Joel Wallach

Vocation

American physician and author, a doctor of veterinary medicine and naturopathic practitioner. He is the founder of "Soaring Eagle," the famous 70-plus trace mineral company based in San Diego. Known as the "Mineral Doctor," his first remedies were developed for farm animals. Wallach has co-authored eight textbooks, and in 1983, wrote a reference book on comparative medicine. He grew up on a small farm in Missouri where he worked with animals. Seeing that they were given doses of vitamins and minerals to supplement their diet, he wondered why humans didn’t do the same thing, and this grew into a life-long interest. Wallach attended the University of Missouri where he majored in animal husbandry and nutrition and minored in field crops and soils. After getting his degree, he went on to earn his D.V.M. in 1964, eventually doing his post-doctorate work at Washington University. Wallach managed to obtain a research grant that allowed him to travel the world while extensively studying why zoo animals got sick or died. He was particularly interested in discovering an early warning species for pollution but ultimately he found that many of the diseases in captive animals resulted from mineral deficiencies, just as he feels they do in the human population. Publishing his findings, he was stunned when the medical profession as a whole seemed disinterested in the results. This rejection prompted him to go back to school where he became a Naturopathic doctor. He set up a family practice in Oregon and spent the next 12 years educating his patients before he began to travel extensively in the hopes of reaching more people by giving educational seminars on health and nutrition. In 1991, the Association of Eclectic Physicians nominated him for a Nobel Prize in Medicine for his groundbreaking work in nutrition. He is known for his tape, "Dead Doctors Don’t Lie," the biggest selling tape in advertising history. It mentions his hobby of several decades, the practice of clipping doctors’ obituaries from newspapers throughout the country. He has hundreds on file and found that while the average person lives 75.5 years, a doctor lives only 58 years, and women doctors much less. So, Wallach says, why listen to doctors or their minions? He doesn’t; in fact, he says he does the opposite of whatever an M.D. says, and his primary message is that people need to take personal responsibility for their own health. Link to Wikipedia biography