I have to rendezvous with my husband in a few hours, and have a bunch of things to do before then.\u00a0 I should be in the shower – not hunched over the keyboard.\u00a0 But it’s all Paul’s fault: he got me going on this.<\/p>\n
What set me off was\u00a0his\u00a0previous post: “Mangosteen, Noni, Goji, Zrii Juice…What’s Next?<\/a>”\u00a0 In the text, Paul linked to an expose on Goji juice<\/a>, produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.\u00a0 The video featured an extended interview with one of the\u00a0promoters of a particular (and hideously expensive)\u00a0MLM<\/a> product: “Dr.” Earl Mindell.<\/p>\n Now, I’ve known about Mindell for years, but paid little attention to him before yesterday.\u00a0\u00a0He’s just one\u00a0face in a virtual mob of\u00a0alternative health promoters, all of whom preach a secular gospel of\u00a0nutrition\/supplementation that’s\u00a0a gemische of fact and fiction.\u00a0 But something he said in the video caught my ear…it was a statement to the effect that Goji would make you feel and look<\/strong> 20 years younger (it occurs 2:50 minutes into the video).<\/p>\n It was the irony of that statement that drew me in.\u00a0 Needless to state, the Earl Mindell I saw in the video didn’t look like a young man, nor a youthful one. \u00a0According to his Wikipedia entry, he was born in January 1940…so was\u00a066+ at the time the video was shot.\u00a0 He looked every year of\u00a0it too: while not explicitly fat, he\u00a0was comfortably “padded” and jowly, with a receding hairline and eye bags to spare.<\/p>\n “20 years younger” – my a**.<\/p>\n This got me thinking back to my first\u00a0look at\u00a0the “anti-aging” mindset: a book titled “Life Extension” by Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As I recall from their\u00a0book, Pearson and Shaw contended you didn’t need to exercise or eat right, provided you\u00a0took the right supplements…which – according to interviews – they consumed\u00a0by the fistful.\u00a0 To illustrate how well their program worked,\u00a0“Life Extension”\u00a0featured a series of photos of the two of them posing (somewhat discreetly)\u00a0in the nude.<\/p>\n Needless to\u00a0state,\u00a0the book\u00a0made them instant celebrities.\u00a0 There were TV and magazine interviews galore: Durk Pearson’s\u00a0unremarkable\u00a0physique\u00a0was even featured in a Playgirl spread.\u00a0 This absolutely\u00a0boggled my mind, since to me, they looked incredibly ordinary.\u00a0 It was plain to see that neither one had a particularly good body…really, the only positive\u00a0thing I could say is that they weren’t fat.\u00a0 At the time, both were in their mid-30’s and\u00a0I couldn’t see any evidence\u00a0in those photos\u00a0that suggested they’d discovered a fountain of youth.\u00a0 This was confirmed by the most recent pic I could find<\/a>, taken about 9 years ago.\u00a0 Yet they were – and to some extent still are – lionized as “experts.”<\/p>\n I gotta ask: why in the world would\u00a0anyone take “anti-aging” advice from people who don’t look any younger or\u00a0better than your Average Joe?\u00a0 No offense to Pearson, Shaw or Mindell, but none of them are exactly walking billboards for their\u00a0ideas or commercial products.\u00a0 Sorry, but this is one case where you can’t separate the message from the messenger.\u00a0\u00a0But people do, because the message is one that they desperately want to hear: that there’s a quick and simple “fix” for the\u00a0health problems that accumulate with the years.<\/p>\n There isn’t.\u00a0 And how do I know that?\u00a0 Because that’s what my favorite “anti-aging” guru,\u00a0Jack LaLanne<\/a>, says.\u00a0 And unlike Mindell, Pearson or Shaw, Jack lives – and looks – the part.<\/p>\n At 93,\u00a0LaLanne is more active than most people 1\/3 his age.\u00a0 He and his wife, Elaine, could pass for people in their early 70’s…and a vibrant 70’s at that.\u00a0 How do they do it?\u00a0 According to a 2007 interview in the Washington Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n