Ideology

Give your body a chance to do the job that it is meant to, by giving it the nutrients that diets fall short of. We started out with this thought and saw it to fruition. It is a fact that food gets digested and absorbed the best when it is enjoyed the most. So, from the day that we conceived the idea of our brand, we were pretty clear that we wanted to reimagine daily supplements and serve them in an absolutely delicious, fun and enjoyable format.

At the very core, we believe that humankind has specific deficiency-lead problems that can only be resolved with very specific nutrients in specific quantities - not more, not less. Synthetic vitamins and minerals in amounts that are not ideal can never be absorbed correctly by the body. They end up doing more harm than good. Therefore, at årelang®, we use all natural, plant-based ingredients in the exact quantities that your body can recognize, absorb and benefit from.

We believe in the power of trust and honesty to enrich lives. And we set out to create products that do just that, and we wanted our brand to be transparent, ethical, honest, well researched and backed by science.

Our research is so fundamentally sound, that our formulations have been created to be able to allow the body to optimally function the way it was meant to and here's how:

1. Using Ideal Micronutrients

There are two types of nutrients we get from foods; Macronutrients like carbohydrates, proteins and fats which are the body’s energy source and Micronutrients like Vitamins and Minerals which don’t provide calories but are equally important for healthy functioning of the body and are required in small amounts for normal cell growth. The food today gives you your carbs, proteins and fats, but micronutrients? Not so much.

Here’s where phytonutrients and we come in. Plant based Bioactives are specific phytonutrients that have biological activities and specific health benefits for humans. These bioactives are isolated from phytonutrient compounds through a process called extraction. The bioactives are extracted from the plants depending on the purpose they are required for. Each plant may contain gazillion phytochemicals having innumerable bioactives. Through the extraction process the smallest most relevant and most potent part of the plant can be isolated for use in supplements. And for most cases the more bitter the extract the greater the potency of the extract! We use these potent bioactives in our formulations.

2. Plant-based:

It is no myth that Plant-Based ingredients are highly bioavailable. But by using only plant based ingredients, it allows the body's processes to function optimally - the way the body was built to work. Let's use an example, if we were to make a sleep formulation, we would not be using direct Melatonin, instead, our formulation would provide ingredients that would boost the production of Melatonin in your body. Thereby allowing your body to work the way it is meant to work for that specific function.

Why is this important?

Melatonin is a hormone that is produced by the pineal gland in the brain and helps induce sleep. By ingesting regular doses of direct Melatonin each night, sure it will induce sleep, but what happens when this stops? The gut becomes lazy and the cells slowly stop functioning and then gradually stop. The body now either slows down its natural functioning or under worse cases, no longer knows how to produce melatonin on its own. Habituating the body’s reliance on the Melatonin pop every night forOn the other hand our formulation, gives the body the micronutrients that form the source of Melatonin which is first digested in the stomach to get free Melatonin which along with the other nutrients passes through the bloodstream and reaches its receptors to feed the pineal glands to produce its own Melatonin which helps induce sleep. Same result but only now the body is forced to produce its own Melatonin, regulating its Circadian Rhythm naturally. Not really such a small difference, is it?

3. Chemical and API free formulations:

We decided to not only keep our products completely chemical free and plant-based only, we have also spent a lot of our research, resources and time on the goodness of plant-based formulations and how they work to optimize the body's natural mechanism. You see, our bodies have been taught to absorb nutrients from the food we eat, bind them to the body’s receptors, complete their biological activity, metabolize them and finally excrete them out of the body.

Why is this important?

But, with the modern trends, we tend to take a faster track and provide our body supplements that contain ready enzymes, chemical concoctions or API drugs. Melatonin, Biotin(Vit B7), COQ10, Retinol (Vit A), Glutathione (Antioxidant) etc, all of which the body is supposed to make from the nutrients it absorbs from the food that is digested. However, these ‘ready foods’ make us miss the first few steps of absorption and production. This natural biological activity is no longer functioning and the body not only starts to forget some of its natural processes but also becomes completely reliant on the ‘ready foods’ it's getting. When we stop taking them, the body by then has forgotten how to produce them naturally. So sticking to plant based is the safest option when supplementing, plus their Bioavailability levels are a whole lot more than their chemical counterparts.

4. The right quantity and quality of ingredients:

One of the main fundamentals of our research was how much of these nutrients does the body actually absorb? What we got from the years of research on some of the nutrients, is that micronutrients are absorbed in micro as in very less quantities. What happens to the excess nutrients and how does this excess impact your health? We found an answer to the question.

The Liver!

The liver is a very hard-working organ - it makes bile, helps score nutrients from the diet, breaks down your food and provides energy to your other organs, breaks down fats, alcohol and medications, controls blood sugar and hormone levels, stores iron. All excess nutrients that are pumped into your system eventually just get expelled from the body but they all have to go through the liver – can you imagine the stress you are putting it through? So, we decided to take the onus on ourselves and ensure that we do not stress your livers. It would be counterproductive to eliminate one problem and create another!

We did this by keeping the quantities of the actives in our formulation only slightly higher than your body can actually absorb. No marketing gimmicks and no lies! And since it was smaller quantities that we needed to go with, we decided to make them count! So, we upped the potency and quality of the bioactives we used so that they can make the impact we intend them to make.

5. Confectionery:

It's a documented fact that the body will absorb more nutrients from the foods that it enjoys the most. A huge part of the mechanism of digestion is in response to signals sent by the brain of the way food looks, tastes, the brain is more eager to send messages to digest it, getting the entire digestive tract producing the enzymes and juices it needs for the food it's about to receive. The best way to see this function is how the salivary glands go berserk when delicious food is placed in front of you. You can feel the saliva because it is in the mouth - the body responds in the same way through the rest of the digestive tract as well. Digestion just got a whole lot easier!

Why is this important?

The same effect works adversely when we are forced to gulp down pills, diluted powders, etc which we wash down with a whole lot of water. So if we have to put nutritional supplements into the body for the purpose of absorption, we decided to present it in a form of something that was enjoyable, and what can be more enjoyable and soul satisfying than a piece of confectionery, while giving bioavailability a better chance?

6. Highly Potent Ingredients:

Our research shows that the body can absorb only a very small quantity of micro nutrients from the food we eat each day. We have been able to successfully quantify the amount of micronutrients the body is able to effectively absorb. We took this quantity, upped the dose just a little more and used the most potent form of bioactives we could find for the function we wanted. If it's little our body needs, we said, let's make the little count.

7. The Right Supplies:

Finding the right suppliers was as important as identifying the right formulation. What our formulations demanded was not readily available with all the extract manufacturers. So we had to get most of our bioactives specifically manufactured for our formulation.We have partnered with some of the best extract manufacturers in India, who work with us to give us the bioactives that we are looking for in the right quantity, potency and quality. Ingredients specifically made for us so we could provide our formulations with the best!

8. Result Oriented

All our products, from the ingredients we receive to the final product have been tested for safety, their actions individually and collectively in the formulation, have been clinically proven, and we have run several focus group studies using over 100 volunteers on each product before launching the products. Since our products are plant based, we needed to be absolutely confident on how they would work on different demographics across India. And we were! The results have been remarkably close and in some cases higher than our expectations.

Conclusion: From sourcing our ingredients, supporting local farmers, to our communication and packaging, we take our principles very seriously. Our ingredients are traceable down to their origin, free of artificial colourants and ethically sourced. We will never compromise on quality and will taste and test every batch that is retailed, before it hits the supply chain. All in all, we want to enjoy the process of creating these unique products while making sure you enjoy your journey to absolute wellness and health. What you hold in your hand is not just any confectionery - it is a piece of good health; it is the love your body needs.

Research

Institute of Chemical Technology

Arelang Naturals® has partnered with the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT, Mumbai), formerly known as the University Department of Chemical Technology (UDCT) for our extensive research and formulation development. Working closely with the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology, every formulation has been carefully developed through a precise scientific approach, in vitro studies and quality and assay driven tests for each ingredient we have used in our products. 

Our research has been pioneered by Dr. Cyrus Naterwalla, Mrs. Nikita Naterwalla along with the renowned Dr. Kirti S. Laddha of the ICT, who has a several research publications, patents and accolades to his name, and years of accomplishment in the fields of Pharmacognosy, Advanced Pharmacognosy and Natural products for flavours and fragrances.