The Only Ways Drug Induced Nutrient Depletions Sell

compounding pharmacy nutritional pharmacy pharmacy marketing Jul 01, 2016

As a pharmacist, if you are anything like me, when you first learned about Drug Induced Nutrient Depletion’s, it was an Ahhh Haaa moment like no other.

In my case it was from the horse’s mouth during module 3 of my certification in clinical nutrition training which Jim LaValle taught.

I have always been a “vitamin taker” and I have always been a contrarian to the casual prescribing and treating medication side effects with more medications- so for me this was an intellectual holy grail to hold on to.

To a natural pharmacist mind, it seems like a slam dunk…”your medications cause you to lose THIS…so you need THIS to maintain your health”, right?

But have you noticed, this is not always the case?

Have you implemented a program, either through your dispensing process or front store marketing based on drug induced nutrient depletions…with less than stellar results?

If you have answered yes, I am willing to bet it’s all because of emotions.

It all comes down to the principle of pain or pleasure.

People motivate towards what gives them pleasure, or takes them away from pain.

You can tell a person that their statin drug is depleting CoQ10 or K2, but unless they FEEEELLL what it’s like, such as muscle pains, your counseling might fall on deaf ears, there is no pain to motivate them.

So what if they don’t FEEEELLL what the depletion is doing to them?

Then as far as I am concerned, the only other ways to motivate them is through personal reference, or more emotional tugging.

To be clear, this is not a process to sell nutrition, its an educative process with the goal of adding value to their life and supporting their health.

If you educate them and deliver the message in a way that they feel that they are being taken advantage of by “Pharma”… such as statin drugs leading to CoQ10 and K2 depletions which can lead to heart disease…then they might budge.

As personal reference, if they have seen a loved one lose their quality of life with increased medication therapy and advancement of disease- than they might decide to do whatever they can not to go down the same road.

If you have experienced any other ways or examples, I would love to hear.