If you've got a question about supplements (and who doesn't?) Earl Mindell, Ph.D., is the guy to ask. Mindell has written over a dozen books, probably the most famous of which is Earl Mindell's Vitamin Bible, first published 30 years ago. He is a registered pharmacist, a master herbalist, and a professor of nutrition at Pacific Western University in Los Angeles.
This month Mindell released Earl Mindell's New Vitamin Bible, which is exhaustively updated with info on everything from the latest anti-aging supplements to natural alternatives to popular drugs such as Viagra and Prozac, to nutraceuticals, homeopathy and herbal remedies.
I got Dr. Mindell on the phone to ask him a few questions about the book and also got to hear some feisty, dead-on commentary about the problems with the modern American lifestyle:
What's changed in the thirty years since you wrote the original Vitamin Bible?
The biggest change is that people are much more interested in health, both because people are better educated and because the advertisement of prescription drugs to the public has changed the situation dramatically. If the government feels that the layperson should decide which drug to take, shouldn't they also be educated about how to take better care of themselves, so they might not need the drugs in the first place?
Also we are finally understanding that the Standard American Diet, or SAD, is pathetic. Of the 33 western countries America is the fattest, the most overweight of the 33. The public has become aware of this, and that it needs to change.
What's your opinion of multivitamins—are they a good idea for most people?
They are, but I recommend that people read the labels and make sure that they're buying all-natural, food-based vitamins and minerals. Food-based ones are natural to the body, and the body recognizes them. Drugs cause side effects because they are not natural to body, they are intruders, and the body reacts to them that way.
Which individual vitamins and minerals are most essential?
For starters, B complex, A and D, C, and minerals such as calcium, magnesium, selenium and zinc. The body can not make a single mineral. It can make a few vitamins, but not minerals.
But if you eat a healthy diet do you still need supplements?
It's unlikely that you can get all of your vitamins and minerals through diet alone. The average food on the grocery shelf travels 1500 miles before it gets to you, and in most cities there are not too many places where people can buy natural foods.
America is bombarded with unhealthy messages. When I watched the Superbowl I couldn't believe the ads. It's amazing to see what the public is being brainwashed into thinking is good for them—booze and horrible food, chips and dips and gigantic hamburgers with bacon and cheese on big white buns. If you do what they tell you you'll be overweight and on the way to having all kinds of degenerative diseases. If you want to be healthy in America today, don't eat or take anything you see advertised on television commercials. We need to get off of the pizza-Pepsi-Plavix-Paxil diet.
You sound very hale and hearty for a 71-year-old. What's your supplement regimen?
I'm very atypical, I don't eat meat, which is almost unheard of in America, and I don't imbibe much alcohol, I don't drink coffee, I drink water. I eat fish two or three times per week. But I also take an all-natural multivitamin/mineral, a resveratrol supplement, an antioxidant blend that contains green and white tea and grape extracts, selenium, and L-glutathione. Antioxidants are very important.
I also take a liver detoxifier, because the liver is the most important detoxifying center in our bodies, and we're exposed to pollutants all day. Milk thistle is one of best herbs for detoxifying the liver.
And do you think that that regimen is giving you good results?
I can tell you that I'm 71 and I have no pain. I walk about two miles three times per week. Plus a lot of people think I look 10 to 15 years younger than I am, and when I see people who don't do what I do they're falling apart, especially the men. I was at a memorial for Jack Lalanne a few weeks ago, he lived to be 96, in part by taking supplements and exercising. But what's most important isn't how long you live but the quality of that life. You don't want to be put in a retirement home and drugged, you want to feel great.
You can buy Earl Mindell's New Vitamin Bible here from Amazon, for just $10.