Resident experts of the health and fitness board, I have a favor to ask. I recently became involved with a health and wellness company called IDLife. IDLife manufacturers and distributes pharmaceutical grade, all natural, gluten free, soy free, casein free, non GMO, and organic nutritional supplements. IDLife attracted me because of the free, online, HIPAA compliant, health and lifestyle assessment it offers that determines the unique nutritional supplementation needs of an individual. The supplements are then delivered to each individual in customized daily tear off strips using chronobiology dosing in AM and PM packets. I would be very grateful to anyone willing to go online to the website below, take the free assessment and provide feedback - whether positive or negative. It will ask you to create a profile for HIPAA compliance reasons - your information will not be used as part of a mass mailing or anything like that.

If you have any questions or want to email me your thoughts, feel free to contact me at liveonce.idlife@gmail.com. If you are interested in buying any of the products or to learn more about the business, I am happy to discuss that as well. Your feedback is valuable to me.

https://liveonce.idlife.com

Thanks in advance - Josh Marion, Class of 2004

So you have any with gluten and soy in them? My life coach recommended I get a lot more gluten in my diet, and I love the taste of soy.

1. I'm not signing up for anything.
2. It seems very similar to Amway, Avacare, etc.
3. Prices are outrageous - $90 for 2 lbs of protein? Come on.
4. The concept is good, but the execution if flawed. Understand I didn't take the survey (see #1), but how do you know what I need without bloodwork and detailed information.

That's my feedback with 11 years of training and suppliment expermentation.

buy an ad.

Hoosegow - Thanks for your thoughts. I'll attempt to provide a few responses.

1. I understand your hesitation as I am very reluctant to sign up or create a log-in for anything. However, I can tell you that your information will not be used for any purpose other than IDLife being HIPAA compliant. You will receive no communications from IDLife and your information will not be distributed to any third parties. Unfortunately, if you do not sign up you cannot take the assessment, and then I think you miss out on the true value of the product.

2. Disclaimer - I am not an Advocare expert but this is my understanding of the differences. The supplements being provided to you by IDLife are individually designed based on the results of your assessment. IDLife sells a different combination of specific supplements for each individual whereas I believe Advocare only offers products that contain the exact same ingredients for everyone who takes them. Additionally, Associates that sell IDLife do not have to maintain any inventory and do not deal with any of the payments. Customers order from and pay IDLife directly through the Associate's website.

3. The meal replacement shake is intended to compete with other high quality meal replacement shakes as opposed to pure protein shakes. For example, Shakeology is a fairly popular meal replacement shake and it is priced well above $90 for a 30 day supply.

4. The assessment contains thousands of algorithms that determine the supplements you need based on your answers to the assessment. The assessment asks questions about your family history, your diet, exercise, current medicines, etc. Therefore, unless you take the assessment, it cannot tell you what supplements you should be taking. I have discussed the assessment with individuals that usually work with specialists and do the entire blood work analysis, etc. to determine their correct supplements. The results produced by the online assessment have been matching up with the analysis provided to those individuals by their specialists.

I understand if this is not for everyone but I wanted to help clarify a few items with you.

Aggie00 - like I said, the goal of my post was not to try and sell products to you. I am trying to gain some feedback from a group that I believe has a good knowledge base in this industry. I am trying to use this as a gauge to determine if this is a valuable resource to people or if I have been drinking the kool-aid.

One of my good friends has been involved with this, so I had previously signed up to see what was recommended to me for curiosity sake. I agree with hoosegow, good concept, but flawed execution.

1. It seems to recommend the AM and PM supplement to everyone. Does everyone really need these supplements?
2. There seems to be a lot of conflicting research on what is good for you. I've seen research showing Vitamin D and Fish Oil supplements to be good for you, other research showing it to be bad. How do they determine which results to use?
3. The accuracy of the health report seems questionable without blood work and other detailed information as hoosegow mentioned.
4. It's expensive although the quality is theoretically better.
5. The MLM aspect of the business makes it seem scammy.

I only supplement when there is a specific, short term need. Anything else is handled by adjusting my diet of real food. For example, if I must go without fish for a few months, I'd possibly temporarily supplement fish oil and vitamin D.

I filled out the questionnaire, reviewed the website and leadership of IDLife. I have several concerns. First, based on the ingredients information, I could not see where the individualization occurs without changing the ingredient list.

I also did not see anyone listed as their primary researcher or science director. This made me question the validity of the assessment and/or its algorithm since there was no one credited with its creation. IDLife needs a science or medical board or director who can provide supporting research for the products and/or ingredients as well as the assessment's specific algorithm. How do I know what the specific supplements are that my assessment dictated? How do I know that my individualized supplements are in fact individualized?

Another issue I saw was that the leadership team had no experience in pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals or dietetics. They all had experience in direct marketing or multi-level marketing but zero clinical nutrition experience. It reminded me of an excerpt from the book, "The 4 Hour Work Week" by Timothy Ferris, which described one of the best ways to make easy money is to create your own supplement company by purchasing vitamins and protein shakes wholesale from a generic manufacturer, relabeling them and selling them at a profit online. The joys of an unregulated industry.

I compared the ingredients in the meal replacement shake with a comparable Advocare (competitor mentioned previously) shake. It appears that the IDLife shakes are very low in carbohydrate and high in protein in comparison. This is not an adequate nutrient balance for a meal replacement. It is more appropriate for a protein shake.

All in all, IDLife seems to be well marketed to good people who lack significant nutrition education but lacking transparency, independent quality control and published scientific leadership.

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all natural, gluten free, soy free, casein free, non GMO, and organic nutritional supplements

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I have a lot of that wrapped in white paper in my chest freezer, but then again I went in halves on a grassfed cow with a buddy and nothing beats a freezer full of grassfed locally raised deadcow.

As for your pyramid "health" marketing? Take a number out back and hope you didn't spend a bunch of money "getting in."

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liveonce.idlife@gmail.com

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LOL gmail account for a web based MLM company... seems professional.

txrandom and w8liftr - thanks for the feedback. These are the types of questions and issues I hoped people on this board could help generate. To answer txrandom's question, it is my understanding that every person will have an AM & PM supplement; however, the vitamins, minerals, etc. within the AM & PM supplements will be different for each person. To answer one of w8liftr's concerns, the program has actually been around in a paper form version for several years. It was developed by a pharmacist named Paul Sullivan. The concept was just recently converted to an electronic program by a new company.

Flack - I can see where the gmail account may not seem professional to some but I created it in order to be able to manage the email from my phone.

I've looked at the website, researched some oft he people involved, etc. The overall scheme has my BS alarm going off. I'd stay away.

I googled Paul Sullivan. He does not appear on the IDLife site but several sales people mention him. One says he is consults in the Pharmacy continuing education program for pharmacists at Bastyr University. Looking at the Bastyr Univ website, there are not any listings for Pharmacy continuing education but they do have programs in Acupuncture, Herbal Sciences and Midwifery.

The sales person's website claims thousands of studies supporting the nutritional assessment, but none are referenced and there are no Paul Sullivan articles dealing with vitamins that I could find in a Medline search.

When you are talking about your health, transparency is vital. If you cannot easily find relevant supporting material for a proposed therapy, do not be a blind guinea pig no matter how fantastic the website or salesperson sounds.

Don't forget the public slideshare presentation that doesn't mention anything about the supplements but everything about the compensation opportunities.

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Flack - I can see where the gmail account may not seem professional to some but I created it in order to be able to manage the email from my phone.

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I have a side business (not marketing, but my own personal business), with my own domain, website and e-mail. I use that e-mail with my phone and ipad no problem. It isn't hard to be present a professional image, it is very easy to destroy that professional image with a throw away email like a gmail or hotmail (or other) account.

[This message has been edited by DBSwooper (edited 2/10/2014 1:59p).]

If you Google the founder and CEO, Logan Stout, the website Rip Off Report (www.ripoffreport.com) appears 5th or 6th down the page. It accuses him of making many false promises and half-truths to parents of players in his Dallas Patriots youth select baseball club. He is described by one complainant as "a cross between a television evangelist and a snake oil salesman." This is the first objective website listed in the search results. The others above it are all created/maintained by Mr. Stout.

I mention this as a warning to do your homework before investing any money in any side business, direct sales or multi-level marketing scheme.

[This message has been edited by w8liftr (edited 2/10/2014 2:00p).]