Dr. Israel I. Brekhman was a remarkable man and I’m so privileged to have not only met him but to have had the opportunity to work side-by-side with him for almost 3 years. Brekhman had a very interesting and remarkable life and his unrequited love for the health of humanity, globally, was his passion. He was determined to work for the betterment of the health of the world until his rather sudden and untimely death in July 1994.
As a young man, he became very interested in medicine and it is no coincidence that to continue his education he selected and competed for admittance to the best higher school of medicine in Russia, the Leningrad Naval Medical Academy placing number one on his entrance exams. He entered his studies just as World War II was beginning and found himself studying and attending classes by day and fighting on the front by night. Brekhman impressed his mentor professor, Dr. Nikolai Vasilyevich Lazarev, by creating his first extract medicine, Prosamine, as a student. That product was tested and then used by the Russian Navy.
Upon graduation in 1945, Brekhman served in the Navy and was assigned to the Pacific Fleet in Vladivostok, Russia. There he discovered what he often referred to ad God’s Botanical Laboratory, the Primorye. A largely untouched and incredibly rich in natural plant resource, vast geographical area. The young pharmacologist established his roots in the region following his honorable discharge from the navy in continued his studies and earned his post graduate degree in 1948 and is doctorial in 1956. He immediately began work with the Russian system of scientific institutions at the at the Far Eastern Branch of the Academy of Sciences where he worked until his passing in 1994.
Brekhman created products utilizing his passion for adaptogens that included ginseng, Eleutherococcus, Caprim, Rantarin, Sayrin, Khaurantin and more. Ultimately, Brekhman won the highest honor of Russia, the Order of Lenin for his work in the field of adaptogens and for his untiring focus on the health of his fellow mankind.
We would go on long walks together and he would continually share with me on his thoughts on every aspect of human health. He was determined to improve on everything he was done but at the same time recognized that knowledge is evolutionary and will grow and change as we learn and share with others that which we have learned. He was relentless with me and every day I appreciate his patience and determination. When he learned that my own father died at a relatively young age, Brekhman said that he would be my earthly father and his wife would be my Russian mother. We spent hours and hours together in his “Thinkalorium” the room in his flat in Vladivostok where he said he could do his best thinking and planning. The walls were floor to ceiling covered with books, manuscripts, and data. He maintained a comprehensive library of every paper he had written as well as many from his students and had the uncanny capability to go directly to the precise article he was looking for from among thousands of papers bound in some system that he created on stacks of shelves. That ability alone was fascinating to me but that he was so ready to share his knowledge and continue to learn was the admirable part of Brekhman’s life. One of his many gifts to me was the books presented to me by Dr Brekhman.
He had a fun and humorous side too. He loved a practical joke, and he would tease himself often. He was quick to laugh and would always try to bring out the fun and humorous side of every experience.
Brekhman was an athlete. He was a marathon runner and had a passion for athleticism. Actually, one of his initial areas of work was to find something in nature that would enhance the ability of the organism to endure athletic training and lead to ultimate performance. His work began with Panax Ginseng and evolved to Eleutherococcus or Siberian ginseng when he started to realize that Panax had a relatively impactful toxicity level. He was determined to create products that were completely safe to the organism and thus began his quest to find that in nature that was safe for the use by all.
Brekhman often referred to his mentor professor at St Petersburg Medical Institute, Nikolai Lazarev. They shared science and knowledge and on relatively rare occasion, Brekhman had the opportunity to visit Lazarev in St Petersburg, then Leningrad. The two shared science, research, and laughs. I never had the privilege of meeting Lazarev. He died in 1974 but the passion that drove Lazarev inspired and drove Brekhman to continue in science.
Brekhman often referred to Hans Selye, also a pioneer in plant research and one who inspired both Lazarev and Brekhman. Selye was a Hungarian born research doctor whose pioneering work in both the US and Canada created an understanding of the stress response which was fundamental to the works of Lazarev and Brekhman. Fortunately, the iron walls that created political boundaries at the time did little to stop their science and collaboration.
Brekhman died in July of 1994. I was in Russia at the time and of course was devastated. I attended his funeral services and was inspired by the numbers of true friends and fellow scientists in attendance. Hundreds were in attendance and every one of those in attendance had something to share in terms of what inspiration or knowledge they gained from the experience of knowing Dr. Brekhman. I was asked to speak at the services and was honored to do so but it was truly difficult because it seemed that once again, I had lost a father.
Brekhman’s legacy continued. He was challenged by the company that I was working for at the time to create a product that would exemplify the sum of his adaptogen work. He took on the challenge with pride and vigor. In his view, such a product must be safe to use by virtually anyone, must support human homeostasis and provide cogitative support as well and tonic or “sportsman” support as he loved to call it. Energy and endurance were critical.
His loving wife, Dr. Margaret Grinevich-Brekhman, played a critical role in the development of a commercial product. She had written books on the history of extraction processes and developed catalogs of useful plants in terms of the plants ability to contribute to human health and well-being. For a year we collaborated with Dr. Vladimir Sprygin who was a student of and mentored by Dr. Brekhman through his earing a PhD. A formula was devised that would support immunity, mitigate stress, support endurance and energy and above all else, be safe for general use. The next step was to find a way to correctly extract the elements of the plant materials in a single blend that yielded the greatest possible potential of the plant parts used. We returned to the ancient co—extraction technology.
The herbs in the original blend (that are still used in today’s LERA® blend are complex thus extraction technology was tricky to say the least. Proper certification of the plant parts used, and establishing the process to extract without using pressure, steam, excipients, or chemical processing aids was paramount. We worked with three independent facilities and analyzed plant parts, their cutting and drying techniques hundreds of different ways and tested many samples of the blended co-extracts. Then testing was done to assure that the benefit of each of the components was demonstrable in the final blend.
In the laboratory, Brekhman and his team discovered something that Brekhman told me was his ultimate dream. He was convinced that properly done, his refined of as he called it, complex co-extraction process would yield a product that was greater than the sum of its parts. In other words, as he put it to me, where 1 + 1 would equal 3. Testing the results in the lab was done for stress protective activity and tonic benefit (energy) of the blend. The results were a bit better than Brekhman had hoped in that his blend tests revealed a 5.5 increase over the expected and measured results of single herb extracts. This product was commercialized and imported to the US as Brekhman’s original co-extract blend (elixir as he preferred to call it) and experienced robust sales, quickly achieving sales volumes in the 10’s of thousands of units sold per month.
Brekhman was not done. He told me in his Thinkalorium that we cannot rest. We can always make something better and in a few months’ time, he created a iteration of this first formula that was moved into production as a replacement for the initial product. The results were even better, and the product and technology began to receive wide attention in the medical community, the sport community and even in the animal and pet care arena. We learned, for example, that the adaptogen blend appeared to enhance the potential of that with which the product was taken. One anecdotal study by a medical team in the US used the blend in cased of children with ADD and ADHD who were on the drug Ritalin. They found that children’s cognition and behavior improved and more importantly for the doctors conducting the tests, the quantity of Ritalin could be reduced, something they felt was much safer for the recipients.
In terms of sport and endurance, many athletes were offered the product for training prior to the 1996 Summer Olympic games in Atlanta, Georgia USA. The results were nothing short of stunning. All reported better results than they expected. It is important to note that prior to offering the product to athletes, the blend was submitted to the International Olympic Committee designated laboratory for human testing to assure that nothing in the product would yield a positive test for anything banned and that the epi-testosterone – testosterone levels of the participants would not be modified. While the IOC does not approve products for use in sport they do ban products and substances.
The blend used today has a WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) statement that stipulates that nothing in the product is found on any banned substance lists for use in sport nutrition. The product that you see today, used by NuYugen and other companies is an evolution of the original Brekhman concept. The LERA blend used today continues to use the seven adaptogenic herbs but following Brekhman’s inspiration, three natural plant parts have been added that contribute powerful antioxidants to the blend. This blend was developed late in 1998-99 and tested and approved for use in 2000.
The blend was tested in a human clinical trial in 2001-02 conducted in the US to the gold standard of such testing. This was a double-blind placebo controlled cross over study. The study was done to single out the subject’s measurable response to stress mitigation as measured in slavery cortisol. While this was not a big study in terms of participants, it was conducted according to the specifications of the US Clinical Trials Committee (ClinicalTrials.org) and was designated a qualified pilot study to determine how a larger study could and should be conducted. The results were very positive in determining that stress was mitigated as measured by cortisol and those results were instrumental in the design of a second and much more robust trial that was conducted in 2012 that affirmed the findings of the pilot study showing clear and irrefutable evidence that cortisol production was normalized meaning the participant achieved a level of homeostasis.
Mitigating the stress response is critical for normalizing virtually all functions of the human organism. Stress causes a cascade of deleterious events that lead to compromised immune, lower cognitive response, reduced energy and much more. Brekhman felt that we could improve the health and well-being of everyone on the planet if we could normalize the stress response. In fact, one of his last admonitions to me was to promise to continue to work on sharing the adaptogen blend with as many as possible.
The word normalize here is very important. Stress has three stages: Alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. Exhaustion is important here because that signifies what some call adrenal fatigue. In this instance, the production of cortisol in minimized and a myriad of events may happen in the organism that are manifested is disease. The immune response is also exhausted and not working. So, homeostasis or normalizing the stress response is vitally important.
Brekhman explained the aspect to me this way. Imaging a sphere filled with all the people on the world. At the very top of the north pole, you find a lucky few people who are genetically healthy and just seem to have energy and seeming on top of it all. Adaptogens won’t do much for these people in their current state of great health. At the bottom of the sphere, the south pole, we find the people who are very sick, who are unhealthy and may have terminal disease and unfortunately, who have exhausted organic systems and adaptogens won’t do much for them. Everyone else though will benefit.
Adaptogens in the LERA formula tends to improve your health and well-being to the highest potential of your individual organism. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you will move to and join those at the north pole, but your general heal will tend to increase as you continue to take the product. Here is another important point for adaptogenic products. They, at least the LERA blend, as used as an ingredient in Soulera are designed to be taken every day. The amount in a daily measure at stated on the packaging is a clinical standard and subject to some variation. If you’re an athlete, it’s okay to take more daily. If you’re elderly or inactive and of small stature, you may find a little less provides the benefit you seek. All organisms are unique and finding your ‘sweet spot’ in terms of the supplements you take may involve some trial and error. The good news to remember is that adaptogens are safe at almost any level thus it is okay to experiment a little and find the level that seems to make you feel the best. Being aware of your feeling is important in your personal health.
Created 4/28/2022