“What you repeatedly do (i.e. what you spend time thinking about and doing each day) ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe and the personality that you portray.”— James Clear, author of the New York Times bestselling book Atomic Habits.Our habits define us, but what exactly are habits? A habit is formed when we perform a certain behavior repeatedly over time because it rewards us in some way. This continual repetition literally etches neural pathways in our brains, so that eventually we respond to a given trigger automatically and mostly unconsciously with that behavior. For example, triggered by a feeling of thirst, we seek out water or some other beverage to drink. Triggered by entering a dark room, we switch on a light so we can see. Habits can be very useful, but since most habits are formed unconsciously, some “bad habits” are apt to develop. Bad habits provide an immediate reward (i.e. smoking a cigarette may relieve stress), but…

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”— Will Durant, summarizing what Aristotle had to say on the subject of habitsIt was decades ago, an unseasonably hot spring day in a high school chemistry class. Along with my fellow students, I was already having trouble concentrating on the droning voice of our dour teacher, Mr. Barkley, when a loud motorcycle came roaring to a stop right outside our window. Eager for distraction, we rushed to the open window and saw a cyclist dressed from head to toe in black leather. He’d stopped to pick up, of all people, a nun in full traditional garb. As she hopped on the back of the motorcycle, and it sped away, we students were amazed and delighted to hear Mr. Barkley sigh and remark in his usual dry monotone, “I guess it’s all right as long as he doesn’t get into the habit.”So, although “habit” can refer to a nun’s costume, today we’re focusing on those behaviors we engage in automatically in respo…

Have you tried to establish a regular meditation practice, but found it difficult to sustain over time?Join the club!Or better yet, join a group! One thing that may be getting in your way is a lack of social support. Although you can read about all the great things meditation can do for your health, energy, and emotional equilibrium, and even experience benefit when you try it, if the people around you are totally uninterested in meditation, it’s easy to get discouraged and begin thinking it’s not worth the effort. Most Buddhists belong to religious communities called sanghas. Like any other religious community, the sangha provides community support for common values, including the value of meditation. But what if you’re not a Buddhist and would still like to receive community support for your meditation practice? Fortunately, there are many opportunities to practice meditation outside of a specific religious context in a group setting. And with Zoom, you may n…

Recently, we’ve been focusing on the importance of balancing activity with rest and relaxation for sustaining maximum energy and efficiency. R&R is also essential for combating the negative effects of stress. Today we’ll be giving you a “quick fix” to help you shift quickly from stress mode into a “rest and relax” mode.As you may remember, central to the topic of stress versus rest is the autonomic nervous system (ANS), the part of our nervous system that controls involuntary actions like breathing, digestion, the heartbeat, etc. The ANS has two complementary halves, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which control stress and relaxation in our bodies. The SNS responds to challenge or threat with the classic “fight or flight” response, giving us the extra energy we need to meet life’s demands. The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) is the half of the ANS that tells our bodies all is well and it’s now safe to rest, relax, recuperate…

To operate at top energy and efficiency, getting a good night’s sleep—7 to 9 hours of “restorative sleep” waking up feeling rested and refreshed—is essential.The body is self-healing, self-repairing and self-detoxifying, but only if it gets enough rest and sleep. Because all this healing, repairing and detoxifying work is done when the body is at rest. That’s why sleep deprivation leads to negative consequences of being in a bad mood; overeating and eating the wrong foods high in starch, sugar and fat; depressed immunity; and looking years older. And why chronic sleep deprivation increases the risk of all kinds of chronic disease. Yet, government statistics show that more than ⅓ of American adults habitually get less than 7 hours of sleep a night (7-9 hours is considered healthy). And even those who are getting enough sleep may not be getting good quality sleep. According to the Sleep Foundation, this means falling asleep within 30 minutes of getting into bed, s…

This year, Beyond Health is focusing on maximizing energy in order to do all the wonderful and amazing things you want to do with your life.But to maximize energy, you need to balance activity with deep rest and relaxation, to give your body a chance to settle and become quieter, to heal and regenerate. In Chinese medicine, there are two principles that govern all life, Yang and Yin. Yang is dynamic, active, hard, brilliant, quick, courageous, and decisive. Yin is yielding, resting, soft, dark, nurturing, slow, patient and open-minded. In optimal health, these two aspects of our nature exist in a balance.In Western medicine, the autonomic nervous system—that part of the nervous system that controls involuntary actions, like breathing, the heartbeat and digestion—has two complementary halves that correspond to these Chinese principles: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is the “yang” half; it respond…

Although Americans need to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, the food gurus these days aren’t pushing fruits as much as they once were. That’s because more information has come out about fructose, the sugar in fruit. While fine in moderation, in excessive amounts, fructose can be toxic. That’s why at Beyond Health, we’ve always recommended not exceeding more than two pieces of fruit a day.But one fruit the experts still recommend is berries, including strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, and raspberries. Why?Because no fruit offers so much nutritional value for the calories and fructose it delivers.Berries are chock-full of phytonutrients (translation: nutrients in plants … “phyto” means “plant”) that are some of the world’s most powerful antioxidants and anti-inflammatories.Since oxidation and inflammation are fundamental processes in all disease, it’s not surprising that scientists have been finding that berries help to prevent and curb eve…

Colorful, fresh fruits and vegetables do more than delight the eye and decorate our plates. They keep us feeling light and energized, and numerous studies have shown that they protect our bodies from all kinds of disease by maintaining systemic alkalinity, reducing inflammation, supporting detoxification, providing needed fiber and strengthening immunity.The main problem in our busy lives is finding ways to get enough of them. The recommended 1½ to 2 cups of fruit a day and 2-3 cups of vegetables is really a minimum for good health. If you want maximum benefit, aim for 2 pieces of fruit and 5 cups of vegetables. Since including more fruit isn’t as difficult as getting more vegetables, last week we gave you some ideas on how to include more vegetables in your life—like making them the centerpiece rather than a side-dish in your meals; becoming inspired by the superior taste of fresh and organic vegetables; becoming more imaginative in creating salads; and making your o…

Have you been to a local farmer’s market lately? Being outside in the fresh air, surrounded by nature’s colorful bounty and the good people who spend their lives tending farms and growing nutritious produce, you already feel healthier and inspired to include more delicious fruits and vegetables in your diet.Using your recently purchased produce to make lunch when you get home is a reminder of how much tastier (and healthier) fresh fruits and vegetables are. Health exists along a continuum, from near-death all the way to bursting-with-energy optimal health; and including more fresh fruits and vegetables in our diets is a major way to keep moving along that continuum towards greater vitality, strength, endurance, mental clarity and optimistic mood. Including more fruit isn’t hard—just remember to buy it and keep it where it’s visible and handy. Fruit is the original fast food, always ready to eat when you want a snack or to add to a salad or a smoothie. In fact, i…

“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.” – HippocratesDo your meals leave you feeling light and full of vitality, or do they weigh you down, making you feel sleepy and dull? Although all food supplies calories, how well your body utilizes those calories to provide you with energy depends on the “life force” in the foods you eat. And foods vary widely along a continuum in this respect, from producing vitality, rejuvenation and healing to sapping your energy, adding unwanted weight and contributing to premature aging and disease. Food also influences mood and mental abilities, from raising your spirits, making you optimistic and heightening your awareness and mental function to bringing you down and dulling your brain. A number of factors determine a food’s vibration or life force. Overall, foods are most energizing and health-promoting when they’re consumed raw, or as close as possible to their natural state.This gives pride of place to the multicolor…

How do you get the energy to achieve your goals and manifest your dreams? What fuels you?The goals and dreams themselves, if they speak to your heart and soul, energize your spirit. But you also need physical health to manifest them. To be a human dynamo, you need to go beyond “health” as simply the absence of a disease diagnosis. True health is a condition of vigor, stamina and exuberant energy that is rare in today’s world. True health means every cell in your body is bursting with vitality!That is the vision for you that drives us at Beyond Health—to go beyond conventional definitions of health and beyond what you may have imagined for yourself. No matter where you are now, we know it’s possible for you to be a healthier and more vital you! Although you are the only one who can achieve optimal health for yourself, you don’t have to do it alone. We’re here to support you by providing the know-how, along with effective health-supporting products and friendly servi…

It’s not that easy for a virus to take hold in the body. Should it gain entry, it must first attach itself to a cell, then pass through the cell’s outer membrane, and once inside the cell take over the cell’s machinery to replicate itself.The immune system can intervene and abort this hijacking of the cell at different points along the way, and a strong immune system can make short work of an intruding virus, nipping it in the bud before it can do any damage or even produce symptoms. Ultimately, it’s the strength of your immune system that determines whether you get sick. If you do get sick, how sick you will get and how soon you will recover is the real question. But we need to help our immune systems function optimally. While other factors, such as avoiding toxins, eating a good diet and getting appropriate sleep and exercise are also important, there are four crucial supplements that we suggest focusing on at this time: Vitamin C, Vitamin D3, Quercetin Pro and Z…

Neurodegenerative disease occurs when nerve cells in the brain or nervous system lose function over time and ultimately die. Alzheimer’s disease, which affects as many as 6.2 million Americans, is the most common neurodegenerative disease, but there are hundreds of others, including other dementias, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Huntington’s disease and Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS).Although conventional medical treatments help relieve some of the physical and mental symptoms associated with neurodegenerative diseases, there is currently no way to slow disease progression and no known cures.But our friend Dr. Len Saputo, MD, who has been practicing functional medicine in Walnut Creek, California, with a special emphasis on light therapy for more than twenty years, has been getting remarkable results using light therapy. His state-of-the-art photobiomodulation device called the Firefly combines infrared, red and blue light of many frequencies and is more powerful…

Like many drugs, levodopa, the most common drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease (PD), can create nutrient deficiencies with serious side effects taken over time.PD is a progressive neurological disease in which brain cells that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine gradually die off. Low levels of dopamine cause various movement and non-movement related dysfunctions. The drugs that treat PD either replace or enhance dopamine, and central among these drugs is levodopa. Levodopa is converted into dopamine in your body. It is usually combined with another drug, carbidopa, which prevents levodopa from being converted into dopamine too soon, before it reaches the brain. The combination of levodopa and carbidopa is called Sinemet.Past studies have linked carbidopa with low vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) levels. In a recent study, Spanish researchers measured vitamin B6 levels in 24 patients being treated with levodopa/carbidopa. Six of these patients were being given the drug…

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurological disease. Although it may start out with something as simple as a tremor in a single finger, it can progress over the years to complete disability. Its hallmark is the dying off of brain cells that make the neurotransmitter dopamine. Without sufficient dopamine, movement becomes increasingly difficult and finally almost impossible. PD’s non-motor symptoms include anxiety, depression, fatigue, insomnia and other sleep disorders, hallucinations, cognitive impairment and dementia.Although dopamine replacement and enhancement drugs can control motor symptoms for a while, they don’t reverse or stop the underlying disease process. When these medications lose their effectiveness, a surgery may be done to control symptoms. But again, because the surgery doesn’t address the underlying disease process, it too becomes less effective with time. However, a novel therapy addresses both symptoms and the disease process. Italian neurologist Anton…

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurological disease in which brain cells that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine gradually die off. The result is an increasing loss of control of motor functions and other non-motor symptoms.Although it doesn’t usually show up until after the age of sixty, PD can afflict younger people too. A case in point is the popular actor Michael J. Fox, who noticed the first signs of PD when he was only thirty years old. Diagnosing Parkinson’s disease (PD) is done on the basis of symptoms and excluding other diseases. But by the time the classic motor symptoms of PD begin to manifest (tremor, rigidity, balance and posture problems, and slowness of movement/difficulty in initiating movement), 60-80% of your 400,000 or so dopamine-producing brain cells have already died. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know that they were dying off years before a large percent of them were already gone?While research scientists are working to find predictive…

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurological disease second only to Alzheimer’s as a thief of brain cells and quality of life.Although everyone’s PD journey is different in terms of the appearance and intensity of symptoms, and how quickly the disease progresses, the central feature of PD is that brain cells responsible for producing the neurotransmitter dopamine begin to die off. The resulting dopamine deficiency produces PD’s characteristic symptoms, including tremors, rigidity, posture and balance problems, slowed movement and difficulty initiating movement, and non-motor symptoms such as depression, anxiety, fatigue, insomnia and other sleep disorders, cognitive impairment and dementia. Allopathic medicine manages PD motor symptoms by replacing or boosting dopamine production. Most PD patients will need these drugs because by the time PD can be diagnosed, 60-80% of dopamine-producing brain cells are already gone. There is also a surgery called Deep Brain Stimulation that…

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is our most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s and one of the world’s fastest growing neurological disorders. About a million people had PD in 2017, costing the nation more than $51 billion. It is expected that more than 1.6 million will be living with PD by 2037.Although symptoms and symptom severity vary among individuals, PD generally starts with a tremor in the hands or arms. Other early symptoms include:1) Bradykinesia—slowness of movement in which the patient feels like they’re glued to the ground or chair and it’s hard to get going; this progressively erases body language and facial expression.2) Rigidity—stiffness and jerkiness in movement.3) Posture and balance problems—instability, stooped stance, impaired gait.However PD is a relentlessly progressive disease of neurological deterioration. In its most advanced stage PD is totally disabling. It makes your legs so “frozen” and stiff that it’s impossible to walk or even stand. At this st…