FROM DARKNESS INTO LIGHT How ancient Asian medical wisdom led to the development of perhaps the world's most effective mental acuity supplement.
By Richard T. Waggoner
For most of us it's a gradual process until the lights are finally turned off. It's almost like our brains are equipped with a dimmer switch that age insidiously pushes down. At first you may not notice that you've begun your journey into darkness. A forgotten name, a missed appointment, an almost imperceptible slowing down of your thought processes, all of which you might attribute to fatigue, stress, or whatever. But something is happening and that something is the breakdown of mental acuity.
Mental acuity is defined as sharpness of mind. Things considered in determining your mental acuity are memory, focus, concentration, and understanding. It is believed that as you age mental acuity will inevitably decline. The true story that follows will leave little doubt that this belief is wrong.
Ageless Dr. Lee I was not surprised in the least when I found out that my 103 year old friend Dr. Lee won the 2021 Chinese Sudoku Championship. Sudoku is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. The objective is to fill a 9 X 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3 X 3 sub-grids that compose the grid contain all of the digits from 1 to 9. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid, which for a well-posed puzzle has a single solution. Sudoku puzzle solutions at the level of national championships are extremely difficult and require mental acuity powers even the best sudoku players do not possess. But as I said, I was not surprised Dr. Lee won.
I met the extraordinary Dr. Lee 5 years ago in Shanghai. I travelled there to secure his help in formulating what I hoped would become the world's most effective mental acuity supplement. I dream big.
Dr. Lee was then and still is the owner and head formulator for one of China's oldest and most respected manufactures of TCM remedies. The effectiveness of the mental acuity formulation he ultimately helped develop for me was beyond anything I could have imagined.
Demand for mental acuity supplements is skyrocketing. Aging baby boomers are driving this demand. They desperately want to avoid the one condition they fear most, dementia. The never trust anyone over 30 generation are well into their seventies and clearly want to keep the lights on as long as possible. Thus a whole slew of natural products continue to appear that claim to stave off dementia and deliver vastly improved mental acuity.
They don't deliver. Many do contain so called nootropic brain hacking (I hate that meaningless term) ingredients but in reality the effects people feel mostly comes from the caffeine that all mental acuity products contain in abundance. More people are suffering from dementia than ever before, despite the best efforts of supplement manufactures in general and western medicine in particular. There had to be better solutions. I looked to the east.
Dr. Lee picked me up at the Shanghai international airport. He said he would be holding a sign with my name on it. Look for a tall old man with grey hair, he wrote in his email. On departing customs I spotted a sign with my name on it being held by a very tall impeccably dressed man in a tan suit. He had partially grey hair and appeared to be in his mid sixties, but certainly not old. I was struck by his lively piercing brown eyes. He stared intensely at me as I introduced myself. However, rather than being off putting, his stare exuded warmth and kindness
Dr. Lee spoke perfect english without a trace of accent. Shanghai international airport is located in Pudong the modern area of Shanghai, an enormous city with a population of 26.3 million people. To put that in perspective, New York City has a population of 8.3 million. I had never seen so many sky scrapers, literally hundreds surrounded us as Dr. Lee drove incredibly fast, weaving through light traffic, sometimes coming dangerous close to slower cars, all the while, chatting, laughing, drawing my attention to the many points of interest along the way.
His detailed descriptions surpassed even the best professional tour guides. I was amazed by the shear amount of knowledge he imparted on our 45 minute drive to my hotel that Dr. Lee said was located in the Bund. However, nothing could have prepared me for what I would soon learn.
Upon arriving at my hotel Dr. Lee explained that the Bund was the most famous area in Shanghai. It had once been the western center of culture and finance for Asia rivaling both New York and London, hence the early 20th century European architecture. Then he said, “I'll never forget the day, August 15, 1937. I was standing right here in front of this same hotel when I suddenly heard bombs exploding, the day Japanese General Iwane Matsui invaded Shanghai. On that day I decided to join the Chinese army led by General Chiang Kai-shek. It was my 18th birthday.”
I was dumbfounded. I did the quick math in my head. Dr. Lee was not in his mid sixties as I had thought. He was 98 years old! Dr. Lee looked at my shocked expression, smiled and said, “I told you I was an old man.”
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) The next morning Dr. Lee drove us to his company which was located on the outskirts of Shanghai. I found the contrast in scenery striking, ultra modern city, 30 minutes later rural China. There nestled in rolling farmland sat Dr. Lee's TCM manufacturing facility.
TCM is different in several fundamental ways from western medicine, but it's also based on the same principal, empiricism, the belief that objective observation is the most accurate way to determine facts. On that score Chinese doctors have been objectively observing by trail and error the healing effects of natural remedies for at least 50 centuries!
TCM views your body as an energy field consisting of ying and yang (male and female) expressions of a vital energy they call Qi, pronounced Chee. Health problems are an indication that ying and yang are either out of balance or blocked. It's the job of a TCM practitioner to restore free flowing balanced QI. They do so by administering acupuncture, acupressure, and herbal remedies.
Western medicine views your body as a multiplicity of individual parts organized into a series of systems: immune system, endocrine system, nervous system, etc. When a health problem emerges it is treated with drugs, natural substances, or interventions.
Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. My idea was to combine the best of both approaches to try and find a solution for the breakdown of mental acuity. After initially experiencing the 98 year old Dr. Lee in person I knew I was on the right track.
I've been casually interested in TCM for years, but became far more so recently with my budding mental acuity obsession. I was given Dr. Lee's contact information from a friend of mine, a prominent medical doctor, who was aware of my interest in TCM. My friend took a course from Dr. Lee several years ago when Dr. Lee was a visiting professor at Stanford. The course was entitled, TCM modalities for the prevention of neurodegeneration. Bingo!
I've been in the nutritional supplement manufacturing and marketing business for almost 40 years, both as an owner and CEO of several supplement companies. Currently I'm the CEO of IMMUNOCORP® which I founded in 1998. I am very familiar with good manufacturing practices (GMP) and everything related to producing quality nutritional supplements. Dr. Lee's company takes quality manufacturing to a level I've never seen.
He gave me an impressive and thorough tour to say the least. First Dr. Lee showed me an enormous warehouse filled with rows of neatly stacked burlap bags containing every known raw herb used in TCM remedies, from common to extremely rare, and all, Dr Lee said, were organically grown.
Then we moved to his extraction facility that housed several large extractors that Dr. Lee said used a patented high pressure purified water system, no chemicals, to produce his extremely concentrated herbal extracts. Finally we moved to his ultra modern research, testing, and certification laboratory, so well appointed it could have just as easily been the center piece of a modern pharmaceutical company. I felt completely confident that every product coming from Dr. Lee's TCM manufacturing company would equal or exceed the quality and safety protocols for western Pharmaceutical companies. It certainly surpassed most supplement manufactures.
We finished the tour in Dr. Lee's beautifully decorated office, a fusion of east and west, and immediately got down to the business at hand, mental acuity. The first question I had, of course, was what TCM formulations did Dr. Lee take personally? He was not a normal 98 year old man, by any stretch of the imagination. His answer surprised me.
Reverence “I do take an herbal formulation my father entrusted to me years ago. It's been in my family for a long time and maybe that's why we all live so long,” he laughed. Dr. Lee comes from a family of TCM practitioners famous in Asia for centuries. “I definitely believe my father's formula that I take everyday helps me stay sharp, but I also get something else everyday that helps me stay sharp, and I believe it's every bit as important as my father's formula,” He paused, and said, “reverence.”
“You see in Asia we revere old age not youth. Everyday you age you automatically gain status. Old people are respected, valued, sought after. A wrinkled face denotes wisdom. Old age is not something we try to slow down it's something we desire. Rather than thinking old people are less competent we believe as you age you become more intelligent, more capable.
“We don't trust youth and we certainly don't idolize youth. Youth is to grow out of not to prolong. We take old people's advise not young people's. Old people are not a burden to their families they are a blessing, a gift.
“We believe life starts in darkness, ignorance, and moves towards the light, wisdom. As the Buddha taught, enlightenment is the journey we are all on. It's the reason we are here. Maybe it will happen in this lifetime. We only need to pay attention.
“I can promise you this Mr. Waggoner, my herbal formulation will absolutely help your brain function better, perhaps much better. It will improve what you call mental acuity, and this new experience may make you see yourself and the world from a new positive perspective.
“Hopefully my formulation will help your older customers realize how capable they really are, as their memory, focus and comprehension improves. Maybe it will help them worry less. Maybe it will help them realize that old age is something to cherish not dread. Maybe my formula will help your customers become an example of why everyone should revere old age. I sincerely hope so.”
And thus began a close collaboration that culminated with what I'm sure is the world's most effective mental acuity supplement, the perfected blending of TCM and western science. The subject of the final chapter.
ACUITOL® I brought a large sample of Dr. Lee's ancient “sharpness” formula back to IMMUNOCORP® along with his recommendations of “western” natural ingredients that he thought might improve his formula, knowing my goal was to combine the best of both TCM and western science. In that respect, Dr. Lee was well qualified to be of assistance. Not only was he a master TCM practitioner, Dr. Lee held Ph.D's in both organic chemistry and neuroscience.
IMMUNOCORP® has an amazing research team that over the years has developed multiple world class health products, ARCTIC RUBY® OIL and IMMUTOL®, to name a couple. My team was primed and ready to begin the combining process. However, before we began the daunting task of trying to prove poet Rudyard Kipling's famous line wrong, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, we would first try Dr. Lee's formula on ourselves to get a baseline understanding. The effects literally blew our collective minds!
I'm 75. If I am honest with myself I'd have to admit my interest in developing the world's best mental acuity product was not exclusively driven by the exploding demand for said product. I wanted, like everyone else I knew over 50, to keep the lights burning bright. So far, I thought mine were. After taking Dr. Lee's formula, 4 capsules daily, I discovered that my brain's dimmer switch had been pushed down far more than I realized.
Sure, I occasionally forgot a name, but overall my memory seemed to be functioning fine. A few days on Dr. Lee's formula and both my short term and long term memory were different. I had no problem accessing experiences long forgotten. I took a series of short term memory tests, and aced them. Within a week my mind felt transformed. Hard to explain. Focus and concentration had improved, but something else was happening. It was like I could understand things better. Creative thinking, abstract concepts came more easily. I saw subtle connections in the world at large that I had never noticed. The act of perception itself seemed to have meaning.
My experience was in no way unique. Virtually every one of the scientists on my research team, 7 in total all distinguished, reported dramatically improved mental acuity. My lead Scientist, Dr Jan Raa, was so stunned by the effects he suspected Dr. Lee had included pharmaceutical drugs like amphetamine sulfate to his formula.
Dr. Raa ran a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis, the gold standard of lab equipment we use to identify individual ingredients. The analysis came back drug negative and only identified the purified herbs contained in Dr. Lee's ancient formula.
I emailed Dr. Lee a report of our initial experiences with his formula. Dr. Lee's reply was brief: Now you're starting to understand the power of balancing Ying and Yang. Add the the other western ingredients I recommended and get back to me.
And that's exactly what we did plus several more natural substances my team chose that were backed by double blind clinical studies which clearly demonstrated their ability to improve mental acuity. However, the task of blending east and west proved extremely difficult. On our first go around the new western ingredients did not help Dr. Lee's formula. If anything, they diminished its effectiveness.
We continued to experiment to no avail. At my wits end after more than 2 years of fruitless efforts I emailed Dr. Lee and asked him if he had any suggestions? He asked me a single simple question. Had I tried the formula with just the extra western ingredients he originally recommended? I had not. My team always added more of what they and I thought would help.
We tried again using only his recommended western ingredients in the precise amounts specified. The results were, as I mentioned at the beginning, beyond anything I could have imagined. When I told Dr. Lee he was not surprised. His only comment was “well done Mr Waggoner.” East and West had indeed met, even if the credit went entirely to Dr. Lee. It didn't matter, my team and I couldn't have been happier. I named our new formula ACUITOL®.
Here are a few reviews:
ACUITOL® turned around my life I'm 71. The last 10 years have been all down hill for me. Things went south when I started to forget names and faces. It wasn't that bad at first, but it got worse. Then my friends would tell me that I was repeating myself. That made me really self conscious which made it harder for me to hold a conversation because I was so worried that I'd stumble or repeat myself. One thing led to another. Eventually I felt like I was annoying people so I avoided being around them. Luckily my neighbor gave me a copy of From Darkness Into Light. I ordered ACUITOL® immediately. It turned around my life! The most important thing ACUITOL® did was give me back my confidence. Yes my memory got much better, so did my focus and understanding. But take it from me, once your start to see any improvement your confidence skyrockets. I realized that my worst enemy was myself. I just stoped listening to the negative voice in my head and started living again.
Stanley M. Cedar Rapids, IA
I can run circles around the hot shots! I have zero issues with mental acuity. I'm 42 and my recall, focus and concentration are great. I ordered ACUITOL® because I thought it might give me an edge. It did in spades. I am a coder and now no one in my office can keep up with me. No one and that includes the young hot shots. I can run circles around them! The coolest part is ACUITOL® doesn't feel like and energy shot or any other super caffeinated drink. It's different. The best word I can think of to describe its effects is clarity, massive clarity.
Reed S. Los Angeles, CA
I got my mom back! My mother is 84 years old and lives with me. She's definitely all there but for the last few years she's slowed down. Hardly talks at all. The one thing my mom liked to do the most was play canasta. That stopped 2 years ago. My mom and I have been loyal customers of IMMUNOCORP® for twenty years so when I received your new book I ordered ACUITOL®. I figured if it worked as well as your other products I should try it on mom. For the first week I didn't notice much, maybe she was a little more talkative but not much. The next week the miracle happened. One night she suddenly asked me to play canasta. I was shocked. Not only did we play, she beat the living day lights out of me. Now we play almost every night. ACUITOL® gave me my mom back. The only down side, she never stops talking. lol. BTW I take ACUITOL® now. I need all the help I can get to beat mom.
Sally B. Salt Lake City, UT
So there you have it. If you'd like greater light in your life, If you'd like to experience the centuries of wisdom contained in every capsule then order what I believe is the world's most effective mental acuity supplement. Order ACUITOL® now. You won't be disappointed.
Richard T. Waggoner Founder, IMMUNOCORP® | |