though you get in the shade immediately and stay there, in a matter of hours it will be horribly painful even to get dressed or undressed or bathe. After a couple of days, when the pain subsides, that reddened skin will have turned into an ugly, peeling mess. Finally, a week later, you’ll be pretty much back to where you started with that pale and vulnerable skin, newly resolved never to forget the sunscreen again!  Read it HERE

Scientists, doctors and the general public are finally catching on to the fact that most diseases that make people sick and die these days—including heart disease and cancer—can be traced to a condition of chronic inflammation (See my earlier post: “What is inflammation?“) They are also catching on to the fact that chronic inflammation can be limited or even eliminated by eating an anti-inflammatory diet. And you don’t have to look very far online for plenty of suggestions for what to eat in an anti-inflammatory diet, most of which are pretty similar, and—for most people—hard to follow without a complete dietary makeover. That’s because most anti-inflammatory diets start with a long list of stuff you should not eat.

READ it HERE