It’s easy for a company in the wellness industry to make claims about the power of their products. But if those claims aren’t backed up by scientific research then they really aren’t worth much. That’s why it’s important to look at the process through which a company looks into the effectiveness of its offerings. In this respect, the health and wellness company LifeWave has shown itself to be ahead of others in the field. We’ve broken down some of that work below to help readers learn to gauge a company’s effectiveness.
Company background
For those not familiar with the company, LifeWave was founded in 2004 by CEO David Schmidt. The company works to create innovative products that help consumers rejuvenate their bodies and bring themselves to higher levels of overall wellbeing. Much of this work focuses on the company’s phototherapy patches, which have helped distinguish the brand from its competitors. The patches work through the use of phototherapy by reflecting wavelengths of light back into the body. The reflected light works to stimulate cellular processes and create physiological changes corresponding to patch design and placement.
The patches were created by Schmidt himself, who draws from a long career of business and development to aid him in his ongoing work to expand the company’s many offerings. A lifelong inventor, Schmidt has over 100 patents to his name. The innovations he’s developed for his company have centered on the goal of creating wellness benefits for customers without the use of potentially harmful pharmaceuticals. This work mirrors the efforts he’s made throughout his professional life to create inventive solutions to existing problems.
Dr. Gaetan Chevalier
In order to confirm the efficacy of LifeWave’s innovations, the company has worked extensively with independent researchers to make sure they are following non-biased scientific protocols while conducting studies. One of these researchers is Dr. Gaetan Chevalier, the Research Director at Psy-Tek Labs, which is located in Encinitas, California. Dr. Chevalier received his Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from the University of Montreal Polytechnic School and went on to become a postdoctoral scholar at Canada’s National Scientific Research Institute.
After leaving Canada, the researcher became a member of the staff of UCLA’s Low Energy Plasma Group and also served as the Director of Research at the California Institute for Human Science. From these varied experiences, the researcher was well-placed to start working in conjunction with independent organizations seeking to verify the effects of products or theories. This is what led him to his work with LifeWave, where he has now worked on multiple different studies with the company to examine the effects of its products. His most recent work with the brand focuses on its X39 patches, which work by activating a user’s stem cells to produce a host of wellness benefits.
Dr. Melinda Connor
Another professional that often works with LifeWave is Dr. Melinda Connor. Dr. Connor holds degrees or honors from a number of universities including Wellesley College, Harvard University, and the University of Arizona. She has training as both a clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist and she was a National Institutes of Health T-32 postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona in the Program in Integrative Medicine. That work was conducted under Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Iris Bell. Dr. Connor also has extensive experience in various areas related to alternative healing including serving as the former director of the Optimal Healing Research Program at the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health.
By the time Dr. Connor started working with LifeWave, she had set out to work as an independent researcher, conducting studies on ideas and products that she found personally interesting. Her work with the wellness company came about as a result of her interactions with David Schmidt. When she met the company’s CEO, she recalls being impressed with his depth of knowledge on issues related to his technology and beyond. She found the ideas behind his phototherapy patches intriguing and agreed to test them on herself to see if she wanted to engage in formal research on the product. After trying out the patches, and witnessing profound changes in her own body, the researcher began what would become a long-term relationship between herself and the company. Her latest studies, also on X39, involving both urine and blood analyses, show a dramatic elevation in the peptides GHK and GHK-CU, both known for providing a number of health benefits when they are fully accessible to the body.
Benefits of independent research
When discussing their work with LifeWave, both Dr. Chevalier and Dr. Connor have singled out the importance of the brand’s use of independent researchers. In a traditional institutional research environment, one might find at a university or pharmaceutical company, researchers are often assigned their roles in certain studies at the discretion of the institution itself. The choices around which studies to engage in are often based around funding allocation and may be tied to partnerships between the institution and a certain company. Regardless of the cause, researchers in these scenarios are constrained by the needs of the institution.
By contrast, independent researchers are free to engage in research that they find personally fulfilling. That means that the researchers are able to seek out promising products that are based on sound fundamental ideas that could produce exciting results. This, for instance, was the case for Dr. Connor’s decision to work with LifeWave. After seeing the effects the product had on her own body, she became immediately curious as to what was behind the effectiveness of the technology. Her curiosity in the matter not only drove her to conduct research on the company’s products, but also led to high-quality independent studies that helped to show the power of the CEO’s innovations.
Presentations in 2020
LifeWave works extensively with independent distributors in order to expose consumers to their products and the powerful wellness benefits they can bring. One of the ways the company reaches out to distributors is through gatherings where people can come and gain information from a variety of sources. These sources include keynote speakers, networking opportunities, and more. One important gathering this coming year will be the LifeWave Live! Las Vegas event.
At the event, Dr. Gaetan Chevalier will present his exciting findings pertaining to the company’s newly released X39 patch. One of Dr. Chevalier’s pilot studies focused on “brain mapping” the effect of X39, LifeWave’s latest product, and he will be unveiling research results from a 12-person pilot study that showed impressive, positive, anti-aging effects on brain function, cognition and coherence in a matter of days. Those and other results from his work will be shared at that conference.
The findings that will be presented in Las Vegas go to show just one aspect of the importance of working with independent researchers. These scientific professionals are able to evaluate the effectiveness of a particular idea or product without bringing a bias that might skew the results. This concept is especially important in the fields of health and wellness, where many companies make claims without verifying them in a scientific manner. This is one of the reasons why LifeWave has grown quickly over its 15 years of existence, and why its newest introductions, such as the X39 patch, seem set to continue that trend into the near future.
