lassesen 7:25 am on May 5, 2022  

Intelligence of Nature “RESTORE” – still danger?

A reader emailed about my earlier post, RESTORE for gut health Danger Will Robison! I am a firm believer in evidence based medical treatment. Ideally the source of the information will be a study on the US National Library of Medicine (PubMed). If it is not studied, IMHO there is a significant risk of danger.

He writes:

I purchased  a bottle of RESTORE a couple years back which was manufactured by Bionic Sciences LLC which is now ION* Gut Health and the company changed its name to Intelligence of Nature  the ingredients of my RESTORE bottle says Aqueous Humid Substances ( Terrahydrate). 150mg per teaspoon and now the ingredients on the ION* bottle says Humic Extract from ancient soil 5mg per teaspoon …
Are we talking about the same product here???

I proceeded to their site to see if they have any evidence. They linked to studies, I downloaded many of them:

My first impression is that we have gas-lighting here. It has not been peer-reviewed, but most people will not registered the “pending”. It has not been published.

Another of their studies seems like a deliberate attempt to mislead, iMedPub seems to be an attempt to mimic PubMed… Going to that site I see “All Published work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License” and who owns that site is willfully hidden (checking its registration) and it is a “we publish anything for a fee site” – “Hence, the Journals operate solely through processing charges we receive from the authors and some academic/corporate sponsors. ‘[src]

So what is in it? They appear to have obfuscate the ingredients – Dropping the list and replacing it with a non-descript “Humic Extract (from Ancient Soil)”. In other words, I can get the same thing by just going to any National park and collecting some soil!!

There are studies for other products

Bottom Line

The firm is my issue, not the concept. Studies have shown that results depend on the source/content of the humic acids. They have failed to provide scientific information on the content. They have failed to publish respectable studies and the studies on their site appears to be gas-lighting. Their prices is $72 for a 2 month supply… well, I can get 25 pounds of Granular Humic Acid Powder – 25lb Bag, for $20 from Walmart!

I have also commented in the past” A teaspoon of good soil will likely help many microbiome issues” (i.e. the hygiene hypothesis). Most of the bacillus probiotics are soil based bacteria.