REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Disease is a choice. And there is only one disease, malfunctioning cells. Cells will malfunction for only two reasons- they are not getting everything they need (deficiency) and/or they are getting something they do not need (toxicity). The Breakfast of Chumps manages to be both nutrient deficient and toxic and is a sure-fire pathway to disease. We all have been brought up with the myth that a healthy way to start the day is with a breakfast cereal. They come in a convenient box, are easy to prepare and are time efficient. Oh, if only they were good for us. Far from a "breakfast of champions," these products are the breakfast of chumps. Almost all breakfast cereals are second rate sources of nutrition, made from refined grains and loaded with toxic sugars, hydrogenated oils, and artificial vitamins, colors, flavors and preservatives. Providing both deficiency and toxicity, these products cause disease. Amazingly, some ce…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Following is a synopsis of the speech I presented at the New Millennium Conference in Egypt on the afternoon of January 1, 2000. As I was speaking, I could see the Great Pyramid through the window. What a fitting place it was to ponder the next 1000 years of human history, and to project the evolution of health and medicine in the coming centuries. I was reminded that it was in Egypt where man first created a great state, devised institutions to rule a widespread geographical area, organized the governmental machinery to administer large groups of people, and planned and executed the first epicscale projects. It was an awesome experience talking about the next millennium, while in direct view of 5000 years of human history. The millennium is a convenient way for us to measure what we call "time," but beyond that the millennium has no importance; it is an arbitrary human construct, with no meaning of its own. However, this…

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 ObamaCare has been passed and signed into law. While healthcare reform is desperately needed, is this the reform we need? The existing drugs-and-surgery approach to healthcare is a failure; it keeps people sick and costs high. ObamaCare traps us into this failed system and makes change even more difficult. This is not the reform we need, and it comes at a huge cost not only in dollars but in more government intrusion into our lives, loss of freedom and serious constitutional questions. ObamaCare is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, hoping it will keep us from sinking! Disease-care costs are out of control. Rapidly increasing and economically unsustainable, these costs threaten to bankrupt our governments and businesses. The unfunded liability for Medicare and Social Security alone is well over $100 trillion. There is no way this money can be paid without crippling taxation and confiscation of wealth (a…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Our children need our protection. As more people come to the realization that vaccinations are dangerous and ineffective, those who “look after our health” are becoming desperate and turning to the police power of the government to force vaccinations on the public. Most of you may be familiar with the recent TV images of people being forced, virtually at gunpoint, to vaccinate their children in New Jersey. In truth, under existing law, no one can force you to have a vaccination, but that may change if we are foolish enough to let it happen. New Jersey may be on the way to becoming the first state to make childhood vaccination a legal requirement. Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children would become criminals subject to arrest and imprisonment. Then there is the spectacle of the New York pediatrician, Dr. Mark Nesselson, who conspired with families to get their children into school without being vaccinated. Dr. Nes…

. . . the mind is far more powerful than most of us appreciate Can thoughts prolong life? Absolutely! In a 2002 study that followed more than 600 people for 23 years, researchers at Yale University found that having a positive attitude toward aging extended average lifespan for more than 7 years. This makes thoughts and expectations more powerful in extending life than other factors such as low blood pressure, low cholesterol, maintaining a healthy weight and regular exercise! It’s not that other factors aren’t important, but the mind is far more powerful than most of us appreciate. Every thought and every feeling has biochemical repercussions, some good and some bad. Not surprisingly, positive thoughts and emotions like joy, compassion, optimism, love, gratitude and a sense of purpose bolster both immunity and general health, while negative thoughts and feelings, like anger, envy, apathy, gloom and resentment do the opposite. But how can you maintain a positive and hopeful ex…

. . . do what smart people have done for millennia There is a natural way to protect your skin from the sun, one that has been used effectively for millennia. While it’s true that some things have changed – depletion of the ozone layer has made the sun’s rays more intense; also in times past people stayed in one place for generations, and pigments in their skin adapted to the intensity of the sun where they lived – the same principles still apply. 1.  Maximize Antioxidant Intake. Antioxidants protect skin from potential sun damage, making diet the single most important factor in skin protection. Getting your 10-12 servings of fruits and vegetables daily will go a long way towards supplying the antioxidants you need. Most culinary herbs as well as green and white tea, garlic and olive oil are also high in antioxidants. However, because environmental pollutants nowadays chew up antioxidants faster than you can say “free radical damage,” we need more antioxidants than ever, making s…

. . . It's not nice to fool Mother Nature! Elizabeth Plourde, PhD, author of the book Sunscreens – Biohazard: Treat as Hazardous Waste, is on a campaign to expose the truth about sunscreens. Touted for protecting against cancer and photoaging (sun damage to skin), sunscreens, says Plourde, do the exact opposite. Since the introduction of sunscreens, the number of annual skin cancers has greatly increased, and damage done by sunscreens encourages the fine lines and wrinkles, sagging and loss of tone, dryness, and roughness that characterize skin aging. It’s not that radiation from the sun can’t potentially cause both cancer and photoaging. These can both be caused by the sun’s rays creating free radicals in the skin. But from time immemorial, Mother Nature has had that covered. Antioxidants protect against free radical damage, and Mother Nature has provided us with plenty of antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables to consume. She’s also arranged for the sun’s rays to stimulate the…

. . . which is better? As you may know, we carry Kyolic AGE, so we’re often asked this question. The answer is that both forms of garlic are fantastic sources of health-promoting compounds; both are high in organosulfur compounds that do wonderful things in your body. Although the compounds are somewhat different in each, both AGE and raw garlic have abundant antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties and help your body to detoxify and to prevent and possibly reverse the same wide range of health problems. In addition to the cardiovascular and neurological benefits described above, garlic, whether raw or aged, has immune boosting and antibiotic abilities and is active against worms, fungi (including candida albicans), bacteria (including helicobacter pylori), viruses, allergies and cancer. It helps build energy, endurance and the ability to withstand stress. Because it is anti-inflammatory, and because all chronic disease has an inflammatory component, it is useful in all chron…

. . . new research finds connection between a healthy gut and cruciferous greens A startling discovery has, in the words of one of the researchers involved, “thrown open a completely new way of looking at gut biology.” Certain immune cells that protect the digestive tract from bad bacteria may be controlled by green, cruciferous vegetables in the diet. Dr. Gabrielle Belz and her colleagues have found that a gene called T-bet is responsible for the production of these gut-protective immune cells, called innate lymphoid cells (ILCs). The T-bet gene, in turn, is influenced by both bacteria in our gut and by what we eat. Specifically, proteins in green, cruciferous vegetables (like broccoli, beet greens, chard, watercress, bok choy, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and kale) apparently switch the T-bet gene on and may also assist it in producing ILCs. ILCs can be found in the digestive tract lining, where they can certainly be very handy. ILCs help maintain a healthy gut by promoting th…

. . . how peaches, plums and nectarines can keep us healthy Fresh, juicy, sweet and colorful . . . the “stone fruits”: peaches, plums and nectarines are one of my favorite things about summer. And scientists at Texas A&M have found that these delicious fruits possess certain compounds that work in different and synergistic ways to thwart heart disease, obesity and diabetes – together known as “metabolic syndrome.” A study presented at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting last summer showed that four groups of phenolic compounds found in stone fruits – anthocyanins, chlorogenic acids, quercetin derivatives and catechins – have anti-obesity, anti-inflammatory and anti-diabetic properties and may also reduce the oxidation of LDL (the “bad” cholesterol). (Cholesterol alone isn’t harmful; but when it is oxidized it leads to atherosclerosis and heart disease.) Each of the fruits has similar healthful compounds, but in differing proportions. The researchers recommended…

. . . you betcha! When Raymond Francis’ book Never Be Fat Again was published in 2007, it was the first weight loss book we know of to treat toxins as a significant cause of obesity. The connection between chemical toxins and weight gain had already been reported in the scientific literature, but was still unknown to most of us. In 2006, Dr. Bruce Blumberg of the University of California at Irvine coined the term “obesogen” after discovering that a chemical used in wood preservatives could cause pregnant mice to have fat baby mice – effects which persisted throughout their lives. Obesogens are chemicals that alter metabolism in favor of fat accumulation or impact hunger leading to overeating. In a report for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy published this past July, Kathleen Schuler, MPH, reviewed recent research confirming the obesogenic nature of four common chemicals: Bisphenol A (BPA): Found in polycarbonate plastic (the kind of plastic used in large water bo…

. . . 2 1/2 years later, the uncertainty about safer radiation levels continues When we last reported, Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was still spewing radiation into the ground and water 16 months after the environmental catastrophe began. Now 30 months later, the situation appears to have gotten worse, instead of better. Fukushima is affecting the entire northern hemisphere, and its radioactive ocean plume is projected to reach US waters in 2014. Radioactive cesium has already been found in tuna caught off California in 2011, and seaweed in Southern California has measured 500 times more radioactive than seaweed elsewhere in the US. The US West Coast has borne the brunt of hot airborne particles with Seattle receiving radioactive fallout similar to Tokyo. The Fukushima nuclear disaster occurred on March 11, 2011 and was caused by a devastating tsunami triggered by an earthquake off the coast of Japan. Granted, it promised to be a challenge from the start. TEPC…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News By Raymond Francis Vitamin C is one of the most important molecules you can put into your body. Unfortunately, modern living has increased our need for vitamin C so that most of us are deficient and need to supplement. Tragically, most people are taking the wrong vitamin C. A number of manufacturers produce vitamin C with varying degrees of purity, and as you will see, purity is critical. Most of the vitamin C on the market is not what you should be taking. Most of us don’t think about the fact that supplement manufacturers can purchase vitamins in a range of different chemical forms and degrees of purity. The correct chemical forms, the forms that the body actually uses, coupled with the highest purity will give you the best results. Vitamins that are less pure and/or in incorrect forms may give you few or no results at all. Some vitamins are even known to have negative effects. The correct chemical forms cost more to manufacture and numerou…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News By Raymond Francis Most people who think they’re healthy are actually slowly declining toward serious health problems that, when they finally arrive, will seem to have come without warning. Most of us consider it normal to get sick several times a year, to use up our sick leave at work, or to occasionally miss a favorite gathering or activity because we’re feeling “a little under the weather.” This may be normal, but it isn’t how it’s supposed to be. The body’s natural state is homeostasis, where all systems are balanced and running smoothly. When in homeostasis, you can’t get sick, not even a cold. When properly supported, the body knows exactly how to maintain this healthy state. Ignore its basic needs for too long, however, and your body will let you know that it is not amused! You might be tapped on the shoulder with a little sniffle, a headache, indigestion, a cough, or some aches and pains. (We have drugstore aisles full of pills to…

. . . lower shipping charges and a new money-back guarantee We appreciate our customers and the faith you have put in us and our products, and we’re showing our appreciation in two new ways. First, we’ve found a way to reduce shipping costs. For most of you, you’ll find you’re paying about half of what you were. Second, we’re now offering a 30-day money-back guarantee.  If you are dissatisfied with a product, just let us know within 30 days of purchase for a full refund. We do suggest, however, that you contact us first with any problems you’re having. For example, even though we include information which says to go slow in introducing new supplements, sometimes people still take what is too much for them, which can lead to a cleansing reaction that produces uncomfortable symptoms. This and other issues can often be easily resolved by calling or emailing us. In general, please also let us know if there is some way in which we can make using our website or ordering from u…