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Amla-C Plus · Natural Vitamin C

Immune enhancing benefits
Antioxidant
No GMOs, fillers, sweeteners or additives
Potent Source of Vitamin C
General Health Tonic
Supports Liver and Kidney detoxification and function

There is no better source of natural vitamin C, with its’ full spectrum of bioflavonoids and supporting nutrients than amla berry. Also known as the Indian Gooseberry, the amla berry has been revered in Ayurvedic medicine since the 7th century for its’ anti-aging and immune-enhancing benefits and as a general tonic for optimal health. Mother Nature’s very best source of vitamin C, amla berries are well documented as much easier to assimilate than synthetic vitamin C, which is known as ascorbic acid. Vitamins from an all-natural whole-food source like amla are also safer and more effective than laboratory-created synthetic or crystalline vitamins, which may be derived from genetically engineered ingredients.

Whole-food Amla C Plus is more potent and thoroughly assimilated than synthetic supplements. As a wonderful antioxidant, alma aids the body’s natural defenses against bacteria and viruses, and even supports digestion. A unique blend of 80% amla berry and 20% Spirulina, Pure Planet Amla-C Plus has no GMOs, fillers, sweeteners or additives. No other vitamin C can make the same claim. Find out why our customers rave about Amla-C Plus and its healing powers.

Amla-C Plus · Articles

AMLA
Traditional Food and Medicine
By Linda Treadway, Ph.D.

The Amla fruit, (Emblica officinalis) small and innocuous looking, is worthy of consideration by the serious herbalist. It grows wild and is also cultivated forest and seacoasts of India and Kashmir.

Amla has long been recognized as a stalwart member of the family Euphorbiaceae with literally hundreds of uses. The Amla shrub grows into a small or middle-sized deciduous tree with feathery leaves 10-13 mm long and 2-3 mm broad Male and Female pale green flowers appear on the same tree and the juicy, green, fleshy fruit grows to over 2 cm with six softly defined ridges and six seeds.1 Cultivated fruits weigh approximately one ounce, while the wild berry grows to only half that size.

Medical studies conducted on Amla fruit suggested that it has antiviral properties and also functions as an antibacterial and anti fungal agent.2 The Amla berry holds a place of esteem in traditional Asian medicine, even though it is only now becoming known in the West. Amla forms the base for an ancient herbal restorative tonic known as chayavan prash. Approximately 5,000 years ago, the formula, which contains 34 herbs and fruits plus aromatic spices, clarified butter, sugar cane juice, and honey, was recorded in the Ayurvedic medical texts as a Rasayana or supreme rejuvenative tonic.3 The gelatinous plum-size Amla fruit contains between 700 and 1,000 mg of heat-stable vitamin C.4 Because of its tartness, the Amla fruit is good liver stimulant: the fruit is cooling and mildly laxative. Experiments conducted on patients with pulmonary tuberculosis show that the natural vitamin C contained in the Amla berry was more quickly assimilated than synthetic vitamin C; a finding that “certain unknown factors in the fruit may be responsible for this advantage.”5 Experiments conducted at the Niwa Institute of Immunology in Japan have shown Amla to be a potent scavenger of free radicals, the stress-related reactive oxygen-based ions, which clutter up an unhealthy body. With an excess of free radicals, the body may become prey to auto immune processes, destroying and degenerating its own tissue structure. The Niwa Institute of Immunology studies showed that Amla preparations contained high levels of the free-radical scavenger, superoxide dimutase (SOD), in the experimental subjects. Further survey of the medical literature shows that the Amla berry, either in combination with other herbs or alone, has been useful in the amelioration of anemia, diabetes, chronic lung disease, colds, influenza, hypertension. Elevated cholesterol levels, and even as an immune restorative in cancer treatment.6 Additional clinical research has been conducted on Amla's positive effects on the body which include enhanced cellular regeneration, increase of lean body mass, and enhanced production and secretion of interferon and corticosteroids.7 The Amla berry can be identified as a mainstay of Ayurveda classical East Indian Medicine. Ayurveda is an original holistic system of diagnosis and treatment including nutrition, hygiene, rejuvenation, and plant and herbal medicine developed and perfected in India over 5,000 years ago. Ayurveda is an entire science of healthy living, perfectly compatible with the present shift in the awareness of our Western population toward the practice of preventive health leading to wellness.

According to Ayurveda, the human constitution as well as the entire environment is composed of five basic elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space. In an ideal situation, these five basic elements exist in a perpetual dynamic harmony, creating life, good health, and the perfection that is living creation. Ayurveda under goes a further theoretical refinement when it identifies the functional triad known as the Tridosha, or three great basic factors governing human life ( Water, Fire, and Air). Healing occurs when the dynamic harmony of the doshas is restored. Disease can only occur when there is an abnormal affliction, an imbalance in one, two, or all three of the elements or doshas. Traditionally, Amla has been called the best of the Ayurvedic rejuvenative herbs, because it is tridosaghna, that is, through its natural balance of tastes (sweet,sour,pungent,bitter and astringent) all in one fruit it stimulates the brain to rebalance the three main components of all physiological functions, the water, fire, and air elements within the body.8

Traditional & Folk Medicines

Amla Berries from one-third of the colon rejuvenation tonic called Triphala (three-fruits tonic). India has produced these three varieties of gooseberry fruit: Amla, Harde, or Harada (Terminalia chebula) is a warming variety of gooseberry fruit, known for its yellow-green color.

IS YOUR VITAMIN C SAFE?
Consumers discover ancient Indian fruit is “the best, natural, guaranteed safe” source of this vital nutrient. Did you know that almost all vitamin C is derived from corn? Did you know that genetically modified corn is turning up in many corn products thought to be GMO free? Did you know that Pure Planet offers a 100% pure food source vitamin C made from an ancient Indian fruit that is guaranteed non GMO?

This ancient Indian fruit is called amla. Amla the Indian gooseberry has been the most revered herb in Auyervedic medicine for over 5000 years and is the most potent source of vitamin C on the planet. Why should you care? Over the last 50 years synthetic vitamins have taken the place of proper food. “Synthetic” means that the product, even though it may have come from food, no longer is food, so it doesn’t contain protein, fats, carbohydrates, phyto-chemicals or enzymes. Unfortunately we have become consumers who take “nutrition by the numbers” rather than being concerned with absorbtion and assimilation.

While others have forgotten the most important lessons taught by the pioneers of nutritional scienceŠ PURE PLANET has not. In the late 1920’s Dr. Albert Szent Gyorgi discovered Vitamin C in red peppers. This was the beginning of the vitamin industry. He further discovered that the Vitamin C in the red peppers was at least 10 times more absorbable than the pure ascorbic acid he had isolated out of the pepper. This was ignored. Today while bio engineers manipulate corn to increase its vitamin C content, Pure Planet scours the world for nature’s most potent whole food source! We believe as Dr. Albert Szent Gyorgi discovered- that Mother Nature knows best.

Spirulina - Nature’s Cancer Answer? US University Confirms Promising Research Results.
Sacramento, CA - UC Davis recently released the results of studies it conducted over the last several years. In those studies scientists sought to determine whether spirulina had an immuno-modulatory effect on the human body. These studies were inspired by previous research where chickens showed an increase in secondary antibody activity and an increase in natural killer cells (NK cells) after spirulina supplementation. Additional studies showed spirulina to be a powerful immune modulator in a wide variety of animals. The UC Davis studies conducted on human blood cells showed that spirulina increased Interferon Gamma up to thirteen times. Interferon Gamma supports the body’s natural anti-viral and anti-cancer response. To put it scientifically, the studies confirm that spirulina increases the secretion of three different cytokines from human peripheral mononuclear cells. To explain in layman’s terms consider this. When the body gets invaded- by a virus or bacteria- it is much like a robber who breaks into a house. They have breeched the first line of defense (closed windows and doors). 0nce detected, a message is sent to the 911 of the body called lymphocytes, neutrophylls and monocytes- also known as white blood cells- that receive the message and dispatch an immediate response. Spirulina promotes an early warning like a burglar alarm by increasing three chemicals, interleukin1 , interleukin 4, and interferon gamma. These all support the body’s police force (macrophages) who will attempt to eliminate the problem, if they fail, the special- forces called NK or natural killer cells are released to complete the job like the SWAT team.

In a summary of test results presented to the 30th annual meeting of the Japanese Society of Immunology in November of 2000 titled, “The Effect of SpirulinaŠ. to the Basic Immune Activation”, it was stated that this micro-algae has anti-tumor function or immune enhancement function. In the results it was stated that killer cells increased after two weeks of administering spirulina extract. In the “discussion” of results obtained from the study, it was concluded that spirulina contain a substance which activates the basic immune system [such as] natural killer cells and macrophages.

While research must continue, this food has shown great promise as a powerful tool in any cancer preventive lifestyle. PURE PLANET is extremely proud to have offered the worlds purest premium spirulina tablets and powder for over 10 years. Details on back page.

Taking Too Much Vitamin C Can Be Dangerous
By Jane E. Brody

Those who think that if a little vitamin C is good, more must be better should think again, says a team of British researchers, who found that a supplement of 500 milligrams a day could damage people’s genes. Many Americans take that much, or more, in hopes of preventing colds and reaping the widely celebrated antioxidant benefits of vitamin C. Antioxidants, which block cellular and molecular damage caused by the highly reactive molecules called free radicals, are believed to protect against heart disease, cancer, eye disorders like cataracts and macular degeneration, and other chronic health problems. But the British researcher, chemical pathologists at the University of Leicester, found in a six-week study of 30 healthy men and women that a daily 500-milligram supplement of vitamin C had pro-oxidant as well as antioxidant effects on the genetic material DNA. The researchers found that at the 500-millgram level, vitamin C promotes genetic damage by free radicals to a part of the DNA, the adenine bases, which had not previously been measured in studies of the vitamin’s oxidative properties.

The finding, published in the current issue of the British journal Nature, Corroborates warnings that have been issued for decades by an American physician, Dr. Victor Herbert, professor of medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Dr. Herbert has shown, primarily through laboratory studies, that vitamin C supplements promote the generation of free radicals from iron in the body.

“The vitamin C in supplements mobilizes harmless ferric iron stored in the body and converts it to harmful ferrous iron, which induces damage to the heart and other organs,” Dr. Herbert said in an interview.

“Unlike the vitamin C naturally present in foods like orange juice, vitamin C as a supplement is not an antioxidant,” Dr. Herbert said. “It’s a redox agent- an antioxidant in some circumstances and a pro-oxidant in others.”

In contrast, vitamin C naturally present in food, he said, has no oxidizing effects. Vitamin C supplements in large doses have been linked to genetic damage as far back as the mid-1970. In a study then, Canadian researchers found that use of the vitamin in doses larger than in the British study, but not much larger than the amounts some people take to ward off colds and the flu, damaged genetic material in three systems: bacterial cells, human cells grown in test tubes, and live mice.

The lead author of the new study, Dr. lan Pod more, said that at 500 milligrams, vitamin C did act as an antioxidant on one part of the DNA, the guanine bases. Oxidation of guanine to oxoguanine is what is usually measured to determine the degree of DNA damage through oxidation. As expected, when the volunteers took a daily 500-milligram dose of vitamin C for six weeks, oxoguanine levels indeed declined, “which is why vitamin C is generally thought to be an antioxidant,” Dr. Pod more said.

But when they measured a second indicator of DNA oxidation, oxoadenine, the researchers found that it had risen rather than declined, “indicating genetic damage to this DNA base,” Dr. Podmore said.

A colleague, Dr. Joseph Lunec, said that at the 500-milligram level, vitamin C’s “protective effect dominated, but there was also a damaging effect.” “There should be caution about taking too much vitamin C,” Dr. Lunec said. “The normal healthy individual would not need to take supplements of vitamin C.” In the United States and Britain alike, the recommended daily intake of vitamin C for healthy adults is 60 milligrams, which can be easily obtained from foods-by drinking about six ounces of orange juice, for example. Larger amounts are recommended for smokers and for pregnant and lactating women, but even these amounts can be readily obtained from foods.

Dr. Lunec took issue with the late Dr. Linus C. Pauling, the Nobel laureate chemist who took 12,000 milligrams of vitamin C daily and suggested that people could take as much of it as they wanted with no ill effect. “We think that's not the case, to say the least,” Dr. Lunec said. “You can have too much of a good thing.” The research team is now studying the effects of lower doses of vitamin C, “to see if we can maximize the protective effect and minimize the damage,” Dr. Lunec said. Given the new findings, he said, “It would be unethical to test higher levels.”

Vitamin C “vs.” Ascorbic Acid
By Michael and Nora Wohlfeld

Have you ever gone shopping for a car and settled on buying a steering wheel? No one would consider a steering wheel to be a whole car, but it is part of a car. To take this a step further, imagine that you go from one parts store to another and pick up fenders at one place, engine parts, transmission parts, tires, wheels, and seats, all at different places. Your take all of these home. Would you have a car? Obviously not. In order to have a car that runs effectively, you should purchase it from its creator: General Motors, Toyota, Ford, or whatever car manufacturer you choose. A car manufacturer has done the research and planning to ensure that the parts of a car are designed appropriately and assembled in the right way so that everything works together. The finished product will be a car that you can drive safely and efficiently.

This scenario may sound ridiculous but most people go to health food stores, drug stores and supermarkets and buy Vitamin C in the same way that one would go out shopping for a car and decide to buy only the steering wheel, thinking it was the whole car. Thousands of bottles of ascorbic acid are purchased everyday under the misguided assumption that ascorbic acid is the same as Vitamin C. In reality, ascorbic acid is an isolated nutrient that is part of Vitamin C but it is not the whole Vitamin C.

So you are getting cheated if you buy ascorbic acid thinking it is Vitamin C. But that might be the least of the consequences you may suffer. Studies over the last several years have demonstrated that people who take high doses of ascorbic acid actually put themselves at risk for a number of health challenges. One study demonstrated that doses of 500 mg a day or more of ascorbic acid increase the incidence of arterial plaque buildup. Another study indicated that gallstones are more likely to appear in those taking ascorbic acid. Are these backlash studies against the health food industry? No, they are legtimate studies.

Wait a minute, you may be thinking. What about all the studies done by Linus Pauling and a multitude of other reputable researchers who have proven the health promoting benefits of Vitamin C and ascorbic acid? Let us put a little perspective on the subject.

Back in the 1930’s ascorbic acis was isolated out of little red peppers. The man who first performed thus experiment was Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi who won a Nobel Prize for his work. What he also found, which has mostly been ignored until recently, was that ascorbic acid was far more biologically available and active while it was still in the red pepper.

Scientist of the era of “Better Living Through Chemistry and Science” (which we have been experiencing for the last fifty years) decided to take the discoveries about Vitamin C and “improve” on Mother Nature. First they found that extracting ascorbic acid from natural foods, such as the red peppers, cabbage, cranberries, gooseberries, or acerola berries, is relatively expensive. Ascorbic acid can be created in the laboratory much less expensively (and of course much more profitably). Scientists discovered that they could take corn syrup, mix it with hydrochloric acid, and voila: ascorbic acid! (By the way, the corn is more likely than ever to be genetically modified and of course not organically grown.) Years later, scientists discovered what Dr. Szent-Györgyi had discovered about ascorbic acid, it is not as effective when detached from the whole food matrix! So they went about trying to determine what other factors there could be in the whole food that would make the ascorbic acid work better. First, they discovered the importance of bioflavonoids, so they figured out how to produce these synthetically in the laboratory, to be added to the ascorbic acid. Then they found that ascorbic acid worked better as a mineral ascorbate and they worked on that! Then they found that fat soluble ascorbic acid was superior, because it went directly to the liver vs. water soluble ascorbic acid. In fact if you put 100 mg of ascorbic acid in the body, within a few hours at least 90% of it will be excreted in the urine. If you put 10 times more into the body to account for a 90% loss it caused diarrhea. So they experimented with various things and concluded that if you attach the ascorbic acid molecule to another molecule, in one case a metabolite, the ascorbic acid will stay in the body longer (they didn’t seem to care why it stayed in the body longer, but it stayed in the body longer and hopefully that was a good thing). Today there is a broad variety of ascorbic acid products with various things attached to them.

With all this research, time, thought and dollars being put into creating a synthetic vitamin C, the fact remains that none of them can come even close to the potentials of what Mother Nature makes. One important factor that science has not been able to duplicate is the special kind of energy that holds living food together. Whether this energy is found in the enzymes or in the energy patterns of whole food structures, it is unlikely that science will ever be able to reproduce it in a laboratory. This may be one of several reasons why studies have shown that the body will absorb close to 100% of the vitamin C that is consumed as part of a whole food, whereas barely 10% of the “stripped down” ascorbic acid is absorbed.

Again it is an issue of what we are willing to put into our bodies. Just as you would not shop for a car by buying the various pieces at different places, but look for a whole vehicle that has been synergistically put together by its creator/manufacturer, so Mother Nature has created foods for us that are complex and exactly designed to work in a synergistic way with the design of our bodies.

Pure Planet offers the most potent whole food form of vitamin C that is available. This is from the Indian gooseberry, or amla berry. Pure Planet’s Amla-C Plus is unique in several ways. The berries are hand pealed to insure that not only the vitamin rich inner layer but also the cofactors that make this product a whole food are preserved. We check our amla for potency. Of course, all of our products are herbicide and pesticide free. Amla-C Plus is alkaline, which means that it contributes to the natural alkaline balance of the body. Ascorbic acid is an acid and acids stress the body setting the stage for all kinds of malfunctions and diseases. Amla-C Plus is tabletted with no binders, fillers, excipients, coloring agents, or tabletting coating. The tablets are formed with pure Hawaiian spirulina, giving added synergistic nutrition. You can be sure that you are getting a quality uncontaminated tablet that has been pressed at low heat, without exposure to harmful elements, to preserve the high nutritional value of this whole food supplement.

The founders and staff of Pure Planet have studied what health is. We work to bring you products that will support the way your body works, as Mother Nature intended, not as some scientist in a laboratory intellectualizes. We offer you the best because our number one priority is your health. If you want a true Vitamin C product discover Pure Planet’s Amla-C PLUS.