In this premiere Access Health episode that recently aired on Lifetime TV, the largest US women's network, Hardy Nutritionals® founder David L. Hardy and Harvard Psychiatrist Dr. Charles Popper join Access Health experts to discuss Hardy's ground-breaking discovery that mental illness symptoms can be reversed naturally.

Hardy shares his own personal family story that inspired him to pursue the academic and clinical validation of his formulations. "Several years after we started studying this--and I was working with hundreds of other people with mental illness--I began to understand more about the illness itself. Ironically, I came home one day and my son was completely psychotic; he'd had a psychotic break and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. And about a year after that experience, my daughter was diagnosed after the birth of a baby with postpartum psychosis...and those experiences were devastating. I mean, my experience with other people with mental illness is one thing, but it doesn't hold a candle to when you experience it with someone that you love."

Hardy continues, "The biggest thing that came out of it was an incredible desire to legitimize this so that my grandchildren and your grandchildren and millions of others don't have to go through what my family went through. That kind of motivation probably would not have come had I not had that powerfully emotional experience with my own children."

"There is mounting scientific evidence" Hardy says, "proving that minerals and vitamins can indeed have a powerful treatment effect on mental illness."

In the episode, Harvard Psychiatrist Dr. Charles Popper shared his first clinical experience using one of David's nutritional formulations+. "I first became involved in nutrition as a psychiatrist observing a 10 year-old boy who had bipolar disorder--a very serious form of it," Dr. Popper emphasizes. "He was having major temper tantrums for an hour, two hours, four hours a day every day for some months--a very seriously disruptive set of symptoms. And he took a vitamin-mineral supplement and within 5 days his symptoms cleared entirely. The tantrums were gone on the 5^th day of treatment and he wasn't even irritable; he wasn't even grouchy. Now, we don't have any psychiatric drugs that can do that. I've never seen a psychiatric drug do that in any case...! So based on that one child, I began to pay attention to nutrition and to the use of vitamins and minerals, in particular, to treat mood disorders."

Commenting on Dr. Popper's initial exposure to nutritional supplements, Hardy says, "We don't always see that quick of a response with the supplement, but it was a great way to introduce Dr. Popper to nutrition, because nutrition was not on his radar screen at all."

Hardy explains how choosing a supplement like Daily Essential Nutrients for completeness, balance, and bioavailability can reverse psychiatric problems, and how taking just any supplement likely won't yield the desired results. "When you choose a supplement that's not complete, when you choose one that is not properly balanced, when you choose one that is not very bioavailable, you don't get a very good response," he comments. "We've found what the right amount is. We've also found a special way to put together our products so that the minerals become more effective, and it's very significant. The minerals we process in a way that combines the inorganic molecules with organic molecules so that it makes it into an organic molecule that is, in some cases, 100 times (or more) more soluble than the inorganic form."

Dr. Popper confirms how important absorption is for effectiveness of nutritional supplements. "Especially in psychiatry, when we are using these as medical treatments," he says, "we look for very much higher quality vitamins and minerals that are demonstrated to have much higher absorption rates than the routine commercial formulations."

Hardy states, "Our research speaks for itself. There are over 23 medical journal publishing's+ from 15 universities, 4 different countries...our supplement+ is the most studied supplement for mood disorders on earth. We're excited about the research and the verification that it gives what we do."

Dr. Popper concludes his remarks by commenting how the researched benefits of using nutrition could affect the future of psychiatry. "If it turns out with more effective studies," he states, "that we can treat depression, bipolar disorder, attention deficit disorder, or perhaps other psychiatric disorders with vitamins and minerals that were as effective as the current psychiatric drugs, but with much fewer side effects and better long-term stability, and with less mental fog, if that were to turn out to be true, then we would have a much better set of alternative treatments to be able to offer patients who are currently struggling with these conditions."

Hardy's final statement in the segment illustrates how complete nutrition has broad application beyond mental illness. He affirms, "When you understand how minerals and vitamins work in the body, that they are the basis of every metabolic process, they become not only the most logical but also the most likely cause of all kinds of illness. So research does show that they positively impact and reduce the level of cancer, and heart disease, and Alzheimer's, and many other chronic illnesses that we suffer from."

About Access Health

Access Health is an O2 Media produced program that airs on Lifetime TV. It explores the latest cutting-edge developments and innovations in medicine, nutrition, and fitness.

In each episode, a panel of three renowned experts in their fields--medical expert Dr. Dennis Holmes, nutritionist Janet Zappala, and fitness guru Dave Sinclair--are joined by show host Ereka Vetrini to offer their in-depth knowledge and insights into the leading health and wellness issues of the day.

Watch "Mind Over Matter", the entire first Access Health episode, to learn more.

⁺Refers to pre-2013 versions of Truehope EMPowerplus which were co-formulated by David Hardy. Truehope EMPowerplus is a registered trademark of The Synergy Group of Canada Inc.

About Hardy Nutritionals®

Hardy Nutritionals® multivitamin-mineral products are powered by our proprietary NutraTek™ mineral delivery technology, which combines each mineral with specialized organic molecules—just like nature—to optimize absorption and distribution to body cells. Our flagship supplement, Daily Essential Nutrients, is widely considered to be the most research-backed micronutrient treatment.