Life Force

Product Review

Life Force from Source Naturals

General:

Source Naturals is another large US based supplement company. It was founded in 1982 and now has over 400 products for sale. Source Naturals has huge product sales and is a very well known brand particularly in the USA. It is a listed company and uses a MLM model for distribution of its products.

Although it manufacturers a huge range of products which causes some to see it as a ‘mass marketer’ of supplements, its multi ingredient products, which it calls “multiples” are well put together and, as with the other 3 best vitamin supplements in these comparisons, are based on cutting edge science.

Source Naturals was one of the pioneers of combining multiple categories of nutrients in a supplement.

They have the financial means to churn out a tonne of marketing literature and scientific studies, although not to the same extent as Pharmanex whose extensive library of scientific research and studies (for customers) appears unmatched.

Source Naturals refers to their multi ingredient products as “Bio-Aligned Formulas – designed to help bring the power of alignment to the body by evaluating the root causes of body system imbalances, and then providing targeted nutrition”. They also state “nature abhors imbalance” – A great statement!

So in the case of Life Force, a supplement aimed at supporting complete good health, what they are professing to is a formula that provides total balance within the body by delivering a wide range of ingredients to all the organs and systems so as to correct any and all nutritional imbalances. Source Naturals believes that Life Force is the best vitamin supplement - let's see if they are right!.

P.S. Source Naturals was the least ‘consumer-friendly’ company I dealt with in my research.

Strengths:

The main strength of Life Force is its completeness as a nutritional support supplement. It has 48 ingredients, the second highest total after Total Balance (83) and is the cheapest of the four supplements – roughly $6 - $7 dollars a bottle cheaper.

Life Force was runner-up to Total Balance in most categories for ‘most potent ingredients’.

The formula looks good - the ingredients are excellent, well accepted choices - this is in keeping with Source Naturals history as being a pioneer of multi ingredient supplements.

The only things missing appear to be trace elements and enzymes. Otherwise there’s a good range of vitamins, minerals, cofactors, phytonutrients, herbal extracts and 2 amino acids.

Source Naturals manufacturers some of its own products and contracts out others – which they refer to as “specialty products” but I couldn’t find out which products they were referring to.

Their manufacturing standards are shrouded in mystery since they won’t reveal much of anything about this topic. The usual claims of ‘excellence’ are there on the website but no in depth details are given – only what I would classify as generalizations and broad claims – the same as what you’ll find on many supplement companies’ websites.

Life Force contains just 4 all-natural excipients which is at the lowest end of the optimal range for high quality supplements – the lowest of all 4 supplements.

There are 7 herbal extracts in Life Force however Source Naturals does not exclusively use standardized extracts (a major disappointment).

There are 4 standardized extracts – 3 of which reveal their potencies and they are all high.

Turmeric 95%

Green Tea 95%

Gingko Biloba 24% (this is considered a high potency for supplements)

The dose rates of all 4 standardized extracts are generous and not too far from those in Total Balance other than for turmeric. Life Force actually has 10 mg more gingko biloba than TB at almost the same potency.

Life Force	Total Balance
Turmeric 75 mg	360 mg
Green Tea 75 mg	100 mg
Gingko 60 mg	50 mg
Bilberry 30 mg	50 mg

Life Force contains a tocotrienols complex which is a big plus!!

Vitamin E occurs naturally in 8 different forms – 4 tocopherols and 4 tocotrienols. The best vitamin supplements should include all 8 in order to provide the full spectrum of benefits of vitamin E.

Most supplements on health food store shelves consist mainly of tocopherol (alpha – tocopherol or mixed tocopherols).

Life Force has Tocomax®from the Carotech Corporation. Tocomax® is a potent, natural, full spectrum tocotrienol / tocopherol complex. Total Balance also includes Tocomax®. Lifepak doesn’t but does have the full vitamin E spectrum.

“Of late, tocotrienol have been gaining wide attention and surfacing as a potent neuroprotective form of vitamin E…” (5)

Lastly, Life Force has a nice amount of Phyto-nutrients (322 mg) – the second highest tally after Total Balance Women’s Plus 691 mg and Men’s Plus 591 mg).

Weaknesses:

Life Force provides 300 mg of N-Acetyl Cysteine which seems way over the top for any ingredient in a multi ingredient supplement. But since I don’t have the qualifications or knowledge to know optimum dose amounts of various amino acids, I’m not sure whether this is actually a weakness, strength or neither – so we’ll park this one.

Bilberry is the fourth standardized extract, but unlike the three listed above, Source Naturals will not reveal the potency of this ingredient why?) Since bilberry is an extremely expensive ingredient for manufacturers to include - could it be that they use a really low potency? If they won’t tell, then people are naturally going to make that assumption.

The total of vitamins and minerals in one Life Force tablet accounts for 71% of that tablet! This is the second highest vitamins and minerals tally of the 4 supplements.

So my comment for this is the same as per LifePak and Essentials! (Please see above). Whether you see this as a weakness or not will once again depend on your stance towards high dose amounts of vitamins and minerals.

There is a lot of vitamin C in Life Force - 1500 mg to be exact!

for a full daily dose of tablets. I’d like to remind you (again) – vitamin C is one of the cheapest ingredients, roughly $15 a kilo - expensive ingredients cost hundreds of dollars a kilo with some over a thousand dollars!

There’s a tonne of studies available for and against high doses of vitamin C – many contradicting the results of the others. So I’m not going to get into that here. Keep in mind though that in doses of 400 mg > vitamin C acts as a pro-oxidant (opposite of antioxidant). Dose rates of >300 mg of Vitamin C have also been proven to increase the death rate from cardiovascular disease in diabetic women. Be careful! Think about it!

My final take on Life Force:

While I can’t help but see LifePak and Essentials as primarily multi vitamin and mineral supplements with some important extras included, I don’t see Life Force in the same way. That’s because there are enough non-vitamin/mineral nutrients to give it a definite ‘elite multi nutrient health supplement’ image – a true ‘one of the best vitamin supplements’ kinda feel.

However due to the high percentage of vitamin and minerals I don’t see Life Force as offering particularly good value for money.

Source Naturals definitely needs to be more open about their formulas.

Other ingredients for which information is hidden include:

Grape Seed Extract

Hawthorne Berry Extract

Milk Thistle Extract

Inositol

Lycopene

Quercetin

The company refused to reveal this info when I requested it - twice!

If for some reason I was unable to take Total Balance (for example an allergic reaction to one of the ingredients) then Life Force would be my next choice.

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