The episode examines the challenges that natural health products face against regulations influenced by the pharmaceutical industry and the consequences for public health in Canada. Through personal stories and legal insights, experts Shawn Buckley and David Stephan advocate for health autonomy, urging listeners to actively safeguard their access to natural wellness solutions.
• Discussion of the current regulatory landscape and its impact on natural health products • Shawn Buckley's experiences with legal battles for natural health rights • David Stephan's personal narrative linking mental health struggles to natural remedies • Call to action encouraging grassroots advocacy against restrictive health regulations • Overview of the self-care framework and its implications for access to health products
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00:00:00.921 --> 00:00:07.653 Hi everyone, it's me, Sandy Kruse of Sandy K, nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen.
00:00:07.653 --> 00:00:18.248 For years now, I've been bringing to you conversations about wellness from incredible guests from all over the world.
00:00:18.248 --> 00:00:36.408 Discover a fresh take on healthy living for midlife and beyond, one that embraces balance and reason, without letting only science dictate every aspect of our wellness.
00:00:36.408 --> 00:00:54.834 Join me and my guests as we explore ways that we can age gracefully, with in-depth conversations about the thyroid, about hormones and other alternative wellness options for you and your family.
00:00:54.834 --> 00:01:09.102 True Wellness nurtures a healthy body, mind, spirit and soul, and we cover all of these essential aspects to help you live a balanced, joyful life.
00:01:09.102 --> 00:01:16.373 Be sure to follow my show, rate it, review it and share it.
00:01:16.373 --> 00:01:22.231 Always remember my friends balanced living works.
00:01:22.231 --> 00:01:28.950 Balanced Living Works.
00:01:28.950 --> 00:01:32.674 Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy Kay, nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen.
00:01:42.540 --> 00:01:44.786 Today, I have with me Shawn Buckley of the NHPPA and David Stephan of True Hope Canada.
00:01:44.786 --> 00:01:55.233 Today, we are going to talk about natural health products and we're going to speak specifically on what's happening in Canada.
00:01:55.233 --> 00:02:12.007 However, if you are not Canadian and you're listening, I encourage you to listen to the entire podcast episode, and the reason I say that is because I've actually recorded with Brett Hawes.
00:02:12.007 --> 00:02:22.463 I'm going to actually put all of the recordings in the show notes for those of you who want a little bit of history behind what's happening with natural health products.
00:02:22.463 --> 00:02:31.426 And I will note that this issue that's going on is not going on just in Canada.
00:02:31.426 --> 00:02:46.320 There are some interesting things happenings with natural health products globally here in Canada, something that we've seen, and it's not just in Canada, I think it's happening in the US as well.
00:02:46.320 --> 00:02:57.044 We're seeing some of these really high end, therapeutic grade supplements bought by pharmaceutical companies.
00:02:57.044 --> 00:02:58.907 I'll give you a very specific example.
00:02:58.907 --> 00:03:02.503 I am a registered holistic nutritionist.
00:03:02.503 --> 00:03:20.243 I'm also a certified metabolic balance coach and I worked with clients for years one-on-one, and there were many supplements that I would recommend that were just not supplements that you could buy off the shelf.
00:03:20.243 --> 00:03:24.008 These are really good, good quality supplements.
00:03:24.008 --> 00:03:24.848 Well, guess what?
00:03:24.848 --> 00:03:32.377 Recently, a number of them were purchased by Apotex, which is a pharmaceutical company.
00:03:32.377 --> 00:03:40.618 Now I'm going to just give you a little scenario.
00:03:40.618 --> 00:04:04.967 If many of these supplements are there for preventative care and that said pharmaceutical company actually manufactures pharmaceuticals for disease states, for those who are not really interested in prevention, wouldn't that be a conflict of interest?
00:04:04.967 --> 00:04:08.054 I just like you to think about that.
00:04:08.199 --> 00:04:10.747 By the way, I do have a new podcast coming.
00:04:10.747 --> 00:04:14.884 I haven't decided when I'm going to release this, but I've recorded a number of episodes.
00:04:14.884 --> 00:04:22.625 It will only be available through my sub stack, at least for now sandycruisesubstackcom.
00:04:22.625 --> 00:04:34.048 And my new podcast is called Think About it, where really I just bring topics of wellness to light just for you to think about.
00:04:34.048 --> 00:04:37.882 I'm not telling you how to think about certain things.
00:04:37.882 --> 00:04:47.175 I'm just asking you to think about how certain things may actually affect you and your wellness and your decisions.
00:04:47.175 --> 00:05:00.187 I think we come from this world of wellness where you've got people telling you what to do from so many different angles, and so that's why I created this podcast.
00:05:00.187 --> 00:05:02.949 It's only going to be six to 16 minutes each week.
00:05:02.949 --> 00:05:07.668 So join me on Substack, follow me on all of my social media channels.
00:05:07.668 --> 00:05:10.529 It's Sandy Kay Nutrition everywhere.
00:05:11.160 --> 00:05:26.310 I just passed five years, you guys, and I will say this has been 110% a passion project for me.
00:05:26.310 --> 00:05:44.314 It has always been about passion over profit for me, because I'm here to help others see if we can be proactive about our wellness and age better.
00:05:44.314 --> 00:05:56.824 Yeah, we might be living longer, but we're living sicker, and I think a lot of people don't think about their wellness as it relates to modern day life.
00:05:56.824 --> 00:06:04.072 So please share this podcast, share my podcast.
00:06:04.072 --> 00:06:07.536 That's the way everybody learns that I'm even here.
00:06:07.536 --> 00:06:09.543 I'm not a celebrity.
00:06:09.543 --> 00:06:22.182 I don't have a big name behind my podcast, like all of these other podcasters, so the only way that people know about me is through my social media and through sharing.
00:06:22.182 --> 00:06:26.800 So I'm going to ask you to share this episode with at least one person.
00:06:26.800 --> 00:06:43.966 Do it through Instagram, do it through Facebook, do it through text, just however you do it, please do it, because it really helps me to secure amazing guests each and every week, just to help you live your best life.
00:06:43.966 --> 00:06:49.564 Check the show notes, because I'm going to have the other recordings listed there.
00:06:49.564 --> 00:06:58.384 And also, if you are on Apple or Spotify, please review my podcast with a few kind words.
00:06:58.384 --> 00:07:08.305 Thank you, and now let's cut on through to this amazing and informative interview with Sean Buckley and David Stephen.
00:07:09.309 --> 00:07:12.910 Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy K Nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen.
00:07:12.910 --> 00:07:16.911 Today with me, I have two special guests.
00:07:16.911 --> 00:07:33.574 My first guest is Sean Buckley, and he's a Canadian constitutional lawyer with over 30 years of experience and a proven track record defending more natural health companies against Health Canada than any other lawyer.
00:07:33.574 --> 00:07:54.588 Since 2008, mr Buckley has been president of the Natural Health Products Protection Association Association, nhppa, whom I've recorded with twice now, and this association is dedicated to protecting Canadians' access to natural health products.
00:07:55.170 --> 00:07:58.880 My second guest with us today is David Stephen.
00:07:58.880 --> 00:08:15.242 He has worked extensively with True Hope, a scientific research-based organization with a passion for providing individuals with groundbreaking micronutrient solutions for overcoming mental illness.
00:08:15.242 --> 00:08:44.243 He has been involved in leading-edge discoveries that have provided significant transformation in thousands of lives and has been scientifically validated in dozens of independent studies from universities around the world, and today we're going to be discussing the status of natural health products in Canada, which actually reflects on what's happening all over the world right now.
00:08:44.243 --> 00:08:50.240 So don't leave this conversation thinking that it's only applicable to Canada.
00:08:50.240 --> 00:09:08.155 I just want to make that note right off the bat, because it's applicable to everywhere around the world, and Sean and David bring a rare combination of legal expertise and real worldworld industry experience to this conversation.
00:09:08.155 --> 00:09:09.523 So stick around.
00:09:09.523 --> 00:09:12.432 This is going to be a really good one, you guys, and welcome.
00:09:12.432 --> 00:09:15.149 I'm so happy to have you both today.
00:09:17.221 --> 00:09:18.706 Very pleased to be with you, Sandy.
00:09:18.706 --> 00:09:19.769 Appreciate it.
00:09:20.860 --> 00:09:29.687 Me too, and I think you know I always say a background story is really, really important to every conversation.
00:09:29.687 --> 00:09:33.731 Everything we do is usually passion for some reason.
00:09:33.731 --> 00:09:36.634 So let's start with you, sean.
00:09:36.634 --> 00:09:37.475 Please give us.
00:09:37.475 --> 00:09:39.636 You've got such a history in Canada.
00:09:41.282 --> 00:09:42.748 So you want to know how I got into this.
00:09:43.120 --> 00:09:46.509 Yeah, why so interested in natural health?
00:09:47.240 --> 00:09:57.871 So back in 1994, I was working at a law firm that had the federal government contract in Kamloops so anything federal government, we would be the federal government's lawyers.
00:09:57.871 --> 00:10:11.509 And there was a herbalist named Jim Strauss that was suing Health Canada because Health Canada had seized herbs he was, you know, importing from the United States Perfectly legal for him or anyone else to import.
00:10:11.509 --> 00:10:17.210 But you know Health Canada hated this guy and was trying to shut him down.
00:10:17.210 --> 00:10:18.572 So well, let's steal his herbs.
00:10:18.572 --> 00:10:21.105 And he's suing to get the herbs back.
00:10:21.105 --> 00:10:28.687 And I end up being Health Canada's lawyer and I go to court and I have his case thrown out of court because he was in the wrong court.
00:10:28.687 --> 00:10:36.051 But he and I got along really well and you know he took me out for lunch afterwards, which speaks to his character.
00:10:36.051 --> 00:10:52.822 And then shortly after I start my own firm and then another effort to have him shut down, health Canada convinces the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC to charge him with practicing medicine without a license and he wanted to hire me.
00:10:52.822 --> 00:11:14.375 So I had to get Health Canada to waive solicitor-client privilege, which they did, which is why I can talk about this and I represent him in court Now that he's charged with practicing medicine, and practicing medicine was defined as it included making treatment claims.
00:11:14.375 --> 00:11:15.458 Well, he was making treatment claims.
00:11:15.580 --> 00:11:16.702 He could not shut up about curing heart disease.
00:11:16.702 --> 00:11:18.368 He drove around in a white van covered in red letters.
00:11:18.368 --> 00:11:19.270 We cure heart disease.
00:11:19.270 --> 00:11:20.903 You know hi I'm.
00:11:20.903 --> 00:11:22.481 You know, sean, why?
00:11:22.481 --> 00:11:24.585 Cure heart disease Like he probably wouldn't even give us.
00:11:24.585 --> 00:11:25.629 He could not stop.
00:11:25.629 --> 00:11:27.746 Now why he couldn't stop.
00:11:29.073 --> 00:11:30.080 He was an older gentleman.
00:11:30.080 --> 00:11:32.629 He flew in the German Air Force in the Second World War.
00:11:32.629 --> 00:11:39.167 His family were traditional healers in Austria for 400 years and he was trained in the family business.
00:11:39.167 --> 00:11:43.825 He's working as an electrical engineer for BC Hydro and he has a heart attack.
00:11:43.825 --> 00:11:45.845 He's rushed to the hospital.
00:11:45.845 --> 00:11:46.948 They do the angiogram.
00:11:46.948 --> 00:11:49.929 He's got one artery fully blocked, another 80% blocked.
00:11:49.929 --> 00:11:53.530 They say, jim, you're going to die unless we do a double bypass.
00:11:53.530 --> 00:11:55.306 And he didn't like that idea.
00:11:55.306 --> 00:12:06.254 So he went home, made his heart drops, cured himself, lived probably another 35 years, died in an old folks' home without ever having a bypass surgery and thought I've got to do this.
00:12:06.254 --> 00:12:12.089 So that's why he's passionate, saved his life and he's trying to help people.
00:12:12.259 --> 00:12:15.470 I mean, when you get to David's story, it's the exact same thing.
00:12:15.470 --> 00:12:19.799 And so now I've got to defend him.
00:12:19.799 --> 00:12:20.945 Well, how do I defend this guy?
00:12:20.945 --> 00:12:29.774 The law says he can't make claims, he can't shut up about making claims, and so I have to attack the law for violating freedom of expression.
00:12:29.774 --> 00:12:31.660 But I have a narrative problem.
00:12:31.660 --> 00:12:33.846 Back then, like now, the charter is meaningless.
00:12:33.846 --> 00:12:43.524 I mean the courts have just made it meaningless, but back then it was very meaningful and the court decisions on freedom of expression, I mean the law, was 100% on my, my side.
00:12:43.565 --> 00:12:44.687 But I had a narrative problem.
00:12:44.687 --> 00:12:46.211 So put yourself in the judge's shoes.
00:12:46.211 --> 00:12:57.344 Although case law tells you you should let this guy, he's got the right to freedom of expression, but Health Canada's convinced you and the term they used was he called?
00:12:57.344 --> 00:12:58.609 They called them a rogue herbalist.
00:12:58.609 --> 00:12:59.875 This is a rogue herbalist.
00:12:59.875 --> 00:13:16.027 Who's who's endangering lives because they need bypass surgeries, they need what Health Canada would call proper medical treatment, or they will die or, you know, injure themselves with heart attacks, you know significantly.
00:13:16.027 --> 00:13:26.349 And so now the judge believes there's a danger and you as a judge, just in simple psychology, even though the law says this guy should be able to, are you going to say he can speak and kill people?
00:13:26.349 --> 00:13:28.426 So I had a narrative problem.
00:13:28.426 --> 00:13:31.528 So I asked Jim like is there?
00:13:31.528 --> 00:13:33.620 I know there's no clinical trial.
00:13:33.620 --> 00:13:34.764 He had a little herb shop.
00:13:34.764 --> 00:13:43.547 So I go there and I said Jim, like I know I got your story but it's going to be viewed as self-serving, Like, is there any other way we can show you're telling the truth?
00:13:43.547 --> 00:13:52.871 And he sandy, he brought me boxes I forget now if it was three boxes or five, it was an odd number filled with letters like so you know what?
00:13:52.871 --> 00:14:02.024 I have five thousand letters, ten thousand, I don't even know I I remember it took me forever to read them and they were all the same, like they might as well just have been a photocopy with changed names.
00:14:02.024 --> 00:14:02.403 They weren't.
00:14:02.403 --> 00:14:04.948 Most of them were hand, were handwritten, but they were all the same.
00:14:04.948 --> 00:14:06.892 I had heart disease, I was sick, I was dying.
00:14:06.892 --> 00:14:08.961 I took your heart drops, I got well.
00:14:08.961 --> 00:14:12.394 I can't enter a single one of those letters in court pure hearsay.
00:14:12.394 --> 00:14:14.802 But I can call the authors of those letters.
00:14:14.802 --> 00:14:23.583 And so on the day of trial I had five middle class professionals, and I chose middle class professionals because the judge is a middle class professional.
00:14:23.583 --> 00:14:26.508 These are the judge's people, they'll be credible.
00:14:26.508 --> 00:14:28.370 They had all had heart disease.
00:14:28.370 --> 00:14:31.653 They had all had at least one open heart bypass surgery.
00:14:31.653 --> 00:14:32.775 One of them had had two.
00:14:32.775 --> 00:14:38.331 They all continued to have heart disease because the reasons their arteries are being plugged up isn't being addressed.
00:14:38.331 --> 00:14:41.669 They all needed another bypass surgery to survive.
00:14:41.669 --> 00:14:52.326 A couple of them were too weak to survive the surgeries so they were sent home to die and the others weren't willing to go through it again just to buy another year or two because it was just too traumatic.
00:14:52.326 --> 00:14:55.057 So the medical system's a dead end.
00:14:55.057 --> 00:14:56.621 They come across these heart drops.
00:14:56.621 --> 00:14:59.688 They all get well, sandy, on the day of trial.
00:14:59.688 --> 00:15:01.493 They're all working full time.
00:15:01.493 --> 00:15:06.172 Most of them had been disabled for like a decade or more and you can't fake that.
00:15:06.172 --> 00:15:16.952 So that was kind of my road to Damascus conversion experience, because when I was acting for Health Canada against this guy, it's like, oh yeah, is this ever dangerous?
00:15:16.952 --> 00:15:23.533 You know, some rogue herbalist is peddling snake oil and people aren't, you know, seeking proper medical treatment.
00:15:23.533 --> 00:15:25.779 I mean it sounds great, great, except it's a lie.
00:15:25.779 --> 00:15:30.472 Well, after I prepared for that trial, it was like, no, the opposite is true.
00:15:30.472 --> 00:15:43.568 The danger is removing this guy and you know I could have given you the names, phone numbers and addresses of like thousands of people that are only alive because of his, you know drops.
00:15:43.568 --> 00:15:54.392 So I came to a realization that it is extremely dangerous to allow a regulatory body to tell us how we're going to treat ourselves.
00:15:54.392 --> 00:15:58.370 And this is a situation where the medical system was a dead end.
00:15:58.370 --> 00:16:18.210 Now I'll stop there and we'll segue to David, but I'll just, you know, set him up by saying you know, I acted for the company he's going to start talking about because Health Canada charged them criminally and they had started restricting this product and it treats serious mental illness.
00:16:18.210 --> 00:16:25.701 And when I was calling witnesses to call them, and the court acquitted them basically saying thank goodness you defied Health Canada, or more people would have died.
00:16:25.701 --> 00:16:28.432 So, in effect, and the court acquitted them basically saying thank goodness you defied Health Canada, or more people would have died.
00:16:28.432 --> 00:16:32.227 So, in effect, the court was saying Health Canada killed people by restricting access.
00:16:32.227 --> 00:16:36.803 But, sandy, I'm calling these people and these are people that had severe bipolar disorder.
00:16:36.803 --> 00:16:50.490 These are the people that are being involuntarily committed to psych wards and their lifespan, like once they hit that stage, like after five years, they're all dead, like the mainstream system's a dead end for them.
00:16:50.490 --> 00:16:59.809 They have zero life, they're being involuntarily committed, they're being doped up the yin yang, they have the medical system and they've tried every drug cocktail.
00:16:59.809 --> 00:17:02.643 I mean the doctors at that point are creating new drug cocktails.
00:17:02.643 --> 00:17:16.150 Nothing approved works and yet Health Canada, like they did with stress heart drops, takes the position like even when the medical system is a dead end for you, you are 100% guaranteed to be dead in a couple of years.
00:17:16.150 --> 00:17:22.613 You're not allowed legally in Canada to you know, try other things.
00:17:26.820 --> 00:17:37.013 So that is a perfect segue to get to you, david, if you could continue with your story, because that's very, it's a very power.
00:17:37.013 --> 00:17:38.326 I love how you set things up.
00:17:38.326 --> 00:17:40.179 This is why you're a lawyer, right Sean.
00:17:40.179 --> 00:17:44.290 So, David, I would love to hear from you.
00:17:48.740 --> 00:17:51.066 Fantastic, yeah, so so kind of a similar type story where you know it comes down to life and death.
00:17:51.066 --> 00:18:01.989 And that's a serious nature of some of the natural health supplements that are out there is that some people actually literally rely on them for their life, otherwise they wouldn't be here.
00:18:01.989 --> 00:18:23.191 And so so you know, our story really began in the late 70s when my grandfather on my mother's side took his own life, and there's a for lack of better terms a very rich, uh, history or a very prevalent history of mental illness on my mother's side, and you can see it in in my cousins, my second cousins.
00:18:23.191 --> 00:18:27.243 It it's a multi-generational thing that goes back who knows how far.
00:18:27.243 --> 00:18:53.824 So my grandfather takes his life in the late 70s, my mother is struggling with bipolar disorder throughout the 80s and her and my father have nine children, and so life is busy, life is hectic, life is is stressful, and things really came to a climax in january of 1994 when she was struggling so bad that she decided to go to the doctor and receive help.
00:18:53.824 --> 00:18:56.131 She ended up with a prescription for prozac.
00:18:56.131 --> 00:19:24.486 She took that prescription for about two to three weeks before she ended up taking her own life, leaving behind nine children and her husband of 22 years becoming a statistic, because it would be a decade later that we'd find out that the Prozac would at minimum increase your risk of suicide by two times, but in certain situations, especially with certain varieties of bipolar, anywhere from eight to 12 times suicide risk increased suicide risk from it.
00:19:24.486 --> 00:19:30.961 But we wouldn't find that out until a decade later because that was suppressed science that was being really kind of just kept in the closet.
00:19:30.961 --> 00:19:34.929 So if we fast forward now, we've got.
00:19:35.069 --> 00:19:39.324 A number of my siblings have been diagnosed with mental health conditions.
00:19:39.324 --> 00:19:41.348 My older sister, autumn.
00:19:41.348 --> 00:19:42.371 She's in her early 20s.
00:19:42.371 --> 00:19:44.222 She's in and out of the psych ward.
00:19:44.222 --> 00:19:45.426 She has a three-year-old son.
00:19:45.426 --> 00:19:51.625 When she's not in the psych ward she has to be on 24-hour supervision because she's obsessing about killing herself and her three-year-old son.
00:19:51.625 --> 00:20:15.497 At best the medications are leaving her in a state of sedation, but she still has psychotic episodes and it's just a mess and there's no quality of life and her husband's just trying to hold things together and her husband's really taking care of two people at home, a three-year-old son and his wife, and so that's the situation that my older sister finds herself in.
00:20:16.078 --> 00:20:18.226 Well, my older brother, who's just three years older than me.
00:20:18.226 --> 00:20:19.750 He's about 15 years old.
00:20:19.750 --> 00:20:35.173 He's quite a large boy, he's in the low 200 pounds, kind of a raging bull, and he's homicidal, he's suicidal and he basically has all the ingredients together to make up the recipe for the next schoolyard shooting.
00:20:35.173 --> 00:20:41.672 That's the type of situation he's in, and my father's looking at this and just watching his family continue to fall apart.
00:20:41.672 --> 00:20:51.711 And so, as 1995 persists, he comes to the realization that the medications that are being offered them aren't helping, that there's no known answer.
00:20:51.711 --> 00:21:02.361 He, rather than just work with family doctors, he went and met with the head psychiatrist out of the Foothills Hospital in Calgary and was given the information that this is as good as it's going to get.
00:21:02.361 --> 00:21:08.321 You need to face the reality that someday you may have to plan more funerals because these disorders do not go away and often in time to get worse.
00:21:08.321 --> 00:21:11.349 And so he was given this brutal information.
00:21:11.349 --> 00:21:35.259 But it was necessary for him to hear it, because that's when he began to turn and look elsewhere for answers, outside of the medical system, and that's when he began to spend a lot of time in prayer and fasting, pleading that his family would be saved from these issues, because he was watching his children go down the exact same road that their mother went down and that their grandfather went down, and nothing miraculous happened overnight.
00:21:35.400 --> 00:21:38.106 But something interesting happened in November of 1995.
00:21:38.106 --> 00:21:47.097 As a property manager over 26 large buildings in southern Alberta, he's walking down the hallway one day with a colleague, david Hardy, and he feels impressed.
00:21:47.097 --> 00:21:52.105 Colleague David Hardy, and he feels impressed to tell David Hardy about what's going on at home.
00:21:52.105 --> 00:21:53.270 And so he does, basically ending off the conversation.
00:21:53.270 --> 00:21:55.200 If things don't change, we have no choice but to institutionalize.
00:21:55.200 --> 00:22:01.073 My older brother, joseph, and his colleague had something really interesting to say.
00:22:01.073 --> 00:22:03.750 He said you know, tony, I've got a large family like yours, but they're all fine, they're well.
00:22:03.750 --> 00:22:05.778 I've never dealt with mental illness, however.
00:22:05.817 --> 00:22:19.684 I spent over 20 years in the animal feed industry formulating feed for hogs across Western Canada and the West United States, and we saw something common in the hog pens called ear and tail biting syndrome, where the hogs have become hyper irritable with each other.
00:22:19.684 --> 00:22:25.474 They bite chunks of their ears and tails off each other and if you didn't separate them out they'd actually end up killing each other.
00:22:25.474 --> 00:22:35.646 He says we learned that you could completely eradicate that condition simply by putting the proper nutrition into their feed, and in that moment my father had already tried a bunch of stuff.
00:22:35.646 --> 00:22:37.121 He'd been talking to people in the community.
00:22:37.121 --> 00:22:51.905 He'd tried magnetic therapy, tahitian noni juice, copious amounts of flax oil, omega-3 oils, stuff like that all good stuff but nothing was working for my older brother, joseph, to allow for him to get off the medication and to um establish quality of life.
00:22:52.768 --> 00:22:54.972 But in that moment, he says, like a light bulb went off.
00:22:54.972 --> 00:23:01.650 He knew it was the answer and it's a good thing he had that confirmation, because he went down to a health food store, grabbed all these products, tried it out and it didn't work.
00:23:01.650 --> 00:23:02.893 And so then they tried it out and it didn't work.
00:23:02.893 --> 00:23:04.136 And so then they tried it again.
00:23:04.136 --> 00:23:14.286 And they tried it again and it would be just over two months later, in january of 1996, that they'd come across four products out of the states that worked.
00:23:14.286 --> 00:23:20.392 And the reason why they worked is because the minerals were put into such a form that they were actually bioavailable.
00:23:20.392 --> 00:23:26.670 Colloidal minerals, chelated minerals, were being employed and all of a sudden, within five days, joe was saying it's like a fog lifted.
00:23:26.670 --> 00:23:27.932 I can now see what was right and wrong.
00:23:27.932 --> 00:23:32.770 So here he was in this fog of mental illness, and it was everyone else's problem.
00:23:32.770 --> 00:23:35.467 When there was an issue that arose, it was the other person's problem.
00:23:35.467 --> 00:23:37.050 He was never to blame in his own eyes.
00:23:37.050 --> 00:23:50.593 And now, all of a sudden, he's able to examine himself, he's able to see with eyes more clearly and his behavior starts to change quite quickly because he's seeing through a different lens, a lens that's not so clouded.
00:23:50.593 --> 00:23:54.888 Within 30 days, he would have no longer received the diagnosis for bipolar.
00:23:55.851 --> 00:24:03.748 A month later, my sister ends up having to come and stay with us for a week because she had to be on 24-hour supervision and her husband was working a night shift at a factory.
00:24:03.748 --> 00:24:14.951 So she comes to stay with us and it was in that, uh, during that week time that my father took the opportunity to get her onto the supplements and, um, and things started to change pretty quickly.
00:24:14.951 --> 00:24:25.932 Um, it was a little bit rough, but it was better than than it was, and within a week she'd already had major turnarounds, to the point that her husband uh, husband got on board, because he definitely wasn't on board at first.
00:24:25.932 --> 00:24:45.132 And there's a good thing, there's a five hour drive distance between him and my father, because it would have been probably more than words, because the psychiatrist told them that if you rock the boat and you play around with medications, you're going to die, and so they weren't willing to do anything different, even though her life was complete misery, and so they continued on with it.
00:24:45.132 --> 00:24:49.464 Within 45 days, they had her off of all of her medications and they thought she was 100% better.
00:24:49.464 --> 00:24:59.284 She wasn't, but she was sure a lot better than she had been, and as time went on, she just got better and better and better, but no longer like just within the first month of her being on it.
00:24:59.284 --> 00:25:06.561 No longer was she a 24-hour supervised patient, right, because she was no longer thinking about killing herself.
00:25:06.561 --> 00:25:08.607 She was no longer thinking about killing her son.
00:25:08.607 --> 00:25:16.846 She was now starting to, to you know, take up hobbies and side businesses and stuff that she wanted to do that she couldn't do when she was in that state of sedation.
00:25:16.846 --> 00:25:18.771 So that was the beginning of true hope.
00:25:19.240 --> 00:25:47.590 Well, when you fast forward, um four years after this, we end up in a situation where we've developed our own all-in-one supplement to make it more cost effective and to ensure that the quality of the supplement is there, that's generating the results that we're looking for personally within our own home, but also that the community has come to rely on and there was no idea about making it into a business at first, but it just naturally started to spread like wildfire when people saw the change that took place in my brother, joe.
00:25:47.590 --> 00:25:54.730 And all of a sudden you know the principal rather than phoning my dad saying hey, we've got an issue with Joe, again he's saying, hey, we've got an issue with another kid.
00:25:54.730 --> 00:25:56.180 Do you think you can consult with his parents.
00:25:56.180 --> 00:26:08.573 And so all of a sudden all these types of phone calls are taking place and it spreads through the small community we're living in and it was at that point in time that it took on kind of an organic business nature of its own.
00:26:08.573 --> 00:26:12.622 And so four years later, we have our own all-in-one supplement.
00:26:12.622 --> 00:26:16.580 It's getting studied in the University of Calgary at the Alberta Children's Hospital.
00:26:16.580 --> 00:26:18.905 The results are phenomenal.
00:26:18.905 --> 00:26:24.855 Bonnie Kaplan, the researcher who's undertaken to do the studies, she's looking at this.
00:26:24.855 --> 00:26:36.952 She's so excited about the preliminary results of the first study that's coming out that in October of 2000, she releases those results before the study is even fully completed, and it makes national news.
00:26:38.260 --> 00:26:40.948 And literally the next day Health Canada swoops in.
00:26:40.948 --> 00:26:47.351 They phoned my father and said who gave you permission to speak on television last night about what you're doing and my father's thinking like what?
00:26:47.351 --> 00:26:51.669 Am I in Bolivia, here, or some third world country where we don't have the ability to talk?
00:26:51.669 --> 00:26:54.484 I need to get permission from the government to speak on what we're doing.
00:26:54.484 --> 00:26:58.160 And but they proceeded to say that study's being shut down.
00:26:58.160 --> 00:27:01.184 You're no longer going to be able to supply these supplements.
00:27:01.184 --> 00:27:02.026 You're in contravention.
00:27:02.026 --> 00:27:10.804 I believe it is section 3132 of the Food and Drugs Act and in order to help somebody with bipolar disorder, you need a drug identification number, even though it's a multivitamin.
00:27:10.804 --> 00:27:13.290 And yes, go ahead, john.
00:27:13.680 --> 00:27:15.464 Well, just to make it stronger.
00:27:15.464 --> 00:27:17.210 So the audience understands, david.
00:27:17.210 --> 00:27:21.847 So this is actually a study being funded by the Alberta government.
00:27:21.847 --> 00:27:29.063 So the Bayview Research Unit which is running this clinical trial, it's all they do.
00:27:29.063 --> 00:27:30.366 They were set up to do this.
00:27:30.366 --> 00:27:31.690 They run clinical trials.
00:27:31.690 --> 00:27:51.914 They're based at Children's Hospital, they're part of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary and this study is funded by the Alberta government because a couple of earlier studies they did showed such amazing results that the Alberta government agreed the taxpayer needs to fund a large double-blind clinical trial.
00:27:51.914 --> 00:28:05.859 So when David's telling you that Health Canada is shutting down this trial, understand it's a trial being run by the Alberta, funded by the Alberta government, run out of Children's Hospital by a unit of the Faculty of Medicine.
00:28:05.859 --> 00:28:07.143 That this is all they do.
00:28:07.143 --> 00:28:09.446 They run clinical trials.
00:28:09.446 --> 00:28:10.869 They are professionals at it.
00:28:10.869 --> 00:28:14.544 This was a blue chip government funded endeavor.
