REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Fluoridation is a vast medical experiment, and we have all been guinea pigs. Unfortunately, the public is still unaware that this experiment has been a colossal failure. In January of 1995, I warned against the health hazards of fluoride in one of my newspaper columns. A month later, I devoted an entire radio show to the subject. Today, four years later, there are even more people exposed to fluoride, and the health damage continues unabated. Why do you suppose this is happening? Let's consider fluoride for a moment... Fluoride is one of the most toxic chemicals in our environment. Did you know that? It is more toxic than lead and only slightly less toxic than arsenic, according to the Clinical Toxicology of Commercial Products handbook. Fluoride accumulates in the body over time, and has been shown to damage teeth, bones, kidneys, muscles, nerves, the brain and immune function. It also causes genetic damage. So how much fl…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Malnutrition is the number one health problem in America. While it may seem incredible, there is a compelling need to teach everyone how to make better nutritional choices. The vast majority of Americans underestimate the degree to which almost all of us are malnourished. Few appear to appreciate the vast difference that better nutrition could make in their lives. Quite simply, we are what we eat. If you build a house out of low quality materials, you will end up with a poorly constructed house. That house will not age well. The same is true of your body. Abundant amounts of high quality nutrients are essential to build a healthy body and to maintain it, free of disease. Babies and children need extra amounts of nutrients because they are building rather than just maintaining their bodies. After fifteen years of researching health and disease, it is abundantly clear to me that malnutrition is the leading cause of disease…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis In September of '97, the self-serving bureaucrats at the Centers for Disease Control announced that there have been "broad gains in the nation's health." They were able to say this with a straight face because there has been a reduction in our excessively high infant mortality, and therefore average life expectancy is up. Unfortunately, the medical establishment is just spreading misconceptions. How can we address our health problems if we think everything is just fine and getting better? Here is the truth: The nation's health is in a long-term decline. Seventy-five percent of our population now has a diagnosable chronic disease. Sixty-four percent currently take medications, and it's getting worse every year. Yet, get this! According to a recent survey, two-thirds of us think we are in "excellent" or "good" health. Talk about misconceptions! Ninety percent of people over age 65 have a chronic disease, and twenty-five perce…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Why is educational performance so bad? One reason is American children are getting dumber. SAT scores have been declining for decades. In response, our educational establishment has progressively lowered standards and dumbed down achievement tests to avoid embarrassment, but the scores continue to drop anyway. Despite the fact that we are spending more money than ever before on education, numerous studies show a decline in cognitive ability—our ability to think and reason. For a country whose prosperity is founded on superior technology, these are ominous trends. Why are these things happening and what can we do about them? As our children continue to suffer problems with intelligence, learning, poor academic performance, behavior, violence, and suicide, some insights are being provided by the National Children’s Study into the causes of these problems. The study identified a number of common environmental chemicals that ca…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Spirit is the most powerful force in existence, yet few of us are using this power to heal. A woman once asked Thomas Edison, “What is electricity?’’ Edison replied, “Madame, electricity is. Use it.” The same can be said for spirit. It is, and we should use it—even if we don’t fully understand it. Fortunately, spirit is just as easy to use as electricity, and with it, spontaneous remission of disease is achievable. Most of us are familiar with the terms “body, mind and spirit.” In practice, however, our attention is mostly on the body, some on the mind and little if any on the spirit—hence we fail to take full advantage of the most powerful force in the universe. For most of human history, medicine and spirit were inseparable. Yet conventional allopathic medicine pays no attention to the body/spirit connection and fails to see the body as an energy system. In actuality, spirit is all there is, and if we are not actively…

Everything you need to know about how to handle stress better and enjoy the holidays. The holidays are a time of stress in most American lives, from the child stressed over gifts from Santa to the adult worried about their ability to provide the looked forward to gifts. The additional costs of food, time off from work and additional stress from families getting together all take an added toll at this time of year. Every year Beyond Health publishes a few articles on the topic. This year we are dedicating this whole issue of the Beyond Health E-Magazine to getting through the holidays in a stress-free and healthy manor. Take the time to think about what causes you stress at this time of year before reading this issue and you will hopefully find an article or a couple of paragraphs speaking directly to you. Finally, don’t forget that a poor diet adds to both physical and mental stress in many ways, from elevated blood sugars, to excitotoxins keeping you awake and you…

Have you ever won a stare-down with a tray of Christmas cookies?  You’ve probably heard that people gain an average of five to ten pounds between Thanksgiving and New Years. The good news is that the real average is more like one to two pounds. The bad news is that most of that weight is never lost. And people who are already overweight tend to gain pounds faster than normal-weight individuals do. Whether you are following the Beyond Health lifestyle to lose weight, or to get well and stay well, the next few months may challenge your resolve like no other time of year. The holiday season—for many now stretching from Halloween to the Superbowl—is a marathon of festive celebrations with friends and family that attempt to bring cheer to what might otherwise be a cold and gloomy time of year. The Challenge of Cheer It’s always harder to maintain your diet when you leave your house, but during the holidays, there is a whole lot of leaving the house. And the ten…

Question: I heard you talk about thermography.  Could you tell me more about this, how it works, and how good it is?  N.F. — Kentfield, CA Answer: Thermography is a safe and effectivealternative to cancer-causing mammography.  It is a way of measuring the temperature of the breast and of detecting changes in temperature as a tumor begins to receive its own blood supply.  A cancerous tumor will be warmer than the surrounding tissue and will stand out when the temperature of the breast is measured.  Thermography appears to be a far more accurate way of detecting tumors and at a much earlier stage. According to the National Cancer Institute, in 95 percent of cases, a tumor found by mammography or physical examination is already eight years old and has had ample opportunity to metastasize.  Thermography, on the other hand, can find tumors two to three years before any other means of detection.  In addition, thermography can differentiate between a cancerous tumor and fibrocystic g…

. . . do eat the peel, but skip the seeds If you’re going to start eating an apple a day, which apple should you pick? In one Canadian study Red Delicious led the pack in number of antioxidants, but many varieties better known in the US weren’t included. Really, all apples are recommended, as long as they’re fresh, unwaxed and organic. Supermarket apples are often years old! So, as always, it’s best to buy your apples from the friendly farmer at your local Farmer’s Market. Apples in the northern hemisphere are best from late summer until early winter. Many of the ancient supermarket apples are waxed. Put them in attractive baskets to decorate your home if you wish, but by all means don’t eat them! Many of the healthy, antioxidant polyphenols in apples are formed in response to pests as a natural pesticide, so organic apples will have far more. Plus you won’t be getting the synthetic pesticides as well as fungicides and insecticides that bathe the poor non-organic apple. Hav…

Forget diets. Forget New Year's resolutions.  You are building a new you, from the ground up, one healthy habit at a time. You endured the election.  You made it through Thanksgiving.  And, for the sake of argument, let's assume that the world doesn't end on December 21. Now what? What do you want your life to look like in 2013?  What do you want to accomplish?  What new habits do you want to develop?  What old habits do you want to let go of? About 40% of us make New Year's resolutions, and often they're a long list of radical changes that are very hard to make and even harder to sustain.  That's why after one week 25% of people making resolutions have already abandoned them, and by July 54% have given up. HERE'S A SUGGESTION: Instead of making a huge list of New Year's resolutions and demanding of yourself that keep them all from day one, why not take a gradual approach?  The Beyond Health Lifestyle is not like a diet or exercise program; it is a way of life.  And cha…

. . . But most of us can't get raw almonds anymore! Most food-calorie charts list an ounce of almonds as 165-170 calories. But a new, and more accurate, way of measuring calories has found that almonds provide only 129 calories per ounce, about 24% less. Published last August in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, this study used a way of measuring calories that takes into account the rigid structure of cell membranes in almonds that apparently locks in some fats and keep them from being digested. This same factor may mean that other nuts and plant foods are lower in effective calories than we’ve assumed. Last year, the same lab found that pistachios provide 6% fewer calories than had been thought. The problem with almonds, however, is that it’s far healthier to eat them raw, since heat damages their essential fatty acids. But it’s become impossible for most of us to get raw almonds. Most US almonds are grown in California. In 2007, the Almond Board of California (ABC)…

. . . Essential fatty acids in a balanced formula  I met Udo Erasmus early in my search to regain my own health and admired him right from the start as a man of vision and integrity. Like me, he had a background in science, lost his own health and turned to the study of nutrition to help himself. His research led him into the world of edible fats and oils, and his book, Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, became an instant classic. Having observed that the health benefits of most oils were being destroyed by processing, he pioneered new techniques for packaging edible, fresh oils that excluded the three main factors which destroy most oils: light, heat and oxygen.  It was Udo who taught me about the importance of balancing omega 3 with omega 6 fatty acids to prevent chronic inflammation, a factor in just about every chronic disease. His blended oil, Udo's Choice, combines several different seed oils in a perfect balance of fatty acids, weighted more towards the anti-inflammatory omeg…

. . .  formaldehyde and styrene join the government's list of known or suspected carcinogens Plastic and Styrofoam cups and containers aren't just bad for the environment -- they're bad for us. A new report from the National Toxicology Program of the US Dept. of Health and Human Services has named two chemicals commonly found in such containers, formaldehyde and styrene, as known or suspected carcinogens. As you might expect, the chemical industry as well as the American Cancer Society urged the public not to worry about "insignificant" exposures to these chemicals from cups and containers. What such advice always ignores is that we're being bombarded with chemicals at every turn. A little bit here, a little bit there . . . it all adds up to a significant problem. Avoid foods and beverages in plastic containers. National Toxicology Program, Public Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Report on Carcinogens, 12th Edition, 2011. …

. . . or taking good care of your nerve cells?  Alzheimer's disease has become an epidemic. Many people today fear losing their mental capacity more than they fear having a heart attack or getting a cancer diagnosis. One in eight individuals aged 65 and under now has Alzheimer's. For those aged 85 and older, it's one in two! Bad as this is, if the epidemic continues to grow at its current rate, the number of people in the U.S. with Alzheimer's could triple by the year 2050! Though these odds are alarming, Alzheimer's is easy to prevent. In fact in healthy cultures in the past, it didn't exist. The risk factors for getting Alzheimer's are familiar to anyone who's read my books: poor diet, nutritional deficiency, toxins, stress, free radical damage, chronic inflammation, blood sugar disregulation and insulin resistance (from eating sugar and other refined carbohydrates), excess body weight, stress, not enough exercise, particular prescription drugs, excessive use of salt and dehydr…

. . . it's a lot more than just empty calories For decades I've been calling refined sugar a deadly, metabolic poison that should be outlawed like cocaine or at least made a controlled substance like alcohol so that children will not be allowed to purchase products containing sugar. At long last someone in the medical establishment has come to the same conclusion! Dr. Robert Lustig is a professor of pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine (one of the highest-rated medical schools in the country), where he also directs the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program. In May of 2009, he gave a 90-minute lecture that's still alive and well on YouTube called, "Sugar: The Bitter Truth." Last year at around this time, Gary Taubes reported in the New York Times that it had been viewed well over 800,000 times at a rate of about 50,000 a month. In this lecture, and in a new study written in collaboration with two colleagues at UCSF, L…

. . . but have Monsanto et al. gone too far this time? A rider to a resolution that will fund the federal government through September 30 – critics call it the “Monsanto Protection Act” – is too much for even mainstream media like the New York Times and Bloomberg to stomach. This rider prevents federal courts from putting a stop to the sale and planting of genetically engineered (GE) food crops that the courts themselves have deemed possibly dangerous to public health while the USDA performs an environmental impact report. How could such a thing happen despite an avalanche of letters and emails from a public that opposed this rider? Well, as the Alliance for Natural Health points out, it has something to do with the nearly $90 million Monsanto and the agricultural industry contributed to political campaigns between 2011 and 2012. Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO), who introduced the rider, alone received $243,000 from agribiz PACs in 2010. Food Democracy Now! reports that the rider is…

Question: I am taking St. John’s Wort for depression.  Are there any downsides to doing this?  M.P. — Delray Beach, FL Answer: St. John’s Wort has been well studied and it is effective in treating depression.  Regarding downsides, the one you should be most concerned with, especially living in Florida, is it makes your skin more sensitive to the sun.  So be careful of getting more than a little sun.  It is also not good to take this herb with prescription drugs as it can interfere with their metabolism and make them even more toxic. Your best bet is to stop being depressed by getting on a good diet, getting off of sugar, taking our Basic Wellness Kit, getting adequate sunlight, and exercising.  This will take care of most depression.  Be sure to read my article on depression at www.beyondhealth.com.…

Question: In your books, you recommend avoiding all sweetners other than stevia, primarily because of their effect on blood glucose/insulin levels.  However, many holisitic practitioners allow xylitol (a sugar alcohol) as well as stevia.  Xylitol is even an incredient in my vitamin D supplement, and I've heard that xylitol is helpful in combatting yeast.  I am led to understand that these sugar alcohols have minimal effect on blood sugar and insulin release and have no side effects.  Is there any other reason why a cancer patient should avoid sugar alcohols, such as xylitol and erythritol? Also, I have read that cancer patients should avoid oranges.  Why is that?  -- LP, Internet Answer:  We are wary of xylitol, erythritol and the other sugar alcohols. Whereas they don't appear to cause rapid elevations of blood sugar, whether they are safe for long-term daily consumption is unknown. I don't know why a website on combating cancer would single out oranges; all fruits contain sugar…