Partners in Wellness: Vitality Works

You've probably seen our Cambridge Naturals Brand herbal tinctures around the store - we carry a wide selection of affordable, high quality single herb and herbal blend CN tinctures, as well as some dried herb capsules and over 30 essential oils, to meet our customers' growing need and passion for herbal remedies. These herbal tinctures are manufactured for us for us by Vitality Works in Alberquerque, New Mexico, led by founder and award winning herbalist Mitch Coven.  For over three decades, Vitality Works has striven to provide leading edge medicinal supplements of the highest quality, purity and potency. They offer an unmatched expertise in direct sourcing of botanicals, and their meticulous attention to detail and consistency of the manufacturing process has given them an impeccable reputation for quality. We are proud to work with Vitality Works on our Cambridge Naturals Brand herbal products! Below is our interview with Craig from VW:

Tell me a little bit about Vitality Works. Where are you located and who are you owned by? What makes your products unique in this ever-expanding industry?

Vitality Works is located in Albuquerque, NM where it was founded 34 years ago by Mitch Coven as a complimentary health clinic.  One of the factors that make our products unique is that the entire operation is overseen by Mitch, a Medical and Clinical Herbalist and lecturer. Formulas that were developed and successful in the clinic are the foundation of our line. Mitch’s depth of herbal knowledge assures that everything from the procurement of the herbs worldwide, processing into products, quality and regulatory compliance is carefully managed so that every bottle leaving the facility is consistently of the highest quality to maximize results. Mitch’s leadership is supported by an exceptional group of employees, who share his dedication.

Echinacea fields on the Vitality Works partner farm in Abiquiu

How do you source the raw materials that go into your products?

Our herbs are sourced from all over the world.  We buy certified organic and ethically wild harvested botanicals direct from growers and harvesters as a priority. We buy fresh, recently harvested botanicals that are 100% tested for potency, strength, identity and purity. We pretest lots of herbs to insure they meet our specifications, which go beyond FDA requirements. We have relationships to our growers that go back decades. 

What type of certifications do your products have? Why are these certifications important?

The Vitality Works facility has a number of certifications, all of which are reflections of the quality control that is in place.  It is important to have 3rd party certification to validate that the manufacturer is really making safe product, are following regulations, meet quality standards and that meet the claims on a label. Our facility is FDA-registered; NSF GMP certified, KOF-K Certified Kosher and Certified Organic for some products.  Our products are GMO Freee and Gluten Free as well but are not certified. Mitch is also a member of the American Herbal Products Association (APHA) and the American Botanical Council (ABC). 

Emigdio, herb farmer (left) and Mitch Coven, founder of VW

Does Vitality Works have any transparency initiatives in place and if so what are those? What does Vitality Works do to maintain sourcing and manufacturing transparency? 

Our facility is open to inspection and we hide nothing. We are audited or inspected on average 40 times per year by a third  party. If someone needs to know where our raw materials come from, such as country of origin, we tell them. We are proud of what we offer.

Bottling and Quality Control at VW

Partners in Wellness: Interview with Cristina Ciccone from Gaia

Gaia Herbs is one of our top herbal supplements suppliers - and we've worked with them for decades. They manufacture high quality liquid tinctures and liquid phytocaps as well as dried herb extract capsules. Much of the raw material comes from their amazingly gorgeous organic farm in Brevard, NC - as well as organic farms in Italy and Costa Rica. Their "Meet Your Herbs" platform puts transparency right at your finger tips - just use the QR code on the bottle to discover exactly where and how the extracted herbs in your bottle were grown and processed.

Cristina Ciccone, our Gaia representative, is one of our favorite reps to work with! She is incredibly dedicated to her work and a self proclaimed "herbal nerd" - we've come to her with many complex questions about herbal medicine over the years and she always responds with a thoughtful, detailed answer. In honor of Partners in Wellness week, we've asked Cristina to answer a few questions about her work with Gaia:

What do you love about working for Gaia?

As an Herbalist, I love working for a company that specializes in just that, herbs. Rather than attempting to produce products in every category like multi-vitamins, fish oils, probiotics etc., I think it’s important to have a company that specializes in a particular category and that does it exceeding well. Herbs vary so much in their chemistry and quality batch to batch, so it’s important to understand all the nuances to make really effective herbal medicine. Gaia is uncompromising in its integrity and manages to find the perfect balance of cutting edge science as well as honoring traditional wisdom and plant intelligence. I think it’s so easy for herbal companies to be pulled too far in one direction. Some herbal companies treat their herbal products like pharmaceuticals in isolating and spiking single plant compounds.  This type of herbal product is entirely “missing the point.” Gaia honors whole plant medicine by concentrating, never adulterating or isolating. I believe this makes for the most effective herbal medicine. Gaia is a company I truly believe in and feel honored to work for.

Tulsi growing on Gaia's farm in NC. Photo Credit: Gaia Herbs

What's the best part of your job as an educator and company representative?

Gaia has a full traceability platform called Meet Your Herbs. This is an industry first, and it allows consumers to trace every raw material to where it was grown, how it was grown and all of the testing done on that particular batch of plant material. Showing people that they have the ability to trace a raw material from seed to shelf helps to really bring their medicine to life and helps them to feel confident that it’s a pure and efficacious product. One of my favorite things to do in store aisles is to pull a product off the shelf, plug the lot number into our Meet Your Herbs app and show a staff member or a customer where that batch of herb was grown and all the testing and quality control that took place before that product even reached the shelf. It feels like I’m performing a magic trick. 

I also love the opportunity to educate about individual herbs and formulas. It is one of the best parts of my job with Gaia. It’s another way for people to 'meet their herbs'. The herbal category can feel pretty intimidating, confusing and even esoteric. Education helps to demystify herbal medicine, clear up confusion, and make people feel more comfortable in knowing when to use/recommend which plant or formula.  It can feel entirely overwhelming when you find multiple different choices in the immune health section, stress section, etc.  All herbs have their own specialties and individual properties. Education helps people come to see these patterns and understand an herb’s “personality.” With this knowledge it becomes easier to recommend/choose which product is right for which particular situation and which particular person. When I conduct these trainings, I almost feel like I’m introducing two people at a dinner party!

Echinacea and Bamboo growing on the Gaia farm. Photo Credit: Gaia Herbs

What do you think is enticing more people to start using herbs?

There is a dynamic interplay that takes place between our bodies and plant medicine. We have co-evolved with these plants as long as modern humans have walked this earth. I believe there is an understanding and an awakening that takes place in our bodies when we consume plant medicine. Herbal medicine is literally built into our DNA. Our bodies do not understand isolated synthetic compounds, such as is found in pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals have been used  for little more than a hundred years. This is the blink of an eye for human existence and humans beings have no evolutionary frame of reference for this type of medicine and how it operates. I believe this is why we see so many side effects from pharmaceuticals because rather than the dynamic and elegant interplay we see with people and plant, Pharmaceuticals force a process in our bodies. I think many people are longing for the opportunity to re-connect with their medicine and food as well. I think part of our modern “social sickness” is a feeling of disconnect.  I think it is a profound thing to feel connected with your medicine and for people to reclaim their power by actively engaging in their own healing process. Of course the lack of side effects, less expensive cost and ability to help prevent disease, also makes herbal medicine more and more appealing.

What's your favorite (or one of your favorite) Gaia products that you use every day?

Adrenal Health! I always feel corny saying it, but this product literally changed my life. It was the first Gaia product I had ever tried and made me a believer.  This product is formulated for stress management, but rather than just temporarily masking the symptom of stress, it literally changes your body’s perception of stress through its regulation of stress hormones.  It also has the beneficial “side effects” of increasing my energy levels and enhancing my mood memory. 

Partners in Wellness: Reliance Vitamins

For our Partners In Wellness Week we are going to be publishing some short interviews and vendor profiles to give more insight into our vendors - because it’s not just what we carry that’s important to us, it’s who we carry as well.  For a list of vendor demos this week, visit our calendar. We use three top manufacturers for our Cambridge Naturals brand supplements: Reliance, Vitality Works, and Vitamer Labs.  All three offer the highest quality sourcing and manufacturing and each one offers something unique for us and our customers.  The first in our series of profiles is Reliance, written by Zach, our supplements manager.

Established in 1978, Reliance is a privately owned dietary supplements manufacturer making some of the highest quality products we carry. You'll recognize the green ginkgo Cambridge Naturals brand label in our store - many of these supplements are made for us by Reliance. What makes them high quality?  For starters, Reliance is NSF Certified for Current Good Manufacturing Practices (CGMP) and is NSF Certified for Sport, meaning that their facilities, processes, etc. have been independently certified to follow the highest standards.  On top of that their NSF dual-certifications, Reliance is Certified for CGMPs by the Natural Products Association (NPA), the leading industry body for natural products of all sorts.

These certifications aren’t just for show and they definitely aren’t given to just any company.  To get these certifications, companies must go through a rigorous, in-depth evaluation which includes evaluations of ingredient sourcing, product testing (both during manufacturing and of finished products), and even record keeping.  The fact that Reliance has these certifications means that their products always contain what’s on the label and never contain any unlabeled adulterants. 

From Reliance: "You can observe a Quality team member utilizing advanced HPLC instrumentation to verify the purity and potency of products in our Quality Lab. In addition to our in house lab, we utilize independent labs for the analysis of finished products."

While we definitely choose our companies based on the quality products they can offer us and our customers, we also take into account what each company offers its stakeholders beyond a physical product. Reliance is a partner of Vitamin Angels, an organization that “provides life saving vitamins to mothers and children under five at risk of malnutrition, reducing preventable illness, blindness, and death and creating a healthier world.”  Vitamin Angels is active in over 50 countries worldwide and reaches over 48 million children and mothers with their efforts.

We are proud to work with Reliance to make our private label products, and believe they offer some of the highest quality supplements out there. Ask us about our Cambridge Naturals brand and we're happy to show you some of our favorite items!

From Reliance: "You are looking on as one of our Quality Lab technicians prepares a sample."

(For an added bonus, check out this video from Dr. Brent Bauer, MD, the director of the Mayo Clinic Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program on ‘How To Choose The Right Supplements’ where he calls out the NSF CGMP certification as one of the essential certifications to look for in dietary supplements and dispels some of the myths about dietary supplement regulation.)