Monday, May 4, 2009

The Nature's Cleanse exhorbitant offer

I recently ran across a product claiming to provide health. It's called Nature's Cleanse and what it's supposed to do is clean out your colon, allowing nutrients to be more readily absorbed.

A trial bottle is only 5.95 (non-refundable).

I'm an herbologist. Have been for many years, and I tend to be very skeptical of ads for stuff like that. Since it was such a cheap price for the trial bottle I decided to see what was in it. The website I had been taken to didn't list the ingredients so looking at the bottle was the only way to find out.

My credit card was happily charged for the small fee and a few days later the promised bottle arrived.

A glance at the ingredients on the back confirmed that yes, it WOULD clean out the colon. But a quick glance at the information packed with the bottle confirmed that this is yet one more company preying about uninformed consumers.

According to the information that came with it, I had 15 days to try the product and after that, if I didn't cancel, I'd be charged only $88.00 more dollars. And then every month I'd get a fresh, one months supply for only $99.00

A bottle only contains 60 caps. That's 2 caps a day for a full month. So the price is 99 bucks for 60 caps.

According to the back of the bottle, the ingredients are:

Cascara Sagrada Bark
Aloe Vera leaf
Flax Seed
Marshmallow root
Peppermint Leaf
Slippery Elm Bark
Rhubarb root

No where is an individual amount of each ingredient given so there's no way to tell how much you're getting of each.

While those ingredients aren't a problem, none of them is expensive. They are all available in bulk for pennies or can be purchased as prepackaged teas.

Cascara Sagrada Bark is commonly used for constipation. It's not to be used daily, however. Nothing wrong with Aloe, though it's not necessarily going to do any good for cleaning a colon. Peppermint is used for soothing upset stomachs and is a nervine. The other ingredients are fine, and a little research on the net will show anyone what they are commonly used for.

The caps have a few other ingredients as well. The mixture is packed in Gelatin caps, so that's listed. It's got preservatives in it and stuff to make it stay in powered form without caking so those are listed (not that they're necessary).

My recommendation for anyone reading this blog is to run away from this product as rapidly as you can. Not only is not worth the exorbitant amount of money you'll be charged for it, it's a health concern. Without the individual amounts listed, there's no way to tell if they are combined in correct proportions. Also, without the amounts listed, there's no way to know if the majority of that $100.00 is being spent on 5 bucks worth of Cascara Sagrada bark or not. My guess is that it is.

Peppermint Leaf, btw, is available to anyone that wants it by simply walking into the baking aisle of the grocery store and picking up a bottle of real peppermint extract from the shelf. To take that for an upset stomach, fill an empty 00 capsule (available from most health food stores) and swallow with a full glass of water.

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