He started reading wellness and health books in college by well-known health leaders including Linus Pauling, Dr. Gary Null, Adele Davis, and Paul Bragg. This gave Mr. Lane a sense of the importance of food, exercise and a cleaner environment to promote and sustain good health. After receiving his undergraduate degree from S.U.N.Y., New Paltz, NY, he started working with Dr. Ann Wigmore at her Hippocrates Health Institute clinic in Boston. As the senior assistant to Dr. Wigmore, he was able to observe first-hand that food was a valuable tool to heal the body. Eventually, relocating to Florida, he opened two health food stores and led the early foray into broadcast health media and then moving to experience the California dream. He can be contacted at [email protected].

 
Health E-Insights: I’ve researched the late Dr. Wigmore. Fascinating.
 
Mr. Lane: Dr. Ann Wigmore was a Lithuanian-American holistic health practitioner, nutritionist, whole foods advocate, author and doctor of divinity. She wrote several books on her theories and lectured widely to promote her practices. She passed away in 1994, as a result of smoke inhalation from a fire that destroyed the Boston site of the original Hippocrates Health Institute. Today, her methods are still being promoted in Puerto Rico at the Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institute and in Florida at the Hippocrates Health Institute as well as various other alternative medicine resorts. I feel blessed to have worked with her.
 
Health E-Insights: From our discussions you sound like a prolific health writer? Maybe you should write a book about Dr. Wigmore.
 
Mr. Lane: I have written numerous articles but I’m not a book writer. A few publications that have published my articles include the East West Journal, New Age Journal, Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, In-Flight Magazine and The Hallandale Journal.
 
Health E-Insights: Before we move on, I think you wanted to add more about Dr. Wigmore?
 
Mr. Lane: Indeed. Dr. Wigmore is credited with being the teacher most responsible for promoting wheatgrass, sprouts and raw foods. At that time in the U.S., her Hippocrates Health Institute was probably the foremost center using a non-toxic, vegetarian, chlorophyll-based approach to healing.
 
Health E-Insights: You’re quite intimate with healing centers?
 
Mr. Lane: I worked at the Shangri-La Hygienic Institute, Bonita Springs, FL, in 1972, and was a guest at Pawling Manor in Hyde Park, NY. Water fasting was a popular idea at the time in natural hygiene circles and I completed my first seven-day fast on water at the Shangri-La Institute. I later completed a five-day fast at Pawling Manor, and a five-day fast at the Bay and Gulf Hygienic Center in St. Petersburg, FL.
 
Health E-Insights: Where else did you learn about healthy eating?
 
Mr. Lane: Victoras Kulvinskas, MS, author of Survival Into the 21st Century, was the principal raw foods teacher for a 20-year period from the 70s into the 90s. I learned a great deal from him and saw first-hand that the ideas of healing using fresh fruit, vegetable juices and fresh foods, avoiding processed sugar, white flour, chemicals and preservatives was a surprisingly effective method to help heal the body. Today, these ideas seem almost mainstream, but at the time they were ignored by most people.
 
Health E-Insights: Armed with all this information you went out on your own?
 
Mr. Lane: I opened my first natural foods store in Hallandale, FL, and taught nutrition for Broward Community College. After 10 years in Hallandale, I moved my natural foods store a little farther north and east to Davie, FL, and opened one of the first natural food stores to have a vegan deli. Called “Here’s To Your Health,” it was the largest natural foods store in Broward County.
 
Health E-Insights: How did you get into broadcast media?
 

Mr. Lane: I always thought there was a need to spread the word about alternative health issues and that broadcast media was an excellent vehicle for that. It was also a good way to promote my store. In the early 80s, while living in South Florida, I launched one of the first television health shows titled, “View Point on Nutrition,” which discussed the issues of environmental illness. A few years later, I produced and hosted “The Natural Grocer” radio show, also in South Florida and sponsored by Whole Foods Market. Eventually moving to southern California, the entertainment capital of the world, I ventured in to producing health broadcasts, on “LA Talk Live,” the first Internet radio/television station to earn the Screen Actors Guild designation from Transmedia. In 2015, my wellness show moved to KCAA-AM, 102.3FM, 106.5FM in Los Angeles and simulcast to KTHO 590AM, 96.1FM in Lake Tahoe, CA.
 
Health E-Insights: It’s a talk format?
 
Mr. Lane: Yes. I interview numerous doctors and folks affiliated with the alternative health industry on my show. As it is LA, I reach out to numerous celebrities in the area. Kim Alexis, one of the first so-called super models and original spokesperson for CitriMax from InterHealth, Suzanne Somers, actor, author and wellness advocate who now promotes Forever Health to health practitioners, Dick Gregory, comedian, and civil rights activist and long-time game show host Wink Martindale to name a few have been on the show. As wellness talk radio continues to grow in popularity, Here’s To Your Health is one of the shows where intelligent wellness talk is the order of the day.
 
Health E-Insights:What don’t we know about you?
 
Mr. Lane:I’m interested in animal rights. I helped convince Justice Arthur Birken, serving as a judge in Broward County, Fla., about this important topic. He was one of the first judges to convict a poacher in the everglades of animal cruelty.

Health E-Insights: And now a word from our sponsors?
 
Mr. Lane: Thanks for asking. I’m always looking for health-related sponsors. I can put a nice package together for sponsors, which include numerous interviews and reach a large consumer audience.
 

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Sheldon Baker is a partner in the Baker Dillon Group and has created numerous nutraceutical marketing communications and public relations campaigns for many well-known companies and brands.  For Health E-Insights interview consideration and campaign development, contact him at [email protected].