Benjamin Knight Fuchs is a registered pharmacist who never worked in a conventional pharmacy — because he spent his pharmacy school internship hours in the Blistex research laboratory at the University of Colorado Boulder, working alongside Dr. Tony Jones, the chemist who invented Blistex. He studied nutrition as a competitive athlete in the 1970s and 80s when interest in supplementation was genuinely unusual, graduated with a formulation and skincare expertise that no pharmacy program formally teaches, and spent the following decades compounding individualized skincare products for patients and physicians in Longmont, Colorado before launching Truth Treatments — a skincare line built entirely around transdermal nutrient delivery rather than the oil, wax, water, and filler that constitute most commercial skincare. He has talked to people about Youngevity and the Mighty 90 essential nutrients since 1998. He takes phone calls, responds to emails, and consults for free seven days a week.
I have followed Benjamin Fuchs through Wallack's Warriors for years. His work was part of the intellectual scaffolding that helped me navigate the transition from veganism to carnivore to the ancestral approach I landed on — not because he prescribed a diet, but because his framework for understanding food as medicine, the cell as the real unit of health, and nutrition as the substrate of everything the body does made sense at a level that most dietary advice never reaches. Hearing him say today "we're not sick, we're starving" was not a surprise. It was a confirmation.
What I did not fully anticipate was how completely his skincare framework maps onto the same principles. The missing link in healthcare is cellular nutrition. The missing link in skincare is cellular nutrition. The skin is not separate from the body — it is part of the body, governed by the same biochemistry, responsive to the same inputs, and degraded by the same assaults. When you understand that, Truth Treatments stops being a skincare company and becomes a cellular nutrition delivery system. And everything you thought you knew about moisturizers starts to fall apart.
From Blistex to Truth: Forty Years of Formulating What Actually Works
The origin story starts with a peppermint smell in the basement of the University of Colorado Boulder School of Pharmacy and a little old man tinkering with beakers. Dr. Tony Jones — the chemist who invented Blistex, a celebrity in the pharmacy world — was running the Blistex research facility inside the School of Pharmacy, developing products with student research assistants. Benjamin walked in. Jones needed a research assistant. Benjamin spent his pharmacy school career in that lab rather than in a conventional pharmacy, which meant he graduated knowing almost nothing about dispensing drugs and a great deal about formulation chemistry, ingredient science, and how to make products that actually create changes in the skin.
He combined that with an athlete's interest in nutrition — studying bodybuilding and powerlifting magazines in the late 1970s and early 80s when interest in creatine and B vitamins and amino acids was genuinely eccentric, and studying pharmacy school's approach to nutrition as therapeutic intervention rather than dietary recommendation. The pharmacist's lens on nutrition is unusual: diseases studied as nutritional deficiencies. Eczema as an essential fatty acid deficiency. Heart disease as a vitamin C deficiency. Acne as a zinc deficiency. That framework — that almost every chronic condition has a nutrient substrate that conventional medicine never addresses — has been the organizing principle of everything Benjamin has built since.
"Nutrients are what drugs dream they could be. When prednisone goes to bed at night, it dreams it was vitamin C. Those are the perfect medicines. God's drugs. The drugs our body grew up with."
— Benjamin Knight Fuchs, RPh · truthtreatments.comThe skincare business started with a construction worker named Ed who had alligator hands from concrete dermatitis. Benjamin went to the back of the Albertsons pharmacy where he was working, made Ed a compound from his Blistex training and his nutrition knowledge and his intuition, and two weeks later Ed's hands were almost completely healed. Ed's doctor called. Other dermatologists called. A compounding practice grew. A formulation library grew. Truth Treatments is the crystallization of forty years of that — the answer to a simple question: what would skincare look like if it were built around cellular nutrition rather than the oil, wax, water, filler, preservative, and silicone that fill most commercial products?
The Mighty 90 and the Cell: Why the Unit of Health Is Not the Organ
The medical model organizes disease by organ. Breast cancer. Heart disease. Autoimmune disease. But there is no such thing as breast cancer — there is breast cell cancer. There is pancreatic cell disease. There is immune cell disruption. The locus of every disease is the cell, and because the medical model cannot do anything for the cell except drug it, remove it, irradiate it, or ablate it, the cell never becomes the target of intervention. The nutrients the cell needs to function, generate energy, replicate, detoxify, and repair are never addressed. The cell starves. The disease progresses. More drugs are prescribed to manage the symptoms of the ongoing starvation.
The Mighty 90 essential nutrients — the vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and essential fatty acids that the body cannot produce itself and must receive from food or supplementation — are what Benjamin calls God's drugs. They are what every cell in the body is built from, fueled by, and maintained with. No pharmaceutical on earth can replicate what a vitamin C molecule does at the cellular level. No drug can substitute for the zinc that drives hundreds of enzymatic reactions. No biologic can replace the omega-3 fatty acids that determine the fluidity and permeability of every cell membrane. These are not alternative medicine. They are the foundational chemistry of life.
Vitamins are not nutritional add-ons. They are cofactors without which enzymatic reactions cannot occur. Vitamin C is required for collagen synthesis, immune function, and the recycling of other antioxidants. The B vitamins drive energy metabolism, methylation, neurotransmitter production, and DNA repair. Fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K regulate gene expression, bone metabolism, immune modulation, and cellular differentiation. The body does not store most water-soluble vitamins — daily intake is required. The idea that a balanced diet provides sufficient quantities was established before processed food became the standard diet and before the soils that grew that food were depleted of the minerals that determine vitamin potency.
Benjamin specifically calls them electrical minerals — because mineral ions are what allow cells to generate and transmit electrical signals, maintain membrane potential, drive muscle contraction, regulate nerve impulse transmission, and power the ion pumps that keep the cellular environment stable. Magnesium alone is a cofactor for over 300 enzymatic reactions. Zinc drives immune function, protein synthesis, wound healing, and the smell and taste perception that are among the first things to degrade when zinc is insufficient. The soil depletion of the last hundred years means that even genuinely nutritious food often cannot deliver what the body needs — which is why concentrated mineral supplementation is not optional for most people.
The body is made of protein. Every enzyme, every hormone, every structural component of every cell is assembled from amino acids. Essential amino acids — the ones the body cannot synthesize — must come from dietary protein. Inadequate protein intake degrades every system simultaneously because the body begins cannibalizing its own tissues for the amino acids it needs most urgently. This is why vegan and plant-based approaches frequently produce the symptom complex that Benjamin describes as starvation: fatigue, poor recovery, muscle loss, immune compromise, and cognitive decline — not from malice in the philosophy but from the biological reality that plant proteins are incomplete, less bioavailable, and often embedded in antinutrient matrices that further reduce absorption.
Every cell membrane in the body is a phospholipid bilayer. The composition of that membrane — how fluid, how permeable, how functional — is determined by the fatty acid profile of what you eat. Omega-3 fatty acids produce anti-inflammatory eicosanoids. Omega-6 in excess produces pro-inflammatory ones. The ratio that the modern processed food diet delivers is catastrophically skewed toward omega-6 — which is why systemic inflammation is the background condition of most chronic disease. Topically, essential fatty acids are the substrate of every genuine moisturizing effect the skin can produce. Not because you rub oil on the surface, but because the skin's own lipid production depends on fatty acid availability from within.
Staph, MRSA, and Mat Infections: They Start in the Gut, Not on the Mat
A UFC-affiliated jiu-jitsu fighter won his match last week and disclosed at the end of it that he was dealing with a current staph infection. That disclosure is more common than the jiu-jitsu community talks about — not because it is shameful, but because staph and MRSA and ringworm and fungal infections are constants in the grappling world, and the conversation about them almost always focuses on the wrong place. The mat cleanliness. The training partner's hygiene. The post-roll shower. These matter — but they are not the root cause of why some people get chronic skin infections and some people do not.
Benjamin's answer is the one that I have arrived at from my own experience and from years of trying different approaches: it starts in the gut. It always starts in the gut. The microbiome — the universe of bacteria living in the gut, on the skin, in the respiratory tract, in the eyes — is the immune system's front line. When the microbiome is balanced, pathogenic bacteria, fungi, and viruses encounter a community of competing organisms that limits their ability to colonize and proliferate. When the microbiome is disrupted — by chlorine and fluoride in municipal water, by antibiotics in the food supply and in the water supply, by a diet of processed food that feeds pathogenic species rather than beneficial ones — the front line collapses.
"Staph and MRSA on the skin almost always involve some kind of microbiome imbalance that starts in the gut. Everything starts in the gut. Not because I'm a food guy — because I'm a blood guy. And everything that gets into the blood starts in the digestive system."
— Benjamin Knight Fuchs, RPh · truthtreatments.comI have had staph. I mistreated it — antibiotic first, no attention to the gut — and watched what happened when you suppress the immune response at the site without addressing the underlying microbiome disruption that allowed the infection to take hold. When I went about it differently — prioritizing gut restoration, reducing the inputs that were disrupting the microbiome, supporting the skin from within rather than only attacking the infection from outside — the pattern changed. The infections became less frequent. Recovery was faster. The body's own defenses started working the way they are supposed to work.
- Address the gut first. Every recurring skin infection in a grappler should trigger a gut microbiome assessment before reaching for a prescription. The skin infection is the downstream symptom. The gut dysbiosis is the upstream cause.
- Eliminate the microbiome disruptors. Chlorinated tap water — filter it or use spring water. Antibiotics in the food supply — source meat from farms that do not use routine antibiotic protocols. Processed foods that feed pathogenic bacteria — reduce or eliminate.
- Feed the beneficial bacteria. Fermented foods (sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi, high-quality kombucha under 4g sugar), prebiotic fibers from whole food sources, and targeted probiotic supplementation if the disruption is significant.
- Zinc for skin immunity. Zinc deficiency is one of the most common nutritional contributors to recurring skin infections and poor wound healing. Athletes deplete zinc rapidly through sweat. Supplementation or dietary emphasis on zinc-rich animal foods (oysters, red meat, organ meats) is foundational.
- Vitamin C for skin barrier integrity. The tight junctions of the skin barrier depend on collagen, which requires vitamin C for synthesis. A compromised barrier is an open door for opportunistic pathogens. Therapeutic vitamin C supplementation — not the token 60mg of the RDA — supports barrier repair from within.
- Essential fatty acids for the skin microbiome. The skin's own lipid layer is produced from dietary fatty acids and is one of the primary defenses against pathogenic colonization. Omega-3 emphasis reduces the inflammatory environment that pathogenic bacteria thrive in.
- Topically: Truth Treatments. A topical nutrient delivery system — rather than a conventional antimicrobial that further disrupts the skin microbiome — can support skin cell health and barrier function without collateral damage to the beneficial organisms the skin needs.
Fungal Infections — Why They're the Hardest to Kill and How to Actually Address Them
Nail fungus and systemic fungal infections deserve their own mention because they are so resistant to conventional treatment that most people resign themselves to managing rather than resolving them. Benjamin's explanation for why fungus is so hard to kill is one of the most clarifying things I have heard on the subject: fungus lives on death. It thrives in dead and dying tissue. It laughs at pharmaceutical antifungals because its entire evolutionary biology is oriented around surviving hostile chemical environments — it is the organism that turns a shoe left in the forest into a tree. The pharmaceutical approach tries to kill the fungus at the site. The microbiome approach denies the fungus the conditions it needs to thrive.
When the gut microbiome is balanced, the beneficial bacterial population suppresses fungal overgrowth systemically — not just in the gut but on the skin, in the nail beds, in the sinuses, and in every other tissue where candida and other opportunistic fungi attempt to colonize. Restoring that balance does not happen overnight. But it produces results that no topical antifungal sustains, because it addresses the reason the fungus found purchase in the first place.
The Dumbest Thing You Can Put on Dry Skin Is a Moisturizer
The skincare industry is built on a lie. Not a malicious one, necessarily — more of a category error that has persisted for 120 years because nobody in the mainstream has had an incentive to correct it. The lie is that you can moisturize skin by applying something to its surface. You cannot. Moisture is water. If you leave your hand in water for an hour, it does not get moist — it gets dry. The skin surface is dead. Rubbing oil and wax and water and filler onto dead skin does not restore moisture to the living cells beneath it. It suppresses the skin's own capacity to moisturize itself, which is exactly the opposite of what needs to happen.
The skin is a healing system. Like every other system in the body, it has a built-in homeostatic intelligence. It can produce its own lipids, regulate its own moisture content, manage its own microbiome, mount immune responses, repair barrier breaches, and generate new cell layers on a constant cycle. Every conventional skincare product that sits on the surface of the skin — suppressing its chemistry, blocking its production processes, adding petrochemical derivatives and preservatives and synthetic fragrance — is working against that intelligence rather than supporting it.
"If your favorite beauty product can't heal your baby's diaper rash, it ain't a beauty product. It's a BS product. It's not going to create changes in the skin — it's going to suppress skin chemistry."
— Benjamin Knight Fuchs, RPh · truthtreatments.comTruth Treatments removes everything that suppresses skin chemistry and delivers what the skin actually needs: the vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids that skin cells require to function. The transdermal delivery system — the mechanism that gets these active ingredients through the dead surface layer to the living cells beneath — is what forty years of formulation chemistry produced. One or two drops. No water. No filler. No preservative. No silicone. No vegetable oil. The jelly of the jelly donut, without the donut.
The skin surface is a barrier — its job is to keep things out. Getting active ingredients through it requires a delivery system, not just topical application. Truth Treatments uses formulation chemistry developed over decades to transport nutrients through the stratum corneum to the living cell layers beneath. This is what Benjamin learned in the Blistex lab and what no conventional skincare company has ever attempted at this level of concentration and precision.
Most skincare products are primarily water — the first ingredient on most labels. Water does nothing for skin health and requires preservatives to prevent bacterial contamination. Those preservatives further disrupt the skin microbiome. Silicones create a film that mimics the feel of moisturized skin while blocking the skin's own processes beneath. Vegetable oils in conventional products oxidize on the skin surface and contribute to inflammation rather than reducing it. Benjamin removed all of it.
Because the skin shares its blood supply and biochemistry with every other organ system, the skin is one of the most accurate external diagnostic tools available. Dry skin reflects essential fatty acid deficiency. Acne reflects zinc deficiency and inflammatory gut dysbiosis. Eczema and psoriasis reflect essential fatty acid disruption, gut dysbiosis, and immune dysregulation with identifiable nutritional correlates. Rosacea traces to gut microbiome imbalance and vascular reactivity that responds to dietary intervention. None of these are primarily skin diseases. They are systemic diseases with skin manifestations — and treating them at the skin surface alone is the same category error as treating a fever with an ice pack.
SMEP: The Four Dimensions of Healing That the Medical Model Ignores
Benjamin's framework extends well past nutrition. He calls it SMEP — Spiritual, Mental, Emotional, Physical — and argues that all four dimensions interact with biochemistry in ways that are measurable, real, and consistently ignored by a medical model that can only intervene at the physical level.
The spiritual dimension is not about religion. It is about the autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system — fight or flight, fear, disconnection — is the system that activates when we feel alone, threatened, or unknown to our environment. The parasympathetic nervous system — rest and digest, safety, connection — is where healing occurs. Where longevity occurs. Where joy occurs. Fear, in his framework, is false evidence appearing real: the activation of the sympathetic nervous system by a perceived threat that may not be existentially real but produces the same biochemical cascade as one that is. Every time someone chooses the medical model's fear-based narrative — your body is broken, it's attacking you, only the drug can help — they are activating the sympathetic nervous system and suppressing the healing state that the parasympathetic nervous system provides.
"We're not in the health business. We're in the empowerment business. We want to give people their power back. Because right now we feel like victims — and we can only go to the doctor and just do whatever he says."
— Benjamin Knight Fuchs, RPh · truthtreatments.comThe mental and emotional dimensions operate through the same channel. Stinking thinking — chronic frustration, self-doubt, perceived failure — changes hormone levels and immune function. Rage, jealousy, and chronic depression alter biochemistry in ways that no supplement can fully compensate for. The reason Ben and Jerry's ice cream works — momentarily — is because pleasure is parasympathetic. The problem is that processed food produces a parasympathetic moment by hijacking the reward system with excitotoxins and engineered palatability rather than delivering actual biochemical satisfaction. The post-ice-cream return of anxiety is the sympathetic system coming back online after the excitotoxin hit fades.
The physical dimension — what you eat, how you move, how you breathe, how you sleep — is the most tractable of the four because it is the most measurable. But it cannot be separated from the other three. A person eating perfectly who is chronically terrified is still healing in the sympathetic nervous system's unfavorable environment. The food diary Benjamin recommends is a tool for restoring agency — for making the connection between choice and consequence visible enough that the person can see they are not a passive victim of their biology. That visibility is itself therapeutic.
Empowerment
He did not hesitate.
Empowerment.
Take your power back. Do not give it to the government. Do not give it to the legal system. Do not give it to the institution of medicine. You are sovereign. Your body is yours. And no one — no matter how credentialed, no matter how well-meaning — cares about your health the way you do. The institution of medicine is not a person. It does not have children. It does not have a wife. It does not have to worry about its loved ones. Institutions exist for themselves. Individuals exist for each other. The interests are not the same and they never will be.
The word that made me start this podcast was truth. Benjamin's word is empowerment. They are the same thing from different angles. Truth is the precondition for empowerment — you cannot take your power back from a system you believe is telling you the truth. And empowerment is what truth is for — not intellectual satisfaction, but the practical capacity to make different choices, act on different information, and stop participating in a system that profits from your continued helplessness.
He has been doing this for forty years. He takes calls seven days a week. He answers emails. He consults for free. He will do it until the day he dies, on every podcast, every stage, every mountaintop he can find. The message is the same one it has always been: your body is a healing system. Your skin is a healing system. You do not need to be fixed. You need to be fed. And no matter what your health challenge is — it is 100% reversible if you know what you are doing.
I believe him. And not just because it is hopeful — because it is consistent with everything I have experienced, everything I have tested on myself, and everything the people I have trusted most in this space have confirmed over and over again across a hundred and one conversations.
Feed the Cell. Don't Starve It.
Everything Benjamin Fuchs said in this episode — we're not sick, we're starving; the cell is the unit of health; nutrients are what drugs dream they could be — applies directly to what you use to fuel your body between meals. Lineage Provisions holds to the same standard: real ingredients, no shortcuts, designed for people who take cellular nutrition seriously. Use code JOSHBUTTON for 15% off at Lineage Provisions, or grab the link in bio.
Truth Treatments · Youngevity · The Pharmacist Ben Show
Truth Treatments skincare is available at truthtreatments.com. For Youngevity and the Mighty 90 essential nutrients, visit rootnotfruit.com or pharmacistben.com. Benjamin joins Zoom calls twice a week to discuss Youngevity products — open to anyone who wants to participate. He answers emails and takes calls seven days a week. If you have a skin challenge, a nutritional question, or a health issue you want another perspective on — reach him at fuchs.ben@gmail.com. He consults for free.
Stay Dangerous. Stay on the Mats. Hard to Kill in Midlife.
