Prof. Spira — Author, Educator & Founder of Mucus-free Life

In 2002, Prof. Spira was a nineteen-year-old former high-school football player who weighed 300+ pounds. He had daily migraine headaches — Tylenol waited for him in the school nurse’s office from elementary school on — along with sleep apnea and the CPAP machine that came with it, painful acid reflux, allergies he had taken medication for since the age of seven, joint pain, yearly bronchitis, chronic constipation, dry itchy skin, and constant cold-and-flu symptoms. His mother had died of a string of chronic illnesses when he was in the sixth grade, and her death shaped his early assumptions about heredity, illness, and health.

While studying jazz trombone at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, he met a jazz drummer named Willie Smart Jr., known as Brother Air, who told him about Arnold Ehret’s Mucusless Diet Healing System. He read the book that September and began the transition. Within six months he had lost 100+ pounds and had changed both his diet and his daily health routine; by his own account, the CPAP unit and the childhood medications went with the weight. He has described that year as the beginning of the work that later became Mucus-free Life. The before-and-after photographs on this page were taken one year apart.

He has practiced, studied, and taught the Mucusless Diet Healing System for 24+ years, and the teaching began in music. In 2004 he co-founded the Breathairean Ensemble, an avant-garde jazz collective whose name and repertoire drew on the mucusless lifestyle. It was through that group that the professional name Prof. Spira emerged. From 2006 to 2009 he and Brother Air carried the conversation to the air with the Immortality Pipeline, a weekly radio show about the mucusless lifestyle on WAIF 88.3 FM Cincinnati.

The Work

In 2013, Spira published the first annotated, revised, and edited edition of Ehret’s Mucusless Diet Healing System, adding commentary, corrections, and historical context to the 1922 text. A second edition followed in paperback in 2014, and the audiobook in 2016. The book has repeatedly entered Amazon’s top ten in Naturopathy, Alternative Medicine, and Healing. Through Mucus-free Life, which he founded in 2014, he has since published a Spanish edition of the annotated Mucusless Diet Healing System (Sistema curativo por dieta amucosa del Prof. Arnold Ehret, translated by Israel Frutal); his introduced and edited editions of Ehret’s Rational Fasting for Physical, Mental and Spiritual Rejuvenation, Thus Speaketh the Stomach and the Tragedy of Nutrition, and The Definite Cure of Chronic Constipation (all 2014), and his annotated edition of Physical Fitness Thru a Superior Diet, Fasting, and Dietetics (2018); and his own books — Spira Speaks: Dialogs and Essays on the Mucusless Diet Healing System, Volumes 1–3 (2014), Spira’s Notes: The Official Mucusless Diet Healing System eCourse Study Guide, and, in 2026, The Mucusless Women’s Health Resource, which draws on more than a decade of interviews, panels, and women’s accounts from the mucus-free community.

His Mucusless Diet Healing System eCourse, released in 2018, and the free Transition Diet 101 course carry the teaching to students online. He hosts a weekly live broadcast for the Mucus-free Life community and produces educational videos for an audience of more than a quarter-million YouTube subscribers. Prof. Spira’s Mucus-free Life Podcast, launched in 2019, is carried on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music; its guests have included UFC Hall of Famer Rashad Evans and plant-based chef and restaurateur Babette Davis. In 2018 he founded the annual Prof. Arnold Ehret Day celebration, held each year on the weekend nearest Ehret’s July 29 birthday, which brings students of the system together in person; its speakers have included Dr. Robert Morse (2021) and film stuntman and athlete Eli Martyr (2022).

He has been interviewed on Main Street Vegan with Victoria Moran, Good Living Now with Harold Leffall, The Holistic Healer Podcast, The Corinne Nijjer Podcast, and Steve Prussack’s Juice Guru show, and has been featured by Collective Evolution. He has presented at the Columbus Vegan Festival and, in 2026, at the Woodstock Fruit Festival, where he gave five lectures and four workshops.

The Scholar and Musician

Prof. Spira holds four degrees: a Bachelor of Music in jazz trombone performance (cum laude) and a Master of Music in jazz studies (summa cum laude) from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and a Master of Arts in African American and African Studies and a PhD in musicology, with a specialization in ethnomusicology (both summa cum laude), from The Ohio State University. His doctoral dissertation examined jazz education and creative Black music in the twenty-first-century classroom.

He has taught at the university level since 2006. As an adjunct professor of music and African American studies at Northern Kentucky University from 2006 to 2008 he was the instructor of record for Survey of African-American Music and Music of World Cultures, served on the interdisciplinary committee that developed a Comparative Studies course, Power of Black Sacred Music, and received the university’s Most Wanted Faculty award in 2008 for exemplary teaching and service to students.

At The Ohio State University, as a graduate associate in the Department of Music from 2008 to 2013, he was a research assistant to musicologist Danielle Fosler-Lussier on the U.S. State Department’s use of music in Cold War diplomacy and a teaching assistant for History of Rock and Roll, Survey of African-American Music, Introduction to Jazz, and Music of World Cultures; he returned in 2017–18 as a lecturer teaching Introduction to Jazz. His guest lectures include “The Dynamics of Race in the Cultivation of Early Rhythm & Blues and Rock and Roll” (Northern Kentucky, 2007), “History of Hip-Hop” and “Jazz in the 1970s and Beyond” (Ohio State, 2010). Before and alongside his university work he taught jazz trombone at Cincinnati’s School for Creative and Performing Arts from 2002 to 2008. He wrote the entries on Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Archie Shepp, and Henry Threadgill for Salem Press (2011).

As a jazz trombonist he has performed with Grammy-winning trumpeter Brian Lynch, Bootsy Collins, Foley, George Clinton, Roy Ayers, Bobby Floyd, and Columbus saxophone legend Gene Walker. He has been a street performer since 2003, a subject he took to the TEDxOhioStateUniversity stage in 2019 with the talk “Cultivating Creativity and Community Through Street Music.”

Prof. Spira & Brother Air: Fire Music Project is Spira’s current musical project. The band is known for its intense free improvisational music-making, creative arrangements of jazz standards, funk-infused groove-oriented pieces, unique “jazz” treatments of popular tunes, and original compositions. Co-Leaders Prof. Spira and Brother Air have been musical partners since 2003. Dissatisfied with jazz groups that do not play with any “fire,” they formed Prof. Spira & Brother Air: Fire Music Project. CLICK HERE to visit the band’s website. 

Selected Credentials & References

• PhD, Musicology (Ethnomusicology), The Ohio State University, 2016
• MA, African American and African Studies, The Ohio State University, 2014
• MM, Jazz Studies, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, 2006
• BM, Jazz Trombone Performance, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, 2005
• Adjunct Professor, Music and African American Studies, Northern Kentucky University, 2006–2008 (Survey of African-American Music; Music of World Cultures)
• Lecturer, Department of Music, The Ohio State University, 2017–18 (Introduction to Jazz); Graduate Associate, 2008–2013
• Most Wanted Faculty award, Northern Kentucky University, 2008
• TEDxOhioStateUniversity, 2019 — “Cultivating Creativity and Community Through Street Music”
• Salem Press contributor, 2011 — entries on Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Archie Shepp, and Henry Threadgill
• Greater Columbus Arts Council Individual Artist Grant, 2019
• Co-founder, Breathairean Ensemble, 2004 — breathairmusic.com
• Immortality Pipeline, WAIF 88.3 FM Cincinnati, 2006–2009 (co-host)
• Founder, Prof. Arnold Ehret Day (annual since 2018)
• Books — Amazon author page · Goodreads · Audible
• Selected appearances — Main Street Vegan with Victoria Moran · Good Living Now with Harold Leffall · The Holistic Healer Podcast (2023) · The Corinne Nijjer Podcast (Ep. 107) · Juice Guru with Steve Prussack · Collective Evolution · Columbus Vegan Festival · Woodstock Fruit Festival 2026
• Music projects — the Breathairean Ensemble released the album V=P−O on Breathair Records and performed at the Columbus Jazz & Rib Festival and the Underground Railroad Freedom Center Jazz Festival; today Prof. Spira co-leads its successor, Prof. Spira & Brother Air: Fire Music Project

Prof. Spira lives and works from the road, teaching the mucus-free lifestyle in person at festivals and retreats and online at mucusfreelife.com.

Last updated September 2026.