EP 70: From Tragedy to Triumph: Micronutrients Heal Bipolar with David Stephen, VP of Truehope

Join me and I speak with Truhope Vice President Davide Stephan as we trace how a family’s tragedy led to a nutrient-based approach for mental health, why absorption and balance matter more than labels, and how research and real lives converged. The science behind serotonin and dopamine pathways shows why broad-spectrum micronutrients can restore function where drugs often fall short.

• origin of Truehope and early family outcomes
• why chelation, ratios, and particle size drive results
• building a single consistent 36-ingredient formula
• regulatory roadblocks and court validation
• serotonin and dopamine cofactor pathways explained
• dangers of single-nutrient fixes like zinc without copper
• omegas and micronutrient synergy for brain health
• stress, dosing adjustments, and disaster studies
• preparing to transition from meds to micronutrients

Come back next week as we dig into what to expect when shifting from medications to micronutrients and how to navigate symptoms with confidence

Link:

Truehope Canada | Media & Publications

Bio:

Over the past 22 years, David Stephan has worked extensively with Truehope, an organization on a mission to help individuals overcome mental illness through the use of groundbreaking micronutrient solutions. During this time, he has been involved in leading edge discoveries that have not only provided significant transformation in thousands of lives but have also been scientifically validated in dozens of independent studies from universities around the world. As such, David feels it a privilege and duty to share the knowledge that not only changed his life, but has also allowed for well over 100,000 others to transform their lives as well. 

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FREE Mood Cycle Survival Guide: https://theupsideofbipolar.com/free/

The Upside of Bipolar: 7 Steps to Heal Your Disorder: @upsideofbipolar | Linktree

website: https://theupsideofbipolar.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theupsideofbipolar/

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Chapters

• 0:00 Nutrients And Brain Communication
• 0:50 Host Intro And Guest Background
• 2:16 The Truehope Origin Story
• 6:02 A Family In Crisis
• 9:58 Desperation, Prayer, And A Clue From Agriculture
• 12:35 First Trials And The Breakthrough With Joe
• 15:05 Autumn’s Turnaround And Tapering Meds
• 18:09 Community Transformations And Early Research
• 20:09 Building A Single Balanced Formula
• 22:00 Media Attention And Health Canada Pushback
• 24:06 Court Battles And Scientific Validation
• 27:12 Why Most Multivitamins Don’t Work
• 30:05 The Science: Serotonin, Dopamine, And Nutrient Pathways
• 34:35 Balance Matters: Zinc, Copper, And Omegas
• 37:05 Broad Spectrum vs Single-Nutrient Fixes
• 39:28 Stress, Dosing, And Real-World Outcomes
• 1:22:00 What’s Next: Transitioning From Meds

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:00

There's four main classes of nutrients that do the same thing for our bodies. And that's vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and omega-fatty acids. And I can never get that finger to go down by itself. They all work synergistically together. And if you don't have them, communication breaks down. We all know what happens. When communication breaks down in a household, you end up with dysfunction, right? And eventually maybe the dissolution of that family, right? Couples. Communication breaks down, done. Communication stops in the body, done. You're ending up with disease.

Speaker 1: 0:50

Welcome to the upside of my polar. I am your host, Michelle Reidinger, and I'm going to have a phenomenal guest today. We've actually had him as a guest before, but I'm so excited to have him back. I have uh David Stefan, who over the past 22 years has worked extensively with True Hope, an organization on a mission to help individuals overcome mental illness through the use of groundbreaking micronutrient solutions. During this time, he has been involved in discoveries that have not only provided significant transformation in thousands of lives, but have also been scientifically validated in dozens of independent studies from universities around the world. As such, David feels it a privilege and a duty to share the knowledge that not only changed his life, but has allowed for well over 100,000 others to transform their lives as well. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today, David. I'm so excited for this conversation.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Well, thank you so much for having me back on again, Michelle. It's always a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:49

Just for my audience, this is the first of three episodes we're going to record together because when I had David on, and I think it's been a couple of years actually since I had you on last time. It was the first time that I had gone over an hour. I think most of my episodes up to that point had been maybe 35, 40 minutes. And I didn't even realize how long we've been going until all of a sudden I looked at my clock and I'm like, oh my gosh, it's been over an hour. We need to stop. Like, this is going on too long. And so I we talked, and I'm really excited for our conversation today because one of the things that I think is so important for people to understand is how True Hope got started in the first place. I think that the foundation of True Hope, the reason why it started, is very instructive in how the discovery was made that micronutrients actually could help benefit people who are struggling with severe mental health conditions. But also talking about the story and how that evolution has come to provide such a powerful treatment that is enabling people to get off medications to help heal their brains and to resolve symptoms that that we thought were incurable. So can we start with this the true hope story?

Speaker 2: 3:01

All right. You want me to start at the beginning, I suppose.

Speaker 1: 3:03

Let's begin at the beginning.

Speaker 2: 3:05

All right. Yeah, you know, the story of True Hope is is really quite a phenomenal story. It's had numerous documentaries and films produced on it. And the reason being is that so many people can relate to it. And it's uh it's a story of overcoming, really overcoming that which was deemed to be, you know, incapable of being overcome. We're told that mental illness, you know, there's no cure for it. There's nothing that we can really do other than you know provide lifelong treatments of drugs that you know have to switch from one to another to another. And this is what people have been told in Western civilization for decades now, and not given any sense of hope. And yet the story of true hope is exactly that. It's a story that provides real authentic hope that has really gone on to bless hundreds of thousands of people across the world at this point in time. And so it really all began with my own family going back into the 70s when my grandfather took his own life, coming from a history of mental illness himself. I can see it in my cousins, my second cousins, my aunts. You know, it's it is just pervasive on my mother's side, mental illness. And my father my grandfather ended up taking his own life five years before I was born. Well, my mother, starting about 1983, began to really have a lot more severe bipolar disorder than she'd otherwise had, and struggled, really had, you know, ups and downs and ups and downs. And, you know, she she was trying all sorts of stuff, you know, back in the 80s. I think everybody is aware of Shackly. Uh, I remember, I can still remember distinctly the taste of that gritty protein. I mean, I'm just glad protein doesn't taste like it did then. Yeah. And so, you know, she was doing all sorts of stuff for her health, and she was still struggling with this bipolar disorder. And at times it was worse than not. And so finally, by um January of 1994, she went to the doctor to get help. It had gotten that bad. We were, we had just moved about six months previous. Um, my father had sold a very prominent business. Unfortunately, like, you know, we had a very large family, and my my parents didn't manage their money like really awesomely. So it's not like there was a big, you know, nest egg of you know, money left for us to be able to have a buffer during that move. My father sold the prominent business and started new, and things weren't going as great as hoped. So we were struggling financially. And um, there's multiple factors all coming together at once that made it a little bit worse for her. So she went to the doctor to get the help that she was looking for so that she could ultimately, you know, be the mother that she needed to be. There were still seven children living under the roof. Two had moved out at that point in time. And so she went and she got a prescription for Prozac, was told that it was going to help her. And within three weeks, she had taken her life. And unfortunately, um what did take place and still does take place in relation to the drug approval model that's being applied is that it's a very expensive and onerous process for pharmaceutical companies to get approval for their drugs. And part of the reason is that they have to provide studies, good studies that will highlight the benefit. And oftentimes they'll go and do about two or three times the amount of studies as what's required. And they'll throw out the bad studies that didn't give them the results they were looking for, and they'll take the studies that would allow for the FDA to approve these drugs or Health Canada here in Canada. And so we would discover a decade later in the early 2000s when the evidence would surface that Prozac, alongside all other SSRI medications, are known for the fact that they will increase your risk of suicide by two times. So you better off to take a sugar pill because the therapeutic um effect is so close in the placebo versus the actual SSRI antidepressant, but yet the SSR antidepressant is providing a host of side effects, including increased risk of suicide. Now, in some instances, given the conditions that somebody may be in, the Prozac can actually increase her risk of suicide by eight, twelve times. And that evidence was suppressed. And so unfortunately, my mother became a statistic at that point in time where she was one of the ones that didn't respond proper or the way that she had hoped to the Prozac. And so that was really kind of the beginning, was the traumas that our family had suffered. Incredible traumas that unfortunately way too many people can relate to. I mean, our family's not special in any way, shape, or form. We we are struggling with the same severe illnesses that many families have across Western civilization. And so my father was in this situation where it wasn't just he had lost his wife of 22 years. He was seeing how his children were following in the same footsteps as their mother and their grandfather. And my brother, just older than me, was suicidal, homicidal. He was on a large dose of lithium. He didn't like the way it made him felt. And so compliance was an issue. But when they were able to get into him, he just felt like garbage. And so that's why the compliance was an issue. Here it was supposed to be making him feel good, and yet he was feeling like garbage, but yet it was reducing some of the severe symptoms of the bipolar disorder that he had been diagnosed with. My sister, Autumn, she's about 10 years older than me. So at this point in time, she's in her early 20s. She is suicidal, homicidal, in and out of the psych wards on a very regular basis. And when she wasn't in the psych wards, she had to be on 24-hour supervision because of the risk that she was to herself and her three-year-old son, because she would actually obsess about killing herself and her three-year-old son, thinking that that was somehow appropriate. Fortunately, she had a fantastic husband, still does, and they're still married to this day, but had a fantastic husband that was willing to do anything it took to look out for her, to watch over her, even though they'd only been married at this point in time for about three and a half, four years. And so, you know, um, it was just a real, real terrible thing that my father was observing in relation to our family, and he saw the path that his children were going down and that the medications weren't working. Autumn was on a cocktail of five medications: Haldol, Rivitrol, Adavan, cogentin, and respiradol. And at best, she was left in a sedated state. And at worst, she was in a psychotic state. And that's when she, you know, that's why there was a revolving door with her in the psych psychiatric institutions that she was in and out on a regular basis. And so my father's looking at this and he's seeing where they're going, and he's not willing to lose any more family members, and he's looking at, you know, the their future, right? He's looking at the all of our futures, but really it's two of my siblings that have it the worst that made the rest of us in comparison look good, but nobody was doing well. Nobody was doing well, not with the prevalence of mental illness in our family, and not with the trauma that we had just suffered with the loss of my mother. And so my father exhausts everything available to him in the medical system because that's where his hope was. And so he goes and he eventually ends up meeting with the head psychiatrist out of the Foothills Hospital in Calgary, Alberta, and has a sit-down with her. This is early 1995, and he's telling her about how bad it is at home, how Joe is so incredibly violent, my my brother just older than me, and how if things didn't change, like he'd have to be in the psych ward as well. And she just at one point in time just said, you know, Mr. Stefan, spare me the details. I I work with thousands of clients a year. This isn't gonna do you any good, it's not gonna do me any good. You know, he has the best medications available to him. This is what we're working with. This is as good as it's gonna get. And he wasn't willing to accept that as an answer. So she eventually just said, you know, can you escort your wife and son out the door? Now, at this point in time, my father had been remarried, and so they were all sitting in the in this office together. Joe's there, my stepmom's there, and my dad's there. And she, the psychiatrist says, Please escort, you know, your son and and wife out the door. And so he did. And then she had a real straight conversation with him, if you will, where she just said, Mr. Stefan, you need a reality check. This is as good as it's gonna get. So she went to her bookshelf and pulled off the DSM 4 and read that it was a recurrent disorder and said, Mr. Stefan, do you know do you know what that means? And she he said, No. It means that these disorders do not go away and oftentimes they get worse. You have the best of medications available to you right now. This is as good as it's gonna get, and you need to face the reality that someday you may have to plan more funerals. My father said it's like a shotgun going off in his ears. It was the last thing that he'd gone there to hear because he was meeting with her to get a better sense, a better grasp on this and better medications for Joe. Then hopefully that would translate over to better medications for Autumn as well. And he realized, I mean, any hope that he had had was shattered, but he didn't know where else to turn now. So this is early 1995. So in his, you know, workings in small rural southern Alberta, small town. No, he's a property manager over 26 large buildings. He's meeting with a lot of people, he's talking with a lot of people in the community, asking what they knew about mental illness. He heard a lot of stories, never once did he hear a story of somebody recovering, though. But he a lot of people had things to offer, saying, Hey, well, have you tried maybe, you know, the magnetic therapy or have you tried Tahiti Noni juice is really good. It feeds the body, you know, all this stuff, all great things. And so there was all sorts of stuff coming through our house. I remember the freezer, I don't know where my dad got it. I'll have to ask him at some point in time and see if he recalls. But our freezer ended up like with probably about 20 or 30 bottles of flax oil. So I'm not sure where he got the flax oil from, but so omega-3 fatty acids, which are known to help um alleviate some of the symptoms of things like at least ADHD, because it's good nutrition. But all of these things were being tried on Joe and nothing was really working. And so then my father just, you know, by mid-1995 comes this realization that there was no known answer for mental illness. So he began in desperation to just spend a lot of time in fasting and prayer and just seeking for some divine inspiration that would lead to ultimately a restoration for our family. And nothing miraculous happened overnight. My father persisted in this. He lost, you know, a fair bit of weight that summer just due to the amount of fasting that he was doing, but he was desperate, like really desperate. And something really interesting happened. Now, bits and pieces of information would come into his life. I remember it was that same year that somebody gave him the tape set called Dead Doctors Don't Lie. It's a really fascinating tape set. It's really a classic, if you will. And it was a doctor writing this book, but it was put onto the tapes to listen to. And I remember, you know, you know, 12 years old. I'm sitting here listening to this, 12, 13 years old, and I'm having to listen to these tapes as he's driving down the road because he's so enthralled by them. For a 12, 13-year-old, you're not, right?

unknown: 14:46

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:46

Albeit the value has applied because I think I retained some of the information and now it applies in my line of work. But at the time I saw no value in it. So stuff like that was coming into his life that would ultimately really pave the way for what he was going to hear in November of 1995, when as a property manager over 26 large buildings down in southern Alberta, he's in the hallway of one of these buildings one day and he's talking with a colleague about replacing carpets. And he's overcome with this impression that he needs to tell his colleague about what's happening at home. So he does. And uh, you know, it would be deemed unprofessional, irrelevant. I mean, they're talking about improvements to the building, and yet all of a sudden, now my dad, who's overseeing all of these operations, is confiding in, you know, this individual who's going to be assisting in the process of those restorations to the building. And uh, you know, it was an interesting, very interesting dialogue that they end up having. Uh, because it the colleague that he had confided in, his name is David Hardy, and he's he's fairly well known, just like my father is now. Unfortunately, he passed away about eight years ago, but you know, he le he left a mark on society that won't be so easily forgotten. And it all began with this. He said, You know, Tony, that's my father, by the way. I've never dealt with mental illness. I've got a large family like yours of interest that's actually larger. I believe it was 13 kids that they had. And he said, you know, they're all well, they're fine. I've never had to deal with mental illness. My wife, she's fine. So I can't relate to you in that way. However, I spent over 20 years formulating feed for hogs across the western states and and uh and western Canada for hogs that, you know, oftentimes would end up with a condition called ear and tail biting syndrome, where these hogs would become irritable with each other, they'd bite chunks of their ears and tails off each other, and if you didn't pen them away from each other, they could actually end up killing each other. Now, if you had that type of behavior in a human, it would definitely be found within what's now known as the DSM V, the Diagnostics Statistical Manual. And so he says, you know, we learned in the animal feed industry that you could completely eradicate that condition simply by putting the proper nutrition into their feed. Now, at this point in time, my father had already tried a bunch of stuff. You know, there was the tahiti juice, the magnetic therapy, the flax oil, uh, the stuff that Joe still refers to as rust water. I don't even know what that was, but it was, I'm sure it was rich in some minerals. And my father had already tried all this stuff and to no avail. And so now he hears this. And you'd think that the initial response would actually be somewhat dismissive for my father, like, we've tried that type of stuff, right? We've tried nutrition. But in that moment, my father had this profound spiritual confirmation that he says just went from his head to his toes, and he knew it was the answer. Now, this was significantly important in relation to the discovery that would be made that would then go on to be scientifically validated, that would prove that vitamin and mineral supplementation when in the proper form and the proper balances would actually be the most significant treatment in relation to alleviating the symptoms or correcting mental health conditions. And so, with that, that you know, spiritual confirmation my father just received, him and David Hardy went down to a health food store and they grabbed all of these products in November of 1995 and put them on, put Joe onto taking these nutritional supplements. And it didn't work. And so they tried some more, and it didn't work. Now, my father would have given up at this point in time, probably saying, Well, there's one more thing to check off, saying vitamin mineral supplementation, rust water, Tahitianoni juice, magnetic therapy, flax oil. It doesn't work. So, because of that spiritual confirmation he received, he didn't give up so easily. And by January 18th of 1996, four products arrived from the from the US side that were a little bit different in nature. The ingredients were the same, but what was happening to the minerals was two things. One, the minerals were being put into a proper balance in some of the supplements. And that's crucial. And we had learned that uh about that balance and how necessary that is in relation to uh making corrections in the body rather than you know upsetting the crucial balances in the body and actually disrupting everything, right? Creating disease. And the second thing is that the minerals were being processed in such a way that they were actually being made bioavailable that the body could actually absorb them, that they could be crossed the intestinal wall, that they could be assimilated into the bloodstream, that they could then work on the cellular level. And so what those four products consisted of is really just a colloidal mineral supplement, a multivitamin mineral supplement that was chelated, a calcium, magnesium, phosphorus supplement. Once again, talking about balance, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, the three have to really be working in synergy together. And if you're buying um a CalMeg supplement out there for bone health and it doesn't have phosphorus, the saying in the agricultural industry was calcium, magnesium without phosphorus is preposterous. And that was something that David Hardy really came to the table with, right? Was that understanding already? And so, and then a grapeseed extract, which was helpful in getting a lot of these nutrients to go to the brain. So these four products were put into use, and within five days, Joe said it's like a fog lifted, and he could now see what was right and wrong. Boom. That's huge. We're talking about self-awareness now, because before he had been engaging in all of this incredibly destructive behavior, and yet it was everyone else was the problem. And now he's looking at himself and saying, Whoa, that's not working. That behavior isn't serving me very well. It's not serving those around me. And his behavior began to change just because of the self-awareness. After about 30 days, he would have no longer received a diagnosis for bipolar disorder. He was now operating in the normal range. So normal good days, normal bad days, but not the high highs, the manic highs going into psychosis and not the low lows and of depression and just being just dark, sullen. That was gone. And as time went on, I mean, 30 days wasn't where everything it maxed out. As time went on, he got more and more and more stable, where basically everything tightened up, that his his good days, his high days were less manic, less manic, and his depressive days were less depressed, depressed, to the point that it finally came into a very consistent, day-by-day, stable life, if you will. But within 30 days, significant improvements have been made. Now, my father's looking at this and saying, Wow. Like wouldn't answer to prayer. Now, Autumn, though, she's living five hours north of us. She was not willing whatsoever to do this. My dad phoned her up excited, and she's she just said, Dad, no, no. My psychiatrist said, if I rock the boat, that I'll die. And so she was probably thinking to herself that at that point in time my dad was in need of some psychiatric help himself, you know, being an engineer by trade, right? That that's his education. He's an engineer and it like a boiler room engineer at that. And so he's all of a sudden come up with this solution that all of these specialists don't have, that the whole medical system doesn't have, right? Like it just seemed so outlandish. And it wouldn't be until 30 days later that my sister needing to be on 24-hour supervision, her husband working a night shift at a factory for a week, that she needed somebody to watch out for her. And so my brother-in-law drives her down to Red Deer. My fat my father goes to Red Deer, they rendezvous there, and uh my father takes my sister Autumn and brings her down south to where we're living. Well, a day and a half into her stay, she went severely suicidal, and my father just said, No, we're not doing this. I have an answer. It worked for Joe. Now at this point in time, Joe is 30 days into it, and he is doing fantastic. Like it's a it's a new Joe. And not just in his behavior, but people are able to pick up on it just in how he presented himself. His countenance had just changed. And so it it's so tangible the changes that are taking place in Joe at this point in time. So my father's saying, Lo, look, we got this, you're gonna do this. And so, you know, he he says to be politically correct, he didn't force her to take the supplements, he just merely compelled her to take the supplements. Either way, I'm sure there's some legality issues there, but in essence, she was a mental health patient under his care and she was suicidal. So I I'm not sure where the the legal boundaries would uh would fall on that one. But um she started taking the supplements or was being kind of forced to do so. And when her husband found out about what was happening, five hours south of him, it's just a real good thing that there was that distance because he would have come in and intervened and he would have stopped the process, and it may have been more than just words between him and my dad, I don't know. Well, five days later, my father drives Autumn back to Red Deer. Her husband Dana drives down from Edmonton and they rendezvous there, and Dana is not happy. But my father just says, Look, why don't you just go have a conversation with her? See how she's doing. Because at that point in time, there'd already been significant changes. Now I'm not saying by any means that she would have been deemed to be well, not even close, not even close, but she was no longer hallucinating, seeing things, which was a problem for her because when she'd go into a bathroom, there's mirrors, and she would see things in the mirrors, which prevented her from taking care of her own hygiene. She avoided those places, and she would cover up any reflective glass or mirrors because of what she would see in it. And now she's taking care of herself, she's taking care of her hygiene, and she's starting to have appropriate conversations, rational conversations. She now has a sense of logic that she didn't have before. So Dana and Autumn sit down in the car, they have a conversation. Dana comes back to my dad and says, That's the best conversation I've ever had with her. Here he's seeing who his wife can actually be. And so they continued on with it. And within 45 days, they had her off of all five medications. And we that's when we learned that we had to develop a support system to help people come off these medications. Now, it wasn't that one instance because at that point in time there was actually no intention of making this into a business at all. My father had a good job, his prayers had been answered, his family was receiving the restoration that he had been so desperately pleading for, dynamics in the relationships were changing, especially for Autumn and Dana. Dana now had to view Autumn as, you know, an equal partner in the marriage that was capable of taking care of herself rather than being a care patient. And so there were major shifts that had to take place there. But it was just a beautiful thing because my father's prayers had been answered. Now, in relation to how true came into this, so this is early 1996. Well, word starts to spread. People start asking my father questions. We lived in a community of 3,500 people, and almost everybody knew who Joe was because he was, you know, he's either out vandalizing your property, wrecking stuff on weapons charges with the RCMP. It was just persistent. In fact, he was basically the next schoolyard shooting waiting to happen, in and out of the principal's office on a regular basis. My father was accustomed to phone calls coming from the school in relation to Joe's conduct. Well, all of a sudden, people are asking questions saying, What have you done with Joe? He's a completely different person. And now phone calls start to roll in from the school, the junior high school, saying, Hey, no issue with your son Joe, but hey, we have this other individual here in the office right now. And, you know, he seems to have similar issues to Joe. Do you think that uh that I could put you in touch with his parents and you could work with them? Because they had seen the transformation in Joe. It was so hopeful for so many people. It was actually really quite tearing in the in the community because the doctors were not happy about it because it went against their paradigm. Here they had been, you know, educated for seven plus years, indoctrinated in relation to how to deal with mental illness, being told over and over that you cannot correct mental illness, but you can treat it with these medications and it'll reduce some of the symptoms. And here's how you manage your patients. But never are you going to get a patient off of the medication and they're going to do well and that they're going to be able to go live a normal life. But yeah, Joe was a walking contradiction to that. And then a bunch of other people started to become walking contradictions to that. And then a lady just a block down from us, who almost nobody knew was even living there because all you would see is her elderly husband. He would go to church, you he would be in the community, but you didn't even know that he had a wife because you never saw her with him. And the reason being is she was suffering with schizophrenia and extremely agoraphobic. So she never left her house. All of a sudden, she's well and she's walking around the neighborhood, conversating with people, being social, showing up at church. So, you know, we saw these extreme examples of individuals getting well on these supplements that we had no idea would work. My father would get the question saying, Do you think that this would work for my my wife with depression or my son with ADHD or, or obviously my, you know, my wife with schizophrenia and agoraphobia? Do you think it'd work for that? And my father would just say, I don't know. It worked for my son with bipolar disorder. It wouldn't hurt to try. It's just nutrition. And it did work. And so it began to spread like wildfire. And that's when we got into the whole process of looking at it from a scientific perspective. My father and David Hardy were looking at this saying, wow, this is clearly a medical breakthrough. Think of all the people that can be blessed. We need to get us into the hands of doctors. And so they attempted to do that. And so they they really pounded on the doors of academia. They ended up going first to the Canadian Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, which it was only a 45-minute drive from where we were living. And it was, it was headed up by uh a world renowned neuroscientist by the name of Dr. Brian Kolb. Uh, reason why he knows or what he was renowned is because of the fact that he discovered that brain cell regeneration could take place in rats after they had literally removed brain material, they could actually incite some regrowth. So he disproved the old. Theory that when you have brain damage, the damage is done. So he becomes a world-renowned neuroscientist and and of interest, how he was able to generate the regrowth was through the use of 22 vitamins and minerals, by the way. So this, and the reason why I bring that up is, you know, part of the the whole discovery of true hope, it'll circle back to to a follow-up study that actually took place on rat brains and complete regrowth that occurred, as well as a complete recovery in cognition after having large portions of their brains removed and then putting them onto the true hope supplements. But I digressed for a moment there. But they went and that that was the beginning, that was the opening into the doors of academia, where we would begin to have our findings validated through proper scientific studies. And the first study would occur out of the University of Calgary. And now, before we get too far, we're still working with the four products. The study showed significant results. But then halfway throughout the study, people began to relapse and their symptoms were returning. And we were left looking then after this, the University of Calgary did an analysis on the four different products. They found that the colloidal mineral supplement varied in its levels of minerals depending on the batch. So from one batch to the next, you had inconsistencies. You can't study that. You cannot study a variable because you're obviously going to get varying results from it. So that's not scientifically sound. So the study was shut down once we were fully into that batch and we were left looking for replacement for those within our community and within our own home. And that's actually how, after about a year of, you know, hit and miss, kind of more failures than not in relation to trying to replace that colloidal mineral supplement, that my father and David Hardy determined that they needed to create their own all-in-one supplement that would generate the same results at minimum and really provide people with the healing that they needed and also make it more economically viable at the same time by putting it all into one. And so they set up to do that. And it was no small venture. And they would end up teaming up with, at the time, a fantastic nutraceutical company that had what was arguably the best processes at that time for chelating minerals. And so they would end up doing the chelation of our minerals for us. And my father and David Hardy would put together the 36 ingredient formula, and they launched it and it worked. And people were ecstatic about it. And they would have had to have been ecstatic about it, otherwise, it would have gone nowhere. And here's the reason being is that right off the bat, with the first launch of the product, well-balanced minerals, 16 minerals in the proper balance, chelated every one of them. Right. So they're, and that means being bound to an organic molecule because we don't absorb rock form mineral. You can't just go, you know, and grab a good-looking rock, right? That has all sorts of colors in it, which is saying that you have various minerals in there. And you can't just go grind it up and then be like, hey, here, here, sprinkle a teaspoon over your food here, right? First of all, it'd be way too much. Second of all, you wouldn't absorb a whole lot of it. So we don't absorb rock form mineral. What actually happens in nature is that you have a natural breakdown of mineral in healthy soil, and you have a conversion of it into an organic form that the plant can then uptake, and then you eat the plant, and that's the delivery system for minerals and vitamins into your body that is in the proper form and you're going to thrive. But we have an issue. The soil's been destroyed, it's been depleted of minerals, and it's been sterilized through synthetic herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides. So no longer do you have that conversion taking place. And even though you're sitting at about 50% or just under of the mineral content that was once there, you don't have a 50% uptake. So you're actually seeing about a one-fifth to one-sixth uptake in minerals into plants today compared to what your great-grandparents would have had accessible to them in the same plant. So if you're eating a really healthy meal, maybe it's a really colorful meal, you had a great spinach salad that has all sorts of you know vegetables in there, you know, you have to eat about five to six times the amount as your great-grandparents did to get the same nutrient value out of that based on modern farming methods today and what we've done to the soil. So hence the need for supplementation, the unfortunate need, by the way, because I'd I would rather just eat healthy. I'd rather just eat healthy, and I'd rather just be educating people on eating healthy. Just avoid boxed food, avoid processed food, and you'll you'll thrive in life. That would be way nicer than saying, no, you need to supplement. You need to get more vitamins and minerals than what you're getting out of your food because it's not there even when you're making healthy choices. That's how the the M Power Plus was first produced was over the failure in during the study time in the University of Calgary with the four products. It worked, and then it didn't work because the batch changed, the levels of minerals changed. And so this is this is where we end up with a bit of a twist in the story because, you know, it's looking hopeful for my dad and David Hardy in relation to their dreams coming about in getting this into the hands of doctors. There was still no concept of making this into a business that would then become a family business where their children would largely work for that business and all that. That wasn't the concept at all. The concept, the the model that they were moving forward with was get this into the hands of doctors so that everybody has equal and easy access to these supplements rather than doing medications that don't work, right? Or at best work to a degree for a time, but then you have all the side effects, right? Short term and long term. And so they end up coming up with their own all-in-one supplement, and it's getting studied, and it's looking fantastic, and everyone's excited, and the researchers are so excited that they present their preliminary results, and it ends up on national television. So now it's like, wow, this is amazing. Look at this, you know, this godsend, really, right? Like, look, like it's an answer to prayers. It saved our family, and it's now going on to save a lot of other families. And at this point in time, we're now four years into this, right? Four and a half years into it, after the when the first study's getting published. And by that point in time, like there's thousands and thousands of people across the world, mainly in the US and Canada, but across the world at this point in time, that are receiving that help. And and so it really, everything just looks fantastic, like it's going to make it into the hands of doctors. It's now being scientifically validated, over three times more effective than antidepressants without the side effects. Well, the day after the first news clip aired on it across Canada, national television, Health Canada came in and they informed my father that he was in contravention of section 3-1 and 3-2 of the Food and Drugs Act. And in order to help people with bipolar disorder, he required a drug identification number for this multivitamin supplement that was being used to help people with bipolar. So my father said, Oh, I had no idea, right? How do I get one? And he would attempt for about two years to work with Health Canada to finally come to the realization that they had no intention of granting him a drug identification number. And in fact, the very regulation set up to qualify for a drug identification number was impossible to meet the requirements with a 36 ingredient multivitamin supplement. The protocols were established for one and two ingredient pharmaceutical drugs. So there was no way he could meet the criteria. So the only option was to get what was called a ministerial exemption where the Minister of Health would then provide an exemption saying, here's your drug identification number. We recognize that there's no way that you can pass the testing that's designed for a drug model with a 36 ingredient broad spectrum micronutrient supplement. So here, it's helping people, it's being scientifically validated, let's do this. No, they refused to give it, and instead, they came in and shut down any further studies from taking place, the same studies that you'd actually need to qualify for the drug identification number. So on one end, they're saying you need a DIN number. And on the other end, they're they're removing the ability for us to even have a hope of getting a DIN number by going, and at this point in time, there was a $544,000 double-blind placebo control trial study that was just beginning to take place. And it was actually funded by the Alberta government, and Health Canada came in and shut it down, preventing further scientific validation of these supplements in the treatment or correction of mental health conditions. And so that would become a 10-year battle with Health Canada, where it would eventually lead to a full-on gun-drawn raid on our headquarters after my father just said, you know what? I don't need the permission of some bureaucrats in Ottawa to help other families that have been helped. So we're moving forward with this. And so he just continued to ignore Health Canada after he realized that they had an agenda. Actually, in fact, they really solidified that they had an agenda when they stated to him, you know, Mr. Stefan, if you want to continue doing what you're doing, perhaps you want to move south of the border. Right? And I actually remember those days because we were looking at moving to Utah at that time, to uh Alpine is where my father was looking at. And it looked, I mean, I was telling my friends, hey guys, probably moving in in the next two months, my family, right? Um there's a level of excitement, a level of trepidation around it, concern, you know, I had established friends, but uh, you know, the the concept of going to Alpine, living in in uh right in mountain territory and all that, based on on what my activity level was with snowboarding and all that, I was there was a level of excitement I can I can make it happen. That that's how serious it was. My father was going to do that. But then him and David Hardy said, you know what? No, no, we're not doing that. We're not abandoning the mission here in Canada. Who is the government to tell us whether or not we can provide an answer to prayer that came from God, going back to nature, correcting our bodies the way that they're supposed to be, giving our bodies what they were supposed to be getting all along. Who is the government to deny us from being able to do that? So that's when my father just started boldly rejecting their cease and desist orders and all that. And that's when finally they came in, they raided us, they they cut it off at the border, put 3,000 Canadians in a major crisis, caused suicides, unfortunately, and that would come out later on under oath. I was in uh court hearings because then they would charge us criminally and we would end up in the courts and we'd end up beating them when it was proven that our products did what we claimed they were doing, because Health Canada attempted to shut down all the studies, but they could only have jurisdiction within Canada. Fortunately, there were researchers in the US, researchers like Dr. Charles Popper, who's also a world-renowned psychopharmacologist and psychiatrist out of Harvard University. And the reason why he's world-renowned, and you know, I just want to be clear here, because there's a lot of world-renowned people that are popping up on the scene here, and it sounds actually really fantastical or unbelievable, but just do a do a name search on him, Dr. Charles Popper. He's responsible for bringing lithium into North America as a treatment for child and adolescent bipolar. That was his favorite medication. It was he found it to be the most effective lithium, which of interest is just a mineral, wrong form and wrong dosing, really, really uh high dosing on it. But he found that the mineral was more effective than all the synthetic drugs that the pharmaceutical companies were popping out in relation to his treatment of depression and bipolar. And so he took it on and he studied it. And he, not willingly at first, actually, he was incredibly skeptical. He couldn't believe what he was hearing because Dr. Bonnie Kaplan from the University of Calgary, who did the first study, went down there and met with him. And he just said, no, no, no, this is this is this is a bunch of hogwash. And so he he ended up uh making up an excuse to get out of this presentation that he had been invited to in Harvard, uh, because he'd gone down there and my father was there and David Hardy was there. And he's like, Oh, you know, I got some appointments I got to go to because he had his own private practice as well that he was working with clients and he's like, I gotta go. And so before he went, though, they said, Oh, here, we'll take a bottle of the Empower Plus. Now, at this point in time, it's a huge bottle because it's 48 capsules per day, right? The first batch that we put out, 48 capsules per day, even though it's a fantastic supplement, chelated balanced, but um, so it's in this huge 448-capsule bottle that's being supplied. And he's like, I don't, I don't, I don't know what to do with this. I don't even want to be seen with this. And he was so embarrassed by it that rather than just throwing it in the garbage, he actually took some books off his bookshelf and tucked it back behind so as to hide it because he didn't even want the cleaner person to see it and then be like, hey, what are you what are you doing with this company? Right. He had one nothing to do with this whole concept. And well, I don't want to belabor this too much, a long story, but what ended up happening is one of his colleagues had a 10-year-old son who was tantruming for hours a day, going into rage. And he didn't want to put him on medications, and so he wanted to get a second opinion from his colleague, Dr. Charles Popper. So he went and met with them. And Dr. Charles Popper took a look at the 10-year-old son, you know, did a secondary diagnosis and just said, Yeah, okay, you don't want to do this? Well, you know what? Actually, I've got this stuff. I will not, I do not, you know, I'm not gonna vouch for it in any way, shape, or form. But if you're not wanting to do medications, I don't know, try it, see it, whatever, whatever. And so he he handed off to them, and that was it. Well, he hears back a few weeks later, and his colleague is saying, Hey, we're almost out of that product, and my son is far better than he was before. How do we get more of it? And Dr. Charles Popper couldn't believe his ears. Couldn't believe it. So he goes down to a health food store and he he gets a bottle from his colleague, he goes down to a health food store and he tries to match ingredient for ingredient uh from all these different supplements and say, here, just do this. And it didn't work, not nearly as well. It's there was statistically, I believe he was saying around like the 50% mark-ish kind of like we're talking extremely complicated. I don't know how many supplements he ended up with, but it was a handful of different products that he ended up with to match the 36 ingredients in the Empire Plus. And so then they reordered some from us and they got it. They put the 10-year-old son back on after his tantruming had started coming back while he was using the other supplements, got him back on the Empire Plus, boom, better. And now we got a really strong case where Charles Popper is looking at this and saying, maybe there's something to this. So then he he took 22 patients, put them on it, saw statistically significant results with 19 out of the 22 patients. Now that's before we even refined a lot of things, including the product and our protocols on how to get people well. And Dr. Charles Popper wasn't really trained that well on our protocols either. And at that point in time, our protocols, anyways, were in their infancy. And so now we get back to court and we've got researchers like Dr. Charles Popper, who's testifying and being qualified as a world-class expert who has his own medical journal, who has authored or co-authored many psychiatric textbooks that university students are learning from, that is responsible for bringing lithium in as a treatment for child and adolescent bipolar. And now he's testifying, saying that the M Power Plus is more effective than any medication or combination of medications that he's used before. And so we proved in the courts that our products did what we were claiming they were doing, that already at that point in time, tens of thousands of people had already come to realize in their own lives, and that our protocols in helping people come off medications, because at that point in time, we'd helped probably about 10,000 people come off medications, psychiatric medications, by about the time that the court proceedings were happening, which was in 2005. And what was um what ended up coming out of it was a victory where we weren't just found not guilty, but also a mandate came down that the judge said you had no choice but to disobey Health Canada, because otherwise, had you listened to them, you could have found yourself guilty of criminal negligence resulting in death. And the reason why he came down with that is was the vast amount of evidence that came forward that it was well known Health Canada had killed people through their actions by depriving them access to the Empower Plus, and that many people weren't willing to ever even conceive going back on the medications after they had finally seen life for what it could be. And there was a lot of scared people and there's a lot of stuff going on, and Health Canada persisted, regardless of the fact that they'd received over a thousand phone calls and with people desperately pleading for their lives, and Health Canada's script was you won't have access to this dangerous drug anymore. I go back to your psychiatrist and receive the help that you need basically, get back on medications.

Speaker 1: 47:30

Okay, I've got all kinds of notes, and I this is why we need three episodes instead of just one, because there's like so much here. So I want to start with uh I want to kind of go back and explore a little bit the evolution of the treatment that you provide because your father, you talked a little bit about how they, you know, they learned about chelation. You know, there were some things that they kind of discovered along the way. And oftentimes I hear people say things like, I tried, you know, I tried vitamins and it didn't work, or I tried, you know, and they'll say all of these natural things that they tried. And so they use that to discount the micronutrients from true hope because they said, I already tried that and it didn't work. And I try to help them understand, and this is one of the things I'm I'm super excited to talk to you about today, is you can't just go to the drugstore and get get vitamins off the off the shelf. I, in fact, I tried after I started True Hope in 10 in 2010, there were two times that my husband and I were kind of getting sucked into multi-level marketing schemes. And and I thought, well, I can't sell this stuff if I'm not taking it. And so I, you know, I looked at, I compared the backs of the bottles, you know, the the supplement. I'm not going to say the names of the companies because I'm not trying to disparage them, but um, you know, the true hope supplement, the my, you know, the Empower Plus, and then this other product from these other companies. And they looked similar to each other. There were some, there were some variations in the amount of minerals. The, you know, the minerals in True Hope's products were higher, but it didn't seem significant to me. And so I tried on two separate occasions. In a, you know, one time it was, it was about four years in. And then the second time, I think it was about two years later. And both times within like a month, I became uh I became symptomatic again. Like the symptoms were coming back. And as soon as the symptoms came back, I'm like, oh, that was a mistake. And I went right back on True Hope's products, and within, you know, about a week, I was fine again. And so I want to talk about that. You know, what what was the what number one, what's the difference between True Hope's micronutrients and all the other stuff that's on the market? Because a lot of doctors will tell people, you know, vitamins are totally useless. You pee the, you pee it right out, like it doesn't, it doesn't get absorbed into your body. People will say, I've tried this before. So what is the difference? Because there is a massive difference between the True Hope product and and almost everything else out there. I think Harding Nutritionals is a similar type of product, but other than that, like most of the other stuff out there is it doesn't provide the same benefits.

Speaker 2: 50:02

Yeah, to qualify what you're saying, as far as we're aware, there's only two brands out there right now that are doing what they're doing by supplying the fundamental nutrients that we need to thrive on a daily basis, regardless of what ailment we have. But there's only two companies I'm aware of that are supplying the fundamental nutrients and helping to correct mental health conditions, and that's Hardy Nutritionals and True Hope Nutritional Support. And the reason being uh that Hardy Nutritionals is also supplying the same uh, you know, a similar product, not the same product, but a similar product and achieving similar results is the fact that um in 2011 there was a split in the company going back to David Hardy and his family, and then um Anthony Stefan, my father, and and his family, and there was a split. Um, we have a good relationship with them. Uh we see that there is a lot of people out there that need help that we haven't even scratched the surface yet. And so there's still elements of collaboration and and good, warm discussion between us, and uh, but we're the only two companies that I'm aware of that are doing this. And you know, if there were other companies that were doing it in the 90s, we would have latched onto them rather than producing our own, and we would have just said, hey, supply that. And my dad would have kept on with the the really good job that he had that allowed him to be home every night. And so the difference between our broad spectrum multivitamin mineral supplement, I'll just call it that, you know, micronutrient supplement, multivitamin, because when you look at the label, it's really just a broad spectrum multivitamin. The reason why it's producing different results than what you'd expect from a regular multivitamin is the level of effort that we go that goes into it to ensure that your body's actually able to utilize it. Now, oftentimes we would like a company that has an offering would compare to other companies that are deemed their competition. We don't need to even do that. We could do that. We could say, look, you can go grab a multivitamin, see if it corrects, see if it corrects your depression to the point that you come off your antidepressants and you feel fantastic. Try it. Right? Proofs ultimately in the pudding. The chances that that's gonna happen is incredibly, incredibly low. It may happen, and and if it does, fantastic. Like at the end of the day, this will get better. But really, when we're trying when we when we look at the generations of product that we have had, that in itself communicates that not all nutrition is created equal. So to start off with, the product that we supply today is the exact same ingredients in the exact same balance, the same ratios as what we first supplied in 1998 when Empower Plus was first created. Okay? So just to put that out there and yet today, same ingredients, same label, you can take one-fourth or less and get the same results as what you would have had to have taken back in 1998. So back in 1998, if you were severely depressed, if you were coming to us and saying, hey, look, you know, I'm thinking about taking my life, the medications aren't working, you know, like you're you're my last hope. And we heard that so many times. Not you're my true hope, you're my last hope. And and and if if that doesn't work, then you know, we're going to plan B. And that oftentimes that was, you know, a suicide plan. And so, you know, we have these people coming to us like that, and they're taking 48 capsules per day. Now, you think that'd be a deterrent, except for the fact that it's radically transforming their lives, so they continue to take it. Why? Even though they're taking literally like a handful, a full handful of capsules a day, obviously split out in three doses, but they're taking, you know, a meal's worth of capsules in a day, the fact that it's changing their life would get them to continue taking it. So I'll go through the generations real quick. In 2000, we changed the chelating agent that we had previously been using. So now the the minerals are being chelated or bound to a different organic molecule. It improved the absorption. It went down to 32 capsules per day just by doing that. Same formula, same ingredients, but just a different chelating agent. In 2001, we began to micronize the minerals, grinding them up into an incredibly fine particle size. And we know in in nutrition, when you reduce the particle size, you increase the absorption. And so by doing that, same formula, just micronized chelated minerals now, 18 per day. 18 per day is now producing the same results that 48 capsules per day we're producing three years previous. Now in 2005, we developed our own chelation technology, start chelating in a more unique way, the same way that you'll find in certain circumstances within nature, right? But in a very ideal way. And we didn't have it really down pat at that point, but we were able to get down to 15 capsules per day was the therapeutic dose. Same, same, same formula, different chelating agent, mycronized minerals. In 2013, 2014, we started playing around with stuff. And then coming up into closer to 2020, we really developed some some phenomenal technology. And when I say we, it's it was mainly my older brother, um, kind of a mad scientist, if you will, uh, very intelligent that way. And he came up with some processes to really improve the myconization and chelation technology. And by doing that, uh, they're at at this point in time playing around with that one a day, which uh you're familiar with. Uh, for some people, the one a day is enough. Uh, for some people, two of them. We don't use it here in the Canadian market to put on the health food, health food store shelves. And the reason why we don't do that is because it's very powerful. But for some people, without the proper education and having direct connection to us that we can help guide them through, it can be somewhat unpredictable as well. But there are many people that are, they've reduced the amount of capsule significantly and are seeing profound results. We still use here in Canada uh what we would call the six a day in Canada, and it ensures more stable results across the board, and we can play with the dosing a little bit easier, and we can also use it more easily within medication reductions taking place, whereas uh because you don't want to overpower people with too much nutrition while they're coming off the medications, otherwise you'll put them into a state of over-medication. So we can play with the dosing a lot better with the six a day. But the fact of the matter is, is in Canada, we're working with a six a day that is producing the same results that 48 capsules per day were producing back 1998. And yet, when you look at the labels, as a lay person, if you're just reading the label, you don't know what the chelate is, the label will literally read the same. The same ingredients, the same proportions, everything looks the same. But yet what we've done to it has allowed for it to be more readily usable by the body in such a way that we've been able to reduce the dosing down to less than one-fourth in most instances and achieve those fantastic results that people are looking for.

Speaker 1: 57:08

Yeah. And I think one of the things that is so important to remember in all of this is that the mission of True Hope at the from the very outset was helping people heal the underlying sources of the symptoms that were leading to these severe mental health conditions. And most vitamin and mineral supplements out there are for general health and they can market them. I know when I read um Dr. Kaplan's book, Dr. Bonnie Kaplan and Dr. Julia Reckledge are leading researchers in this field. Bonnie Kaplan was one of the kind of pioneers in this field of research for, you know, micronutrition for healing mental health issues. And they talk about in their book that they went to other companies and offered to study them. And the other companies turned them down. They're like, we're selling just fine. Like we don't need that. Because there was, my guess is that they didn't, you know, they didn't want the potential for a bad review. Like they didn't want the potential for something going wrong. And they were selling just fine and they didn't feel like they needed additional study on their on their product. And so in their book, the only two that they will recommend are Hardy Nutrition and True Hope, because those are the only ones that allowed their products to be tested. And it's been tested, I think, between the two of your companies, there's like 55, over 55 tests, you know, studies that have been done across the US and Canada. And even I think down in, I believe Dr. Reckledge is down in in New Zealand. I mean, this is around the world that they've been doing studies on these products for years and showing the efficacy of these products and helping to address the underlying sources of the symptoms. And that's one of the things that I one of the thoughts that I had when you were talking is the marketing language that is used for psychotropic drugs, that the names of the drugs themselves is marketing language. I don't think people really understand that. When you hear the word antidepressant, that is marketing language. It is, it, there is no, there is no foundation for that from a scientific standpoint. It is just it is strictly used as marketing language to make people think that this is going to resolve their depression. Same thing with antipsychotics, same thing with, you know, all mood stabilizers. That one drives me nuts because now once I understood what was actually happening with those drugs, it made me really angry because when I was diagnosed with bipolar and I was given a mood stabilizer, it was supposed to stabilize my mood. It did not do that. It made things way worse. But the the language of chemical imbalance lends itself to us thinking that our chemicals are out of balance and we need chemicals to fix the balance, which which then kind of justifies the use of these drugs that are chemical in nature, that are messing with our brain chemistry in an abnormal way. When in fact, and I want to I want to ask you about this, sorry, as this is a long way to get to this question, but why is my Micronutrition, why does that help resolve these issues? What is actually happening in the brain? Why is it that micronutrients, that you know, the vitamins and the minerals, why is that resolving these? Because we've been led to believe that there's this disease that we have, this disorder that we have that requires chemical. It's a chemical imbalance, which we've we know now is totally false, but a chemical imbalance that requires chemicals to fix. So why are micronutrients actually the solution? What is actually happening with the micronutrients that help resolve those symptoms?

Speaker 2: 1:00:34

Yeah, fantastic question there. So in 1996, when we first made the discovery, we wouldn't have been able to tell you anything about why the nutrition was working other than it's working, the proof's in the pudding, right? What was interesting at the same time in 1996, a project began um called the Kyoto uh Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes, where they begin mapping out the different pathways in the brain, what was taking place, or different biochemical pathways in relation to the production of, let's say, serotonin, the production of uh dopamine, epinephrine, that type of thing. And that would then start to be published. And it's still not awesome. It's not well-known knowledge. I mean, you have to be a bit of a geek to really get into that type of stuff. So here I am, right? And so I I I love it because it gives me a more understanding. I want to understand why, right? I see, I see what is, but I want to understand why. And so if we were to take, for example, um, let's take an individual who, let's say, hypothetically, isn't producing enough serotonin. So medically they're gonna be treated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSR medications, which is gonna prevent the re-uptake of the serotonin so that you have more serotonin available, being that serotonin is known to help, you know, stabilize mood or or to prevent depression. Okay. So what's taking place though, or what's not taking place, but what would be taking place under ideal circumstances in relation to the production of serotonin, is that you end up with tryptophan being made available. So you're consuming, let's say, turkey, right? Or anything with protein in it. Uh tryptophan is one of the essential amino acids, but turkey is very high in tryptophan. Pumpkin seeds are high in tryptophan. That's why they're actually used as uh, especially in pumpkin seeds, like it's used as a sleep aid because it enhances the level of tryptophan. And we'll get into why that can help with as a sleep aid in a moment. That's exactly it. So you went and ate a bunch of turkey and boom, right? And your body does that for actual protective reasons, because if you produce too much serotonin, it's dangerous and it's damaging to the brain. And the next thing down the line from serotonin is melatonin. So what your body will do to protect itself is it will start converting serotonin rapidly into melatonin, even though you shouldn't have melatonin yet. Sun's not down. But yet here you have melatonin because your body's preserving itself from serotonin syndrome. And that's where one of the major risks can come into play with using SSRI medications. You can enhance the serotonin so much that you will do brain damage. Right? So tryptophan is made available. Now, in order for tryptophan to convert into 5-hydroxyptophan, and many people know they'll they know what 5-HTP is because anybody who's ever been depressed, if they've gone to a health food store, they've likely been recommended 5-HTP. In order for tryptophan to naturally convert into the appropriate amount of 5-HTP, you have to have five nutrients made available to you to incite the tryptophan hydroxylase enzyme that will facilitate the conversion into 5-HTP. Those five nutrients are iron, methylfolate, vitamin C, D, and B3. If you're locking any one of those nutrients, that enzyme isn't working. Tryptophan isn't being converted into 5-hydroxyptophan. So let's say hypothetically you have all those nutrients available. Now you have 5H. In order for 5 HTP or 5-hydroxyptophan to convert to 5-hydroxytryptamine, which is known better as serotonin, you just need one nutrient to incite the enzyme reaction. And what it is, it's P5P or pyrodoxine 5-phosphate, which is just a really fancy term for activated vitamin B6. That's it. So you have six nutrients necessary to take one nutrient, which is the amino acid tryptophan, and convert it into serotonin. And so when you're lacking any of those nutrients, it doesn't happen, though. You have a breakdown in the conversion, and none of those nutrients can be replaced with anything else. There's no herb you can take that will replace that nutrient. Don't get me wrong, there's herbs that will stimulate the body's production of things like dopamine and serotonin, even coffee. The reason why a lot of people will are addicted to coffee is because it will stimulate the production of serotonin. Now, you still need those nutrients available, but it puts a demand on the system where your body's then making sure those nutrients are going to become made available, potentially to the detriment of other areas of the body that needed those nutrients, right? If you're in a deficient state, your body's gonna be constantly robbing from Peter to pay Paul.

Speaker: 1:05:28

Right.

Speaker 2: 1:05:28

That's the way it goes. And your bones, your bones are gonna take a hit because your bones are a major mineral store. So if you're lacking minerals, there's a good chance that your body's ability to survive, utilizing the intelligence, is that it's gonna rob from your bones so much that you are gonna be a candidate for osteoporosis sooner. Uh well, I'm not gonna say sooner, because people that get proper levels of nutrients are never candidates for osteoporosis. But you're gonna you're gonna go osteoporotic much faster. If you're in a deficient state and you are inciting the production, maybe you're drinking a lot of coffee. It's it's saying produce serotonin, that's why it's so comforting to drink the coffee. And so there are certain herbs and stuff like that, or like marijuana enhances dopamine production that will get you to your body to do it, but it's not replacing the fact that you need on a daily basis adequate levels of those nutrients to facilitate the conversions of those amino acids into the various neurotransmitters. And so I just want to kind of digress for a moment here back to the SSRI issue. If somebody's not producing enough serotonin and they're put on an SSRI medication that targets specifically serotonin reuptake, the problem with that is we also need dopamine. And dopamine is a different pathway that looks nearly identical to the serotonin pathway, except that it starts with, rather than tryptophan, it starts with L-tyrosine, which is oftentimes converted from phenylolanine, an essential amino acid. So you start with tyrosine as the precursor, and the tyrosine is going to be converted through the tyrosine hydroxylase enzyme into L-dopa. Now, what's of interest is that the exact same five nutrients, iron, methylfolate, vitamin C, D, and B3, are necessary to incite that enzyme to convert the tyrosine into the L-dopa. The L-dopa then requires, or the enzyme for the uh the conversion of L-dopa into dopamine requires, once again, the P5P pyrodoxine 5-phosphate, which once again activated B6. So that you have the exact same six vitamins and minerals necessary to take tyrosine and convert it into dopamine as you do tryptophan into serotonin. So if you aren't producing serotonin, there's a good chance you're not producing dopamine. So if you get on an SSRI medication, you've only targeted one pathway, you're still deficient in the other pathways. And what happens when you don't have adequate levels of dopamine? You don't really feel that high for life naturally, right? Yeah. Your reward circuitry is compromised. You don't feel like you're achieved, even if you are achieved. You may just accomplish the biggest thing out there, but you're not getting that reward chemical that's saying, wow, amazing. I'm high, right? And so your ability to be high for life naturally is eliminated. And so that's where one of the issues comes with the whole drug model targeting one specific thing versus going back to the fundamentals of health. And I'm gonna digress one more time here and then grab give you the time again. There are four main classes of nutrients. A number of your audience right now watching this are sitting on a chair, probably a four-legged chair. Imagine removing one of those legs. Can you sit? Yes. But are you unstable? Yes. Are you balancing? Yes, are you comfortable? Probably not. You're dysfunctional, but you're still upright. Now remove another leg. Maybe you can do it. Maybe you're skilled. Remove one more leg. Now you're down to one leg. Some people can do that. But it's an incredibly balancing act, or incredible balancing act that just doesn't, right? That's not what we were made to do. You're not stable, you're not comfortable, you're not, you're not reclining, right? And so there's four main classes of nutrients that do the same thing for our bodies. And that's vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and omega-fatty acids. And I can never get that finger to go down by itself. So they all work synergistically together. The two examples I just gave showed how the protein that you're that you're digesting in your in your intestinal tract and it's breaking down into separate amino acids before it uptakes into the bloodstream. So now you're getting things like the tyrosine and you're getting things like the tryptophan, how those amino acids coming from the protein will then be converted through the help of vitamins and minerals. If you're locking those amino acids, it doesn't matter about those vitamins and minerals. They got nothing to start with. There's nothing to be converted in the first place. Or maybe you have the amino acids, but you're locking some of those vitamins and minerals, doesn't matter. You've got the amino acid, but it's not going to do anything because you don't have the vitamins and minerals to facilitate the conversion into the various neurotransmitters that you needed to regulate what's going on in the body. The same thing goes for hormones. So when we're talking neurotransmitters, we're also talking hormones because they're almost identical in how they operate. And they're both messenger molecules. They're both considered what's called the first messenger molecule in the body, the neurotransmitter and the hormone. They're there to tell your body what to do. They're there to tell cells what to do. Right. And if you don't have them, communication breaks down. We all know what happens when communication breaks down in a household, you end up with dysfunction, right? And eventually maybe the dissolution of that family, right? Couples. Communication breaks down, done. Communication stops in the body, done. You're ending up with disease because crucial functions are no longer taking place, and you're going to get a diagnosis. And ultimately, if it's not remedied appropriately through supplying the coenzyme factors and the precursors necessary to produce those molecules, those neurotransmitters and hormones, if it's not remedied, you will end up inevitably suffering a premature death. That's just the way it goes. And leading up to that, it's not going to be the most pleasant experience either, because your body is going to be just in a state of discomfort, balancing on, you know, one or two legs type of thing on the on that chair. And it gets it gets old over after a while, right? And so but the same thing goes to the omega fatty acids, also play into that in relation to the synergistic aspect of all that. So here's one example there. Omega-3 fatty acids are phenomenal, people recognize it, but many people are being trained in the health food store settings now that if you're not taking omega-3 fatty acids from fish oils, that you're not getting a whole lot out of them. And the reason why is that in the fish oil, it's pre-converted already to the DHA and the EPA form of the omega-3 fatty acids, DHA being for cognition, EPA being for uh cardiovascular health, right? And obviously that's that's a myopic approach, but those are the main things that they're known for. Well, the flax oil or things like flax oil, the omega-3 fatty acid coming from flax oil or chia or camelina or hemp, that's an ALA form. It's in a more inactive form. And most people aren't converting it into the DHA, the EPA, and the DPA that you need for other particular functions in the body. But when you break it right down, you take a look at what's going on, the only thing that your body needs to get the enzyme to convert the ALA into those various other substrates is magnesium, zinc, vitamin B3, and B6. That's it. That's it. So if you're locking the vitamins and minerals, that omega fatty acid in that in that particular form isn't going to do you any good. So they all work synergistically together.

Speaker 1: 1:12:59

When you're talking about the all of these, it's so complicated. Like the way that all of these things interact in our bodies and interact with each other is so complex, right? And when I up, I frequently will see people say, you know, we just need to add more magnesium in, or we need to add, you know, they'll they'll talk about single minerals or amino acids, or they'll they'll talk about them individually as if that is the solution. If you just take this, then that's gonna solve the problem. And and I've also heard people talk about how like they take something and then it made them manic, or you know, like and so that's the that is the issue that most people don't really understand. We don't understand how all of these things interact with each other. The way that you just explained it, even though I've read a lot about this, I've never heard that kind of that level of explanation related to how the micronutrients and and the amino acids and you know the you know all of these things interact with each other and how they play into the production of these neurotransmitters that are out of balance, that are not, you know, that are not functioning in a healthy way, that are leading to these mental health symptoms. So why is a broad spectrum? I guess I kind of answered it, but I want I want to ask you that question. Why is it so important to use a broad spectrum micronutrient rather than single dosing these minerals and these nutrients?

Speaker 2: 1:14:26

Awesome question. So we'll kind of rewind real quickly here to, you know, where our knowledge base was when we were first creating the product. It was well understood in agricultural practices that if you were to supplement with calcium alone rather than having calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus in the proper balance, that you could increase, you know, from a, you know, doing a scan, you could increase the bone density, or it appeared that you were increasing the bone density in these animals. But in in reality, you're actually creating more of like a crystallization and the density was there, but it was a weak structure for these animals. And in agriculture, it's incredibly expensive when you end up with an animal that breaks its leg because that's you're not putting it into a cast and then tending to it. No, it's done. It's gone, right? And so they learned early on in the agricultural industry, in the animal feed industry, that you need to supply proper balance to ensure a good health outcome. And so a more modern example that many people will be able to relate to is during COVID, a lot of naturally minded people were being instructed to go and take zinc. Take zinc. It's good for the immune system. Go take zinc, take zinc, take zinc, right? Alongside other stuff, right? Well, that was one of the greatest disservices that that that we could have done to humanity at that point in time. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of egregious things that took place during COVID, but that's one of that in in relation to the misinformation and the outcome that it would have provided to otherwise potentially healthy people, and they would have been in a position that they wouldn't have been able to understand cause and effect because there's multiple facets to this during those circumstances. But when you take zinc out of the 10 to 1 ratio with the copper, and the copper is also really good for the immune system as well, so it should have never been separated, it should have never been recommended on its own. But when you take it out of balance with copper and you overload the body, the propensity of you developing or becoming very agitated, developing irritability, hyper irritability, going into that elevated state of agitation and all of that, potentially even worse, into diagnosably psychic psychiatric issues that could end, you know, end you up in a psych ward. If you offset the balance of zinc uh extreme enough, you will get there. And so it's so crucial that you keep it in the proper balance. But here's the issue is that during that time, the circumstances dictated that people could have been naturally agitated, or at least they would have said it's the circumstances, not the fact that I'm taking elevated levels of zinc and I've thrown off the copper zinc balance of my body. So it's so crucial that, yes, zinc, is it good? Is it good for testosterone production? Yes, it's good. You find it in test boosters, all that type of stuff. You know, hey, if I ever play around with that, and I I love, I love to play around with all sorts of stuff, to be honest with you, right? I've got my foundational supplements, my true supplements, the amino acids, I've got the M Power Plus, and I make sure that I'm I'm good with that. But I still play around with other stuff just to see, because I'm constantly in a state where people are coming to me and saying, Would you recommend, would you recommend, would you recommend? And I could share my personal experience and I can also share um you know what what maybe the literature is saying on it as well. And so it puts me in a better position to make good recommendations when I myself have tried all sorts of stuff. And I and I've played around with some of these test boosters that uh that have isolated zinc, so even just like the um the aspartic acid with zinc. And I'm telling you, if I don't deal with it appropriately, it will throw me into a state of agitation like none other. And it's not just because I'm testy from increased test uh testosterone levels, but the zinc is an issue. So now when I'm playing around with that, you'll see that I'm also drinking out of a copper bottle. Right? So I'm hitting it, right? So if I'm gonna be playing around with it, I'm gonna make sure that I'm gonna be getting copper and I'm gonna be getting zinc. Otherwise, you throw off that that balance in the body far enough, you become an undesirable person to be around.

Speaker 1: 1:18:21

Yeah. Well, and and so the when you take it in a broad spectrum, meaning, and when we say broad spectrum, it's it is you how many? You said 32? Is it 32 minerals and vitamins?

Speaker 2: 1:18:32

There's 36 ingredients total. Yeah, so 16 minerals, 14 vitamins, three amino acids, three antioxidants. Actually, in Canada, it's four amino acids now, so it's 37.

Speaker 1: 1:18:41

Right. And so what what we're doing is actually giving the body the correct ratios. And so when, you know, and I've had this experience with true hope. I've been taking this since 2010, with the the brief exceptions when I tried something else. But I I have gone through periods of like tremendous stress. My husband lost his job and was out of work for two years, and I could feel myself sliding into depression. And I called true hope, you know, kind of in a panic. I'm like, what's happening? And they said, Well, you're under a tremendous amount of stress right now. Your body is burning through these nutrients faster. You need to increase your intake. And so for a year, I increased the intake. And it was pretty incredible because at that point, like I had gone through all of the, like my body had been off of medication for 10 years at that point. So I was done with all of the med releases and that. And anybody who's listening who doesn't know what I'm talking about, we're talking about this in a later episode. So we will get into what med releases are. But but within a couple days, I was back to normal. Like I was back to feeling healthy, everything was fine. I, you know, I wasn't feeling depressed any longer. So it's pretty incredible how and and the thing that I love about that too is all I had to do was increase the empower. I didn't have to, I didn't have to mess with anything. I didn't have to like experiment with anything. All I had to do was increase my intake of the empower because everything was in balance, the ratios were all on the correct balance. And simply by increasing the amount that I was giving my brain, my body then had exactly what it needed to distribute throughout the body and to to give the building blocks, you know, the the brain that what it needed to build and um to produce, I should say not build, but to produce the neurotransmitters in the correct ratios so that my brain was able to function in a healthy way and handle all the stress that we were under during that time.

Speaker 2: 1:20:27

Exactly. Yeah, to put that in in another perspective, anybody who's into fitness knows that when you are engaging in some intense physical stress, right? You're you're you maybe you've adopted a new program, maybe you're just hitting the weights really hard, whatever it is. Anyone that's into that knows that they need to increase their protein intake during that time because of the fact that you can be building new tissue tissue, you're you're tearing muscle fibers, they're regrowing. Um, there's all sorts of processes taking place in the body that requires increased amino acids being made available for building muscle tissue and uh just general reparation. The same thing goes, uh, first of all, that's that's myopic if you're only focusing on protein, because protein doesn't do what it fully needs to do unless you have the vitamins and minerals. So realistically, nutrient uptake needs to happen when you're under physical stress. And I say nutrient uptake on a whole. The same thing happens when we're under mental stress. When you're under mental stress, you your body is regulating and it's trying to preserve you from being overcome by that stress, right? Like I can go through a stressful situation. If you put me in one stressful situation and it's the exact same as someone else next to me, and it's the exact same situation, there's no, there's no different factors involved other than I'm taking the nutrition, they're not, I'm gonna deal with that situation far better than they will. And I'm not trying to say that from an arrogance standpoint, it's just the reality of it. In fact, there's a number of studies that that highlight that where uh Christchurch New Zealand earthquake, uh, Dr. Julia Ruckledge and her team did a study with the Empire Plus and found that those that took the Empire Plus did far better. Circumstances were the same, infrastructure was down, right? It was it was bad. Everybody was suffering. And yet there was significant statistical differences between those that were taking the Empire Plus versus those that were taking another multivitamin versus those that weren't taking anything. And then they did a replicating study of it in 20 out of the University of Calgary in relation to the high river flood, where high river people lost their homes. It was absolutely devastating for a lot of people. And they did another study where they found that those that were taking the Empire Plus did far better than those that were not taking any nutrition at all. So when you're under stress, your body's trying to protect you from that. You are producing a lot more hormones and neurotransmitters to help regulate thought processes and to keep you in a calm state and to keep you focused and logical and able to move forward. But it's using nutrition to do that. And so under any stress, mental or physical stress, nutrition needs to be increased.

Speaker 1: 1:23:07

Yeah. Uh okay, we've got an hour and a half. I do this every like this happened last time. Like I just I kept looking, thinking, okay, I've got to try and keep this. It's gonna happen. Okay, so we are going to stop here. For anybody who's listening who's like, no, I want more. Don't worry. I'm having David on next time. So we have it, we have him scheduled right now for two more. We may need to go to four episodes at this rate. But it's been phenomenal talking to you today, David. And I and what we're going to do is next time, I want everybody to come back. We're going to talk more in depth about how this is actually helping people, like with why this helps. And what are the some of the drawbacks? Like, what are some of the experiences that people have when they go from when they switch from uh not drawbacks, but the experiences, the symptoms that people are experiencing, when they switch from medication to micronutrients, because that I think is a big stumbling block for people when they, when they decide they're going to try this, if they don't understand what they're doing and they don't understand what's happening, we have been so conditioned to believe that these symptoms indicate illness or disorder that when we experience the symptoms and we don't understand what they are, we freak out and think, oh, this isn't working. I got to go back in my meds, right? So next time we're going to explore that in depth because it's very important for people to understand what is actually happening when you experience these symptoms, how these micronutrients are helping to actually heal the brain and heal the underlying sources of the symptoms so that you are not, this isn't, this isn't, you're not in remission, you're actually healed. Like the brain is healed, right? You don't call yourself in remission from illness when you eat properly. Like you just healed the body, right? And the same thing is happening when we take the micronutrients and give our brain what it needs to function in a healthy way. It's actually healing the brain, not just putting it in remission, right? Wonderful. All right. Okay, well, we will talk to you next week. And until next time, upsiders.