Essentials for Life System Technical Bulletin

By Stan Bynum Ph.D.

The science of human nutrition has been built on a more or less close observation of the interaction of foods with members or groups of members of the human species. For most of the history of this science there has been an attempt to separate the chemical constituents that make up the foods and to categorize the effect of each of them on the vitality and healthy function of the human body. One of the early steps taken in nutritional science was to classify each component of food as

1. those that provide energy (the macronutrients) and
2. those that play an enabling biochemical role in the production and utilization of energy to drive essential functions of the human body (the micronutrients). Generally speaking, the macronutrients are proteins, fats and carbohydrates, while micronutrients are vitamins, minerals, enzymes and other accessory food factors such as antioxidants.

The concept of improving human health through supplementation originated with the studies of Cassimir Funk in the 1930's, when it was discovered that specific nutrition-related diseases are cured by supplementing the diet with specific purified vitamins. While most scientific nutritionists feel that all of these factors are of greatest benefit when obtained from high quality food rather than isolated micronutrients, the practice of dietary supplementation to improve health has grown steadily since its earliest beginnings. It should be noted that some of the earliest researchers warned that the purified vitamins would not provide the same health benefits as the same compounds when consumed as part of their whole food complex. For example, Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, who is best known for his Nobel-prize winning research in isolating ascorbic acid from foods, concluded from his studies that the benefits associated with vitamin C are far greater when the vitamin is ingested in the whole food form rather than isolated ascorbic acid. Similar studies with other isolated vitamins have led to the same conclusion. In its research into needs for supplementation, the Infinity2 formulators identified six categories of need for supplementation in today's human population.

1. Whole food vitamins, missing from food as the result of diets which are high in processed foods.
2. Bioavailable minerals, low in foods because of commercial farming methods.
3. Antioxidants, low in the Standard American Diet because of poor food choices.
4. Enzymes, missing from food as the result of cooking and processing.
5. Dietary sugar and fat tolerance factors, low in most diets because of the nature of
   commercial processing of foods.
6. Probiotic organisms, depleted in the body by consumption of drugs, preservatives, stimulants, processed food and many other substances, as well as life-style factors such as stress.
   The Infinity2 Formulation Team has created six separate formulas, one to answer the need defined by each category. These six formulas constitute the Infinity2 Nutritionals and form the core of the supplementation program that we advocate.

In formulating specific supplements to meet each of these categories of need for supplementation, we recognized that the level of each need varies from one individual to the next. To address this individuality, we devised a brief questionnaire entitled "How Much Do I Need, using well-known symptoms and life-style factors to assist the consumer and clinician in deter-mining the level of need for each category and each individual. This highly idealized approach has been very helpful to several tens of thousands of individuals in the five-plus years that it has been in use. However, in analyzing the results of the implementation of this program, we conclude that it has suffered from two basic drawbacks:

1. The typical individual, in order to supplement in the way that is best for his/her health, must consume a large number of capsules. This has resulted in difficulty in implementation, poor compliance in many cases and legitimate complaints about expense.
2. While the recommendations that result from answering the How Much Do I Need questionnaire vary considerably from one individual to another in level of supplementation of the specific supplements, the need for some supplementation in each category has been practically universal.
   Realization of these two facts has led us to an obvious conclusion: the best way to improve this approach to nutritional supplementation that has proven itself to be of great value in terms of human health enhancement is to merge the ingredients of the six formulas into a one powerful system. Our test formulations demonstrated that the smallest number of capsules that would retain the nutritional value of the six separate formulas is two. With this information, we arrived at the optimum combinations to cover all six major needs in human nutrition.

In essence, Essentials For Life One provides the nutrition factors missing from the Standard American Diet, while Essentials For Life Two provides intestinal health factors that are vital to the utilization of these factors in the body. Infinity2's Essentials For Life System is the first 100% natural, whole food supplement system that addresses every single aspect of your body's daily nutritional supplementation needs.
As part of the improvement of the basic Infinity2 supplementation program, the Formulation Team has revised the How Much Do I Need brochure to assume that the individual answering the questions is supplementing with the Essentials For Life System. On that basis, the questionnaire will then give guidance to other INFINITY2 products that may enhance the supplement program, if desired. We are confident that this simpler approach will greatly expand participation in our model of correct supplementation and, hence, expand the human health benefit that it will accomplish.