31/7/10
There’s been lots of noise in the media about
Calcium supplements and like all these things – it comes back to the how good is
the research and the need to always apply moderation in life to whatever you
take or do!
The recent article in the NZ Herald didn’t
indicate the amount of calcium used in “Osteoporosis treatment” which is
apparently doing more harm than good but just seemed to pick up some information
from an online site and regurgitate it to apply to all intakes of Calcium. When
you look at the dosages for “Osteoporosis treatment”, you are looking at over
1000mg per day (of usually two types of calcium and it should be taken with
Vitamin D too).
So where does this leave you? What do you do
now – chuck all vitamins with Calcium out? I don’t think so. Let’s face it,
nothing beats a well-balanced diet and exercise to ensure your body gets enough
calcium – rich in dairy foods, some vegetables and other foods – but probably
not in the amounts you need each and every day. And if you are like me – I have
a personal dislike for anything milky and avoid it where I can. (apart from
creamy blue cheese which I’m addicted to!)
I went through a phase of forcing myself to
eat yogurt in the morning with my fresh fruit and muesli but it made the hair on
the back of my neck stand up! The Fruity flavoured ones seem so heavy with sugar
that I couldn’t face them first thing either. So what do you do?
Take calcium supplements….but of course in
very low dosesto literally “supplement” your diet – not
dominate your blood levels and contribute to a heart attack! Moderation. Vitamin
Supplements are NOT a cure but a support to your body and brain – helping you
maximize your energy levels and assist your body perform and improve a range of
symptoms which your diet and body – as it ages – may struggle to work with.
Here is the original article the NZ Herald
(31/7/10) used for its story:
Risks outweigh benefits’ for calcium
supplements: Meta-analysis
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Risks-outweigh-benefits-for-calcium-supplements-Meta-analysis
But from the same source there was a counter
article currently available too that shows HIGH doses of Calcium (over 600mg) to
treat Osteoporosis does more harm than good but the "cherry picked" research
results should acknowledge that Calcium is still critical for good health.
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Industry-Calcium-research-cherry-picked-results
Our philosophy is around delivering the
research so you can make an informed and balanced choice. And yes we do
have calcium in some of our products. But Health Script
products has calcium in very low doses 50mg - 144mg to assist with the take up
of other vital ingredients, amino acids, minerals and vitamins to improve your
body's absorption of active ingredients. So let moderation and sense prevail –
and do what’s best for your body.
It doesn’t take a sledgehammer to crack a
nut!
Live Better!
25/7/10
If you are anything like most people, and I
count myself in that bunch too, you lead a very busy and demanding life. It’s
really hard always having time to prepare well-balanced meals and avoid
processed food. Almost every week I start out with good intentions, having
purchased fresh fruit and vegetables to cook tasty nutritional dinners after a
busy day at work. Yeah right!
I constantly think I eat healthy meals and am
very aware of what’s good for me and what’s not. But when I actually review a
week’s consumption…it is with shocked horror that I realize some days are just
survival days. Getting through the workload is a priority or making it out with
friends or just plain coping with the demands of family! Food takes a back seat
and I munch through sugar rich snacks or sneak in the odd take away any chance I
get.
So what, I tell myself, I eat healthy most of
the time. Really? Do I get those five plus a day of fruit and veggies – don’t
try and sneak points in on the fruit in a yogurt or juice as part of the 5+
count – they are so loaded with sugars as to discount any health benefits
altogether! So all is not well in the average diet and feeling tired, listless,
lacking energy and just drained makes me head straight back to multivitamins. Of
course you need to take them regularly every day to reap the benefits of
improved energy and well-being. I read some years ago that some vitamins will
actually keep you awake at night – so if you forget to take it in the morning –
DON’T take them before you go to bed. Of course not all vitamins have this
effect, but you need to be a pharmacist to really know – certain vitamin B’s and
some other key elements can make for a restless night’s sleep.
So that’s why
we developed a nutritional supplement that
will turn your ideas about vitamins upside down!
We designed a multivitamin that was split
across the day…..and night. Health
Script’s morning
AM Feel Alive formula has all the get up and go vitamin
supplements and the PM Relax &
Sleep has the ingredients that
encourage calmness, relaxation and a good night’s herbal sleep. So all you do is
take one in the morning and one at night and you have all the bases covered! You
don’t have to worry about the odd wayward take away meal compromising your
dietary balance – our formulas meet all your body’s needs. Our
AM Feel Alive> has 24 ingredients in a carefully designed
balance to ensure they assist one another to maximize your body’s ability to
absorb them. You would’ve heard how some vitamins are just washed out of your
body if you take too much or don’t take calcium with magnesium for instance. So
we have worked very hard to deliver the maximum potency in each vegetarian
capsule to give you the best results. This also applies to the
PM Relax & Sleepformula – the ingredients have been selected
to deliver the maximum efficacy so your body can de-stress, relax and feel
restored after a good night’s sleep.
There are plenty of multivitamins on the
market but there are some important issues you need to consider. Many cheap,
mass-produced vitamins in chain store pharmacies and supermarkets are primarily
cheap synthetic supplements. Synthetic alternatives to whole foods are known as
"isolates". Your body will only absorb a small percentage of an isolate form of
vitamins and minerals and actually use even less during normal body function.
There has been a lot of recent media hype over scientific research that
indicates synthetic vitamins may be contributing to some forms of cancer. While
this is not fully confirmed yet, it’s enough to cause me concern. You wouldn't
go to your local fast food drive-thru for a nice grilled salmon would you? The
same attitude should apply to your health supplements. You get what you pay for!
That is why we chose a pharmaceutical
manufacturer for Health Script’s products very carefully. They meet the most
stringent standards in the industry today, ensuring that the end product is
exactly what it says it is! Made in New Zealand to Certified GMP (good
manufacturing practices) standards. Our quality formulas are presented in
the very best easy-to-swallow capsules, which are also suitable for vegetarians.
Finally, a multivitamin to get excited
about...
Each dose is crammed full of essential
vitamins, minerals, amino acids, trace elements, natural herbs and
ever-important antioxidants and absolutely FREE of ANY additives, colourants or
preservatives. There is no talc or fillers in our capsules, which are sometimes
present in other leading brands. Be wary too of the dosage. Some very well known
labels talk about “servings” on the back of their labels and a serving means six
pills in on recent brand we reviewed! You would almost have no space for an
apple after swallowing all of that! The listed ingredients look like a lot – but
in the fine print it says “per serving” (of six!). We don’t believe our
customers are idiots! We intend to
provide fact-based information and research to document and provide evidence of
what we say is what we deliver!
We’ll turn your ideas about vitamins
upside down!
21/7/10
I kept rolling the sample bottles in my hands,
pressing the grey labels with my fingers, cementing my disappointment. This was
a new product – it needed to present well in a frenzied and competitive sector.
Who would want to buy something that looked…well ….dirty? It had to look as
pristine as the product inside the bottles.
What to do?
I called a meeting with the Sm4rt Services team in
Takapuna. They too felt let down. Within seconds the designer said it was a
printing error. The white needs to be 2 or 3 layers and he pulled out an H2Go
bottle with solid white logo on the same plastic wrap labeling. Ours looked
cream or grey when compared. He said he would sort it – they would need
reprinting! I felt responsible as I had signed them off – but he was insistent.
“If you brought a dress and the stitches fell apart it would be the clothing
manufacturers problem – you don’t have to check that the stitching is close
together when you buy something”, he maintained. “Well it’s the same here – they
are the printing experts and knew these were going on dark blue bottles, if they
couldn’t do it they should’ve told you. Leave it to me!”
I felt a wave of relief. This would be the fix and
within 24 hours the labels got reprinted along with an apology from the
supplier. With their quick and effective response (with no extra charges to me),
I feel loyalty to them and will use them again – but will double-check labels on
the actual bottles each time!! But this was an object lesson to us.
-
You can never check things too much to make sure they
are right
-
Your customer should ALWAYS be given full
consideration every step of the way
-
If you have checked that everything is perfect, then
check AGAIN!
-
I was grateful for Sm4rt Services prompt response and
delighted by the Label Printer’s support to reprint and get them back to the
manufacturing plant within a couple of days so minimal production time was lost.
Now that’s customer service! I will pay their bill as soon as I get it to
acknowledge their support after all we are all in business together!
21/7/10
Sm4rt Services presented us with about 8 design
concepts for product labels and our online store. We were speechless – they were
exactly what we wanted! We were blown away at how they had interpreted our brief
and come up with some fabulous work. Over the coming weeks we went through the
usual pain of amending and editing and changing to get the whole look and feel
perfect – so all the marketing and online collateral had a complete synergy and
reflected what our business stood for. Quality, Value, Transparency, Honesty,
and an Outstanding Customer Experience. Just words, I know, until we put them
into action.
So far so good, everything was unfolding seamlessly. I
always feel uneasy when things go too well – I sense that there is bound to be a
drama lurking around the corner. I apply the same thinking to when things go bad
– it’s not far off until things come right and everything glows again. Change.
If you aware that change is constant you can survive anything. Finally the
labels were ready and I drove to the factory with great anticipation. We got
some sample blue bottles and manually peeled the labels onto the bottles.
Something was VERY wrong! I felt like someone had stabbed my new born baby to
death – I kid you not. It took all my strength to laugh it off and make excuses
and think of ways to fix it.
The labels were on clear plastic wrap around with the
ink on the glue side and the white background of the white of the label was too
pale. The dark blue of the bottle created “show through” making the labels look
dull and grey. Not the crisp, fresh and contemporary look we had all strived so
hard for over the past month. It would cost thousands to reprint 6,000 labels.
What to do? I took the samples back to the car and struggled to think how I
would break this news to my husband. He would not take this lightly. Ironically
when I told him that night, he could see how crestfallen I was and he smiled and
said “ you know what – even with this going wrong, the labels look bloody cool!”
21/7/10
I was driving my husband nuts! Every waking moment I
babble on about 5,000 different ideas for Health Script. I had ideas for new
products and new marketing and promotional strategies…He wore a permanent
“will this ever end” expression of sufferance and bored tolerance. But gradually
glimmers of excitement percolated in him too. My infectious enthusiasm was
starting to touch sides! We had signed the contract with the pharmaceutical
manufacturer (certified GMP quality processes) – a momentous occasion christened
with champagne that night. We had spent the week previously touring their
massive facility completely decked out like a pair of specialist surgeons in
white paper shower hats, booties and overalls. Hygiene and pristine handling of
the equipment and various ingredients was paramount.
They had a massive area like an airline hangar with
tons of different ingredients from floor to ceiling, for every imaginable
combination of vitamin and dietary supplement you could ever think of. The
in-house Naturopath sat behind a large desk completely dwarfed by a huge range
of herbal ingredients from every corner of the world. He joked with us and held
up a plastic sealed bag of what looked like small slices of twigs – black wood
rounds that had incredible aphrodisiac qualities. “So how do you know it does?”
I asked in awestruck ignorance. It comes from a small northern village in India
where elephants graze in the surrounding forest. The elephants chew on these
branches and it is legend that the effects are equally as effective on the
locals too!” I laughed imagining teeth marks on the tree bark late on a
Saturday night after a few beers and wondering if that’s where the Kiwi
expression. ”I’ve got wood” comes from!
20/7/10
I registered the business name, after googling all
kinds of web addresses, I needed one that would be memorable and tell the story
of the business itself. It needed to work as a company name and a web link. It
had to be a name that no one was using too.
I spent hours going through hundreds of options but
one of the first was Health Script. I repeated it several times and talked it
over with my husband who was now also caught up in the excitement – the
privilege of finally having our own business! So I registered the name and we
became 50-50 partners! That was an exciting moment – it made it real for the
first time. I joked around, saying I wanted two brass badges with our names
engraved on them and the word “BOSS” in big bold letters underneath.
So every time we talked to one another about the
business we were reminded about who was the boss! Of course my badge would
be bigger, bolder with bright flashing coloured lights!! This was going to be a
flat earth democratic business relationship with me in charge!! But
seriously, both of us were equally committed right down to the last cent of our
ex-paid up mortgage! And now ever expanding!!
Putting our money where our mouths were also gave a
huge sense of commitment!! No kidding!
20/7/10
Ok so we decided on blue bottles. Deep indigo blue.
That kind of blue you know mean business. A bit of a nod at the old traditional
blue glass medicine bottles of early last century. One friend looked disgusted.
“Yuk how can you choose those – they remind me of the old cod liver oil bottles
or milk of magnesia we had as kids!” I thought of clinical white but neither the
chemist, the manufacturer or our two marketing/brand designer consultants
agreed. They wanted the blue.
I was convinced when I saw a dummied up label on a
sample bottle. This had meaning. This stood out from the crowd – it would secure
our brand and be easily translated across a range of media. Contrary to my
friends comments – I liked it and now I really love it and thank heavens we made
that choice – separating ourselves form that sea of brown and white plastic
bottles. I told my father and brought the sample bottle to show my parents.
He was astounded and told me that my grandfather (who
died at 93 about 15 years ago) had started up his own perfume business just
before the war started (WWII). He used those same dark indigo blue bottles. This
was in Holland in 1932 when he brought the raw liquid to mix with perfume
essence stored in large glass jars protected by woven rope. There was no plastic
back then! “The whole house stank of perfume every time he had to decant the
stuff into those blue bottles,” my father said. I fell silent – my enthusiasm
had quieted down.
So what happened? “The war broke out,” explained my
father, “ the Nazi’s were coming to occupy our home and our country. All the
materials, the expense, the hard work – it all came to nothing.” I could feel
that frustration in the moment’s silence. “He and my uncle would ride their
bikes and take samples and try and sell their products to local stores and
retail outlets. The business was just starting to come into its own when the
Nazi’s marched into Eindhoven and he had to close the whole thing down.”
My silence deepened. In some weird way that I cannot
explain, I felt a kindred spirit with my grandfather – I felt his
entrepreneurial drive and some how an inner guiding force – he was with me in
this journey. Weird I know – and I can’t quite explain it. I started to dream
about him late at night – or rather just before I woke up to my 4am
starts! He had been in the Underground during the war, smuggling Jews out of
Poland. He never spoke directly to me about this time, but I had heard stories
since childhood about how he had gone across Europe and had five fake passports
(which my grandmother had hidden in the chimney and almost burnt when she forgot
about them in their snug hiding place.
Without an identity – even a fake one – the Nazi’s
would ensure you met a certain death. For five years he was hardly at home, my
grandmother looked after her five children and never knew when he would turn up
– sneaking home under cover of darkness to check on his family….but I
digress….back to the business of quality health supplements…well that’s another
good story!!
20/7/10
So how to differentiate ourselves from the other 6,000
dietary supplements on the market? Again much investigation revealed that the
“me too” branding approach was alive and well in this category. We made up
various labels and tried different combinations of colours and bottles – I
visited various manufacturers and took samples of bottles to experiment with.
Every waking moment was spent visualizing that
confusing wall of vitamins in the supermarkets and pharmacies and how I could
make my ones stand out and tell a story in a simple clean way, which offers
quality that works. Being different in a highly competitive industry – therein
lay the challenge. But life’s forces were working with us. I had rehashed the
vitamin formula a dozen times, but not being a qualified chemist, I had little
idea if the combination would mix well or even work. I took them to a consultant
pharmacist – he looked at the 24 ingredients in the first formula and the 11 in
the second – made a few scribbles and comments – altering about 20% of the
original “recipe” and Voila! We had real health supplements – ready to offer the
market.
We signed up contracts and talked about export markets
– it was electrifying! I barely slept. I still had a day job to maintain too –
with demanding clients who needed my attention. I got into the habit for about
six months of waking at 4am and working on the new business. Showering at 7am,
dressing and rushing to the day job.
After a long busy day working for the man, I would
rush home cook dinner for four starving males most nights, plus feed two male
cats – surrounded by men!! Then I would settle down at 7pm to work on my
own business until 11pm. I was scouring the net for all kinds of information –
every moment I learned more and more. I realized just how much I DID NOT KNOW –
how could I make this happen? Ignorance is bliss they say – not in my case – it
was a serious burden I had to overcome…… and Fast!
20/7/10
I want to lift the bar in the vitamin industry. At
home I have, on average, about 50 bottles of different brands of vitamins – I go
into pharmacies for one thing and come out with 2-3 others. I have no real brand
loyalty – but I do have ingredient loyalty. But to get the right combo of things
that worked – I had to buy various bottles.
Why? I looked at walls of vitamins in the supermarkets
and at the various chemists – all “noise” and little substance. Garish very
often, in their colours and over promising in their content. First off I started
to really read the contents and understand what they were and where they came
from. That in itself was alarming. Some reputable brands that I would’ve sworn
by had talc as a filler and worse offered so much per “serving” and then the
serving size turns out to be 6 capsules!
WHAT? Is this the way the industry is engaging with
customers? Do they think we are idiots? Clearly they do – I decided there was
another way to deliver good quality with high integrity to customers. Years
before I had the idea of providing vitamins for both day or night – now I was
determined to undertake research and come up with a formula that works.
Most people take vitamins when they think of it, not
realizing that many will keep you awake at night! Rule No. 1. So I split the
formula in two and thought of ways to inform people about taking vitamins to get
them to work in the best way possible and to enjoy the greatest effect. But
that’s another story…..