| Frequently Asked Questions |
How long will it take to receive my order? We ship orders daily. Your order will always be shipped within 24 hours of us receiving your order (unless we get it on a Friday, in which case it will be shipped the following Monday). Depending on where you live, it can take from 1 day to 5 days for delivery. So, in the general case, 5 days will be the longest it can take for your order to be delivered, though it's more often 2-3 days from when you place you order. Orders are couriered by road using SkyNet Couriers currently. Products are safely packaged, tracked and insured. You will need to sign for your package and we receive scanned copies of the POD (Proof of Delivery) notices to ensure your peace of mind.
Very. The Life Elements group of companies is deeply committed to a healthy, sustainable and integral planetary ecology. While we understand that there are inevitable environmental costs to doing business (and simply living on the earth), we do all that we can to minimize our impact on the world, and preserve the biological integrity of the planetary ecosystem for ourselves and for future generations. Practically we do the following:
Yes. Please see our Returns Policy.
Yes possibly, just let us know what you are looking and we will look into it. Based on the quality of the product itself (which will need to be excellent, and aligned with the ethos of our company) and how practical it is to supply, we may then be able to stock it.
By all means. Please send us an email with your suggestions and ideas. We welcome your input. Legally we may not offer any advice related to the treatment of disease. However, we can offer complete advice about how to improve and strengthen your overall health, immunity and vitality. And we will. Ask us any question and we will happily answer it.
We would be happy to make our products available to you at Practitioner Rates for supply to your clients, and, in fact, many Life Elements products are sold this way. We are very happy that our products can be recommended with integrity by those who understand them. Please contact us for more information.
Simply contact us and we will send you a wholesale information kit and also have a knowledgeable sales consultant call on you at a convenient time, if you require.
Yes. We have the resources and can provide whatever you require. Just ask.
Not currently, but we will have one set up in the near future. Please give us your details if you would like us to contact you when this is operational. 1. Our products are as stated and are formulated and manufactured with the highest integrity.
At present we only offer a door-to-door courier service, which we have found to be far more reliable and efficient. Also better care is taken of your order in transit. Although this service costs a little more than using the post office, it is free for orders of R3000 or more.
We are able to ship anywhere in the world, though in certain cases, especially regarding products from our European and North American suppliers, it will be cheaper to order from them, or their local agent, directly.
We will immediately replace (at our cost) anything that is damaged. If your order has gone missing we will quickly attempt to trace it and have it delivered (this solves the problem in most cases). If it cannot be traced we will re-send your order (once again at our cost).
Yes, Jean-Pierre Le Roux, Life Elements CEO, has 23 years experience with health and nutrition and is certainly able to guide you on the road to wellness, vitality and superhero functioning. Please email him on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.
R120 for orders under R3000 in value. Free for orders of R3000 or more.
Visa, MasterCard and EFT currently. We will be adding Diners Club, American Express and other payment options soon.
Pure Manufacturing is a quality standard for nutritional supplements manufacture that has the following minimum requirements:
In addition, the following state-of-the-art procedures may be (and often are) used in manufacture by the companies we distribute for:
In short, Pure Manufacturing is a standard for supplement manufacture that all companies should aspire to, and is simply the right way of doing this. We are dealing with the functioning of the most complex and sophisticated "machine" we know, the human body, and not a washing machine. Products engineered for the purpose of sustaining this sophisticated and refined organism need to meet the highest standards that exist. Pure Manufacturing is that standard. For an excellent further insight into Pure Manufacturing in practical application, see this review article from Natural Products Insider on Synergy Production Laboratories.
Yes. Or ethically wild-crafted (which is a higher specification than organic, but not generally certifiable) or of a nature that makes certification non-applicable (as for a product such as Angstrom Platinum).
We first begin with decades of experience in the health, nutrition and supplements business. Then many months of research per potential supplier. Our decision to carry any product is first based on a thorough review of the company manufacturing it. The company, its founder and its current owners and managers must be committed, first and foremost, and beyond all else, to personal and planetary health, through the most high integrity, efficacious products that can be created. This must be their primary intention. Secondarily they must be professional business people of the highest order. We are not interested in working with companies who are only in it for the money, or who see your health as just another market demographic, tradable commodity or income source. Such intention will never produce products that are truly regenerative or properly nourishing. Unfortunately it is this very intention that has produced such a slew of ineffective and sub-standard products in shiny packaging in the global supplements market. By contrast, our products are formulated with serious intention to actually do what they are intended to, which is to deeply nourish, revitalize, re-balance and regenerate the human body. Once we have identified a manufacturer we want to work with then we will being a process of due diligence on that company to ensure that their products are aligned with their intention and actually "meet the mark" of excellence. Experience and applied wisdom in formulation, and total application of the Pure Manufacturing paradigm in production are absolutely required. Once this process is complete, we will approach the company in question with a proposal for distribution, and in most cases we will work as their authorized exclusive distributor in Southern Africa, as this allows us to provide a better and more complete service altogether. So when you purchase any product from Life Elements, you have the peace of mind to know that you are getting products that represent the highest expression of nutritional science anywhere in the world today. We have taken the guess-work out of it for you. These products are the best you can get. Period.
For the most part, yes. There are some rare exceptions which we may carry such as organic bovine colostrum, goat mineral whey, ethically farmed deer antler velvet, Polyrachis ant extract, Norwegian cod-liver oil, green-lipped mussel oil, and various products from bees. Everything else is raw vegan organic. Excipients are non-active (or negatively-active) ingredients used during manufacture and only for the purpose of being a carrier or substrate to the active ingredient, or to facilitate the manufacturing process itself. These can be liquid carriers such as ethanol and glycerin, fillers such as maltodextrin, microcrystalline cellulose or various starches, binding gums, preserving agents, drying and flow agents such as silicon dioxide, and lubricants such as the ubiquitous magnesium stearate. Magnesium Stearate (sometimes also called Stearic Acid) is a very commonly used excipient in nutritional supplements. It is primarily used as lubricant and flow agent, allowing materials to flow better through the channels of encapsulation machines and eject better from tablet presses. It comes in a number of forms, and from various sources (both animal and vegetable). The most common form is from hydrogenated cottonseed oil, a bit like a soapy powdered margarine (not very nice). Cottonseed oil is generally heavily pesticided and the oil is processed at high temperatures, damaging its structure. Magnesium Stearate is believed to inhibit absorption of nutrients, and recent studies have shown it to be immunosuppressive, specifically inhibiting T-Cell dependant immune response. Magnesium Stearate is prohibited in Pure Manufacturing and none of our products will ever contain it.
While there are many options, that would normally be drawn from the broad-spectrum Superfood complexes, if we had to pick one, it would be Pure Synergy 354g powder. As a single item this is one of our most expensive products, but is ironically also the most cost-effective, on a gram-for-gram and Rand-for-Rand basis, and will supply the greatest amount of high-integrity nutrition for the lowest price. Because it is such a high-value product and because of the principles espoused by The Synergy Company it enjoys the lowest mark-ups of any product in the industry. Pure Synergy is also the most sophisticated, complete and high-integrity single formulation in the world, and is capable of supplying all your supplement needs alone. Whatever your budget, when it is put towards Pure Synergy you will be making the greatest saving for the greatest return on your health. Another option would be to use the trio of HealthForce products Vitamineral Green, Earth and Fruits of the Earth as a system, switching between them each day, or each serving. This would also be an excellent solution.
Aah! In many and profound ways! Most conventional multi-vitamins are produced from synthetic (i.e. chemically synthesized) materials and are isolates, meaning they are isolated from the bio-chemical matrix in which they naturally occur. They are bio-electrically inert, without DNA, contain no chi or life-force and are only partially recognised by the body as nutrients. Most commercial multi-vitamins contain a mixture of vitamins (often made from coal tars, GM corn, cow brains and even sewerage sludge. really!) and minerals (normally poorly absorbed inorganic mineral salts), and occasionally with the addition of certain amino-acids, herbs (rarely organic) or antioxidants. Furthermore they normally contain excipients of manufacture in varying degrees of yuck, and at various levels. The major issue with this kind of nutrition however is that it will, by necessity, always be incomplete. The complexity of the human body with its specific nutritional requirements, coupled with the complexity of foods, and the literally thousands of nutrients they contain - as various vitamins (known and unknown), minerals, enzymes, phytonutrients, glyconutrients, essential fatty acids, probiotics and amino acids - means that we will never perfectly understand what the apple is comprised of altogether. Nor will we perfectly know which of the components of the apple are needed by the body. Better to just the eat the apple! This simple idea is the basis of wholefood nutrition - which is about creating supplements from full-spectrum concentrates of super-high-integrity foods (which our bodies have an innate and evolutionary familiarity with). These foods, especially when intelligently combined, contain all the many thousands of the building blocks of life. Additionally they contain them in the correct forms, and in the correct ratios, for optimum digestion and assimilation. Importantly, they contain their own DNA and RNA, the "language" of biological life, which allows for the proper communication and relationship between the body and what it ingests - something that is never the case when putting an isolated, fractional, lab-created, molecular facsimile of a nutrient into the body. Superfood complexes usually contain from 5 to 60 different plant components, usually either extracted, freeze-dried, or juiced and evaporated. The plant sources are generally very high-powered foods, such as barley grass, dulse seaweed, wild blueberries, algae such as Spirulina and Chlorella, medicinal mushrooms such as Reishi and Cordyceps and rejuvenative herbs such as Astragalus and Red Clover. Each formulator has his or her own way of working with Nature to produce a supplement that is truly nourishing and usable by the body. These products are enzymatically active which means they have their own enzymes intact to facilitate digestion and assimilation, and they are still living. There is still chi, or life-force, associated with them and we ingest this too. When the product has been properly prepared (which is a high art and takes way more care than when working with non-living synthetic isolates) it is very close to taking in foods in their raw, natural (though concentrated) form, which is how our bodies are meant to receive their nourishment. For a detailed analysis of a classic Superfood product, see this article by Dr. Gabriel Cousens on Pure Synergy, which will provide a deeper insight into what is involved in the creation of a true premier supplement.
This is always a personal consideration, and it always begins with your diet as the foundation. The essential basics of diet are that it must be actual food (and not colourfully packaged pseudo-foods), clean, i.e. organic or otherwise natural and unadulterated, heavily based on plants, including a good percentage or raw foods, and it must be widely varied. On top of this solid foundation one should supplement. The chosen protocol will depend on one's intention and budget. Generally any supplement program should be based on a complex superfood product to ensure good baseline nutrition. Once this is in place then extra pieces can be added. Over time, as your nutritional status improves you will notice that your body's capacity for regeneration is extended and this may indicate further requirements for supplementation, possibly with specific tonic herbs or minerals, if you choose to grow in this way. The idea of "upper-levels", which applies to synthetic supplements (due to potentials for toxicity), do not generally apply to wholefood supplements, and for the most part, the more you take of what is essentially highly nutritionally-dense food, the better it will be for your health. |
