Natural Health Products & Reversal of Metabolic Disorders
Live from the house in Repentigny with Pierre Haddad to meet you around the book but also to answer your questions about Metabzen and Gluconig, the formulas he created.
Transcript of the live broadcast that you can watch here.*
Pierre Haddad is a pharmacologist, scientific director, researcher, professor, and co-founder of the Canadian Natural Health Products Research Society, founded in 2003.
Answers to your questions:
Can everyone try these formulas? Is there any danger in trying a natural health product such as Metabzen?
In fact, it shouldn't be harmful for someone who doesn't have any health problems. It's mainly a preventative tool. It works the liver and the entire body with American Ginseng. Besides, this is an aspect that I hadn't thought about: the energy boost that people notice with Metabzen. It was really in the sense for the role of American Ginseng rather than for sugar management and metabolism in general. But it's true that it works an endocrine sphere, so hormones, the nervous system and the immune system. And American Ginseng also gives more energy on a mental and physical level. This aspect wasn't premeditated, let's say!
On this subject: testimony from Stéphanie, whom we met earlier this summer in Vaudreuil and who was discouraged by her lack of energy during menopause. Today, she came back to see us to tell us that she has regained her energy with Complex B and Metabzen.
Another beautiful testimony today, that of Louise: she was prediabetic and now no longer has any signs.
Do we say at this point that diabetes is dormant?
It doesn't disappear, it depends on our lifestyle habits. It's true that if we continued to live in a world where healthy eating is difficult, especially if we work, but there is a way to do it and I admire Jacynthe for this aspect of rigor which is not always easy because sugary and fatty foods are like drugs, in a way.
Diabetes Reversal:
This is also a clinical reality that is starting to be accepted more and more: the reversal of diabetes. Obviously, it depends on what level you are at. As with all diseases, if you are too advanced, going backward will be more difficult. That's why Metabzen is really formulated to arrive at the metabolic syndrome, that is to say when we are prediabetic, we have a waist measurement that is too large, high triglycerides, good cholesterol that is too low, a little bit of hypertension, therefore a constellation of symptoms (but which are not symptoms because hypertension, we do not feel it unless there are headaches or things like that). So, this formula was really imagined and thought out in this sense of prevention. We do not need to wait to be sick to start helping ourselves.
Nutrition is the cornerstone, and supplements add tools. You really have to think of them as tools!
There is a really good dose of milk thistle to help liver function. The liver is a central organ in general metabolism and even in the energy aspect. I don't know my traditional Chinese medicine very well, but I am certain that the liver really helps with energy circulation.
Can a person with type 2 diabetes take Metabzen and Gluconig?
Absolutely, because once again, it's supportive. I've been thinking about this formula for about fifteen years, studying plants for diabetes and looking at the problems that arise during metabolic diseases like this. So I know that the liver is a central organ, but you also need vitamin D because a lack of vitamin D increases the chances of developing metabolic diseases. There are three components that help with blood sugar, including American Ginseng and Nigella, which is truly a wonderful plant, and Chromium, a trace element essential for the action of insulin. For a liver that is congested, diet will help if we purify sugar and all that, but the plants that work the liver will support our body in these changes. So it works very well together and it was really designed in that sense, to be a general support and to address the different levels of disorders.
Can we take Metabzen and Gluconig 2 hours apart from our medication?
And if you take oral hypoglycemics, it depends on which class you have, there is still a risk of hypoglycemia because they are active plants. It is pharmacologically active even if it is natural, I teach that at university! You have to monitor your blood sugar. If you are diabetic, you do it anyway. So, if you undertake to add more, you must obviously talk to your doctor. And it's like anything else: your doctor is not going to add medications without adjusting the dose of the others if you already had one. It's a bit of the same principle, you have to go about it in a thoughtful and supervised way. If you take your blood sugars, if you see that you have episodes of hypoglycemia, it would be better to stop and consult your doctor. Even if it means adjusting the dose of medication. It's not necessarily a bad deal if Metabzen works to help you better manage your blood sugar. Well, we can think about adjusting the doses of medications downward to work with that. I am not a doctor, you need to be accompanied by your health specialist.
What can be done to cleanse the liver?
Purify... that's one of the terms that health professionals don't like very much. I would rather use the term "supporting liver function." Besides, these are the claims we can make because the scientific evidence is there. Health Canada, everything we can indicate on the claims, it has been recognized by international pharmacopoeias, by research, etc. Even I have done studies with milk thistle in the case of the famous non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. Of course, it was on animals, but it's part of the normal research process. We call these preclinical studies, so before going to humans, we test our ideas. And it had significant benefits for supporting the liver and preventing the negative effects of a high-fat diet that mimicked fatty liver and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. You're right, it's become the most common liver disease and it follows health problems that are linked to the environment in which we live: poorer diet, decreased physical activity and stress. We always forget this last factor and you talk about it in your book. What I liked about the book is the holistic vision; because we can't reduce everything. Metabzen is not a miracle, it's a tool.
Gluconig:
To have less impact on the increase in sugar after a meal. We also call it postprandial in more scientific terms. And then it's a Quebec innovation. It's really a mixture of brown algae from the St. Lawrence Estuary developed in Rimouski by a 100% Quebec company, supported by a lot of scientific and clinical research, also in humans to show the benefits of this. What it does is that it slows down the digestion of complex sugars by the enzymes in your intestine. It's especially the last step also where simpler sugars are transformed into monosaccharides, so glucose, fructose, all the very simple sugars. (…) It helps to reduce the peak. Instead of it being a very high peak in blood sugar that causes the pancreas to produce a lot of insulin to try to control it, we will have a much slower rise and much less stress for the pancreas and the body as a whole. This prevents crashes, like crashes after a chocolate bar or something sweet. You get a sugar buzz, but afterward, because insulin does its job well, then the sugar drops back down, but below normal levels, so hypoglycemia follows. And this is all because of the too rapid rise in blood sugar after meals, especially those rich in sugar.
Actually, what I like about your book is that it doesn't negate the fact that what you're saying is that even from the age of 30, metabolism starts to slow down, collagen production starts to slow down, so for joints, that's another important part to manage. Healthy habits, healthy living; if we start to have joint pain, we'll have a less interesting quality of life.
Coming back to the aspect of Metabzen, it really is a general support for a healthy metabolism and it will mitigate the effects on the liver by helping it with its functions. It helps in the secretion of bile, there is Turmeric that does that in Metabzen. There are plenty of good things to support the liver.
What can an unhealthy liver cause? What are the related problems?
It's mainly at the level of digestion. Stéphanie (whom we met earlier) mentioned that she felt a heaviness, digestion was difficult. The liver, we forget, is a central organ of the gastrointestinal system. It produces bile which helps to emulsify fats well so that they are digested, then better absorbed. And it plays very important functions, bile in digestion. The liver is an organ whose function is difficult to perceive because these are metabolic functions, but it is central.
It's also the management of our entire diet. In fact, all the blood in the viscera necessarily passes through the liver before entering the general circulation. This is quite special because the liver receives three-quarters of its blood supply, venous blood which is the blood that drains the viscera, and therefore a role in food management, but also in defense. All exogenous molecules, a good part of them is also processed in the intestine itself, we're talking about enzymes for example; this is important for interactions with medications. So it's not just your metabolic factory, it's metabolism, but metabolism for protection against foreign exogenous substances, even if they come from your normal diet.
I teach a lot about the liver. It produces all the proteins that transport your lipids in the blood, including good and bad cholesterol. It's the liver that produces them. The coagulation proteins too. It plays a really central role. It also plays a big role in hormone metabolism.
Diabetes and inflammation:
The liver is a central organ for managing this. What often happens is the congestion of fats that accumulate in the liver. This slows down the metabolism, it slows down liver functions and it also reduces the effect of insulin, which is normally to slow down. Because the liver is the only organ, with a little bit of the kidney, that can produce glucose according to your needs. So it stores it, there is a form of storage called glycogen, a bit like animal starch, and which is available if you fast; well for 24 hours your liver will provide you with glucose from this but it can do something else too: it can transform amino acids or fatty acids into sugar, we call this new genesis (new glycogenesis) it is the generation of sugar. So it can provide sugar. Normally, insulin puts a brake on this, but when the liver becomes clogged with fat, the brake doesn't work very well, so your liver produces too much glucose. There are two important factors for insulin resistance, which is a precursor to diabetes: at the liver level, too much sugar production, and at the skeletal muscles level, which normally absorb and use glucose to function (for your movements, the energy source is glucose), well, insulin brings glucose into the muscles, and there too, if there is insulin resistance, insulin does it less well. So less sugar entering your muscles and more sugar being produced by the liver, this leads to hyperglycemia and diabetes.
If you take antacids, can you still take Metabzen?
Normally, it shouldn't interfere...
What about someone who no longer has a spleen?
The spleen is more at the level of the immune system as far as I know, it shouldn't interfere...
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