Why Should I Begin Taking Supplements
Jeff Harrison: Hi, I’m Jeff Harrison. Welcome to Living to 120 and Beyond. I’m honored to be here with …
Dr. Chein: Dr. Edmund Chein.
Jeff Harrison: Dr. Chein, you are so generous with your time to share your knowledge and bridge that gap of understanding about longevity and getting your function back or losing your function through what you do. Before we get started, just take a moment and tell us a little bit about your practice here in Palm Springs, California. What exactly do you do when it comes to aging? Then I have a question specifically for you today.
Dr. Chein: Basically people come here either with diseases already, age-related diseases, and they want to get rid of it before we talk about longevity because you can’t have longevity with the diseases, such as hypertension, cholesterol or diabetes. They’re on drugs. Sometimes five, six, seven drugs to control those diseases. We aim to cure and not to control. It’s very important that when the patient … All the patients that come and see me know that that’s what I do is cure.
Jeff Harrison: That’s step one.
Dr. Chein: Step one is to cure. Everything is cure, not control. The goal is to take no drugs. Pharmaceuticals, I mean. That’s number one. Get away from drugs. Be cured of your diseases. Then restore function. Mental function, physical function. Then in that process when we succeed, longevity comes.
Jeff Harrison: Just a natural byproduct.
Dr. Chein: Byproduct. In fact, longevity is not the goal of most of my patients. Only 20% of them come in and want longevity. 80% of them want to function. They want to maintain function. They’ve seen their parents get old. They’ve seen them in nursing homes and see them mentally having senile dementia, being abused. Physically and financially abused. They don’t want to go through that. They want to maintain their health and die like a seagull. Seagull and sea turtles die like that. They don’t have age-related diseases. There are no strokes in seagull. There’s no stroke in turtle, climbing with one side of their leg. They just go suddenly at the time of their life expectancy. In this case, in [inaudible 00:02:34] females in our country has that life expectancy of 87. Male has a life expectancy of 77. That’s what my patients want. They say, “I want to live fully until 77.”
Jeff Harrison: Keeping that quality of life.
Dr. Chein: Yeah. “I don’t mind dying at 77 at all. I prefer having the quality than from 77 and live to 120. Dr. Chein, you write the book 120. I don’t want to live 77 to 120 in a hospital or on a wheelchair or in a nursing home.” This is the kind of patients that I have. I give them the diet, exercise, nutrition and the hormone supplements to achieve those goals.
Jeff Harrison: Well that’s a perfect segue into today’s topic. Dr. Chein, there’s a whole generation of people that have grown up and now they have kids that really were never into supplements.
Dr. Chein: Yes.
Jeff Harrison: Now they took their kids to fast food on the way home. Let’s face it. Mom and dad are working hard and they’re taking the kids on soccer and this set and the other. They don’t have the time to properly give the kids nutrition. What would you tell them? Why would you suggest they start supplementing their lives now? They’re in their late 30s. Why now?
Dr. Chein: Yeah. Why now? It’s a good question. The change of the world. In stone age or 1,000 years ago, we don’t have the problems we have now. The problems that we face now requires new remedy to prevent us from getting sick from the new world, shall I say. That’s number one. Number two is our knowledge. Our knowledge about vitamins and ‘vitamin’ becomes the word for items that we … That our body makes, but become deficient as we get older and cause diseases. We find more and more deficiency in nutrients, micronutrients, that will cause disease now than 20 years ago. A lot more information. The supplement 10 years ago was not there because we didn’t know better. As we get cancers and cancers and diabetes … 30 years ago, we don’t have that many cancers. 30 years ago, we don’t have diabetes. Why?
We didn’t have the world. For example, the pollution. That’s the number one reason. Okay? We need supplements because of pollution. Pollution from pesticides, pollution from plastics, pollution from GMO food. Okay, all of these pollutions cause diseases. It takes vitamins, amino acids to neutralize these toxins. For example, if you and I go to a five-star restaurant and we start eating the beautiful salad … The way it looks, the way it tastes, it’s great.
Jeff Harrison: Sure.
Dr. Chein: You don’t know who washed it. The chef didn’t wash the veggies. It’s a kitchen help. The kitchen help didn’t wash it carefully. The pesticides, if it wasn’t organic … Most restaurants buy non-organic food because it’s cheaper.
Jeff Harrison: Sure.
Dr. Chein: They didn’t wash it and the pesticides stay on your plate and in my plate. Now if you eat that salad and you didn’t take amino acid the day before or vitamins, that pesticide is going to stay in your body. You cannot pee it out. It’s very much small amounts. It stays in your body for a few days before it gets all out of your system. I took vitamins. I take vitamins every day and amino acids. Specifically amino acids. It will just chelate those pesticides, chelate meaning it’ll lock onto it and it’ll be forced out by my body in my urine. I ended up not being injured by those pesticides and those herbicides on this beautiful salad that you and I ate, whereas you get injured.
Jeff Harrison: Let’s face it. It’s a more expensive option to have to go organic when let’s say you can’t.
Dr. Chein: Yeah.
Jeff Harrison: If you’re properly supplementing your body, at least you’re defending yourself.
Dr. Chein: Yeah.
Jeff Harrison: If you don’t, you’re just exposing yourself to that.
Dr. Chein: Yeah. Even if you’re careful, the restaurants you go to are not careful.
Jeff Harrison: Gotcha. Okay.
Dr. Chein: The water. I walk around now in restaurants with a pen, with a water purity testing pen, and I test the drinking … I ask for drinking water and I test the drinking water. If the reading goes beyond 100, I probably walk away.
Jeff Harrison: Yeah.
Dr. Chein: Or if it’s impolite to walk away, I go home and take a few more amino acids and vitamins because I know if the drinking water, free drinking water, is impure, this restaurant is too cheap to filter its water. If it’s too cheap to filter its water that they serve me, they’re not going to buy organic food and they’re not going to wash their veggies.
Jeff Harrison: It’s probably just right down the chain. Right?
Dr. Chein: I can guess that no matter how beautiful outside looks, back there it’s not educated and it’s dangerous for me.
Jeff Harrison: Interesting.
Dr. Chein: Those problems didn’t exist before. The amount of pesticides … The production and sales goes up by a million tons a year.
Jeff Harrison: Wow.
Dr. Chein: The sales. Straight up. Every year gets more and more pesticides being sold. A million tons.
Jeff Harrison: We can talk about that all day long as far as now there’s more pressure on the farmers to produce more product.
Dr. Chein: Exactly.
Jeff Harrison: More crop because the world population is growing. Right?
Dr. Chein: Exactly.
Jeff Harrison: The only way to do that is with chemicals it seems like.
Dr. Chein: Yes.
Jeff Harrison: Of course it’s like everything else. It’s got to go somewhere. It’s coming to us. If we’re not defending ourselves … That brings me back to the question, why would it even start now? I grew up on this apple a day keeps the doctor away. Right? It just doesn’t work anymore.
Dr. Chein: No.
Jeff Harrison: An apple you’re eating potentially has …
Dr. Chein: Has the pesticides.
Jeff Harrison: … has pesticides that’s harming your body.
Dr. Chein: Exactly.
Jeff Harrison: That’s not such a good idea. You’re saying today it’s even more important than ever to have proper supplementation.
Dr. Chein: Yes, to detox.
Jeff Harrison: To detox.
Dr. Chein: Just on detox alone. We didn’t have the detox years ago.
Jeff Harrison: Okay.
Dr. Chein: We just ate raw from going to the forest and there was no pesticide. It’s safe to eat. You just wash a little bit and that’s all. Today the knowledge also. The knowledge we have increased with computer information age.
Jeff Harrison: Sure.
Dr. Chein: Our knowledge about what is vitamin just exponentially increased. For example, alpha-lipoic acid is … Before it’s an antioxidant. It’s an energy producer in the cell. Today it’s used to treat cancer successfully.
Jeff Harrison: What is that again?
Dr. Chein: Alpha-lipoic acid, which is in my multiple vitamin. Not in other brands. Not in Centrum, definitely. I’m sorry I have to mention names, but because Centrum has been around a long time, but it’s 30 years behind.
Jeff Harrison: Yeah.
Dr. Chein: This alpha-lipoic acid has been found just by adding another drug. Now [inaudible 00:10:08] being used to cure many, many types of cancer. Not all but many types of cancers are cured with it.
Jeff Harrison: This is just in your multivitamin you get every day.
Dr. Chein: Yeah.
Jeff Harrison: Interesting.
Dr. Chein: What I’m saying, if you want to prevent cancer, you should take supplements.
Jeff Harrison: Okay.
Dr. Chein: Before, there was nothing to cause you cancer. Now a lot of things cause you cancer.
Jeff Harrison: Sure.
Dr. Chein: Definitely our knowledge of these … What is vitamins? The list becomes longer and longer and longer. In order to maintain health span, which is the number of years on this earth behind healthy and not lose your physical and mental function, you need to supplement early. You need to take these multiple vitamins, amino acids, essential fatty acids early. As early as you can.
Jeff Harrison: It’s never too soon to start properly supplementing.
Dr. Chein: No, it’s not.
Jeff Harrison: Just a quick question. Let’s say, for instance, I have children. Maybe they’re 10, 12 years old. Are their bodies more susceptible to damage in your opinion if they eat that same salad that’s improperly washed or maybe … It has the chemicals on it. Are they subject to more harm than an adult?
Dr. Chein: The harm is there.
Jeff Harrison: Okay.
Dr. Chein: Equal.
Jeff Harrison: Okay.
Dr. Chein: Except they regenerate. Just like a kid cut themselves, fall. They break. They heal.
Jeff Harrison: They bounce right back.
Dr. Chein: Same thing in the intestine. The same pesticide goes into the body and tries to damage the kidney, damage your adrenal gland. Yeah, the kid repairs the damage right away. They suffer less as a result of the same poison that you and I have or all of us have.
Jeff Harrison: Okay.
Dr. Chein: They can repair a lot better. As we get older, unfortunately we know our ability to repair goes down. We get damaged more than the kids.
Jeff Harrison: Gotcha.
Dr. Chein: Therefore it’s reasonable to think that the kids probably don’t need the supplements and it’s true. They don’t need it until 20s and 30s. 20s and 30s is a good time to start because below that age group, they can regenerate. They can get hurt, but they are capable of healing and regenerating.
Jeff Harrison: Gotcha. Okay.
Dr. Chein: Their growth hormone is a lot higher than ours. What growth hormone does is repair, repair, repair. Every hormone is higher.
Jeff Harrison: Just naturally.
Dr. Chein: Naturally, yes.
Jeff Harrison: We’re still growing at that age.
Dr. Chein: Yes, exactly.
Jeff Harrison: Gotcha. Back to that question and recapping is why would we start now? If I’m 35 or 40 years old, why would I start now? It’s because we no longer live in that same world. We are subject to so many things that we just took for granted. Pollution, mainly.
Dr. Chein: Yes.
Jeff Harrison: Not just in the air, not just in the water, but in our food that we consume every day.
Dr. Chein: Yeah.
Jeff Harrison: We’re ingesting that.
Dr. Chein: GMO. Never exited before.
Jeff Harrison: There we go.
Dr. Chein: GMO foods. There’s no corn you can buy in a supermarket that’s not GMO. No. None. You cannot buy it. Cannot find it.
Jeff Harrison: If you’re not protecting yourself and you eat corn, you’ve got …
Dr. Chein: Yeah. In Europe, in France, they prohibit GMO corn. In this country, it’s not prohibited. Every corn you eat is GMO. GMO affects your intestinal flora or bacteria and it causes problems.
Jeff Harrison: Interesting.
Dr. Chein: In fact a lot of kids are allergic to GMO0-modified foods.
Jeff Harrison: By proper supplementation, that helps again combat against those issues.
Dr. Chein: Yes, those issues.
Jeff Harrison: Okay.
Dr. Chein: You have to eat it. That’s what’s available only. If you eat a corn, you’re going to have a GMO corn.
Jeff Harrison: Yeah.
Dr. Chein: Now it’s just how do you eliminate the damage? How do you prevent the damage? Multiple vitamins and minerals and amino acids.
Jeff Harrison: Now if you’re the first time to come to the program, how does somebody get your multivitamin? It’s not just a regular multivitamin.
Dr. Chein: No.
Jeff Harrison: It’s formulated from the ground up for what? One reason.
Dr. Chein: Well to prevent diseases, prevent age-related diseases, to maintain function with the hope of ultimately achieving longevity. That’s what the vitamin is for. My multivitamins is very different from everybody else’s.
Jeff Harrison: Yeah. They get that right off your website?
Dr. Chein: They can buy it from Amazon. In fact if they say …
Jeff Harrison: Oh, that’s right.
Dr. Chein: Yeah, they can buy it from Amazon without ever seeing me even. They just type “Dr. Chein’s Vitamin or Palm Springs Life Extension Multiple Vitamin.” It pops up.
Jeff Harrison: We’ll put a link down there, so you can see that on the screen of where you can get the multivitamins because … I think competitively-wise, it’s not outrageously expensive. It’s right there with everybody else.
Dr. Chein: Yes.
Jeff Harrison: Except now it has all the things that others don’t have that really, like you said, tell us one time again that particular …
Dr. Chein: Oh, there are more. I have in my multiple vitamin a lot of things that other people don’t have.
Jeff Harrison: Yeah.
Dr. Chein: What I mentioned earlier was alpha-lipoic acid, which is antioxidant, but now found to stop formational chemicals that cause cancer.
Jeff Harrison: You’ve been putting that in your multivitamin …
Dr. Chein: For three, four years now.
Jeff Harrison: I see.
Dr. Chein: Alpha-lipoic acid prevents kidney stones formulating. How nice to take a multivitamin that prevents kidney stones. How many people have kidney stones? Lots of people have kidney stones.
Jeff Harrison: Lots of people. They’re a little bit painful, aren’t they?
Dr. Chein: Yeah. When they get blocked.
Jeff Harrison: Crazy.
Dr. Chein: Yeah. Besides alpha-lipoic acid, I have resveratrol, which is the red wine element from the ingredient from the red wine that extends lifespan of rats. We hope that it’ll expand the lifespan of men. We don’t know how much, but we think it does a little bit. It’s absolutely a great antioxidant. It’s in there.
Jeff Harrison: It’s an antioxidant.
Dr. Chein: Yes.
Jeff Harrison: Okay. All right.
Dr. Chein: You don’t even have to drink red wine when you take my multiple vitamin.
Jeff Harrison: Doesn’t mean you have to stop drinking your red wine.
Dr. Chein: Yeah. You don’t have to drink red wine for longevity, okay? I have it provided in there for you. Not Centrum. Definitely not Centrum, okay?
Jeff Harrison: Okay.
Dr. Chein: Yeah. Then I have grape seed extract, which everybody knows. I don’t need to go into that. I have tumeric. Tumeric prevents cancer. It prevents diabetes. It’s anti-inflammatory. It prevents heart disease.
Jeff Harrison: Wow. Why would you not be taking that?
Dr. Chein: Yeah.
Jeff Harrison: You’re pointing out things that are not common in anyone else’s multivitamin out there on the market.
Dr. Chein: Exactly.
Jeff Harrison: If you go out to the drugstore and you’re looking through One a Day or Centrum or you name it …
Dr. Chein: Yeah.
Jeff Harrison: Right? It doesn’t have this.
Dr. Chein: No.
Jeff Harrison: You’re taking something that’s already semi-deficient of what you really need.
Dr. Chein: Yeah.
Jeff Harrison: You might as well just say, “You know what? Let’s make the change. Let’s go get Dr. Chein’s multivitamin and try that.”
Dr. Chein: Yeah.
Jeff Harrison: They can get that right off your website at drchein.com.
Dr. Chein: Correct. Yes.
Jeff Harrison: Fantastic.
Dr. Chein: For example, there are more things, like [inaudible 00:17:44]
Jeff Harrison: What do they support?
Dr. Chein: Eyes. As we get older and older, we get macular degeneration. You’ve probably heard of that.
Jeff Harrison: Sure.
Dr. Chein: We get cataracts. These nutrients in my multiple vitamins provide it to you for free. It protects the retina from having macular degeneration, from the UV light damage.
Jeff Harrison: I don’t have to go out and get an additional supplement.
Dr. Chein: Exactly.
Jeff Harrison: Just for my eyes. To me, that makes sense. Multivitamins. That should cover the whole thing.
Dr. Chein: Yeah, but they don’t. That’s why you go to look for multiple vitamins. You see probably hundreds of brands.
Jeff Harrison: Yeah.
Dr. Chein: What you need to do is look at the content. You need to look at the content. What this one has and what that one doesn’t. It’s important. For example, I have CoQ10 in there. People take CoQ10 separately for heart, for liver disease, for many, many diseases. CoQ10 is a very powerful energy and mitochondria energy supplement. Okay. There’s a specialty subset of medicine called mitochondrial medicine now that specializes in just studying the mitochondria, which is the energy production. The battery of our every cell.
Jeff Harrison: Okay.
Dr. Chein: The battery is the mitochondria. CoQ10 is extremely important for that. It’s in my multiple vitamins.
Jeff Harrison: It just comes right in there.
Dr. Chein: It’s in there for you. Boron. It’s for prostate [inaudible 00:19:16] cancer. In fact, people who have prostate cancer have come into me. I put them on boron and we have boron in … I have boron in it.
Jeff Harrison: Everything you’re talking about, are these at levels that if I just went out and said, “Hey, these are the levels I need on a daily basis”?
Dr. Chein: Yeah.
Jeff Harrison: You’re giving me that balance that I wasn’t having through my diet.
Dr. Chein: Exactly.
Jeff Harrison: Which again, why would I start now? Well jeez, I’m probably not getting boron in many things.
Dr. Chein: Exactly.
Jeff Harrison: CoQ10. It’s just not happening, right?
Dr. Chein: Right. Exactly.
Jeff Harrison: Probably not in my banana.
Dr. Chein: Yeah.
Jeff Harrison: I don’t know that for a fact, but now I know for sure. I can go take my multivitamin and it’s going to be there.
Dr. Chein: Yeah. Not to bore you, but one more item. Silymarin, which is an herb I have in my multiple vitamin.
Jeff Harrison: What does that do?
Dr. Chein: That prevents prostate enlargement. How many men have prostate enlargement?
Jeff Harrison: Sure.
Dr. Chein: As we get older, we get that because it comes with age. Just about every man living to 80s and 90s get prostate enlargement. Silymarin is in there to prevent that in my multiple vitamin. You don’t have to take extra. It’s just my multiple vitamin and minerals. It has that ingredient in it.
Jeff Harrison: If you’re taking a multiple vitamin, you should probably look at the back of that and say, “Wait a minute. Dr. Chein said these things. How important they are. Mine doesn’t have it.”
Dr. Chein: Yeah.
Jeff Harrison: It’s not going to have it on there.
Dr. Chein: Yeah.
Jeff Harrison: If you’re not supplementing it, you might decide, “Hey, you know what? Why would I want to take four or five other supplements to cover this? Why not just get Dr. Chein’s multivitamin?”
Dr. Chein: Exactly.
Jeff Harrison: With that, Dr. Chein, any other last thoughts about why now? Hey, it’s the world we live in.
Dr. Chein: It’s the knowledge.
Jeff Harrison: The knowledge.
Dr. Chein: Yes.
Jeff Harrison: Okay. Well thank you so much for sharing this today and thanks for joining us on another episode of Living to 120 and Beyond. If you’d like to see more, just go to the website of drchein.com and the weekly shows. You can look at past episodes where he talks about not just dealing with things like arthritis or osteopetrosis, but actually curing that. Diabetes. Actually curing that. As he said, long life is not as important if you’re not healthy first. His goal first off is to get you healthy.
Dr. Chein: Correct.
Jeff Harrison: Share those issues and then the byproduct of that will be a longer, healthier life. Dr. Chein, thanks for joining us. Thanks for joining us. I’m Jeff Harrison.
Dr. Chein: Dr. Edmund Chein.
Jeff Harrison: We’ll catch you again next time on Living to 120 and Beyond.