You will need to read my previous posts to know why I am so interested in writing about particular health products in the market that you haven’t really heard about but are purported to be excellent for you. In any case, as with any article that you read on the Internet, read this post with a pinch of salt and a lot of research.
I’ve been out of MLM for close to a year now. There were some things that I had so much faith in that I had never doubted their capabilities. One of these things was, of course, the nature and the capability of the products that I used to sell. I had never doubted in the ability to restore health to all the people around me. I felt close to being a saint when I gave those products away for free. I had so much faith in TCM essential oils that I used them on my brother, who had acute stomach pain, and I thought he’d get better. 12 hours later, he ended up on the hospital bed, awaiting surgery for severe appendicitis*.
Despite that, my faith in the products were never shaken. One year on, however, I decided to do what I’d call an “itchy-hand” investigation on the latest product that had been circling around through emailers from the company that I used to be with: Celergen.
I found the following on the website about Celergen:
Researched and developed by prestigious Swiss, French and German Anti-Aging Experts, Cell Therapists, gerontologists, biotech chemists, scientists and pharmaceutical professionals, CELERGEN is a powerful, multi-faceted cell therapy treatment system that helps intercept and prevent, repair and maintain, rebuild and rehabilitate your body irrespective of your age.
There have been loads of testimonials on Celergen on its website: Benefits include alleviating one’s depression, quick recuperation from strenuous activities, alleviating back pain, increasing sexual satisfaction etc.
Celergen’s ingredients include BioDNA Cellular Marine Complex (unable to find on Wikipedia), Peptide E Collagen – which is a high-elastin collagen that is supposed to help reinforce skin texture and elasticity, and Hydro MN Peptide. According to the Celergen website, it reduces conversion of carbohydrates to fats by 37%, and also helps in improving the biodynamics of the body.
I just thought that this must be a heck of a wonderful supplement (I initially thought it was a drug, but the corporate video stated that it’s actually an enteric coated supplement). Think about it, it sounds absolutely brilliant. And what sounds good is that it’s been rigorously tested and certified:
Celergen is an extensively certified anti aging supplement with full conformity to international stringent standards of current Good Manufacturing Practice, Organic Farming and Non-GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) compliance, European certifications and Total Environmental Free Quality Management.
It is clinically tested by Bio-HC, one of Europe’s largest and most sophisticated Clinical Test Research Centres in Pessac, France under Good Laboratories Practice conditions. Bio-HC comprises professionals which include physicians, Pharmacists, dermatologists, allergologists, biochemists and bacteriologists.
The website of Bio-HC is a relatively simple one. The laboratory analyses a range of different health supplements and methods and determines if they are safe enough to end up in the market. Interestingly, however, there are no supplements that are listed on the website. That isn’t really important as long as we know the process by which the supplement was made, which you can find from the official Celergen website:
The science of cell therapy is not a recent phenomenon. In the Eber papyrus of medicine written in 1600 B.C., the Egyptians recommended the injection of animal organs to improve human vitality. – Somehow, I have my doubts about that. But anyway, I just continued reading:
At the end of the 19th century, Paris physiologist Brown Sequard also pronounced the potent effects of cellular therapy when he experienced a significant increase in virility through an injection of cellular extracts from the testicles of a bull. In the late 19th century, remarkable research on Cell Therapy by the French Novel (sic) laureate Dr. Alexis Carrel not only stunned the medical world but had a profound effect on Professor Dr. Paul von Niehans, a world renowned Swiss surgeon.
I highlighted these three characters because they are supposed to be the pioneers of Celergen. A simple search on Wikipedia, however, seems to suggest that not only do they not support Celergen, but their studies did not really suggest that cell therapy was effective.
Brown Sequard is really Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, a Mauritian-born physiologist. In his extreme old age, he advocated the hypodermic injection of a fluid prepared from the testicles of guinea pigs and dogs, as a means of prolonging human life. It was known, among scientists, derisively, as the Brown-Séquard Elixir. - Well, I really don’t know if this actually works, the Brown-Sequard Elixir. Even so, injecting testicular fluids into the human body MIGHT only prolong human life in the sense that it contains testosterone, nothing more. I’ll update this page when I do a Google search.
Dr. Alexis Carrel was indeed a Nobel laureate: His work on cellular senescence (aging), however, did not really “stun” the world as mentioned inside the facts given on the website. Carrel believed that the cells could grow indefinitely with proper nutrition and proceeded to demonstrate using chicken cells that they could grow indefinitely (and, interestingly, he did prove it; unfortunately, no other scientist has been able to conclusively demonstrate this procedure). However, two other scientists (Hayflick and Moorhead) proved that this wasn’t possible. Their conclusion – that cells have a limited number of divisions before they die – is now called the Hayflick limit. Today scientists conclude that Carrel’s study could most likely have been confounded by other substances inside the test tube without his knowledge.
That brings me to the last of the three “famous” scientists: Dr. Paul von Niehans. Interestingly, I couldn’t find von Niehans inside the English version of Wikipedia. I delved further into Google (ah, the wonders of Google for a cynic), and I found this – translated into English:
Paul Niehans (November 21 1882 in Bern, † September 1st 1971 in Montreux) was a Swiss physician. He is the inventor of the live cell (life cell therapy or cell therapy).
Niehans conducted in 1931, the process of live cell as cellular therapy book. Suspensions of fetal cells from sheep are injected while the patient. It is a non-surgical form of xenotransplantation in humans, which today has only a minor role.
Read the last paragraph carefully: Xenotransplantation means the usage of animal cells, tissues or organs to transplant into a human body. The procedure has involved many ethical and medical issues. Of course, xenotransplantation now appears to become more and more feasible with the advance in technology: you are now able to “trick” a pig organ, for instance, to behave like a human organ in a body. But questions have been raised about whether an animal organ can live as long as a human one.
So where in the world did Celergen even get those wonderful testimonials of its supposedly groundbreaking research? Unless Bio-HC comes out with something spectacular to counter my argument, I find it doubtful that Celergen is trustworthy enough to observe any sort of usefulness – beyond the placebo effect, of course.
P.S. I am not implying that Celergen does not work. I am only talking about the inconsistency of the historical background of cell therapy that they’ve placed on their website. In any case, do your own research before consulting with anybody, even if the person is a trusted friend, when he or she is selling you a particular product.
*I am also not implying a causation: my brother, obviously, did not contract appendicitis because of the essential oil. But he might have had a less painful experience if we had sent him to the hospital earlier rather than relying blindly on the oils instead.
