Reliv - Don't Take It!!

Below is a post I just got from one of our readers. I have heard many stories like this over the years and it's worth considering before taking Reliv.

"I wish I would of found this site before I got started on Reliv. I always thought it was odd that a product that cared so much about people was so expensive. It seemed that the people it would help the most were ones that couldn't afford it. But that didn't stop me from putting my hard earned dollars into it. For 4 years I took 4 different products of Reliv, the Soy Sentials was really hard for me to get down, was told if wanted results I had to learn to choke it down. I got results alright, there is no doubt in my mind that Reliv was the source of 2 emergency room visits followed by a week in the hospital all do to kidney stones over a 6 month time period and oh yes, lets not forget the parathyroid surgery. My urologist told me that excessive intake of calcium carbonate can cause both conditions. It took 3 months to finally get all the kidney stones out of my body I had added up the % of daily values I was taking with Reliv and knew the calcium was 3 times higher than recommended, when I brought this to my distributors attention was told I was told that the those percentages were out dated and what my body didn't need, it would pass out. That was before I started having problems, but...I kept taking it. I cant believe I bought into that. I wish I would of listened to my body before I ended up the emergency room the first time. It has been 3 years since I last took a Reliv shake, it was just in the past 6 months that I have started getting back to my normal activities. I had about $2000 of product left when I stopped taking Reliv, I was one of those people who became an affiliate to get the product for my own use at a lower cost. When I took the remaining product back to my distributor was told they couldn't refund my money but would switch out for different Reliv product. Are you serious?! After what I have been through, I will never take a supplement of any kind again. I know my story is old, but the medical expenses, losing out on a least a year of my life and the thousands of dollars I spent on Reliv products for nothing is still fresh to me. A lesson I will never forget, any thing taken in excess is not good for you and by all means, if your body doesn't want something in it and you have to choke it down to get it to take it -- don't take it! Thank you for your blog so people can see both sides of Reliv."

What is WRONG with Reliv? Can be Deadly!

"Please, all you who have cancer or have had cancer or have especially a CHILD with cancer - run from RELIV as soon as you possibly can! Flee from this product!

Google "dangers of soy" and read up on the first website that pops up. Documentation is provided for the link between soy and breast cancer. Soy acts like an estrogen in the breast and greatly increases the risk of estrogen-sensitive breast cancer. (This is why menopausal women ceased taking estrogen - HRT - to treat hot flashes: its impact upon breast cancer risk.)

My 37yo. sister came down with estrogen-sensitive breast cancer. Her husband, a bio-medical researcher at UVA who earned his post-doc degree at Johns Hopkins Medical School, poured himself into researching how to fight and prevent breast cancer. He will not permit my sister to TOUCH soy! Only the fermented versions of soy, such as tempeh, are risk-free and only in small quantities.

Please, read up on "dangers of soy" for the sake of you and your loved ones, and recognize that Reliv despite all the hype may not be the best choice for you. Yes, good nutrition can accomplish miracles, and many of the anecdotes you read/hear may be true, but you can get your hands on great nutrition without turning to a soy-based supplement. And in the long run, you may run into life-threatening problems which come only after taking Reliv for many years. (It takes years for cancers to build.)"

New Milestone

We have cleared the 200,000 mark for pages viewed on this blog. Thank you everyone for making this so successful. I hope we have helped some people find the truth.

My Reliv Motive and Helping People

I am not sure if the poster of this comment is still reading the blog but I wanted to answer this post I got this morning. "I noticed you didn't bother to add my positive comments about Reliv to your blog. That tells me a lot about your motive to "help" people."

The purpose of this blog is and will always remain to post negative stories about Reliv, it's products and business. The web is FULL of sites and reviews that post only the positive or sites that are simple flooded by over ambitious distributors. I want to give people a chance to read the negative without having to dig through all the BS that is floating around. I have been to meetings, I have heard the canned phone calls, most I believe are just pre-digested BS.

Yes Reliv does help some people, good for you, but that will not change the fact that Reliv hurts some as well. So please don't bother sending me your positive stories, they won't get posted.

Reliv May Cause Serious Problems! Important Warning

The following is a post from one of our readers. Please read this article before you damage your body by taking Reliv. And please, if you have had any problems with Reliv, the products or business, please send them to us so others will know. Many distributors make Reliv out to be a miracle but for every success story there is someone who fails or is hurt. "I to have fibromyalgia, I went on reliv, on November 4th,2008 within 3 to 4 days I could not sleep due to lots of flem in my throat, after 3 week of not sleeping one day I suddenly felt very dizzy, I was unable to walk without feeling like I was going to pass out. I sat on my couch all day, at about 6 in the evening my mother called to see how I was feeling, I told her what was going on, and she came to my house to pick me up. I called the hospital hotline and they hade me give the phone to my mom, they told her not to try to take me to the hospital herself, but to call 911 immediately. When they got there my BP which has always been fine, was at 154 over 90. I was rushed to the hospital, and on the way there my head started to hurt so bad, it caused tears to pour out of my eyes, the pain was at a ten or higher, I never want to experience that ever again. The dizziness was so bad I could not even make it to the bathroom without help, how embarrassing. I was in the hospital for three days. By the time I was let out of the hospital I had been off of the Reliv for 3 days, it took another 2 days for the dizziness to go away, and after stopping the Reliv, the flem is gone. One week later, my friend who started Reliv 1 week after me, ended up in the hospital with the same exact symptoms, she was in the hospital for 4 days. I wish I knew what steps to take to go after Reliv, it is to strange that we both had the same problems after starting Reliv, and now that we are off of it we both feel better."

Reliv Causes Low Vitamin D and Anxiety Attacks

Why are Reliv distributors so pushy when it comes to their products? I am sure there are some who truly care about the people they are reaching out to and these few are selling the product at or close to their cost as they believe in helping. The rest and I believe the majority, are only selling the products for the money. The Bible is clear that the "love of money is the root of all evil". Few if any distributors have seen actual results themselves but rather regurgitate the lies they hear in their meetings and phone calls.

"Hi, I had a very pushy realtor who insisted Reliv was the cure-all to everyone's problems. According to her, everyone should be taking Reliv and it is our job to tell others about it because it could help them and blah blah blah ( I heard hours of this talk) My husband took the Reliv vitamin about once or twice a day. The next time he went to the doctor he had a vitamin D deficiency and very low good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. He is now on prescription strength vitamin D and was told to eat more avocados, olives, but also bacon and burgers. Because of the low vitamin D he suffered from a few anxiety attacks which is common in those who have low vitamin D. We have no doubt in our minds that Reliv was the cause of this. Just recently our friends who we like to call "crunchy" gave us a pamphlet on the dangers of soy hoping we would not give anything with soy to our new baby. After reading it we concluded that it must have been the soy in Reliv since it specifically mentioned soy depleting vitamin D and lowering cholesterol."

Reliv Destroys Families and Health

Below is an email that I received from one of our readers. I know I have said this more than once but to me it's sad to see how the love of money that Reliv and MLMs create can cause so much heartache and pain. If the product is so good, why not get the price as cheap as possible so that everyone can afford it and be cured? The answer is very simple, they don't care about the cure, they care about the money. 

I get lots of emails from angry distributors saying what I post isn't true, but my question is, are you selling at cost or are you making money????? If you believe this product works then WHY are you making money off the suffering of other people?????????????

"I recently stumbled upon your site and am thankful for it. It has helped me find some balance again and answer some of my questions.

I started dating someone about 7 months ago whose mother is very high up in the company as a Reliv distributor. After hearing a bit about Reliv from them, I thought it was worth a try since it had helped people with similar health problems that I had. I was already eating healthy and taking lots of supplements for my specific ailments. I got on the product and felt very awkward about having to talk to my boyfriend's mother every few days on a "business call" rather than pursuing a personal relationship with her. She'd always put me on three-way calls with others who had similar health problems to me or my family members, and I started noticing that every call had the same format. I eventually had her stop calling me about it because I was uncomfortable with it and didn't like talking to strangers. Later, she blamed why the product didn't work for me on me on me not being in contact with her to have her monitor my symptoms and dosages. They claim people don't get results unless they get their follow up. Sounds like a business tactic to keep people buying it to me. I felt I should be able to be a responsible adult and own my own health without the babysitting, and I took the shakes faithfully without the follow up calls. They soon increased me to three times a day since I was still getting sick easily and I eventually thought I was allergic to the fibrestore (a third, optional powder to add to the shakes) because I would sneeze around it and was getting stomach aches after taking it. I got off of that, but after 3 months, I still hadn't seen any results so they said to double my shakes . Once I doubled the shakes, I started developing a sensitivity/intolerance, or allergy to soy but didn't know that until later when I researched it. I look back at my photos before and after doubling the shakes and see how swollen I was (my family was wondering if my face shape was just changing in my older age). I also started breaking out with acne like crazy on my face and getting very itchy in my eyes and skin and throat after drinking it (my mouth also felt very swollen and dry). I  had stomach pains and gas pains, etc. and worst of all, my chest often felt super tight, and I just thought my asthma was returning (though doctors said I no longer had asthma) or some other health problem was developing. I was super fatigued all of the time too. This was often associated with my face feeling (or being) flushed. I was so frustrated with the obsession/idol this family made out of Reliv that started researching what others said online. That's when I wondered if I might be having a reaction to soy. I got off for a week or two like all the sites (and a few nutritionist friends) recommended and then tried it again and reacted much worse (a sign of a food allergy).

    The worst part of the whole experience was that Reliv was so important to my boyfriend that we would fight about it all of the time. He and his mom wanted his future wife to share this value. He also said he would be disappointed every day of his life if I wasn’t on it and he feared I would die young. Whenever I was sick, I would be blamed because I wasn’t taking Reliv. They always said that after 15+ years of experience with this product and such miraculous testimonies all of their lives that their belief in it was bullet proof and that they just cared about my health and KNEW it would fix everything getting me off my meds and stuff eventually, so it looked like love. Even once they knew I was allergic to it, they said it could cure my soy allergy if I started with a small bit and worked up to the right amount over long periods of time and stayed in contact with her to monitor my dosage. I wasn’t willing at that time to go through more breathing attacks, and she said I just wasn't "emotionally" ready for it.

    I heard another story from them about a doctor who it didn't work for because he wasn't willing to quit his job for this product in order to get enough sleep with it - the product supposedly won't work unless you get the proper amount of sleep too (and water and whatever other excuse they might have). There's always an excuse for why it did not work for some; that way, they can say it works for everyone who uses it right. Everyone else they say it didn't work for must have just not taken it consistently and that's why they do the calls to keep people motivated and believing in it (sounds like a lot of placebo effect to me).

    Moreover, I highlighted every ingredient on the cans (and the exact matching amounts) that I was taking in different forms beforehand (without the soy that I reacted to) and had all of them except two (plus many others that weren't listed), and all that had been working for me prior to Reliv, but it wasn't enough for them; they still felt I had to be on their particular product. They never acknowledge any other products as also beneficial, and though they admit and know this is just a supplement, they act like it's a magical formula. They also never seem to let others have their own opinions. It's fine to recommend it to someone you think it will help, but to never let the topic drop is just wrong. My boyfriend and I would have 45-60 minute conversations about it every few days with him trying to convince me.  I believe it can be a good product for many, but I am not okay with the way they do business or worship this stuff. I came under such confusion about the product while I was in that relationship. I felt like some of the "brainwashing" was rubbing off on me, but now I know it's just not practical. Hospitals would be cleared and news would spread like lightning if what they said was true. It'd be the fountain of youth. They say they never have been sick while on the product but I saw them become under the weather and also knew they took other herbs when they started to not feel well. So be aware that if you have symptoms like I had, you may be developing a food allergy (the more soy you take, the more likely you are to become sensitive to it...and one guy I knew on it was super emotional - maybe from all of the estrogen in it). Don't fall into the brainwashing. If it works for you, fine, but be logical about it not being possible to be a "cure-all.""

Reliv's Return Policy is Smoke and Mirrors

I am getting really tired of people writing in and telling me about Reliv's "Return Policy". This policy depends on the honesty of the distributor selling the product. First of all, if the distributor says no, it isn't going to happen and this happens a LOT more than you think. Secondly the distributor usually tries to convince you that you haven't taken the products properly or for long enough till you run out of time and then they don't have to return your money.

Reliv International doesn't return your money directly to you. IF for some reason you don't like their products, they taste bad, you didn't feel better, etc and you call the 800 number, they tell you sorry but you need to contact the person who sold them to you AND you MUST have all of the cans to get your money back. The distributor who sold the products to you has to return the money from their pocket and they have to get it back from the company, thus you see why they don't like to do it.

And if I'm not mistaken, they only offer a 30 day return policy BUT they encourage you to try it for 45 days. I have rejected many comments from unhappy distributors writing in to say that to get he best results you must take the product for 45 days. How convenient!

Reliv's products and marketing are things of the past. There are WAY better and healthier products out there. Don't settle for something just because a friend is forcing you to listen or buy from them. Over 95% of Reliv Distributors fail to make money and most go into extreme debt buying the products.