The Vital 5 Supplements & Emotional Vitality:
Jared St. Clair on Healing Beyond Symptom Management
Richer Soul Podcast • Episode 480 • Featuring Jared St. Clair
What if your health plan wasn’t “another pill,” but a return to fundamental nutrition, digestion, and mindset?
In this episode of Richer Soul, I sit down with Jared St. Clair, owner of Vitality Nutrition and host of Vitality Radio, to talk about what he calls “the promise of vitality” and why so many people feel unheard, overmedicated, and stuck in symptom management.
We get into the real world side of supplements (including why Amazon can be risky), the misunderstood role of digestion, and a powerful story from Jared’s life: how his wife Jen moved from decades of anxiety/depression and long term psych meds to a place where she no longer lives in that pattern through a combination of supplementation, diet, and mindset.
Pull quote: “It’s such a great gift to be able to provide something that is not just an exchange of time for money, but really the promise of vitality.”
The Seven-Year-Old Who Grew Up to Own the Family Health Store
Jared says he “grew up weird” in a family that owned a health food store starting when he was five. He started working in the store at seven, doing basic tasks like stocking shelves and taking out garbage.
By 14, the rule in the family was that the kids could begin working directly with customers. Jared caught the bug early. He loved the one-on-one interaction and the challenge of answering adult questions about health and nutrition, even as a teenager.
At 15, his parents asked him to run the store; he describes biking there after school and working evenings and Saturdays. At 16, he hired his first employee (who stayed for 20 years). At 22, Jared bought the store from his parents. He says he’s now 53, has owned it for 31 years, and has worked there for 45 years.
Pull quote: “At 53 years old, I’ve owned this place for 31 years, I’ve worked here for 45 years, and I’m more excited about what we do today than I’ve ever been.”
Learning Natural Health Before the Internet (When Research Wasn’t Easy)
Rocky points out that when Jared started learning, there was no internet, and access to medical journals wasn’t simple. Jared adds that even if you had access, “nobody was studying natural stuff back then,” because most clinical attention was on drugs, not nutraceuticals.
So Jared relied heavily on books and tradition/anecdotal experience. He specifically names:
- How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor (Robert Mendelson)
- Confessions of a Medical Heretic (Robert Mendelson)
- Prescription for Natural Healing
- The How-To Herb book
Trust in Medicine After COVID (and Why Health Became Political)
Rocky asks about trust in the medical community. Jared says trust has “eroded substantially” and attributes part of it to post-COVID polarization, where people accept or reject the same health choices based on which political “side” is associated with them.
Jared’s core point: step outside politics, look at information directly, and make informed decisions based on what something is, not who is promoting it.
Treating the Body Like “Parts” Doesn’t Work
Jared describes a major flaw he sees in modern medicine: treating the body like separate machines, pulmonology, cardiology, and endocrinology, rather than one interconnected system. He emphasizes that lungs and heart don’t work independently, yet care is often fragmented.
He contrasts that with the intent behind functional medicine (without claiming every functional medicine doctor is great): the model at least aims to look at the person as a whole.
Pull quote: “In modern medicine today in America, we treat the body like it’s a bunch of individual parts.”
Jen’s Story: Decades of Meds, an Opiate Addiction, and a New Life
Jared shares that his wife, Jen, had anxiety and depression since age 13 and was among the early young people put on Prozac at that age. He says she was on psych meds (sometimes multiple) for most of her life up until he met her about eight years ago.
He also shares that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Separately, after an accident and chronic back pain, she was prescribed an opiate that her doctor told her was “not addictive,” and she became addicted after one dose, spending 10 years addicted. Jared says she later got clean from opiates years before he met her, after a period that included suicide attempts.
Jared explains that when they met, he began helping her with severe IBS, anxiety/depression, and chronic pain. Over time, Jen weaned off pharmaceutical meds through what he describes as a long, cautious process (about a year and a half to fully get off). He says she has now been off pharma meds for about six years (six and a half) and no longer deals with anxiety and depression the way she used to.
Jared emphasizes that, in his view, it wasn’t just supplementation and diet—it was supplementation + diet + mindset, which he calls “emotional vitality.”
Pull quote: “She is now someone who, no matter how hard life can come at her, she doesn’t deal with anxiety and depression anymore.”
Jared’s Perspective on “Disorders” (Presented as His Belief)
Jared states that he personally doesn’t believe that mental health labels ending in “D” (disorder), like ADHD, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorder, mean people are inherently “broken.” He says he believes many cases reflect symptom patterns arising from combined inputs such as toxins, nutritional deficiencies, and learned belief systems.
He uses Jen’s case to explain what he believes contributed to her symptoms, including an MTHFR variant, gut dysbiosis after heavy antibiotic use in childhood, malnourishment, and a highly processed diet plus mindset/limiting beliefs.
Pull quote: “I believe that one of the biggest fallacies in medicine is that we are disordered… I don’t believe that in the vast majority of cases, we’re actually broken.”
The PPI Trap: Acid Reflux Drugs and Long-Term Risk (Attributed to Jared)
Jared calls out proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) like Nexium, Prilosec, and Prevacid. He shares his own story of severe acid reflux in his mid-20s during a period of high stress and poor diet; a GI doctor wanted him on Nexium (the “purple pill”).
Jared says these drugs “should be used” short-term and states that the FDA has never approved any of them for over 12 weeks of continuous use. He describes long-term use reducing digestion/absorption of nutrients and references “multiple studies” suggesting an increased risk of death from all causes after 10+ years of use (he cites “as high as 25%”). This is presented here as Jared’s claim in the interview, not as a medical conclusion from Richer Soul.
He also warns about “reflux rebound” when stopping suddenly (especially without weaning).
Supplements: Rocky’s Stack, and Jared’s “Vital 5” Starting Point
Rocky shares parts of his personal supplement stack (including taurine, magnesium, glycine + NAC, CoQ10, D3K2, lithium, B vitamins, collagen, creatine, omega fats, folic acid) and notes that his needs change with age.
Jared agrees that “nothing’s universal” and that supplement response varies person to person. He then explains his baseline framework for many adults, what he calls the Vital 5, especially for adults over ~35:
- Omega 3s
- Magnesium (he says magnesium is the “stress mineral”; he likes magnesium bisglycinate for most people)
- A high-quality multivitamin (he says many aren’t worth taking; he mentions an episode called “Centrum Sucks” as his view)
- Probiotics
- Digestive enzymes (he says enzyme production often declines after ~35–40)
Pull quote: “Magnesium is the stress mineral and the higher level of stress we have, the more magnesium we use and therefore the more magnesium we need.”
The Amazon Supplement Problem: Counterfeits and Content Fraud (With Jared’s Example)
Jared warns that buying supplements on Amazon can be risky due to counterfeits and what he calls content fraud (a bottle may not contain what the label claims).
He references a test by NOW Foods: they bought 33 bottles of berberine on Amazon and found about 95% didn’t match the claimed amount, and 8 of the 33 had zero berberine.
Watch Your Mouth: Self Talk and the Reticular Activating System
Jared emphasizes being careful about how you speak about yourself. He describes the reticular activating system (RAS) as a brain filter that determines what rises from subconscious to conscious awareness, and suggests that repeated self-talk influences what we notice and pursue.
Pull quote: “Watch your mouth in reference to how you speak about yourself. Because what you speak about yourself, your brain believes about you.”
Key Takeaways
- Jared grew up in a family health food store and began managing it at 15; he bought it at 22 and says he’s owned it for 31 years.
- Before the internet, Jared relied on books and tradition because natural products weren’t widely studied clinically.
- Jared says trust in medicine has eroded and that health has become politically polarized, especially after COVID.
- He criticizes fragmented “parts-based” healthcare and prefers a whole body lens (functional medicine conceptually).
- Jen’s improvement story is presented as supplementation + diet + mindset, with a cautious weaning off medications over time.
- Jared frames many mental health “disorders” as symptom clusters from inputs (his belief), not proof that someone is “broken.”
- Jared warns PPIs are intended short term and states FDA approval is not for >12 weeks continuous use; he describes nutrient absorption concerns and cites studies (his reference) about long-term risk.
- Jared’s “Vital 5” is a baseline: omega 3s, magnesium, high-quality multi, probiotics, digestive enzymes.
- Jared warns about Amazon counterfeits/content fraud and cites the NOW Foods berberine test example.
- He stresses self-talk matters and references the reticular activating system as a mental filter.
About the Guest: Jared St. Clair
Jared St. Clair is the owner of Vitality Nutrition, a brick-and-mortar health store that has been in his family for decades. He says he started working there at age seven, began managing it at 15, hired his first employee at 16, and bought the business at 22. He also hosts the Vitality Radio podcast and teaches about supplementation, nutrition, and mindset.
Links
Website: https://vitalitynutrition.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyVitality/
https://www.facebook.com/vitalityradio/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vitalitynutritionbountiful/
https://www.instagram.com/vitalityradio/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vitality radio podcast with jared st clair/id1499760048
Listen to the Full Conversation
This blog post captures the essence of Jared’s wisdom, but the full conversation goes much deeper into the nuances of gut health, the specific mechanisms of the Vital 5, and the emotional texture of Jen’s story. Tune in to Richer Soul Ep 480 Entrepreneur Wellness: Supplements, Stress, and Emotional Vitality with Jared St. Clair: https://richersoul.com/ep-480-entrepreneur-wellness-supplements-stress-and-emotional-vitality-with-jared-st-clair/
Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@richersoul
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