Author and informerical fixture Kevin Trudeau, aka “Mr. Mega Memory”, as profiled by the Washington Post’s Libby Copeland.

Over the years, Trudeau (above), an ex-con who never went to college or medical school, has been remarkably successful doing infomercials for everything from how to achieve a photographic memory to how to cure your addictions to how to beat cancer by ingesting a particular type of calcium that, as fate would have it, he also happened to sell.

Now he sells the most popular nonfiction book in the country, according to Publishers Weekly. In “Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About,” Trudeau explains how a massive cabal formed of the federal government, pharmaceutical companies and the media is keeping Americans from living well past 100. He advises everybody to get off prescription drugs, even if they have serious problems like diabetes or blood clots; he reveals how multiple sclerosis can be cured by magnetic mattress pads.

He says sunscreen doesn’t prevent skin cancer. Instead (wait for it), sunscreen causes skin cancer.

For those who want to save their $29.95, here are the secrets to health the government is keeping from you, according to Trudeau:

Get an electromagnetic chaos eliminator. Do some “bioenergetic synchronization.” Give yourself some enemas, and then give yourself some more enemas. Wear white, for positive energy. Don’t use a microwave or an electric tumble dryer or fluorescent lights or artificial sweeteners; don’t dry-clean your clothes or use swimming pools or eat pork. Don’t use deodorant (causes cancer) or nonstick cookware (causes cancer) or watch the news (stress alters your body’s pH, which can make you get cancer). Remove the metal fillings from your mouth, and you’re all set!

In 1998, Trudeau paid half a million dollars to settle a Federal Trade Commission complaint that several infomercials he helped create were false and misleading. The products included a “hair farming system” that — according to the infomercial — was supposed to “finally end baldness in the human race,” and “a breakthrough that in 60 seconds can eliminate” addictions, purportedly discovered when a certain “Dr. Callahan” was “studying quantum physics.”

In 2003, the FTC came after Trudeau again. The complaint and a separate contempt action centered on two products, one of which, Coral Calcium Supreme, was being billed as a cure for cancer, according to the FTC. Trudeau’s guest on the infomercial, a man named Robert Barefoot, went so far as to claim that in cultures that consume a lot of calcium, people are so healthy “they don’t even have children until they’re in their seventies when they’re mature enough to handle kids.”