Vitamin D continues to impress as an important protective nutrient. Previous research linked this amazing nutrient to reduced risk of heart disease, bone fractures, depression, and more. Now, a research team at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has confirmed the important role vitamin D plays in helping women survive breast cancer. Vitamin D doubles a woman’s chances of surviving breast cancer Led by Professor Cedric F. Garland, the team analyzed five separate studies investigating the presence of the activated form of vitamin D (25-hydroxyvitamin D or 25(OH)D) in the blood. The research included data from 4,443 breast cancer patients who had their blood levels tested upon diagnosis and at periodic intervals over the following nine years. Then researchers compared women with high blood serum levels of 25(OH)D averaging 30 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) or more to those with low levels of 17 ng/ml or less, which is the current average for breast cance…

You may have heard that overuse of antibiotics has created dangerous “superbugs” that no antibiotic drug can tame or about people losing hands, feet, legs and arms to these “flesh-eating” superbugs. Could you get attacked by one? It’s possible. But maintaining a strong immune system can keep you safe from harm. In 1947, just four years after penicillin was mass marketed, a common bacterium, found on the mucus membranes and skin of about 1/3 of the population, called Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) was found to be resistant to it. That is, someone got a staph infection, and a health practitioner gave them penicillin expecting it to make short work of the critter . . . but it didn’t. Oh-oh. Methicillin then became the antibiotic of choice. But an S. aureus was found to be resistant to methicillin in 1961. Oh-oh again. This time the resistant strains of S. aureus were called methicillin-resistant S. aureus, or MRSA. Vancomycin became the next antibiotic of choice; the first vancomyc…

With warmer weather, grilling fish and meat outside is a great way to enjoy the fresh air. But there’s a catch: high heat used in grilling reacts with proteins in the meat to form cancer-causing toxins called heterocyclic amines (HCAs). The longer these proteins are cooked, and the higher the temperature used, the more HCAs develop. This is one reason why people eating high meat diets get more cancer. If that’s not bad enough, fat dripping into fire produces another cancer-causing compound, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Smoke dense with PAHs gets into lungs and also coats the meat being cooked. Fortunately, you can greatly reduce HCAs and PAHs and the damage they do: Trim fat. This reduces the formation of PAHs as less fat drips into the fire. Use smaller, thinner cuts of meat to reduce cooking time. Flipping burgers once a minute versus only once reduced cooking time in one study by 1.8 minutes, and cut HCAs by more than 11-fold. Score thicker cuts of meat…

According to a recent article in the New York Times, each year more than half a million Americans get a metal mesh tube called a stent inserted into a clogged artery to push back arterial plaque, allowing for better blood flow. A stent can save your life during a heart attack, but it will not prevent a future attack. Yet nine out of ten patients who choose to have stents inserted believe that they do. And, despite the evidence, many cardiologists share this mistaken belief and recommend stents for patients with stable heart disease. In an editorial written for the American Heart Association journal, Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, Michael B. Rothberg, MD, MPH, of the Cleveland Clinic, explains that the belief that stents prevent heart attacks is based on an outmoded picture of coronary artery disease as the slow build-up of arterial plaque until it comes to completely block an artery. “Although the image of coronary arteries as kitchen pipes clogged with fat is sim…

Olive oil is good for us. Studies have shown that olive oil is an especially healthy food that is good for the heart, protects against cancer, reduces pain, lowers blood pressure, protects against oxidative damage, prevents gallstones, protects against ulcer development, controls cholesterol and protects against cognitive decline. The road to getting healthier includes incorporating natural olive oil into your diet. So you probably have some “extra virgin” olive oil in your cupboard that you use to make “healthy” salads. But what if you found out that your olive oil was a sham—a fake food designed to fool both regulators and the public, made from a mixture of olive oil and processed sunflower, soy or hazelnut oil? That it wasn’t healthy at all; in fact it wasn’t any better or less toxic than the processed supermarket oils you must avoid. You’d probably be pretty angry about it. Well, if you don’t already know about the olive oil scandal, be prepared to be outraged. One of the…

Q: I know your position on x-rays—you advise avoiding them if they’re not medically necessary—but what about MRIs? I have been having lower back pain, and my doctor has suggested that I get one. — S. Alexander, Burlington, VT. A: Our position on MRIs is the same as it is on x-rays—avoid unless absolutely necessary. The contrasting dyes used in MRIs are quite toxic and can produce mild to serious side effects, including kidney failure. As for the magnetic resonance technology itself, we don’t know yet all that it does to the human body. A competent orthopedist will gain much more insight into what’s causing your back pain by doing a medical history and physical exam than from an MRI. MRIs are an adjunctive diagnostic tool at best. They can reveal abnormalities, but very often these abnormalities are not causing the pain. For example, one review article looked at 5,000 findings from low-back MRI studies. Half of the group with abnormal MRIs had no pain; half of the group with norm…

Ever feel like you’re aging faster than your years? For Baby Boomers, premature aging is cause for concern. According to a recent AARP survey, nearly 3 out of 4 adults age 48 to 66 fear they’ll need to work at least part-time into retirement to survive financially, while half anticipate never retiring at all. This highlights the importance of preventing chronic diseases in aging Boomers. Yet, if you’re like many Boomers, you regularly engage in unhealthy habits that produce dangerous free radicals and cause you to age faster than your years. As you probably already know, free radicals are highly reactive atoms or molecules that are produced in the body by natural biological processes or introduced from the outside. They can damage cells and tissues through a process called oxidation. Some free radical production is normal and your body is designed to handle it. Yet, excessive free-radicals damage your cell’s DNA, membranes, mitochondria and other structures, and over time, cau…

All mammals eat raw food. Unfortunately for us, humans have departed from what nature intended, and we are paying a heavy price for this foolishness. One of the most egregious assaults on the nutritional quality of our food is cooking. Heat damages nutrients, makes food more difficult to digest, and high heat even creates carcinogenic (cancer-causing) toxins.Cooked foods will not support healthy life in animals or humans. Accordingly, some researchers have suggested a diet of at least 50% raw foods. Others have suggested at least 80%. The long-lived Hunza people ate about 80% of their diet fresh and raw. What is the ideal percentage? Nobody really knows. It may be 100%.As I was researching the effects of food processing, I came across some shocking experiments. I found that a calf would die from its own mother’s milk, if that milk had been cooked (pasteurized). As a chemist, I knew that heat altered the chemical properties of food, but I had never considered that pasteurized cow’s milk…

Big Pharma has been padding their profits by selling drugs for “disease prevention.” For example, the very successful campaign to get everyone on a daily “baby aspirin” to prevent having a heart attack or a stroke. Taking a daily baby aspirin, which is ¼ the dose of a regular aspirin, is known as “low-dose aspirin therapy.” Although there is evidence that low-dose aspirin therapy can help prevent a second heart attack or stroke, major studies have confirmed that it does NOT prevent first heart attacks or strokes in people who have no history of heart disease, even when they are at high risk due to family history and other factors like having diabetes. What low-dose aspirin therapy does do is increase the risk of bleeding events by about 30%! Internal bleeding is serious business; you can die from it and thousands do yearly. Despite its cozy relationship with industry, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has had to bow to the evidence and recently denied a reques…

According to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 67 million adults have high blood pressure. Yet many don’t know it. Because high blood pressure, or hypertension, has no warning signs, earning it the title “America’s silent killer.” That means 1 in 3 adults—maybe even you—are at an increased risk of suffering a fatal heart attack or stroke, two of the leading causes of death in the United States. If you have hypertension, your doctor has likely prescribed one or more of the dozens of medications designed to lower your blood pressure...but there’s a big problem with that. Prescription drugs are toxins that are specifically designed to poison one part of the body in order to suppress a symptom in another part of the body. Poisoning the body causes entirely new diseases, but to obscure this fact, the new diseases are called "side effects." Anti-hypertensive medications cause significant side effects, including dizziness and fainting, which is particularly dangerous for aging…

Dietary Fiber: One of the Most Powerful Tools for Preventing Chronic Disease You can significantly reduce your risk of many of today’s most common chronic diseases simply by increasing your intake of dietary fiber. These include: Coronary heart disease Stroke High blood pressure High cholesterol Type 2 diabetes Colorectal cancer Breast cancer Fiber isn’t a “nice extra.” It’s a foundational nutrient for metabolic, cardiovascular, and digestive health. Landmark Research: Fiber and Longevity A major series of systematic reviews and meta-analyses published in The Lancet examined data from hundreds of studies involving millions of participants. The findings were striking: People who consumed the most dietary fiber, compared to those who consumed the least, experienced: 15–30% reduction in cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality 22% lower risk of stroke 16% lower risk of type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer 30% lower risk o…

Your Urgent Attention Required  **UPDATE: Deadline has been EXTENDED! You now have until August 1 to comment on the proposed changes to supplement labeling regulations.** Dear Health Enthusiast, A dangerous situation that greatly impacts vital nutrient intake is at hand, and your action is urgently needed to prevent it! As founder and president of Beyond Health, it is my personal and professional goal to be a vital health resource to you and your family. This is why I’d like to bring your attention to recent FDA developments proposing revisions to supplement labeling and nutritional potency that are threatening your freedom to obtain the supplements you need to get healthy and stay healthy. In February 2014, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg announced the first major change to nutrition and supplement labeling in 20 years. A large number of formatting and placement changes will be made to the current Nutrition Facts panel on food labels a…

A huge new study from Canada that followed about 90,000 women for almost 25 years has told us what we already knew: mammograms don’t save lives. Raymond Francis has been arguing for more than two decades that not only do mammograms not save lives, ionizing radiation, as found in mammograms, is one of the things that we know for certain causes cancer. Chest X-rays are known to increase the risk of cancer, and mammograms expose your body to 1,000 times more radiation than a chest X-ray. Before you get a mammogram, please read his article, Mammograms Are a Bust. In the new study, 15 different screening centers throughout Canada collaborated in providing 5 yearly mammograms to women ages 40-59. The women were then followed for up to 25 years and compared with similar aged women who had been given only physical breast exams. At the end of the study period 500 of the women who had received mammograms had died of breast cancer compared with 505 of the women who had had breast exams onl…

Q: What are your suggestions for getting rid of cellulite? — D. Cox, Bethesda, Md. A: There are many factors involved in developing cellulite, and just being a woman is one of the big ones. About 90% of all post-adolescent women, whether fat or thin, have cellulite, whereas men rarely develop this problem. It may be impossible to totally eliminate cellulite, but you can certainly minimize it. Cellulite develops in the layer of fatty tissue just under the skin called subcutaneous fat, usually in the thighs, hips or buttocks, but sometimes in the calves, ankles, abdomen, arms, knees and even the upper back. It occurs when tiny blood and lymph vessels become damaged so that circulation of blood and lymph are compromised. This means nutrients can’t get in and wastes can’t get out. Fluid accumulates expanding the subcutaneous fat layer so that it puckers and you get that unattractive dimpled appearance. Effective treatments involve improving circulation, both general circulation an…

A growing body of exciting new research supports the old adage, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper, especially the “dinner like a pauper” part. It seems that human physiology works best when we consume most of our calories early in the day and have a light meal at night. And if you’re trying to lose weight, two studies have shown that when the number of calories consumed, energy spent and sleeping times were kept constant, dieters who ate a big breakfast or lunch lost considerably more weight than those who saved their calories for a big dinner. A Spanish study recruited 420 overweight/obese men and women to follow a 1,400 calorie per day diet for 5 months. However half of the group ate their main meal before 3:00 p.m., while the other half ate theirs after 3:00 p.m.. Those eating early lost an average of 22 pounds; the late eaters lost an average of 17. In a second study, 93 overweight/obese women with metabolic syndrome (a constellation…

Most people aren’t. Most Americans get about 15 grams of fiber daily. In 2002, the US government recommended that the average adult get between 21 and 38 grams each day. These recommendations were based on several large studies that found people who consumed 14 grams of fiber for each 1,000 calories had significantly lower rates of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Many nutritional experts believe 35-45 grams would be even better. What is fiber? It’s the indigestible portion of plant foods. Most people think of fiber as bulk that helps move the bowels, but there’s much more to know about fiber. There are two kinds of fiber—soluble and insoluble. Soluble fiber becomes gelatinous in the intestines. It’s soothing to intestinal walls and helps make bowel movements easier. Studies show it also decreases cholesterol. Insoluble fiber acts like an intestinal broom. Both kinds ease elimination by increasing fecal bulk and making stools softer. Both kinds of fiber absorb and remove toxins,…

It’s been 12 years since Raymond Francis published his groundbreaking book, Never Be Sick Again (NBSA). At this point hundreds of thousands of dog-eared copies of this best seller are being used as trusted references for getting well and staying well. To incorporate all the new information that’s come out in the past decade, it was time for a revised edition. But Raymond wanted to create a new book with a more practical emphasis. The Great American Health Hoax will be available early in 2015. Like NBSA, it indicts the American “disease-care” system that focuses on alleviating symptoms at the expense of supporting the body’s inherent self-healing capacities. And, like NBSA, the new book presents a solution to the problem: Raymond’s one disease-two causes-six pathways model. But The Great American Health Hoax adds the equivalent of an automobile’s maintenance manual. Several “maintenance items” are introduced—health parameters we need to monitor. If they deviate too far f…

Regular exercise is one of the best things you can do for your health. Writing in the Townsend Letter, sports medicine experts Jason E. Barker and Chris D. Meletis say that using the large muscle groups at about 40-50% of your exercise capacity six days a week, with resistance training at least two days a week, has been shown repeatedly to reduce the risk of getting heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, obesity, depression, anxiety and other chronic diseases. But, they warn, exercise itself can have some hazards, especially when it comes to wear and tear on your joints. They recommend glucosamine, as well as vitamin C to maintain healthy muscles and joints if you engage in regular strenuous exercise. Glucosamine is the precursor for glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), the building blocks of hyaluronic acid and synovial fluid. These lubricants protect the joints from friction. Glucosamine is also used to build cartilage, tendons, and ligaments. Glucosamine stimulates the producti…