Food as medicine for a global community

Eldon Dahl always knew what he wanted to do with his life. For as long as he can remember, he wanted to make people feel better and live healthier. “When other kids were reading comics, I was reading medical books,” he says. “I was always fascinated with healthcare and naturopathic medicine.” Dahl’s precocious passion was spurred on by his family—in particular, his mother. She used naturopathic formulations and turned her young son on to the idea that there were effective ways to treat disease that didn’t involve hospitals or expensive pharmaceuticals. Then, at the age of 10, Dahl’s cousin of the same age died of cancer. It was an epiphany for the young boy. “At her funeral, I kept thinking that something was terribly wrong,” he says. “She was 10 years old. She shouldn’t have been lying there.”

Dahl founded the nutraceutical company Life Choice® in 1986. “I realized I could have more impact on the health of patients by going into the supply side of naturopathic medicine,” he says. He graduated as naturopathic doctor in 1988 and began working with patients who were ill with diseases such as cancer, AIDS and ALS. At the same time, Dahl began working to come up with new and more effective naturopathic formulations. As he discovered new and better sources, he also helped other naturopaths with their own sourcing needs. Dahl has never backed down from his insistence on using only top-quality ingredients for his formulations. He has also persisted in challenging the status quo of natural medicines, pioneering the introduction or re-introduction of products once thought long gone. Under his direction, Life Choice® became the first company to legally provide supplements like Thyrodine® Thyroid gland, Kava Kava, HGH+, DMSO, and Next Generation B-Complex, the first organic plant based B-Complex free of synthetic B vitamins.

To further protect prescribing naturopaths from having their supplement recommendations replaced by ineffective substitutes, Dahl launched the Doctor’s Choice® line in 2014.

Today, Dahl remains a hands-on executive. He oversees all daily operations at the company that involve the formulation of products, from the preliminary design stage to the licensing process. He sources raw materials, supervises third-party testing of the final products, and spearheads health-related research into medical conditions—specifically anti-aging and chronic disease treatments. Through it all, he follows a simple philosophy: to educate the public on the benefits of naturopathic medicines, while developing new formulas that are as effective as pharmaceuticals, without the side effects. “We’re starting to see the impact of the stand we’ve taken and it’s very gratifying,” says Dahl. “But, we still have a lot of work to do. We have to continue to raise the standards of quality in our industry.”

All our raw materials are purchased based on the purest possible pharmaceutical grade, manufactured either in Japan, USA, or Europe. Hormonal products are vegetarian, with the exception of our raw tissue gland formulations and digestive enzyme. All amino acids are free form, and purity must be 99.9% or higher. We encapsulate our formulas in vegetarian capsules and not the cheaper animal gelatin form, because the quality of every component is paramount. We strive to maintain a consistent high quality in all our formulations and to do so we stick with proven raw material suppliers. We never purchase our ingredients based on price, but rather on purity. Our products may not be the cheapest in the marketplace, but we guarantee that they are among the purest!

From our profits, we make donations to the Mustard Seed, women’s shelters and EU orphanages. We also regularly donate to PETA, Stars, and Community Safety Net. Doctor’s Choice® gives back to the community through volunteer efforts, offering free supplements to naturopathic satellite clinics, which distribute them to those who are homeless or have limited income. We try to give back to the naturopathic community, too, by sponsoring a clinic room at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine; we also utilize CCNM students to help introduce our line to the next generation of naturopaths. We are part of a small industry and a small community, and we believe in giving back to both whenever we can.

We are conscious of how our liquids, creams and gels are made. We are strong supporters of PETA and have been from the beginning. All testing is done with humans, not animals. We have been offered animal testing at a fraction of the cost of human testing, but we refuse to treat animals as experimental objects. For our glandular products, we only use organic New Zealand bovine (cow) and ovine (sheep). New Zealand’s standards mandate the livestock to be free-range, with no feed supplements, hormones or antibiotics; this also prevents any development of BSE or TSE. We strongly feel that animals should have the happiest, healthiest lives possible, and crucial to that goal is their ability to live as nature intended, as much as possible.





Plastic is a global concern. The reasons Doctor’s Choice® chooses PET packaging are: Recyclable: can be recycled so that the PET can be used over and over again. Sustainable: increasing numbers of PET plastic bottles are made from recycled PET. Uses less oil: PET packages use less oil compared to other plastic bottles. Even the cotton we use to prevent capsule breakage is produced from organic cotton. Our products are all third-party manufactured at GMP facilities, which means that they are made with the highest environmental standards. We also avoid GMO’s in all our products, which ensures we are supporting organic farmers. In our head office, we also recycle and compost to do our part to help the planet.