Dr. Rick Green, President of Technology Development for KeyLeaf Life Sciences, delivered a presentation to healthcare professionals attending the biennial Health Vision 20/20 Conference Presented by the Office of Health Innovation in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.  The title of the presentation was “Innovating Health Beyond the Doctors Office – The KeyLeaf Story” and the topic session was…

Dr. Rick Green, President of Technology Development for KeyLeaf Life Sciences, delivered a presentation to healthcare professionals attending the biennial Health Vision 20/20 Conference Presented by the Office of Health Innovation in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.  The title of the presentation was “Innovating Health Beyond the Doctors Office – The KeyLeaf Story” and the topic session was “Beyond the Pill”.

“By ‘beyond the pill’ we’re talking about looking at what lies behind the need to take a prescription pharmaceutical pill or medicine,” said Dr. Green. “Yes, we take a pill for a certain ailment, but it goes back to what caused that ailment. Maybe the way we eat, maybe the lack of dietary nutrients?  So, going ‘beyond the pill’ requires our asking, ‘what really caused the symptom that we’re now taking a pill to remedy?’ If we know the root cause of what’s causing the ailment, we may be able to give the consumer dietary options so they can delay taking that pill… or maybe they’ll never need to take the pill in the first place.”

Going “beyond the pill” includes getting the right plant-based ingredients/natural products included in your foods so that taking pharmaceutical pills and capsules becomes unnecessary.  Now that we know how to identify and stabilize thousands of ingredients and bio-actives, we can enhance the nutritional profile of your soup, salad, or entrée by ensuring we maintain the desired ingredients and bio-actives in your food.

According to Dr. Green, we are currently witnessing a major shift in the food and nutrition industries, as the food industry includes a new focus of health and wellness for consumers. He additionally pointed out that the consumer is looking for natural, clean-label foods and natural nutraceutical supplements to reduce the dependence on pharmaceuticals.  Consumers are becoming more educated and they’re taking a clinical approach to their food sources. For example, they know they can get antioxidants from blueberries and blackberries and these components may have health benefits.

“People are beginning to practice ‘personalized nutrition’ now,” Dr. Green observed.  “It’s a preventative medicine-type approach using food and diet.  You can do gene screening for any individual to get an idea of what diseases that person is individually susceptible to, so when they’re young they can start addressing that genetic predisposition through food choices to extend the time before that disease sets in.”

Thomas Edison is attributed with making a prescient statement in the latter part of the 19th Century:  He said the doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.  It’s taken more than 100 years, but thanks to decades of research and inventiveness by companies like KeyLeaf and others in the food ingredient, and health and wellness industries, the goal of global well-being is now further advanced as healthcare moves ‘beyond the pill’.

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