Seasonal allergies can be a challenge to manage: You may be dealing with a combination of congestion and sneezing, as well as sinus pressure and watery, itchy eyes. Yet, over-the-counter antihistamines come with side effects - drowsiness and nausea among them - prompting many sufferers to seek out natural solutions. Learn what antihistamines do and the foods and supplements that can help you find relief naturally.What Are Histamines?Allergies are, in fact, an immune system response. When substances like pollen, dust or pet dander come into contact with cells present in your nose, mouth, throat, lungs, stomach or intestines, your immune system produces a reaction. Called "histamine activity," this results in cold-like symptoms: Along with congestion and sneezing, this can include a sore throat and itchy eyes. Antihistamines help halt this reaction and related symptoms. Types of Natural AntihistaminesThe following foods and supplements provide natural antihistamine properties:Vitamin CVi…

If your doctor recently diagnosed you with high blood pressure, you might assume that medication is your only option. However, lifestyle changes, from increasing physical activity to addressing your diet, can also help you manage this condition. Learn more about what high blood pressure is, and lifestyle changes you can make to help manage it naturally.What Is High Blood Pressure?Also known as hypertension, high blood pressure is often symptomless, yet it increases your risks for heart disease, kidney disease, strokes and aneurysms. Roughly half of U.S. adults live with high blood pressure, and the condition remains one of the leading causes of death in the country.Blood pressure factors in how much blood your heart pumps and the resistance your arteries create. This measurement uses two numbers: Systolic blood pressure pertains to the force your heart uses to divert blood to your arteries, and diastolic applies to the pressure inside your blood vessels as your heart fills with blood.…

We know hydration is important, but you might be wondering about the water coming from your tap. Due to the journey water takes - from its source all the way to a treatment facility and then to your home - water may be "hard" or "soft." This is determined based on the mineral content in your water, including the types and concentration of minerals. Here's what you should know about hard water.What Is Hard Water?Hard water pertains to the concentration of calcium and magnesium present. Higher levels results in hard water. Soft water, meanwhile, has a lower concentration of these minerals and a greater percentage of salt. What Does Hard Water Mean?Hard water is found in homes and communities across the United States. Generally, most people living with hard water are unaware of it, until they find they can't efficiently wash dishes or clothing, or their skin is consistently dry.Understanding hard water starts with its trip to your tap. Beginning from the source, water collects and holds o…

Inflammation is natural to your body - but only to a point. The presence of infection catalyzes this process, which helps your body fight off this intruder and encourages healing. However, your body can also develop chronic inflammation - also called "silent" inflammation due to its abnormal or lack of symptoms. This pattern puts your immune system into overdrive and causes your body's own inflammatory process to go after your organs and tissues. This combination can contribute to a range of inflammatory conditions, from arthritis and heart disease to cancer and Alzheimer's disease. If you've been battling inflammation, learn more about how it develops, and ways you can reduce it naturally. What Is Inflammation? Bacteria, viruses, toxic substances and injuries all instigate the inflammatory process. Your immune system becomes alert, deploying inflammatory cells and cytokines as its defenses. Your body, in response, may experience redness, pain and swelling. These sensations indic…

Vitamin E is an essential fat-soluble vitamin that we can’t do without. It’s known primarily as an antithrombic, preventing blood clots inside blood vessels, and as the body’s primary fat-soluble antioxidant, offering significant protection to the heart, brain, skin and immune system.But as crucial as vitamin E is to our health, well-known vitamin E researcher Magrit G. Traber has reported that an estimated 90% or more Americans don’t consume enough dietary vitamin E to meet the minimal government standard of 12 milligrams (mg) a day. Meanwhile, health experts recommend hundreds of mg daily for optimal health. Vitamin E is found in whole grains, nuts, seeds, and healthy fats and oils, such as pure, extra-virgin olive oil. If you included all these good foods regularly in your diet, you would likely meet minimum government standards, but for optimal health Beyond Health recommends 400 IU (268 mg) a day, an amount that can only be feasibly consumed by taking a nutritio…

A major reason we slow down as we age is that we’re carrying around a lifetime’s accumulation of toxins. When toxins coming in exceed our ability to detoxify and eliminate them, they get stored in our fat cells and in our liver.Toxins can remain for years—often a lifetime. These stored toxins constitute a “toxic load,” stealing our energy, compromising liver and immune functions, damaging DNA, and exerting other harmful effects.Lightening your toxic load will make you feel a lot younger, more energetic and just BETTER. In addition, toxicity is one of the two causes of disease (the other being nutritional deficiency). So the more you detoxify, not only the better you’ll feel today, the more disease you’ll prevent in your future!Of course, it’s best to avoid toxins as much as you can in the first place. Raymond Francis, Beyond Health’s founder, wrote at length in his books about how to avoid toxins in food, water, supplements, medications, household products, cosmetics,…

Facts don’t cease to exist just because they’re ignored – Aldous HuxleyThe above quote introduces nutritionist Ann Louise Gittleman’s book Zapped, about the invisible pollution that is increasing exponentially all around us — electromagnetic fields (EMFs). Nutrition — what we eat and the supplements we take — can play an important role in protecting ourselves from EMFs’ potentially damaging effects. But first, what are EMFs? Anything that produces energy, including the cells in our own bodies, radiates that energy outwards, creating a field of energy, an EMF, that diminishes exponentially as you move away from its source. Some EMFs are healing and some are harmful. The earth radiates healing energy, which is why “earthing” — standing or sitting barefoot, with the soles of your feet in direct contact with the earth — is a scientifically authenticated healing therapy. Other EMFs can be harmful, depending on their intensity and proximity. These include the radio freq…

Much has been written about the benefits of whey protein for athletes, bodybuilders and gym enthusiasts to help their muscles recover…BUT, what about its overall health-enhancing benefits for immunity and healthy aging?The most resistance to whey is from individuals allergic or sensitive to dairy because what is not universally understood is that whey is technically NOT dairy. Whey protein is a mixture of proteins isolated from whey – the liquid part of milk that separates during cheese production. Milk actually contains two main types of protein: casein (80%) and whey (20%).Whey is found in the watery portion of milk. When cheese is produced, the fatty parts of the milk coagulate and the whey is separated from it as a byproduct. An example is a yogurt container – usually liquid is floating on top — that’s whey. Cheese makers used to discard it before they discovered its health benefits and commercial value.After being separated during cheese production, whey goes throu…

A recent article in the New York Times featured a young woman who had been prescribed 10 different psychiatric drugs by the time she graduated from high school. She’s one of the millions of U.S. children who are now taking one or more drugs to manage an array of mental disorders.In 4th grade, Renae Smith found herself struggling in school and was given Focalin, a prescription drug for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Still on her ADHD meds, she reported severe depression and anxiety as a freshman in high school and was prescribed the antidepressant Prozac. When the effects of Prozac dissipated over time, she was given an additional antidepressant, Effexor. Subsequent drugs were prescribed to stabilize mood, and more to dull the side effects of existing prescriptions. By the time she graduated from high school, she was taking 5 different mood-altering drugs and had been prescribed ten different psychiatric drugs in her young lifeThe Centers for Diseas…

One way to prepare your child for a satisfying and successful life is by helping them take on increasing levels of age-appropriate responsibility for taking care of themselves and contributing to the household.According to Janet Lehman, MSW, who specializes in child behavior issues, all children want and need to be given tasks and chores. Successfully completing valuable work feeds a child’s sense of mastery and self-esteem, especially if they’re praised for doing it well—or sometimes for doing it at all! Taking on increasingly more demanding tasks prepares them to become competent and self-confident adults. Lehman suggests explaining to your child that the family is a team, and that everyone in the family has an important role to play in the team’s success. The adults bring in the money to support the family and also do most of the work to create and maintain a home. As children, their job is to go to school and do their homework and to help take care of their h…

How much vitamin C do you need?The government’s Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA)—90 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C per day for adult men and 75 mg per day for adult women—is enough to prevent scurvy, a potentially fatal disease in which the body literally falls apart due to vitamin C deficiency. (Vitamin C is needed for making collagen, an essential component of the connective tissue that holds the body together.)But vitamin C does a great many more things in our bodies than help us make collagen. In fact, it probably does more to keep you well and vital than any other molecule you can put into your body. Vitamin C is essential to: detoxificationrepair of injuryimmune functionour ability to handle stresshealthy hormone activityhealthy neurotransmitter functionenergy productioniron utilizationnitrous oxide functions (which help with energy and also with healthy blood pressure)healthy bone formation, andoptimal brain functionAnd to top it all off,…

Would you like to be smarter? Of course, you would! Who wouldn’t want to be able to bring laser-like attention to the task at hand, assess all the elements in a situation quickly, analyze how they interrelate, and remain wholeheartedly engaged and absorbed until any problem is solved creatively and effectively?Well, vitamin C supplementation can help with that, especially if you’re at all deficient — and most of us are!Recently, Korean scientists assembled a group of 241 healthy, young (ages 20-39) adults to see if their serum vitamin C levels correlated with their “mental vitality.” Indeed, it did. So the researchers went a step further. About half of these young Korean men and women had “inadequate” levels of the vitamin, which the researchers defined as being less than 0.88 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). Fifty of these vitamin C-insufficient subjects were invited to participate in a four-week experiment. Half of them took 500 mg of vitamin C twice a day, fo…

According to Tylenol manufacturer Johnson & Johnson, acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, is used by 50 million Americans each week to treat pain, fever, and the aches and pains associated with cold and flu. It’s become as common as aspirin.And like aspirin, this over-the-counter drug is assumed to be quite safe. In fact, it gained its reputation as being safer than aspirin and the other non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) because it was, as a famous actress told us in a TV ad, “gentle on the stomach.” Translation: it doesn’t cause gastrointestinal bleeding, while NSAIDs do. Then why would neurologist and pain management specialist Aric Hausknecht, M.D., call it “by far the most dangerous drug ever made?”Perhaps because, although when used in low doses its side effects are generally mild, it is notoriously over-dosed when used to address pain. According to the National Institutes of Health, acetaminophen overdose poisons the liver and leads…

Preventing osteoporosis in old age should begin early. We build up our bone stores in childhood and as young adults, reaching peak bone mass in our thirties. From this peak, we begin gradually losing bone.Bones undergo a continual process called “remodeling” in which old bone is dismantled, and new bone is built to take its place. The adult human skeleton is renewed every 10 years by overhauling tiny patches of bone at a time. First, bone cells called osteoclasts chip away at old bone (often referred to as “bone resorption”); then bone cells called osteoblasts build fresh new bone. Somewhere in our thirties, we start losing more bone than we build, so the more bone we’ve amassed in our youth with good nutrition and weight-bearing exercise, the better our chances will be of maintaining strong bones for life. But, because bones are constantly being replaced, we can, in the words of President Joe Biden, “Build Back Better” at any time. Many factors influence both the qu…

If you plan to live to a ripe old age, you’ll want your bones to be good for the long haul.Unfortunately, according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, about half our population over the age of fifty is “cruisin’ for a bruisin’”—a bone fracture due to either osteoporosis, a disease in which bones become thin, weak and prone to fracture, or “low bone density,” a condition in which bones have become thin, weak and prone to fracture to a somewhat lesser degree. There are some risk factors for osteoporosis that you can’t do anything about—age, gender (a woman’s risk of developing osteoporosis is four times greater than a man’s), genetics, being thin and small boned, and either Asian or blond and fair-skinned—but you can still maintain healthy bones for a life with the right care. Last week we talked about bone health supplementation and getting the “complete team” of nutrients needed with Beyond Health’s Bone Mineral Formula along with a good multi and individuali…

The biggest misconception about osteoporosis is that it can be prevented simply by getting enough calcium in the diet or through supplements. At Beyond Health we often get questions about “what’s the best calcium for building good bones?” On the other hand, many people tell us they’ve heard that supplemental calcium can be dangerous (we’ll get to that later).But first, while we’re glad that more and more women (and men!) of all ages are taking proactive steps to build bones that will last a lifetime, building healthy bone is a little more complicated than just getting enough calcium. Calcium plays many vital roles in our bodies—in energy production, nerve transmission, muscle contraction, blood clotting and more—but it is certainly most well known as the major component of bone (it makes up about 65% of our bones). But like the star player on a football team, calcium can’t “win the game” by itself. It needs a complete team of vitamins and minerals backing it up.For examp…

This year we’re focusing on energy—which of course comes from eating food. But overeating—eating more than we need to meet biological demand—can weigh us down, literally, with energy stored as fat.Our nation is obsessed with food and weight. We love to eat, eat a lot of the wrong things, and eat more than we need, so we’re constantly looking for ways to lose weight. Food psychologist Marc David reports that nearly 50% of little girls in the U.S. ages 3-6(!) are already concerned about their weight and report that they are on a diet, while about 1/3 of American adults are on a diet at any given time.Did nature make a mistake in giving us an appetite that drives us to overeat?Dr. Doug Lisle, PhD, co-author of The Pleasure Trap, has an answer for this. Our primitive ancestors and their appetites were perfectly adapted to their environment. Three instincts gave them an evolutionary advantage: 1) the drive to experience pleasure; 2) the drive to avoid pain; and 3) the drive to be efficien…

Sometimes the sensation creeps up on your or comes on suddenly: You have no energy to do anything. Work feels like a slog. You put off household chores like washing dishes or taking out the trash. In between, you settle for takeout because it requires minimal effort. Day after day, the sensation persists, and rather than attribute it to lifestyle habits, you conclude that you have a lack of willpower. According to psychologist Caterina Lino, "Overall, self-control appears to be a better predictor of academic achievement than intelligence. It is also a stronger determinant of effective leadership than charisma, and more important for marital satisfaction than empathy." Willpower and Your Brain Do you believe you lack willpower? The reality is, you probably have more than you know. The truth is, everyone has two parts in their brain that are often in conflict. There is an older, "primitive brain" governed by the pleasure principle; it wants what it wants right now. Another part…