Part 1
David: I'm looking around this place, and it seems much more than a vitamin store. Tell me where we are and what kind of a place this is.
Cindy: Well, this is The Vitamin Store, and we're here in Tsawwassen, British Columbia, and what we're doing is we're a store that is very progressive, and we believe in assisting people toward wellness, toward their wellness goals. David: Wellness. Now is there a difference between general health and wellness?
Cindy: I think it is. You know, some people have very, very specific goals. In other words, they come in and they've got blood sugar problems; in other words, they have diabetes. Some people have cancer, and they want a specific program to follow to help them through the chemotherapy and radiation. There are people who are just starting to want to lose weight, and so they don't know where to start, so we're here to help them, assist into what they want to-where they want to go with their health. David: Okay, vitamins are often referred to as "supplements," and what you are mentioning here, these medical conditions-are these something that take the place of general medicine, or are they supplementing the treatment of medicine and helping them through the treatment of medicine, and helping them through the chemotherapy and such? Cindy: Supplements are exactly that-supplements. They are to be as an adjunct. They should never be in place of treatment, and we're here-the very first thing that we do and focus on is people's diets and what they eat, and getting them specifically to give up the simple carbohydrates, get on to complex carbohydrates, good-quality proteins. Then if they have any other concerns, then we can certainly address that and help them with the supplementation end of it.
David: I, like most people, I guess-I eat salads, generally, and a little bit of meat, a little bit of this, little bit of that, and I think I'm fairly healthy, and I do take supplements. When the average person like myself would come in here, you're using terms about carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates. What is the most common thing you find with people, that they're doing wrong with their diets? Cindy: I think that they hear something in the mass media, and then they jump onto it and run away with it. They're usually looking for the magic bullet when they come in here, and unfortunately, there is no magic bullet. So what we're here to do is to give them a balance, a stability in what it is that they need to do, with respect to how to eat. Of course, we're not a big believer in sort of the Canadian Food Guide, because the Canadian Food Guide is a particularly healthy indicator of good eating. But it's a matter of sitting down with a person on an individual basis, because each person has certain dietary requirements. We also look at what their blood type is, because a different blood type has a different dietary requirement than-they're all different. David: So you create a specific plan before you begin dispensing things for each individual.
Cindy: Absolutely.
David: Are there other things that you offer, or that you know about, or that you're connected with, to help them with their wellness? Cindy: Absolutely.
We have a lot of practitioners that come through the store. We have people that do craniosacral work, we have massage therapy, we have aromatherapists, we have a naturopath, a kinesiologist, and these are all people that work through the store. And again, they're just sort of a helpful adjunct to what it is that they're doing. Some people have had severe car accidents, and they haven't had the relief, aside from taking a lot of painkillers, so we're able to assist them and guide them toward a proper practitioner. David: Can you take somebody who's taking traditional medication for pain, or traditional medication for anxiety, and can you actually replace those medically-dispensed items with something that's equivalent here? Cindy: We never would replace anybody's medication here. It's a matter of finding out what the medication is, and that's what we do here, is we make sure that the medication, that the supplementation that we are recommending or telling a person about is going to be conducive to that person's situation, and it's not going to counter indicate or cause side effects. That's the other thing, is you know, you have people that are coming in that are taking warfarin, or they're taking particular hypertensive drugs, and there are certain nutrients that you just don't give these people. So we have to be very, very careful.
David: When did this all take off? The notion of wellness and of vitamins was something that was sort of alternative in the seventies. When did it take off, and why has it become so mainstream, do you think?
Cindy: I think that perhaps a lot of the doctors have toppled off the pedestal, so to speak. People are sick and tired of not being well anymore, and they're going to the doctor's and they're not getting the answers. Unfortunately, I think a lot of times people are ill, and they go to the doctor and they're prescribed a certain regime of drugs, and they're not getting better. So, unfortunately, when they come into this situation a lot of times, people are quite ill, and they come to us because of an end result. So what we need to do is we need to look at the whole picture, and we try to back it up to find out where the person in fact got ill. So we look at the whole body, and the whole endocrine system, the muscular structure, and also the emotional well-being of that person. So it's not just-you know, it's not replacing valerian root for a sleeping medication. It's looking at why that person is not sleeping. David: It's so much more complex than I thought, than just dispensing pills. It's amazing.
