Science & Religion

Editors note: After years of experimentation to find help for his son, Joseph Stephan’s father, Tony, created a proprietary micronutrient blend called EMPowerplus Q96 which turned his mental illness around. We share this story because so many are suffering from depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder and don’t know where to turn. The good news is that you or someone you love is not sentenced to a life of anguish and pain. Happiness, well-being and good health can be recovered. 

To see a list of empirical reports and clinical research on this product, click here. To watch a TED talk given by a clinical psychologist who has researched the EMPowerplus formulation, click here. For more information about EMPowerplus Q96, click here. If you are interested in trying the product for yourself, click here.

His beloved mother had committed suicide when he was only 13 and as a teenager, Joseph Stephan believed that he, too, wouldn’t live to see the next summer. He suffered in a fog of darkness and delusion from a dangerous mental illness.

Young Joseph Stephan with his mother, the late Debbie Stephan.

Puberty was the perfect storm and with it came a diagnosis that, just like his mother, he, had Bipolar I disorder. However, eighteen years later, Joseph is still very alive and healthy without any medications. We tell his story to give hope to other LDS families like his who are dealing with the drudgery and fear of mental illness every single day.

When Joe was thirteen, he moved to Cardston, Alberta, Canada. The move was one more stress on a boy whose mind was so fragile. He had difficulty making friends and became a loner. Life as a teenager for him “stunk.”

“Puberty really messed me up,” he said, and that was just the beginning. School was a war zone for him. He was constantly getting into fights and would sometimes wander the streets at night with an aluminum baseball bat, banging it on the concrete in explosive anger. “I was a rebel without a cause. Going to school was a joke. I got in fights and became very violent and I told the principal (and really any authority) where to stick it.”

Some might think that this is just the lot of all hormonal teenagers who are going through puberty, but Joe’s case was so bad that his father, Tony, feared for his life and his family’s life when Joe was at home.

Joe as a teenager.

Some nights, Joe would threaten to burn down the house while they were sleeping. Joe said: “I didn’t care and I didn’t have the ability to care at this point. It was as if there was a fog over my mind and an inability to have good judgment. When you are in the depth of it, you just want it to end. That’s how I felt, every day.”

The Effects of Mental Illness on Spirituality

The Stephan family was and is a devout LDS family who went to Church and did the things that LDS families do. This seemed to bring no help because in his mental dungeon, he could not feel the Spirit.

He said: “Being given a clear mind is a plus if you are trying to feel the Spirit. You have to get to the place where you can quiet your mind. If you are in a bipolar state, good luck with that. You constantly have music or voices going in your head. For spirituality to work, you have to get your mind right. You can’t be wishy washy and have a million thoughts going through your head to feel the Spirit.”

His mental illness was so serious, every part of his life was touched. Life was impossible for him and his violent outbursts were miserable and terrifying to live with.

Tony feared for this son, who was so violent and irrational. Psychiatrists dished out psychotropic meds, but not any hope. Tony was told frankly by his doctors to expect this son to follow the path his mother had taken—the tortured path to suicide.

Having lost his wife to this, Tony was not about to lose his child too. He was desperate for a solution and, after much research, began experimenting with the idea that mood disorder was attached to the deficiency of particular nutrients in the brain, an idea that much clinical research since then has borne out.

The effects of Joseph’s mental illness were so profound that he wasn’t even really aware that his father was doing something that would revolutionize every aspect of his life—and the life of thousands of others, too.

Joseph said: “For the most part, I didn’t really have the ability to care. I remember when my dad was experimenting with the different mixtures. It smelled really bad. I remember I was open to it. Would I have cared if it worked at that point? Likely not, but I remember that he was doing something. He wouldn’t give up, and I was open to it, but didn’t care much.”

The First Person to take EMPowerplus and Recover from Bipolar Disorder

Joe was constrained by his father to take this new mixture of vitamins, minerals and amino acids, a formulation they later called EMPowerplus. Joe was currently taking a high dose of lithium, but when his prescription ran out, his dad decided not to refill it and see if this new concoction would work.

“It wasn’t an overnight thing, not a magic pill. It really took a week and a half to two weeks to when it really started to affect me. I thought I was normal because I was sick. I didn’t see it like they had seen it from the outside, but as soon as I hit the two-week mark, no joke, it was like a literal fog had been lifted off my brain. It was an amazing change. When I felt it, it was like a light switch. Maybe others around me noticed it before I did, but things like anger and obsessions were just gone.

“It was amazing to realize this and it felt good once I actually realized what had happened.” Joe also emphasized the fact that once you are free of the mental illness, you still have a lot of work to do. He says: “You can take the product and it will fix the Bipolar disorder, but you will still have issues to deal with, relationships to mend, and behaviors to improve. You’ll still have to learn to be ‘normal.’ I’m still learning that today. It’s not just a magic pill that will fix everything in your life, but it does work.”

Eighteen years later, Joe is free of the pain of Bipolar illness and is now happily married, with six children (four are twins). They live a happy life, working hard on a beautiful ten- acre plot, with a milk cow, sheep and plenty to farm. It’s hard work, but he loves it. He said with a laugh: “We have a nice garden full of strawberries and weeds.”

Joe’s work life and family life have improved drastically from where they were before. He made special mention of the spiritual growth that he has made and even shared an experience he recently had with the power of the priesthood.

One of his boys became deathly ill and was on life support for three full days. Joe felt prompted to give his son a priesthood blessing and during the blessing he blessed his son to be brought back to life. To the complete amazement of the doctors, his son came back to life and is now in full health again. This became a backbone of Joe’s faith that God is looking out for him in his life and his children in their lives.

Unfortunately Joe’s situation is like so many others. There are millions who are struggling with the same thing that Joe went through. In America alone, nearly one in five (18.2%) suffers from some sort of mental illness (1). 6.1 million Americans suffer from Bipolar disorder (2). Over 49 million Americans are taking psychiatric drugs (3) and sadly, in the next thirteen minutes, an American will already have committed suicide (105 per day) (4).

Joe is one of the first to be successfully treated for Bipolar disorder without psychotropic medications. To this day he is medication free. Psychiatrists and researchers both say that Bipolar disorder should only get worse throughout a person’s life, but Joe has defied the odds.

In late 2013, we published an article on Joseph’s father, Tony Stephan, which has been one of the most read stories in the history of Meridian Magazine.

Joe and his family have been featured or mentioned on Discovery Health, on multiple news stories like Fox News and others, and even in a recent TED talk. However. Joe has never been featured alone and we wanted to give our readers an inside view of what he went through from his point of view.

We asked Joe what advice he would give to those who are going through this right now. Here is what he told us: “Have a little bit of patience and have trust. There are answers. It’s right in front of you and a little faith never hurts. You have to believe in what you are doing, you know? Just take that step forward and just take the Q96 pills and be consistent in taking them and you will feel better.”

There is hope for those struggling with mental illness like Joseph Stephan did. He was the first to recover using this method, and because of his willingness to try and his father’s persistence, thousands have now experienced the same improvement, just like Joe. For those who have lived with this in their family for any amount of time, this is truly a miracle.

In Joe’s words: “Maybe a lot of people have this belief that the heavens are silent, but I’m here to tell you that I see miracles all the time with this. It is a miracle that it was brought into our family and I have not seen an end to the miracles. There is no mistake about that.”

Editors note: To see a list of empirical reports and clinical research on this product, click here. To watch a TED talk given by a clinical psychologist who has researched the EMPowerplus formulation, click here. For more information about EMPowerplus Q96, click here. If you are interested in trying the product for yourself, click here.

Important Safety Disclaimer: If you are considering transitioning from any medication onto the EMPowerplus formulation, please be careful. Please do not go off your medications “cold-turkey.” This is dangerous and is unwise. However, please do consider trying this method very carefully and with the help of professionals, family and transition coaches. Mental illness is serious and can be life-threatening. Please be careful, but know that there is hope and for anyone who is willing to take the time and make the effort to transition to a more natural pathway. It may take longer than Joe Stephan to transition (typically, the longer someone has been on medications, the longer it may take). For anyone considering it, we would recommend using the Micronutrient Support coaches who have been trained professionally to coach people in this type of transition. As you consider a lifelong pathway for your health, remember that the former president of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Martin Seligman, has said in his latest book Flourish that there is not one SSRI that is made for a cure. They are all cosmetic, not curative. He said this: “Every single drug on the shelf of psychopharmacopoeia is cosmetic. There are no curative drugs, and no drug is in development that I know of that aims at cure. Biological psychiatry has given up on cure.” [Flourish, p. 46]. EMPowerplus does not claim to cure any mental illness, but it has been proven to have clinically effective results with those who suffer from mental illnesses. As stated above, please be wise and use caution in your decisions about your mental health or that of a loved one.

Citations:

1. From the Newsweek article: https://www.newsweek.com/nearly-1-5-americans-suffer-mental-illness-each-year-230608
2. From the NAMI website: https://www2.nami.org/factsheets/mentalillness_factsheet.pdf
3. From this article: https://www.cchrint.org/2012/07/18/with-49-million-americans-on-psychiatric-drugs-renowned-psychiatrist-issues-call-for-psychiatric-drug-withdrawal/
4. From the CDC statistics found on Save.org here: https://www.save.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewPage&page_id=705D5DF4-055B-F1EC-3F66462866FCB4E6