Out of the box thinking around health begins at home.
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f your energy is low, you can’t sleep, your gut is upset, or your mind is cloudy, Jas Kalsi wants you to think of your body as if it were a home with many rooms. Jas encourages us to get our ‘physical house in order’ by aligning our energies with our natural flow, through a self-care package he calls Santé Bespoke. If this sounds a little like feng shui, you’d be right — Jas is not only a company CEO, he’s also a feng shui master.
In feng shui, you don’t just look at one space, you look at the whole house. That’s the naturopathic approach to wellness Jas and his team take at Santé Bespoke. They have a holistic view of the entire body, and their focus is on prevention, not cure. As Jas says, everything is connected:
“When you look at Vancouver — outdoor living, yoga — here supplements are a big part of your life. We think about lifestyle as different areas you try to get a balance in. It’s your social networking, your financial health, your mental health, and your physical health. Supplements can feed into all of that. And we know we don’t get enough nutrients from the food we eat today.”
If you thought that all supplements, such as probiotics, are the same, Jas has some news for you: they’re definitely not.
“In Canada, this is a regulated market — everything has to go through Health Canada. But even with that, there’s tiers. Not every supplement is made the same. The vitamin D you buy at Whole Foods is not what you’ll get from a naturopathic doctor. We only provide professional grade supplements. You cannot dispense these supplements without a naturopathic doctor giving you the recommendation.”
And the probiotics in yogurt, for example, are weak compared to Santé Bespoke’s concentrated formulas.
According to Jas, there are three big areas of concern for his patients. Sleep is #1, then immunity, and then the gut. Where do you find the clues to these complex concerns?
“We do an online assessment, lots of companies do them — what you’re eating, how much exercise, how many alcoholic drinks … But people sometimes misremember! So we require blood work as well. We send a kit to your home — you just take a tiny pinprick of blood. The results of your blood work go to our naturopathic doctor. They’ll look at what you want to achieve in life — what your goals are — and look at your blood work. The doctor then designs a personalized supplement protocol. We take into account all allergies, and preferences such as vegan, vegetarian, keto. Everybody’s supplement protocol is different — because your blood is your blood.”
“Then you’ll have a conference call with our nutritionist, based on your assessment. Now you are on a journey. Every month you get a box, everything you need is in it. In the morning you take a sachet, in the evening you take a sachet.”
Jas believes in taking time to heal. He cautions that this is not an overnight fix. In six months, Santé will need to test your blood again, with an adjustment in your supplement mix. There’s even a concierge team ready to answer questions and suggest tweaks to your regime.
Your Santé Bespoke box doesn’t neglect the spiritual side of health either. Inside every box are a set of intention cards, to help you keep your focus and meditate to relieve stress and neutralize negative energy.
“Your thoughts have power. It’s just energy. If you can understand how it works, you can manipulate it. Take a second just to be mindful of your health by focusing on the supplement in your hand.”
Ryan Laurin from ASPAC is trying out Santé Bespoke. He’ll report back in a future issue of Haute.
