Fresh out of pharmacy school, a young Kent MacLeod purchased a bankrupt pharmacy in Ottawa’s west end. He was frustrated with traditional pharmacy, where patients were often prescribed more and more medication but in many cases didn’t get better.
So, MacLeod founded NutriChem to emphasize whole-body health – such as taking into account how his patients ate and slept – to bridge the gap he saw between conventional and naturopathic medicine.
“He was swamped as a pharmacist because he would have lineups of people wanting to chat with him,” says Kent’s daughter and NutriChem CEO, Dr. Emma Pollon-MacLeod. “So he opened a clinical practice and brought in some other naturopathic doctors. That’s how the clinic was born.”
Today, the next generation of the MacLeod family has carried that tradition forward at Canada’s leading integrative health clinic, where NutriChem’s team of naturopathic doctors and clinical pharmacists specializes in bespoke health services tailored to each patient’s needs.
Personalized, proactive health plans for the long term
NutriChem has been a family business since its founding. The MacLeod family still owns and operates the company, with the second generation now taking the lead.
“There’s four kids, and we always joke that NutriChem is like another sibling,” says Dr. Pollon-MacLeod. All four siblings are now involved and work within the business.
Unlike a big-box pharmacy, NutriChem is an integrative health hub where clients can get highly personalized health advice and treatment. A pillar of its services is the naturopathic clinic, where clients can set up an hour-long consultation with a naturopathic doctor. After consultation and lab testing, NutriChem’s naturopathic doctors formulate a highly personalized health plan for each client.
The company places a significant focus on addressing the root causes of illness, along with body chemistry balancing, women’s hormone health, and other elements of specialized care.
“We dive into all different aspects of someone’s health,” explains Dr. Pollon-MacLeod, also a naturopathic doctor, adding that customers often arrive frustrated with a siloed health-care system that doesn’t often take a holistic approach. “Naturopathic medicine is about looking at the whole body with a prevention-focused lens, and making a unique plan tailored to that person.”
Treatment can involve combinations of nutritional guidance, custom-compounded medication, custom vitamins, or lifestyle adjustments.
Health plans aren’t just one-time treatments, either: With the help of an on-site phlebotomist, NutriChem’s naturopathic doctors track and monitor patient health and adjust as needed to proactively optimize health and prevention.
“We’re all trained to think that in order to seek care, something has to be really wrong,” says Dr. Pollon-MacLeod. “We give people the empowerment to play a role in their own health.”
A pharmacy guided by whole-body wellness
Personalized, root-cause care at NutriChem is also at the heart of the company’s pharmacy, which offers custom compounding (tailoring a medication to a patient’s specific needs, whether by dose, form, sensitivity to allergens, or other factors) and deprescribing services to clients.
NutriChem’s Director of Science and the pharmacy’s Designated Manager (DM), Dr. Adam Livingston, is an expert in deprescribing. By combining deprescription with custom compounding, he safely moves patients away from medications that can be problematic for overall health.
“With a lot of these psychiatric medications, for example, you can’t just stop them cold turkey,” he says. “What you need is controlled tapering, but commercial doses don’t exist to accommodate tapering. We can use compounding to make custom, slow, gradual reduction doses for patients.”
NutriChem can also adapt medications, if needed, such as transforming a pill into a topical for ease of use or removing additives or allergens.
In addition to personalized health services, NutriChem can fill regular prescriptions at its brick-and-mortar retail store.
“If you have a regular prescription from your doctor, come on in and chat with us – we can give you better counsel than most pharmacies,” says Dr. Livingston.
Retail store and a Health Canada-approved supplement line
Clients can drop in to the company’s brick-and-mortar or online store to browse products from NutriChem’s own Health Canada-approved supplement line, featuring additive and filler-free, 100-per-cent Canadian products that have been trusted by customers for 30 years.
The staples of the company’s supplement line – including pure magnesium glycinate, probiotics, and gut health support products – work alongside prescription medications and are used within NutriChem’s personalized patient support plans.
Dr. Pollon-MacLeod says NutriChem always encourages its customers to look deeper into their health concerns to identify and deal with root causes, rather than just masking symptoms.
“We want people to be aware that we’re having these conversations about health,” says Dr. Pollon-MacLeod. “Just come in and experience NutriChem in any way you need.”