01 March 2002

I have been on the move so much for the last 2 months that I've hardly had a moment to stop and think about what I want to convey to my web friends of what has been happening. So please forgive the long silence. January began with the shooting of a film about what happens to be my favourite nutritional product in the world, Pure Synergy (see resources). This film was shot in New Zealand, the United States, and Britain. It's the first commercial film that Lyhtwalker Films has now completed. Our production company was formed as a partnership between my youngest son Aaron Kenton and myself. We set up the company for two purposes:

• To make promotional films and commercials only for products, services and ranges which we believe make important contributions to health and the quality of human life

• To make drama films, both short films and full length features.

Our Pure Synergy shoot began in the middle of Summer in New Zealand and then moved on to Los Angeles where we interviewed practitioners who use the Pure Synergy product with their patients. We then drove across America in the middle of Winter there, ending up in Moab, Utah, where the Pure Synergy award-winning, ecologically-aware factory is based. On the way we had the great pleasure of filming at the Grand Canyon in the snow. Magnificent with the brilliant red, yellow, purple rocks behind snow covered fir trees hung with icicles; it was really quite splendid. While we were travelling across the United States we were eating in diners and truck drivers' cafes. I was feeling particularly frustrated at not being able to get all of the wonderful low glycaemic vegetables that form the centre of the X Factor Diet. After having lost 11 1/2 kilos in the first two months on the X Factor program over a year ago (and then not having weighed myself for another 7 months after that ) I was convinced that the fact that I was having to survive on foods that were much higher glycaemic than I would ordinarily have chosen would mean that I would gain weight. It was not until I got to London that I had an opportunity to weigh myself. To my amazement, I found that in the interim 7 months I had lost another 5 kilos. This was particularly exciting information to me. This I think is the way that fat loss should happen, automatically, simply because the X Factor program, being based on a Palaeolithic diet on which we as human beings appear to be genetically programmed to thrive, allows a disturbed metabolism to rebalance itself. When this happens if there is excess fat carried on the body it simply gradually and easily melts away. But it was an important experience to me in another way too: What it indicated to me is that despite having spent a couple of weeks eating higher glycaemic foods that I would ordinarily not eat at all, because my body had rebalanced itself by using the X Factor diet for now over a year, I found my system was highly resistant to any disturbance in that balance.

This is particularly exciting news to those of you who ask me questions like, 'Does that mean I will never be able to eat toast for breakfast again?'. The answer appears to be simple. The problem with the high glycaemic foods like the grains, flours, sugars, honey, bananas etc. is that we have eaten far too many of them in the twentieth century. It is this excess that predisposes us to insulin resistance syndrome - Syndrome X. So it certainly does not mean that you have to give up a plate of pasta now and then. But what it does mean is that we need to emphasise the phytonutrient-filled low glycaemic vegetables such as bok choy, celery, endive, rocket, radishes, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower ... the list is endless, as well as the low carbohydrate fruit such as blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and melons.

No sooner did my son Aaron and I arrive in London and complete the filming, than I leapt into a promotional tour in England to launch the X Factor Diet there. The response was tremendous which was delightful to me because I believe it is so important that the world becomes aware of Syndrome X. Far too many governments throughout the world are still urging us to eat a high carb, low fat diet on the mistaken belief that it helps prevent degenerative diseases like arthritis, diabetes, coronary heart disease and obesity. One of the things I enjoyed most about the tour in Britain - as well as a similar book tour which I have only just completed in New Zealand - is the opportunity to meet so many of you whom I write for. It's a strange thing that as a writer you spend most of your time on your own in front of a computer screen or with your nose poked into medical journals or books or on the telephone interviewing one biochemist, doctor or other specialist in some field, gathering the research for whatever project I'm working on. This, for me, can be a lonely task. It was an absolute joy to me to meet so many of you who came along to lectures and workshops both in Britain and New Zealand.

I am about to embark on a similar tour of Australia. It begins on Monday 11 March. I am very much looking forward to that.

Meanwhile I am now sitting in my Southern hemisphere home on the shore of the Banks Peninsular on the South Island, New Zealand gathering together the enormous volume of research that I have done over the last 18 months and writing Age Power. I have to deliver the manuscript to the publisher in less than 6 weeks time and I'm very much looking forward to the challenge of seeing if I can pull it off. I adore working in very intense ways and being totally immersed in the project that I am working on. On this particular project however, there has been so much amazing information that I have gathered that I hardly know how to put it altogether into one book. I've become acquainted with one of the most exciting products I've ever come across, Coenzyme-A, a unique and balanced combination of components needed by the body to manufacture and use Coenzyme-A. Coenzyme-A is the most active metabolic enzyme in the human body. It initiates hundreds of vital processes such as metabolising fats, carbohydrates and proteins. It also plays a central role in the body's ability to cope with stress and strengthen the immune system, is vital for the production of cellular energy as well as adrenal and sex hormone production. It supports the critical functions of the immune system and helps the repair of DNA and RNA and is one of the leading products in the world that slows down the destructive processes of ageing. As yet little known and is the creation of Coenzyme-A Technologies in Winwood Washington, USA. www.coenzyme-a.com

Some of the other wonderful discoveries I have made in the cause of my research for Age Power include a way of treating water that makes it much more accessible to the cells of the body, helping to improve the quality of skin and overall health, the discovery of an amazing anti-oxidant which is a hundred times more powerful than Vitamin C, and skin care products which lay outside the realm of department store cosmetics, yet are probably the most powerful and advanced formulas used anywhere today. How on earth I am going to put all this together in a way to create one cohesive book, I have no idea. Every time I sit down to write a new book it feels impossible to me and yet so far it continues to happen. Age Power is to be published in August, provided I get it written. Please send prayers for this one. I hope you all have a wonderful month.

Leslie