Answers about ProEFA and history of how it came to be known

Nordic Natural’s ProEFA is the same thing as their Complete Omega Ultimate Omega with Borage Oil (it has to be that name -there are other Complete Omega’s that are not the Ultimate Omega)

ProEFA is the professional line which only used to be for sale to health care professionals -not parents direct. The Ultimate Omega line is the commercial line for parents, health food stores, etc. and the only difference between the two is the price.

When my son Tanner responded so amazingly well to Efalex just weeks after he was diagnosed with apraxia yet months after therapy with no results as you can read in The LCP Solution book or read under apraxia online, I had just started the Children’s Apraxia Network (August of 1999) and wanted to organize a feedback with our new group. Our first meeting in August I spoke with Nordic Naturals who offered to send us free samples of DHA Jr. (cod liver oil) for us to try -and I was crushed when nobody including Tanner had positive results with them. At that time I had thought all fish oil was the same.

After hearing more and more that it appeared to be only Efalex that worked for most of us with apraxic children, I had long discussions with Michele, the owner of Nordic Naturals and kept saying “There has to be something in Efalex that you don’t have in your DHA Jr. because Efalex works and DHA Jr. isn’t for some reasons for most of us.

I would have probably organized something with Efalex but they were in the UK at that time through Efamol and my phone bill was already starting to pile up with running the Children’s Apraxia Network -also I liked the Nordic Naturals company because I thought they were the only ones that were trying to make fish oil more appealing to children by making them into smaller strawberry flavored capsules that I wish worked. One day Michele called me and said “Lisa I have our version of Efalex which we think is better” So I again offered to do a feedback -but this time, after switching Tanner unsuccessfully from Efalex time after time I really didn’t want him to be part of it -but then I did try it for him because I was curious and within a week Tanner had a surge and got the letter K sound that we were working on for over a year -and within a month he started to tell stories for the first time -and on only one capsule a day as you can hear online!! (I have to update that page!!)

We arranged for Nordic Naturals to ship product to do the same feedback through the nonprofit ECHO of Canada with Rhonda, the President -(actually at that point I did it through the first nonprofit I founded -Children’s Apraxia Network) Both groups found the exact same results -little to no change with cod liver oil (we used DHA Jr.) and then for the same children -moderate to unbelievable dramatic changes within days to just one to three weeks in most cases -and this wasn’t a grouplist thing where people can post what they want without knowing each other. This was done through in Cherab’s case a support group where we all knew each other -and each other’s kids. We anecdotally found out two things -that children with diagnosed and undiagnosed apraxia had almost immediate changes on the ProEFA formula -and even more importantly we discovered that the formula is very important -and that fish oil alone doesn’t appear to be successful for our children for some reason, and that our children also required the small amount of Omega 6 -such as found in the ProEFA -or the Efalex or Eye Q formula’s for some reason -maybe due to the anti -inflammatory properties, perhaps they enable the Omega 3 to get to the small vessels of the brain somehow where they are needed?

Why is ProEFA now available to the parents? I don’t know if they really want it to be, however when Cherab did the feedback and due to the success we all wanted to keep using it. Because after the feedback the ProEFA supply was cut off to the parents and I said “You can’t do this to us!! You have to let us keep getting the ProEFA” Nordic Naturals let me distribute it through the Shop-in-Service, which at that time was the only way to get ProEFA if you were a parent outside of getting it from your doctor.

Even though we from the beginning got various media attention like Inside Edition TV, etc., we were this small grass roots support group/nonprofit yet wanted the world to know something that we knew would seem “fishy” to anyone on the outside. So I was put in touch with Robert Katz PhD, formally of the NIH who runs the Omega 3 Institute who offered to assist us organizing a professional anecdotal feedback -which he did for the few months he was with us. The reports were reviewed together by Robert Katz PhD and Andrew Zimmerman MD from Kennedy Krieger. Problem was we had asked for reports from pediatricians which is what Dr. Katz wanted -which is what most people sent in, and unfortunately most were promptly discarded when they were reviewed and the pediatricians were questioned over the phone, since the MD’s in most cases did not witness first hand the before and after -they filled in the reports based on the parent’s testimony. So therefore the only reports that were OK’d for the professional anecdotal feedback were those from the speech pathologists that worked with the children on a daily or almost daily basis -which were only 19 of the reports. So in our attempt to make a more credible report -which it was -we had a measly amount of patients which is so sad since as we know there are literally hundreds and hundreds of testimonies (as we had on our quilt of hope that we had at the First Apraxia Conference)

Well soon after the media noticed these 19 professional anecdotal reports as you can read online -which together with the continuing overwhelming amounts of parent testimonies-people all over that heard about it with any type of late talker child not just apraxic wanted to know -how do we get this fish oil? What is it? What is the dosage? Is there side effects? Does fish oil cause diarrhea, constipation or does it make a child regular if they are prone to constipation? (Once again a child prone to constipation can get constipation anytime -and I’ve asked experts in this area who say that fish oil will not constipate people, just the opposite -in most cases the addition of oil to a child’s diet may cause mild looser stools for a few days in a handful -not all, and it does appear to make children prone to constipation more regular -and without having to give them medications or reducing amounts -check with MD’s)

Anyway parents that were optimists and just knew it would work, and parents that were pessimists and didn’t think it would work, and those that weren’t sure -didn’t matter, almost all found that their late talker children when supplemented had the same positive results that you read about here. It took time for word to spread because it really does seem so simple and easy and cheap and hard to believe and so why doesn’t everyone know and just do this (I don’t know) and it gradually made it’s way to other grouplists, and into other disorders outside of apraxia. So the demand for ProEFA vs the Ultimate Omega Complete Omega with Borage Oil really grew since that’s the name everyone hears but they are the same except for ProEFA being a better price per capsule which most people don’t know. So Nordic Naturals began selling ProEFA direct to parents -and they also started letting other companies sell ProEFA to parents.

You can still ask your local drug store to purchase the Complete Omega Ultimate Omega with Borage Oil -and you can also make up the formula yourself by checking the amounts of DHA, EPA and GLA -I know parents that have done that successfully too -just make sure you use fish oil from reputable companies.