If it's sold at a wellness clinic, is it actually regulated?
You walk into a clean, calm-looking clinic. There's a price list, a friendly intake coordinator, It feels medical. It feels official. So it's safe to assume someone Health Canada, a licensing college, somebody has signed off on what's in that syringe, right?
Not necessarily. And that gap between "feels regulated" and "is regulated" is where a lot of my patients get caught off guard.
The word "clinic" doesn't mean what you think it means
In Ontario, "clinic" isn't a protected term tied to a specific level of oversight. A clinic can be run by a physician, a nurse practitioner, a naturopathic doctor, or in many cases — by someone with no regulated health designation at all, depending on what's being offered. What's actually regulated is the practitioner's licence and the product being used, not the word on the door.
That means two clinics on the same street, both calling themselves "wellness clinics," can have completely different levels of oversight depending on who's running them and what they're selling.
How products actually get regulated in Canada
Health Canada has three relevant categories, and where a product lands changes everything about what's known about it:
Approved drugs (Food and Drugs Act): went through pre-market review, have a Drug Identification Number (DIN), and have published safety and efficacy data. Think insulin, semaglutide, most prescription medications.
Natural Health Products (NHP Regulations, overseen by the Natural and Non-prescription Health Products Directorate): lower bar than drugs, but still requires licensing, labelling standards, and basic safety review. Most vitamins, many botanicals, and some collagen-based peptides fall here.
Unauthorized drugs: products sold with implied or explicit therapeutic claims, without a DIN, and without going through any approval pathway. This is where compounds like BPC-157 and TB-500 currently sit. No regulatory body in the world not Health Canada, not the FDA, not the European Medicines Agency has approved them for human use.
Here's the part that surprises people: a product being sold at a clinic, even a clean, professional-looking one, doesn't tell you which of these three categories it's in. You have to ask.
Where the real gaps show up in practice
A few patterns I see often:
"Research peptides" being administered as therapy. Compounds like BPC-157 and TB-500 are frequently sold online labelled "for research use only not for human consumption," then administered in clinics anyway. A 2025 systematic review screening for clinical (not animal) studies on BPC-157 in orthopaedic applications found only one study that met inclusion criteria, out of 544 articles screened. The animal data is genuinely interesting. The human safety data, for all practical purposes, doesn't exist yet.
Compounded peptides without a clear clinical rationale. A licensed physician in Ontario can prescribe a compounded peptide sermorelin, for example when no commercially approved product meets a patient's specific need, and a licensed pharmacy prepares it under Good Compounding Practices. That's a real, regulated pathway. The gap shows up when the compounding rationale is vague ("anti-aging," "optimization") rather than tied to an actual diagnosis and monitoring plan.
IV therapy and injectables marketed with confidence that outpaces the evidence. Confidence in the sales pitch and confidence in the data are two different things, and it's worth asking which one you're being sold.
Questions worth asking before you say yes to anything
I'd rather you ask these questions of any provider including me than take a clean waiting room as a proxy for evidence:
Is this product approved by Health Canada, and does it have a DIN?
If it's compounded, what licensed pharmacy is preparing it, and under what prescription?
Is the person recommending this regulated by a college that requires standards of practice and liability insurance?
What's the actual published human data not animal data, not testimonials behind this specific use?
None of these questions are confrontational. A practitioner with nothing to hide will answer them plainly.
What this looks like in my practice
As a naturopathic doctor registered with the College of Naturopaths of Ontario, I work within a defined scope: functional lab testing, clinical nutrition, botanical medicine, and lifestyle interventions with real evidence behind them. I don't prescribe pharmaceuticals or compounded peptides if a patient and I decide that's the right next step, I coordinate with their physician. That's not a limitation I apologize for. It's the line that keeps the recommendations I make accountable to something more than a sales pitch.
When patients come in asking about something they saw advertised at a wellness clinic, my job isn't to tell them no. It's to help them understand which regulatory bucket it actually falls into, and what that does and doesn't tell us about safety.
Frequently asked questions
Is everything sold at a naturopathic clinic a Natural Health Product? No. Naturopathic doctors can recommend NHPs, but the products themselves still fall into whichever Health Canada category applies NHP, approved drug, or, if mislabelled, unauthorized drug. The practitioner's licence doesn't change the product's regulatory status.
If a product is legal to buy, does that mean it's regulated? Not always. Some products are sold legally as "research use only" specifically to avoid the regulatory pathway required for human therapeutic use. Legal to purchase and approved for the use you're putting it to are two different things.
How do I find out if my practitioner is regulated? Every regulated health profession in Ontario has a public college register — for naturopathic doctors, that's the College of Naturopaths of Ontario. You can search any practitioner's name and licence status directly.
Does "natural" mean safer? Not inherently. Natural Health Product status reflects a regulatory category, not a safety guarantee. Some of the least-regulated compounds in wellness spaces right now (unapproved peptides) are marketed using natural-sounding language despite having no human safety data.
This article is for educational purposes and is not medical advice. If you have concerns about a specific product or treatment, please consult a qualified, regulated healthcare provider before starting it.
Ready to get real answers about what's actually behind a recommendation? Book a free 15-minute discovery call to talk about your health goals and how evidence-based naturopathic care can help. Book here
About the author: Dr. Sonya Arrigo, ND is a Naturopathic Doctor practicing virtually across Ontario and in person at Insight Naturopathic Clinic in Toronto's Leaside neighbourhood. She holds an HBSc from the University of Toronto and a Doctor of Naturopathy from the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, and is registered with the College of Naturopaths of Ontario. She sees patients in English, Spanish.
