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Do you know what’s in your vitamins?

Aug 23, 2012

In a previous post , I discussed why I believe that proper vitamin and mineral supplementation is essential in today’s world in order to achieve optimal health. I’ll admit that among most dietitians and other health professionals, I am in the minority, but having personally experienced the benefits of a good multivitamin on top of an already very healthy diet, I can only conclude that either the food we eat today is not as nutritious as it once was; the atmosphere we live in is more polluted, requiring greater levels of antioxidants to protect us; or a combination of both.

I mentioned in another post some of the methods to determine how to choose a good multivitamin. One of those methods was to rely on independent reviews, such as the Nutrisearch Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements by Lyle MacWilliam, MSc, FP.

Last week, I was extremely fortunate to attend a seminar presented by Lyle MacWilliam, in which he described the process by which the Comparative Guide was developed. Lyle MacWilliam is a former Member of Parliament and Member of the Legislative Assembly for British Columbia. He served as Canada’s federal Minister of Health and he was heavily involved at the time in the development of Canada’s current regulatory framework for natural health products (which includes multivitamins). During his tenure, he recognized that, with the size of the industry as it was, and ever growing, the ability for Canadians to make informed choices about the quality of their supplements was getting more and more difficult. So, he used his extensive knowledge of science and nutrition to develop the Comparative Guide.

That much I already knew. It was what followed that came to me as as quite a shock. In Canada there are tough standards for the manufacturing of nutritional supplements, but in the United States, the onus is on the supplement manufacturers to prove that their products are safe, not the FDA. So, while once upon a time, it was part of the regulatory body’s responsibilities to ensure that products on the market would not do any harm, things are no longer like that. Compliance at the pharmaceutical level of manufacturing is strictly voluntary. How many manufacturers are really checking their products? How many of them will guarantee that everything they say is in the product is in there, in the doses specified? And more importantly, how many will guarantee that their product is free from contaminants ? Very few.

There are supplements on the market with traces of lead, arsenic, mercury and a whole host of other contaminants. And unless you are taking a supplement from a company that follows Good Manufacturing Procedures (aka GMPs), or subscribes to an independent verification program, there is no guarantee that the product has been tested for quality or potency.

You might be wondering why would anyone put that stuff in their products ? The same thought occurred to me, too. The fact is, they wouldn’t. But, if the raw materials from their suppliers were contaminated, then that stuff will wind up in the end product. How many times do we hear of recalls due to lead in children’s toys? It’s not an additive…it’s a contaminant.

In doing their research for the book, Nutrisearch offered any product that scored the top rating, 5.0, to apply for an additional award which was received if they submitted their product for independent verification. Out of the 14 manufacturers that got a 5.0 rating for one or more products, only 4 bothered to apply for this award. What does that say about the manufacturing standards of the majority?

Luckily, if you’re buying products sold in Canada, you’re probably safe. However, if you’re cross-border shopping, or having them shipped to you from the US, then you need to take a good look at the certifications on the bottle; there’s no other way to be certain that you’re getting exactly what the label promises, and nothing more. There are three independent non-government programs in the US which certify supplement quality: Natural Products Association Certification (NPA GMP), NSF Dietary Supplements Certification, and USP Dietary Supplement Verification (USP GMP).  Independent labs may also be used to verify quality, so supplements may be labeled with the Internal Standards Organization’s ISO 17025 Certification. In Canada, all products should have a DIN (drug identification number) or NPN (natural product number).

To your good health!

 

If you’d like to order the supplements I take and recommend, click here.

By Renu Arora 24 Jan, 2024
This is a short one... A client came in for her first session with me, and as I typically do for an intro session, we planned to find and heal a life event for her. This generally starts off with us needing to find out a belief that the client is hanging onto as a result of the experience. I got my clues, but none of it meant anything to my client. I checked into see if we were being blocked, and I didn't see any issues, but still no spark of insight came to her. Worse yet, nothing was coming to me either. I usually get an intuitive hit to guide the conversation but this time, nada. Then it occurred to me to ask if she and I were still connected. I got a "no." No?? I tried again to connect and found, in a nutshell, that her spirit guides had booted me out! It sometimes happens that I can't connect initially, but I don't generally get kicked out mid-session like that. So I asked what her guides needed to allow us to move forward and it turns out that they needed an apology from me! I can only guess that I ticked them off in a past life. 😕 I apologized. Thankfully they accepted. And I quickly found that the information that I had received earlier had been completely false and we had to start from scratch. Happily, they didn't interfere again and my client and I went on to have a great session. 😃 Today's tip: if you are doing your own healing work and you find your intuition shut down, verify that you are actually connected! And don't be surprised if somebody's grudge from a past life comes up to be resolved. :) If you are interested in learning more about whether ART is right for you, either to learn for yourself, or to experience as a client, book a discovery call with me and let's chat!
By Renu Arora 31 Dec, 2023
Before the year ends, I've got one last story to share for 2023. Today's client reached out to do a session with me because she felt that something was amiss and her intuition told her that I could help. She was finding herself unusually angry with her husband. She's not by nature an angry person so this unnatural rage bubbling up whenever she would see or even think about him was especially disconcerting. Connected to her anger, she also had this strange feeling that he himself was feeling distant and resentful towards her. To be honest, it was a confusing session. I didn't really know where we were going with it, but I always maintain trust in the subconscious and that it knows more than I do - and that everything would make sense by the end. I was not disappointed! My client and I reasoned that since she was feeling his resentment, it made sense that he was the one needing the healing. So, I tapped into his energy and immediately found a huge cluster of trapped emotions and beliefs - disgust, a lack of control, a belief that he couldn't be happy, that his happiness was dependent on others, not being good enough, and more. We cleared all of that after which she sensed an improvement in the resentment, but not yet to the feeling of him being distant. Add to that, she was also now feeling a lack of love, and not being wanted. Even more new, unusual emotions for her. So we kept going. With a little more digging, all of the pieces started falling into place. It turns out that she and her husband have a beautiful daughter whom they adore, but needed medical intervention to conceive. My client knew she was destined to have another child - she had heard this child communicate with her before, during previous sessions with me and at other times, too. Recently she had broached the subject with her husband about starting the process again for this second child and he had not shown any interest. That's when it all clicked. NONE of the emotions my client had been experiencing were her own. The anger, resentment, disconnect, lack of love or anything else...those all belonged to not-yet-even-conceived Baby #2! All the emotions and beliefs we had healed...those belonged to the baby as well! It made so much sense! This baby was aching to join the family, but dad's lack of interest led to feelings of rejection, anger, and sadness. Wow! No wonder my client was so confused as to what to do. The emotions were so foreign to her, not at all how she usually responds to disappointment, and now we understood why! Shortly after that, a wave of sleepiness hit my client, always signal of a message from someone trying to come through: very clearly, she heard the words "Bring me home now" in her head. Baby #2 was no longer angry or hurt, just insistent that it was their time to make an appearance. And with that, my client felt totally better - back to her old self once again. We could both see a visible change in her face - she was smiling from ear to ear. And ready to pass along the message to her husband. 😀 Do you feel like you are behaving out of character? Sometimes your emotions are not your own! Whether they are yours or not, they can be healed so you can feel back to normal once again. Book a session with me and I can help! Happy New Year! See you in 2024!
By Renu Arora 22 Dec, 2023
One of my clients came to me to address, amongst other things, migraine headaches. She would get them regularly, requiring daily medication which, when working properly, would mean she would have fewer episodes and (hopefully!) less severe ones. Until working with me, she never felt like her head was ever fully pain free. If you have never had a migraine, or known anyone who has suffered from them, then to put it simply, a migraine is an extremely intense headache, which for most sufferers, can be debilitating. In addition to throbbing pain, they may be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and extreme sensitivity to light and sound that can last from hours to days. Many migraine sufferers are forced to sequester themselves alone in a dark, quiet room until the symptoms subside. After a bit of work, her subconscious lead us to one key experience in her childhood. It was in grade 5, when she was newly designated as "enhanced" at school. That change meant that she was suddenly required to be taken out of her regular classes to participate in extra programming with the other enhanced kids. And she hated it! She was being pulled away from her friends and being given extra work to do, to boot! Yuck! Are you ready to play detective...what do you think the connection is? That kid was angry. The injustice of it all! Teachers, parents...the whole system seemed to be forcing her to do something she had absolutely no interest in. Deep inside her, there was an inner child screaming to the world "will everyone just leave me alone?!?" What happens when someone gets a migraine? The whole world has to leave them alone! It took giving her a lot of pain to get it, but that inner child eventually got what she was asking for. Crazy, eh? It's actually more common than you think. Once that was understood, our next task was to heal that child so it could stop being so angry and upset. And shortly after that, my client's head stopped hurting. That little bit of pain that she always felt, was gone . Her subconscious no longer had a purpose for her migraines, so it was time to let them go. If you suffer from migraines or know anyone who does, book a session with me so we can make them a thing of the past. 
By Renu Arora 14 Dec, 2023
If you find yourself holding yourself back on doing something, you are absolutely not alone! It is one of the most common things that I see, but it is often one of the more devastating. To know that you have a gift to share with the world, to want to do it and know that you should, but to feel this invisible resistance keeping you from your dreams...it is heartbreaking! It invariably leads to us questioning ourselves, wondering "What is wrong with me?" It's just another case of your subconscious trying to tell you that you've got something from your past that needs to be healed. That was the situation for my client in this week's story. My client in question is a fellow alternative health practitioner. She had an event coming up and was afraid that people wouldn't sign up. I could see her whole heart wasn't into it. She was doubting herself. But it was bigger than the one event. It turned out that the emotions she was feeling surrounding the event could be found in other places in her life as well. She had to admit that she wasn't 100% certain that her husband was fully on board with her work. And quite frankly, part of her doubted herself and whether her work was as effective as she thought. (A sentiment I could absolutely relate to from the early years in my practice.) We discovered that she had the phrase "Am I ridiculous?" anchored into her subconscious. It took us some work, but eventually the memory surfaced that when she wanted to go to university, her parents didn't approve of her desire to go into music therapy, and they made it very clear that they thought she ought to do something else. This made her question her own judgement, and the thought "Am I ridiculous?" anchored in. Together we shifted that belief and integrated the phrase "I do amazing things and am loved for it!" in it's place. She ended the session with a new level of confidence and self-assurance. And the event? It went great! If you are an entrepreneur and you find yourself questioning your ability to be successful, book a session with me and we'll have you ready to take on the world in no time!
By Renu Arora 08 Dec, 2023
A client was struggling with feeling like she doesn't belong anywhere. She moved to Canada from Chile when she was young, and despite living here for so long, has never felt entirely at ease. But during trips to visit Chile, she would feel like an outsider there as well. We discovered that her subconscious was holding onto the belief "Why don't I fit in?" As long as that belief was programmed into her psyche, we knew she wouldn't feel at home no matter where she was. Together we determined that what she really wanted to believe was "I am comfortable anywhere". So where did her subconscious anchor in the belief "Why don't I fit in?". As it turns out, at the airport, on the day she arrived in Canada as a little girl, she and her family encountered something they had never seen before: an escalator. My client accidentally managed to get separated from her family and onto the escalator...and they all panicked! They were terrified that she was going to reach the end and get sucked into the machinery. Of course, the escalator monster didn't end up eating her, but it left her completely puzzled, asking herself "Why don't I fit in?"! She and I got a big chuckle out of this one! Once we healed the terror and embarrassment from the experience we were then able to release the negative belief and program in her new belief "I am comfortable anywhere". That is now her new truth. If there is a moral to the story, it is this: trauma is in the eye of the beholder. Even seemingly insignificant events can have a huge impact on our lives, because what would be meaningless to an adult can be terrifying for a child. So if you've got embarrassing or uncomfortable stories from your childhood, don't ignore them - they are probably impacting you in ways you would never expect.
By Renu Arora 01 Dec, 2023
That was certainly the case with a recent client. In her first session with me, my client admitted that she has been struggling a lot lately, suffering with feelings of inadequacy, and imposter syndrome, which had been triggering her to engage in avoidance behaviour, including turning to internet surfing and television watching to cope. We quickly found that she was holding onto the belief "I'm not good enough." In my head, I thought, "well that would make sense...if she doesn't feel good enough to engage with the work she is meant to do, she would be drawn to procrastinate and do other things, like TV or internet." Where did the belief "I'm not good enough" come from? We tracked it to a time when she was younger and her older brother bullied her. Despite her telling her parents that he was mistreating her, they took no action, and the torment continued. To her, "I'm not good enough" really meant "I'm not good enough for my parents to care about me...I'm all on my own". This general problem came attached to a specific memory that came to mind, though. In this one, her brother "decided" that she would no longer be allowed to watch TV for a year. He put a sheet over her head to prevent her from viewing the TV, and would interfere in other ways anytime she would try. As always, her parents did not intervene, and this behaviour went on for some time. And then it hit us. She wasn't surfing the web and watching television because she was avoiding doing other work. She was watching it because the little girl inside her wanted to watch TV and was upset with her big brother for not letting her! My client's subconscious was communicating with her. That "desire to watch a screen" was meant to remind her of an earlier experience of when she had that same desire; it was trying to direct us to heal the abuse and neglect she experienced when she was young. By the time we were done healing the experience, my client said the thought alone of spending hours in front of a screen made her nauseous - she had no desire to do it. She even wrote me later and told me that she had no craving to spend time on the internet or TV, and instead her evening was "pleasantly filled with other joyful stuff." Yay! Do you know anyone who is addicted to their screens? If they would like to get hours of their life back doing meaningful activities that would bring them more joy, let them know I can help and suggest they book a session today.
By Renu Arora 25 Apr, 2022
Everything we react to, whether it's foods, things in the environment, people...whatever...the reaction is there for a reason . Your subconscious is communicating with you. Let's take lactose for example. Some people (okay, most of them) will say that lactose intolerance exists "because the body has stopped producing the enzyme that digests lactose". (I was a registered dietitian for 12 years, so that was exactly what I believed, and didn't think twice about it.) But have they ever asked themselves why the body stopped producing lactase (that's the enzyme). Like, did the person's DNA change? And all of a sudden, this one protein is unavailable for production? Or did the production system change (and miraculously only this one single protein was affected?) I was never, ever, provided with a satisfactory reason for why the body couldn't do it's job anymore. "It just stopped" is a description, not a reason . So let's look at the symbolism of lactose. Lactose is found in only one place: milk. Milk has only once source: mothers . To the subconscious, milk (lactose) represents mothers. Let me give you a real-life example. I met with a new friend for a get-to-know-you coffee date. Without any prompting from me, he told me exactly what his subconscious had been trying to tell him for 30 years, in under 30 minutes. As we were settling in and he was adding cream to his coffee, he casually mentioned to me how until recently he used to be unable to tolerate any amount of dairy for years. He used to love milk as a kid, but sometime after university, milk stopped loving him and even the littlest bit would have him running to the bathroom. Over the last few years, however, he started to be able to tolerate more and more, so now he can have the cream in his coffee or a slice of pizza without digestive discomfort. So far, so good. Then we started talking about our families. He was pleased to let me know that his youngest of three kids had just graduated from university and admitted to a sense of relief that his mother had been able to see all of them graduate. He went on to tell me that when he himself graduated from university he didn't want to go to his convocation ceremony, so he neglected to tell his mother about it. She was devastated! She had very much wanted to see her son's graduation and so he had felt guilty about it for all these years. Now that she was able to see her three grandkids in their caps and gowns, he didn't feel quite so bad. Bingo! My friend's reaction to dairy was directly related to the level of guilt he felt towards his mother. So, if you have an issue with milk, there's an exceptionally good chance that you've either got an issue with your own mother, or a maternal figure in your life, or the concept of motherhood. I've seen it over and over. Heal the issue with mom, and you can say hello to ice cream again. :) Do you have your own allergy or intolerance you'd like to get rid of? Book a session with me and we can make that problem history!
By Renu Arora 25 Apr, 2022
Check out my recommendations and more in this recent Redfin article
By renuarora 01 Jan, 2021
Hello my friend,In most of my posts, I share with you my clients’ experiences and provide the links between the problem or challenge they’re facing and the underlying root cause. As fun and fascinating as it is, there’s only a small chance that any given story will reflect what’s going on in your own life. […]
By renuarora 10 Apr, 2020
It’s an understatement to say that we are living in difficult times right now. Fear of illness, loss of loved ones, reduced personal freedoms, and the absence of physical connections are only a handful of the stresses we are all feeling these days. If you look around, you will note that some people are managing fine, […]
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