Interview with Charles Welling about Rheo H. Blair

Interview with Charles Welling about Rheo H. Blair
Charles Welling is writing a book on Hollywood nutritionist Rheo H. Blair.  He writes about his research at rheohblair.blogspot.com.  If you are interested in learning more about Rheo H. Blair, please read Charles’ blog to find out more about this amazing man.

How did you meet Rheo Blair and how was your relationship with him?

It began with Rheo’s frequent guest appearances on ABC Television’s A.M. Los Angeles with Regis Philbin in the late 1970’s. His segments dealt with a variety of topics, healthy recipes which he demonstrated in the studio kitchen, exercises – he jumped on his mini trampoline once, etc.  His most popular appearances were when he brought before and after photos of his students – blown up very large and mounted on foam board — whose bodies and health had been dramatically – and I mean dramatically — transformed under Blair’s guidance. These were remarkable, eye popping photographs of people, mostly young men, showing how they looked before Blair’s program and again a few weeks later after working with Blair. The photos and the stories of health transformation that went with them  really got my mother’s attention whenever she saw Rheo on the show. You see I had been a sickly child and my parents did not know where to turn for help; they had tried several approaches. Finally, having seen many of his cases on Philbin’s show, my parents contacted Rheo and set up an appointment to speak with him at his home. I vividly recall that day, seeing all the before and afters and realizing that here was a program that could give me the health and vitality that had eluded me for so long.  Rheo saw my interest and enthusiasm and immediately accepted me as a client – which was a stroke of great luck for me since he had a lengthy waiting list at any given time. I moved in with him two weeks later and stayed for several months during which time I was under his 24 hour care and tutelage. Each day I consumed several hundred grams of protein, supplements in the form of 500 capsules and pills – and again, this is each day. In addition I underwent three hours of blood circulation enhancing physical therapy treatments Monday through Friday, did a few minutes of light exercise and slept 12 to 16 hours a day. That, in a nutshell, was the Blair program that transformed my health and made me one of his before and afters.

The journey of healing during the transformation was, for the most part, very pleasant. Rheo and I got along well; indeed he was easy to get along with! Rheo was a people lover and people loved him. He was such a fascinating person; unlike anyone else I have ever met. He treated me very well and was generous with his time and attention. And there was always something interesting going on at his home. I can’t tell you how many Hollywood celebrities I met during my time there. It was a thrilling experience in so many ways.

What was Rheo H. Blair’s real name?  Why did he change it?

His given name was Irvin P. Johnson.  In considering why he changed his name it is important to understand that Rheo was very open-minded and inquisitive. He was always looking for new ways to grow and improve as a person. He often explored ideas that were outside the mainstream including two of his favorites, astrology and numerology. The latter is where the name change came from, a friend having recommended a numerologist. This numerologist taught a detailed philosophy in the form of a self study program wherein he functioned as a teacher or even “guru”, mentoring the student throughout the process. Once the student successfully completed the course the guru gave him his “true” name based upon the numerological properties of the student’s birthdate.. Having, using and completely accepting this name as one’s real name would, according to this philosophy, make him a stronger (in every sense of the word) person and a more successful person. Rheo became so completely enamored of this philosophy, passionate even, that he talked about it frequently and with such conviction as though he had discovered the very meaning of life. His passion was obviously convincing and compelling because several of his close associates subsequently went through the same process of obtaining their “true names.” So I got to know a number of people – five that I can think of off the top of my head — with these odd sounding names. As if the atmosphere at Rheo’s home wasn’t already interesting enough, this made it all the more so. I should add that he disowned his given name as not being the real him, as being irrelevant and entirely random whereas his “real name” was based upon what he viewed as scientific and spiritual truth and therefore legitimate in his eyes.

What was Rheo’s early life like?  What early failures and disappointments did he experience while developing his theories?

Rheo was born on a farm in 1921 in rural New Jersey to parents who were chain smokers and described as very thin, frail people.  Rheo himself was very sick and frail as a child. The extent to which his parents’ poor health and lack of physical fortitude may have influenced his own health is difficult to determine since Rheo had an older brother who was in fine health all his life. In other words, the parents own frailty apparently did not affect his brother as it did Rheo. However, Rheo claimed his mother contracted polio not long before his birth and that this was the reason he himself suffered health problems; in other words that he inherited a constitutional weakness resulting from his mothers condition. But this is not the complete story as it is known that Rheo lost a kidney at the age of nine due to an accident and that his health deteriorated after this happened. He was always reticent to speak about this. In any case his doctors did not expect him to live to see his 20th birthday and he was frequently so sick that he finally had to leave high school. This left him with plenty of time to daydream and so he looked with envy and desire at pictures of bodybuilders, dreaming and wishing to transform his own body to look like theirs. He read everything he could get his hands on about exercise and muscle growth. This led him to order the Charles Atlas course but after months of daily workouts and having followed the instructions to the letter — he got nowhere. In fact he said the exercises just made him tired.

What was Blair’s key breakthrough?  Who were the key people in shaping Blair’s philosophy and what did they teach him?

I mentioned earlier that Rheo read everything he could get his hands on. This reading continued after he became frustrated with barbells and pushups. He came across some information from Bernarr Macfadden that got his attention, so much so that Macfadden ultimately became one of the biggest influences on his thinking. Blair (and of course we are talking about “Irvin Johnson” at this point in his life…) read about the health wonders of drinking large quantities of milk, and I mean consuming nothing but milk for several weeks. This experience was the first major turning point in his life wherein he began changing from being a sickly young man into the robust, dynamic person who changed other people’s lives. His health improved enough with the milk the he genuinely felt good for the first time that he could remember. He was even able to go out and get his first job. Quite an accomplishment for an invalid!

However, after a period of time on the milk diet, he developed a sensitivity to the milk resulting in problems such as digestion issues. He had to stop drinking milk which consequently resulted in a deterioration once more of his health.  However, he continued his voracious reading in search of more and better answers.. One expert whose information he encountered was nutritionist Carlton Fredericks. Here he found the answers he had been seeking and Fredericks quickly became Blair’s primary nutritional mentor and remained so for the next 40 years.  Rheo took a class with Fredericks in New York where he learned a few methods to improve the digestion and assimilation of the nutrients in the milk. Now he was able to put together a comprehensive health and bodybuilding program for himself which completely turned his life around. He transformed himself over the course of several weeks to the point where people found it hard to believe it could be the same person. He just looked completely different. He had added the muscle that had so eluded him earlier. He even won a minor bodybuilding contest in Chicago. But it was not just muscle. His chemistry was different. He had energy. His skin had better color, his hair had luster. Even his personality was different. No longer downtrodden quiet and depressed. He was dynamic, energetic, outgoing and genuinely happy.  Fredericks and Blair remained close until the latter’s death in 1983 frequently speaking on the phone and exchanging correspondence. In the summer of 1983, just four months before Rheo died, He and I traveled to New York City to appear on “The Morning Show” with Regis Philbin and Cyndy Garvey Later that same day we were guests on Carlton Fredericks’ daily radio program for a full half hour. Thus I had the enormous privilege of meeting this great man that meant so much to Rheo and, by extension, to me.

Who are some other people that had a large influence on Rheo Blair or were largely influenced by him?

There were several other nutritionists over the years who, in varying degrees influenced his thinking, including Roger Williams, Richard Passwater, Henry Bieler and Linus Pauling and others. These will all be in the book including the story of one particularly interesting and pivotal influence he experienced. Then too, there were other non-nutritional influences on his thinking that helped shape the person we came to know. You see, Rheo had the practice of looking to brilliant minds outside the realm of nutrition as role models he could learn something from. Among these were people such as Thomas Edison whose methods of experimentation and habits of persistence Rheo would apply to various areas of his life including, of course, his own nutritional experimentation.

I might briefly mention one other interesting nutritional character in the life of Rheo Blair and that is none other than Dr. Robert Atkins. Long before he wrote his first book on low carb dieting, Rheo had been using very similar principles with many of his clients in Chicago. This was no coincidence. Many people have made the point that long before Dr. Atkins was writing about it, Rheo was doing it. Now, as Paul Harvey might say, we are going to find out “the rest of the story…” The connection between Rheo Blair and Robert Atkins is none other than Carlton Fredericks.  Atkins refers in one of his books to Carlton Fredericks as “my mentor” – if nothing else an indication of Fredericks’ considerable influence on Atkins. They apparently remained close and even collaborated professionally as Fredericks worked as a nutrition consultant in Atkins medical office in New York. So we know now that Carlton Fredericks played an influential role in the thinking of both Rheo Blair and Robert Atkins and that both of them relied on Fredericks to greater or lesser degrees throughout their respective careers. Of course Blair and Atkins knew each other, too.  I might mention a long telephone conversation that Blair had with Atkins one day in 1978 when I was at his home. When he got off the phone, he swiveled around in his chair and said to me, “do you know who that was?” and I said, no. He then held up a copy of Atkins first book and said “that was the author of this book, Dr. Robert Atkins. He’s a brilliant man…”

How did Rheo become prominent in body building?  What were some of his main successes?

Well it began with his own dramatic transformation and the subsequent similar transformations of many of his students, all of which he documented with before and after photographs. Those photos – and the transformation stories behind them, became famous as word about his work spread. He began his work in rented space in a Chicago YMCA gym where – for a fee – he coached work outs while offering his recently acquired nutritional methods – which he was VERY excited about. His “business” grew and one thing led to the next eventually resulting in his opening a gym in the Chicago loop. Here he began selling protein and a small line of unique supplements.

Here too he began publishing Tomorrow’s Man Magazine. The magazine did very well and developed a respectable following in a short period of time. He published many of his before and after cases in the magazine which spread his fame in the bodybuilding world. Before the magazine came on the scene, however, he had previously appeared in several prominent articles in another magazine — Iron Man Magazine, THE bodybuilding publication; the “Bible” of Bodybuilding, if you will. It was in Iron Man that the public at large first began to take notice of Rheo’s work.

His two main areas of success were in working with professional bodybuilders at one extreme and with underdeveloped “95 pound weaklings” at the other. More specifically, he  produced prize winning bodybuilding champions while at the same time taking scrawny, frail young men (much as he had once been) for whom the usual diet and exercise weren’t helping — and giving them fine bodies they could be proud of. One of the most interesting aspects of both the champion bodybuilders and the scrawny young men he worked with was the almost unbelievably short period of time it took to produce those results. In some cases we are talking about less than a month, occasionally, longer. He worked with other types too including a middle aged lady who after years of living on what amounted to spaghetti and cake, was on death’s door – and she looked it. She was also angry and downcast of spirit. Several months later she was virtually unrecognizable as being the same person. Even her personality was transformed into that of a vibrant, happy, energetic person. The change in personality in this lady and as we saw earlier with Rheo himself, would be a familiar thread running throughout his career. His clients often saw their personalities change as dramatically as did their bodies. This was the case with me, too. After all, it’s difficult to be happy if you don’t feel good. But beyond that the nutrients his students received produced some real changes in brain chemistry. When one has a need for nutrients that are absent entirely or at sufficient levels in the diet, this can cause personality issues ranging from mild depression to worse. More can be learned about this subject by exploring orthomolecular medicine.

What did Rheo consider the ideal body?  What were the ideal body’s characteristics and who are some examples of ideal bodies?

Rheo actually had a lot to say about this very subject. He was at least as interested in proportion and symmetry as he was in size, and arguably more so. That is, he encouraged muscular growth to be sure, but within reason.  He was never in favor of “big for big’s sake”, so to speak and strongly objected to the idea that bigger is always better. He also found it absurd that some bodybuilders concentrate primarily on some specific muscle or region of the body without giving any thought as to how these look in proportion to the rest of the body. In other words he was interested in the whole picture, not just one or two parts of the body while forgetting about the rest of it.  He also thought a thin midsection was attractive and so felt that it was best to avoid squats which tended — in his view — to produce a large fanny (to be sure he had other reasons to oppose the squat which I will cover in the book). It should be noted, too, that there was one part of the body he felt was often disregarded by bodybuilders – and that is the calf. Too many bodybuilders, he said, have underdeveloped calves. So he came up with this brilliant little “calf stretcher” device for the purpose of giving the calf a good workout. In fact he sold an entire calf building program out of his Chicago offices. And for those who insisted on doing squats he felt it important to at least have well developed calves so that the squat could be performed both correctly and with reasonable safely. Finally, you asked for some examples of ideal bodies as he saw them. Glen Bishop and Steve Reeves were two of his favorites. Their physiques were both well developed AND symmetrical; you might say they had muscles but just the right amount.

How would Rheo Blair determine an individual’s program?  What commonalities did all programs have and what varied between individual programs?

Blair’s broad, guiding principle was biochemical individuality – the idea that our bodies look as different on the inside as we all do on the outside. That is to say that our glands and organs are all shaped and sized unique to us and that these differences in size and shape affect their function and therefore our health — and that such considerations which influenced a person’s chemistry are critical in determining an individual’s program. So he wanted to find out what kind of chemistry a client had. What were his endocrinal and hormonal tendencies and characteristics. When he got the answers to these questions then he knew what needed help and what kind of help would work. I mean by that which nutrients and how much. Specifically, he looked at blood chemistry, endocrine types, body types and body measurements when determining an individual’s program.  All of the programs included an abundance of sleep, supplements, protein, raw milk, raw eggs, and small amounts of complex carbohydrates. Those losing weight would consume less protein and would have salads thrown into the mix. Their supplement regime would include higher amounts of nutrients beneficial to their reducing goal such as choline. The use of sugar and other simple carbohydrates was absolutely verboten!  Again, Blair assigned each client an individualized regime and would therefore vary the types and amounts of exercise, the quantity and mix of supplements, and the dietary specifics.

Why did Rheo Blair have people take so many pills as opposed to eating whole foods?  What were his pills trying to simulate?  Were there any changes to Blair’s pills over the course of his career?

Well first he was certainly in favor of whole foods and opposed to the processed, nutrient depleted fare of the standard American diet. His clients ate whole foods daily; some more, some less. Part of my daily routine included whole eggs, raw milk, raw butter, whole grain toast, etc. And those of his clients on a non-building program, i.e. weight loss or something else certainly did eat an abundance of whole foods. They typically did consume some of his protein supplement because it was such a good source of healthy non-denatured protein; but their dietary regimes emphasized more whole foods. But in addition to the whole foods and/or protein supplements his clients all took large quantities – megadoses they are called – of supplements. It really was not a question of pills instead of whole foods. But yes the pills played a huge role, especially for those of us who were wanting to gain. And in that regard Rheo had a unique concern in his work with those wanting to put on solid muscle; the ability to get an abundance of protein in the clients’ diet – upwards of several hundred grams per day — without overloading the stomach. That is no easy trick. If the stomach becomes overloaded one encounters several issues; not wanting to eat for hours and so you end up ultimately getting less protein in; lethargy which means the body is using too much energy simply trying to digest food rather than using that energy for assimilation and thus growth. If you are not digesting your food efficiently, you are not getting everything out of it you should – and Rheo wanted you to assimilate ALL the nutrients in your food. So he came up with a system that made the hi-level protein intake relatively easy and even pleasant. He had a system of concentrated and tasty protein puddings and shakes which one took throughout the day; many small meals so the stomach never got overloaded. He wrote an entire booklet about it called “Rheo Blair’s Protein Way of Life” explaining the process in detail so it was easy to accomplish.

Hand in hand with the quantities of protein went quantities of pills.  The supplements served various needs related to digestion and assimilation. One of his favorite sayings was “it’s not what you eat, it’s what you assimilate!” For those wanting to gain muscle they were important in ramping up the ability of the body to turn ingested protein into muscle. For those wanting to lose weight they assisted in fat reduction.  Obviously, many people found it difficult to take hundreds of pills every day. Stuffing the stomach could be a real issue. So, like with the protein he had his students either divide them up into 4 or 5 feedings per day. Or, if that didn’t work, he then suggested they “nibble” on them all day perhaps taking on or two every few minutes.

Now to take your question one step further. Bodybuilding was one thing but many of his clients were sickly, skinny, frail and, as such, were found to have unique needs above and beyond what I just described for bodybuilding in general.  I was an example of this – a sickly, frail, teen — and I and others like me were anything but bodybuilders. We just wanted normal, healthy bodies. What Rheo found out in his work with us is that we were been born with extreme needs of certain nutrients and that we required these nutrients in very substantial quantities just to be able to function normally on a daily basis. To obtain such quantities it is necessary to use supplements.  Not instead of whole foods but as supplements to whole foods. The needed levels of certain nutrients cannot be achieved by diet alone no matter how whole, unprocessed and nutritious the diet. That said, the diet is critical and goes hand in hand with the supplement regime; they are complementary. There is a great deal of work being done today on this subject in the field of orthomolecular medicine.

The part of your question concerning any changes to Blair’s pills over the course of his career could be the subject for a lengthy article all by itself. Suffice it to say that he had a line of supplements during his Chicago years in the 1950’s and when he moved to California he completely revamped and expanded his supplement line. He also tinkered with specific formulations for his products as new information dictated, always striving for the very best; after all, he was consuming hundreds of his own pills every day himself. He was formulating them for himself, first. The same can be said of his protein supplements. When he got to California, he began discarding his Chicago line and came out with several new formulas based on the concept of the growth factors in human breast milk. He consumed them himself and was always his own client first. He understood the frailty of his own health given his background and wanted nothing but the finest for himself. He was constantly tinkering with and upgrading his formulations.  He also personally experimented with substances that were not part of his product line; he would do this and, if he felt they had merit, would add them to his line. But first he would try them extensively on himself and then possibly on friends, close clients, etc. to judge their efficacy. One thing he was very interested in during his latter years was royal jelly, the food of the queen bee. This is a substance that, when eaten by an ordinary worker bee, transforms that bee into a queen bee. This is interesting to ponder because one can sense a certain similarity with the royal jelly to the growth ideas and growth factors of his “mothers milk” protein formulations. He consumed this stuff in enormous quantities every day. We are talking tablespoons full of pure royal jelly. And this was at a time when it was not nearly as available as it is today. He spent a small fortune on it. But that was Rheo; always experimenting and no price was too high.

What are some ways in which pills could speed change and induce change?

Going back to biochemical individuality, as mentioned previously we are all as different on the inside of our bodies as we look on the outside. Significantly, our organs are not of uniform size and shape. In his book, Biochemical Individuality, Roger Williams has two large diagrams of specimens of stomachs and livers showing their variation in form from one person to the next. You look at those diagrams and they really get you to thinking about what we are talking about here. Oh sure, they are all basically the same organs from one person to the next but there, in terms of practical reality, is where the similarities end. Take the liver for example. We all have the same basic size and shape livers but the specific specifications can vary considerably. Indeed, the dimensions of my liver may be as different from your liver as are the dimensions of my arm from your arm.  And what is critical here is that this difference in size and shape affects function and efficiency – and of course I mean far more an organ than for an arm. An arm has a few basic functions; the liver, thousands. You, for example, may have a strong efficient liver superbly managing blood sugar, conjugating hormones and a thousand other vital activities whereas I may have one that struggles simply to keep up with day to day requirements resulting in a considerably lower level of health. Rheo’s whole idea was that the difference between a skinny, sickly, weak person and a thriving energetic person – for example an Arnold Schwarzenegger – was in their body chemistry, and by this he meant the functioning of their organs and glands; their efficiency and ability to manage hormone balance, blood sugar, turning food into muscle and tissue and just overall the entire realm of blood chemistry issues the liver and other organs are responsible for. If you can optimize organ/gland function, you can almost create a whole new person. Hormone balance alone has a huge influence on the health and strength of the body. What Rheo was doing with his megadosing of supplements was to support and, where needed, improve the functioning of the organs and glands. When the glands function well, you literally get more nutrition assimilated out of your food; you have more energy; your immune system functions better, etc. All of these are critical to good health. And if you want to be a bodybuilder, well, all of these things need to be running at peek efficiency as well. But to effect the changes in blood chemistry that he sought took truly huge quantities of certain nutrients. And again this varied from client to client. Rheo’s supplement regimes were, though enormous, targeted and specific for ones individual needs.

One other thought here, you mentioned whole foods. Rheo would never suggest you eat anything but whole foods (his protein powders were an exception to this perhaps; but there were reasons in his programs for using a concentrated protein source and the powders themselves were undenatured and very close in many biochemical respects to the milk and eggs they came from). But getting back to using pills and powders instead of completely relying on whole foods. Two reasons; one already mentioned – the nutritional needs of some people are such that it is impossible to get what they need from food alone. Secondly, Rheo’s methods allowed dramatic results to happen over a fairly short period of time; weeks or months whereas this wouldn’t be possible in quite the same way relying on foods alone. His methods not only made dramatic transformations possible, they dramatically condensed the time needed to accomplish them. And remember, too, that a rapid transformation measured in mere months had been his own personal experience when he started out so, naturally, it is what he was excited about and what he espoused.

Rheo Blair was an unconventional thinker.  What were some ways that he challenged conventional and acted out of the ordinary?

He challenged his clients in many regards. Everything about him was unconventional from his research methodology to his spiritual thinking. The more you got to know him the more he shared his ideas with you and challenged you. There is much more to his thinking than most people realize– even those with some familiarity with him.
Nutritionally speaking, he was the original high-protein lo-carb guru. He was also the original nutrition-focused bodybuilding coach. Today it would be unheard of to try bodybuilding without eating a diet and taking supplements conducive to growth. Pick up a bodybuilding magazine today and you find page after page of protein and supplement ads as well as nutritional advice. But until Rheo came on the scene, bodybuilding thinking was almost entirely centered around exercise alone with very little attention paid to what goes in one’s mouth. Through his work and writings he convinced people that if they wanted to get their bodies correct they had to first get their nutrition correct. Exercise could be complementary to this fact but not a substitute for it.  Indeed, he felt that exercise was not always good; too much could have a detrimental effect on one. This is quite contrary to the conventional wisdom that exercise is always good and that more is better. One exercise in particular he had problems with was the squat; a very, very popular exercise even today. He felt them to be detrimental for more than one reason but particularly because, in his thinking, they negatively affect endocrine function and balance which was exactly the opposite of what you want to be doing as a bodybuilder. In the Blair philosophy, good endocrine function and balance is the very foundation of a strong, beautiful body.

Would you like to share any final thoughts?

He was one of history’s truly unique “originals.” He died an untimely death in the early 1980’s during the ascendancy of hi-carb diets as his ideas seemed to be fading away. Sad, really, to see one’s ideas trashed in one’s final years. So he would be thrilled today with much of what is happening out there;  the increasing popularity of low carb dieting, the deservedly bad rap that sugar increasing gets, the acceptance and widespread use of supplements and just in general the active interest more and more people are taking in their own health. I think, too he would  appreciate the growing skepticism with which the medical profession is viewed in terms of it’s ability – or lack thereof – to heal the causes of disease and create real health. As a person, he was a kind, prince of a fellow, thoughtful, giving and generous and those who were privileged to be counted among his friends were truly blessed by his friendship.