REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® Newsby Raymond FrancisThere are thousands of different diseases—or so goes one of the major myths of modern medicine. In fact, there is only one disease—malfunctioning cells. Your body is made up of between 50 and a 100 trillion cells. When all of your cells are in perfect health, you cannot be sick. When cells malfunction, myriad symptoms can be produced. This makes it appear as if there are thousands of diseases. Not true. To prevent or reverse almost any disease, you must make daily choices that support your cellular health. Unfortunately, optimizing cellular health in our society is no easy task. Our deficient diets, toxic environment, and stressful lifestyles all conspire to damage cellular health; they are the primary causes of our pandemic of chronic disease. To reverse this pandemic, through keeping our cells healthy, there is a little-recognized factor that we must consider—our pH.The pH (acid-alkaline balance) of our blood and of the…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Our health is determined by many factors, including diet, toxins, genes, stress, thoughts and emotions, and the amount of physical activity we get. Research has proven that the benefits of exercise are cumulative and that physical activity is absolutely essential for health. Unfortunately, we have become a nation of couch potatoes. Even our children are sedentary—physical play has been replaced with television and video games. In fact, 60 percent of our adult population is sedentary, both professionally and recreationally, and about 25 percent of Americans engage in absolutely no exercise whatsoever. Did you know that this level of inactivity virtually guarantees disease? We are not getting enough physical activity to stay healthy, and it is having a profoundly negative effect on the health and productivity of our nation. Traditionally, getting enough exercise was not a problem. Our ancestors either farmed or gathered their…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Evidence continues to accumulate that mammograms cause cancer, while doing little to save lives. Unfortunately, the medical establishment, including the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society, has brainwashed most of us into thinking the opposite. As a result, millions of women march off to get mammograms every year, exposing themselves to cancer-causing x-rays. The misinformation is so bad that when women were asked in a poll what they could do to prevent breast cancer, the number one response was "get a mammogram." (Exactly how mammograms are supposed to "prevent" breast cancer was not explained.) In truth, mammograms cause cancer; they are the leading cause of breast cancer. Mammograms have put a very large number of women at risk for cancer and many have died as a result. Mammograms are routinely performed without the patient being warned of the radiation hazard. Yet Dr. John Gofman, a medical doctor,…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Digestive aids are one of the biggest selling over-the-counter drugs in America, and sales of prescription drugs for heartburn are in the many billions of dollars. A vast number of people have trouble properly digesting their food and this is a major contributor to our epidemic of chronic and degenerative diseases. Where is all this poor digestion coming from? Modern medicine may be the single largest cause of poor digestion through its irresponsible use of antibiotics, birth control pills, and anti-inflammatory drugs. However, another major contributor is the foods we select to eat at a given meal. This last problem can be completely solved by learning which foods digest well together and which do not. Having evolved as hunter-gatherers, our digestive systems are not designed to digest different types of food all at the same time. Yet, due to today's technology, we can eat a variety of foods, at the same time, at every meal.…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Millions of Americans take vitamin supplements on a daily basis. Does it improve their health? No! Large-scale epidemiological studies have been unable to find health benefits in vitamin takers. Confused? There is a simple explanation. Most vitamin products are ineffective and even the best-selling brands contain toxins. The few decent brands are not taken by many people, while the harm done by top selling, toxic brands more than offset the good effects of the better brands, making it difficult to measure benefits. After seeking help from 36 medical doctors and almost dying from their treatments, I took control of my own health. As I was struggling to restore my health, I knew I needed vitamins, but I had to learn the hard way about the differences between vitamin brands. I was chemically sensitive and contaminants in all of the brands I tried made me sick. The Perque brand was the first supplement I was able to tolerate, a…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Oils are essential to human health. They rank among our most important nutrients, yet they are poorly understood by most people. Unfortunately, over the last 140 years there has been a massive shift in the type and quantity of oils consumed due to the development of the modern vegetable oil industry and the feeding of grains to livestock. Experts now estimate that up to 90 percent of the U.S. population is not obtaining the correct assortment of oils in the proper amounts. This massive deficiency crisis is a major contributor to our unprecedented epidemic of chronic disease. Supplementing with the correct types of oils is essential. However, there is widespread confusion regarding which supplements to take, in which amounts, and why they are needed. There are right oils and wrong oils. The right oils are important building blocks of life and are referred to as essential fatty acids (EFAs). EFAs are essential for building…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Following is a summary of the presentation by Raymond Francis at the Second North American Conference on Natural Vision Improvement held in San Francisco on April 26 and 27, 2003. Poor vision and eye diseases are epidemic in America today. There are many reasons for this, but nutrition plays a critical role in this equation. The eye is a complex and delicate organ. One factor that makes the eye vulnerable to damage is that light enters the eye. This allows us to see, but it is also presents problems. Think for a moment about how much damage light can do, especially if it gets inside your eye. Light fades the paint on your house or car, or the color on your drapes, furniture or carpets. Light degrades plastics, causes dietary oils to turn rancid or our skin to burn. Because of this potential for harm, the eye has a number of defensive mechanisms to protect itself, and it is important to understand how to support these defens…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Almost all vitamin supplements are junk. Large-scale epidemiological studies by the federal Centers for Disease Control and the National Research Council (NRC) have failed to find health benefits among people who take vitamins. The NRC issued a report saying there is no conclusive evidence of any healthful effect from taking vitamin supplements. Last July an Oxford University study in the medical journal Lancet announced that vitamins are “a waste of money.” There is a good reason for all this—most supplements are ineffective. Yet supplements are a necessity. It is almost impossible to be healthy without them. Because we are not getting the nutrition we need, more than 75 percent of us have a diagnosable chronic disease. In April of 1998, the National Academy of Sciences issued a profound statement saying that most people will not get all the vitamins they need, even if they eat a good diet with lots of fruit and vegetables…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis The World Health Organization is projecting that, by the year 2020, depression will become the world’s second most devastating illness, after heart disease. Depression also affects many physical illnesses, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, making them more likely, severe, and difficult to treat. Right now, one in five Americans will experience major depression in their lifetimes, and one in ten suffers from recurring bouts of major depression. We need to understand how this epidemic came about and put an end to it. Symptoms of depression include: despair, worthlessness, guilt, fatigue, poor concentration, significant weight loss or gain, sleep problems, and loss of interest in life. The personal and economic costs of this ailment are enormous. Major depression has become the leading cause of workplace absenteeism, and is the cause of 20 to 35% of all suicides. While almost everyone gets depressed at one time or…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis The next major advance in health will be determined by what people are willing to do for themselves. However, willingness is only part of the equation—the other is knowing what to do. In my book Never Be Sick Again, I outlined a new model of health based on the revolutionary concept of one disease. As varied and complex as "diseases" appear to be, all disease is the result of malfunctioning cells. Cellular malfunction is then the one disease. Modern medicine believes there are thousands of diseases, but viewing all diseases as one presents a profound opportunity—the opportunity to take the mystery out of disease and to gain power over it. The enormous pandemic of chronic and degenerative disease sweeping the world today is characterized by complex neuro-immuno-hormonal-gastrointestinal dysfunction. Complexity aside, all disease occurs at the molecular and cellular level, and we now know that virtually all disease has common…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis "Aging is a mistake," said Dr. Deepak Chopra. Actually, aging is worse than a mistake, it is a catastrophe. Aging reduces quality of life and causes so-called "diseases of aging" such as cancer, Alzheimer's, and arthritis. Making yourself old and sick is not a sensible choice—it is a mistake. Each disease, even a cold, accelerates aging, makes you sicker, and causes more disease. Then our physicians manage these diseases with treatments that create still more aging and disease. It's a vicious cycle, and we have to learn how to break that cycle. To live a long disease-free life, it is essential to learn how to prevent and reverse aging and disease. Fortunately, this is not difficult to learn. With just a little bit of effort, any of us can become healthier and biologically younger. While we cannot control our chronological age, we do have control over our biological age. Recently, I had my arteries measured. I have the arter…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Why Beyond Health Olive Oil? For those who have asked this question, the answer lies in Beyond Health’s mission: To improve the health of the American people by supplying cutting-edge health education and carefully researched, world class, health-supporting products. Toward this end, Beyond Health searches for the highest-quality products and makes them available to the public—all in one place. This is a unique and valuable service, and selecting healthy olive oil is just one example of that service. The health benefits of olive oil are well established, which is why I recommend it. The challenge is to find real olive oil. The world is awash in phony food products. For example, new genetic tests indicate that 77 percent of the fish sold in the U.S. as red snapper consists of other illegally mislabeled species. The problems with olive oil are far worse. A 1996 study by the FDA found that 96 percent of the extra virgin oils t…

. . . an epidemic of misdiagnosesSally Pacholok was a recent nursing grad when she diagnosed her own vitamin B12 deficiency and pernicious anemia. For the next 25 years she couldn't believe her ears when doctors around her continued to misdiagnose debilitating conditions which failed to improve because they were in fact symptoms of B12 deficiency. Finally, she and her husband, Jeffrey Stuart, wrote Could it Be B12? An Epidemic of Misdiagnoses to raise awareness of this problem among health providers and consumers alike.Symptoms of vitamin B12 range from the subtle to the disabling and include pain, numbness and tingling in the extremities, weakness and fatigue, imbalance, confusion, agitation, cognitive problems like memory loss and diminished mental acuity, dementia, insomnia, anxiety, depression, tremors and incontinence. Unfortunately, Pacholok notes, medications are given to suppress these symptoms, masking the deficiency. If caught early, symptoms of B12 deficiency can b…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Consider this: The human body is 70 percent water. To maintain health, we must get adequate water every day. Tragically, there is not much water available in America that is fit to drink. Clean water is one of our body’s most important needs. Yet according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control tens-ofmillions of Americans are drinking water that violates the EPA’s contamination standards. Regretfully, it’s far worse than that! Any water containing chlorine or fluoride is unfit to drink. In other words, most of the water in the country! Chlorine is added to water to kill bacteria, but it kills and injures your cells as well. While toxic, chlorine at least does something of value. Fluoride does only harm; it is an exceedingly dangerous toxin that is having catastrophic effects on both physical and mental health. These healthdestroying toxins must be removed from your water. In a more rational society, they would not be ther…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Russell L. Blaylock, M.D. Excitotoxin and excitotoxicity are words most people have never heard before. Among neuroscientists, excitotoxicity is something that is connected with virtually everything bad that can happen to the brain—strokes, brain injury, brain tumors, severe hypoglycemia, multiple sclerosis, asphyxia, heavy metal poisoning and most of the neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease). Excitotoxicity is considered to be the central mechanism for all these disorders of the brain. So, what is excitotoxicity? Brain cells communicate mostly by way of special chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. By secreting small amounts of these special chemicals, brain cells can “excite” nearby brain cells, thereby sending signals. A Frightening Discovery Dozens of these communicating neurotransmitter chemicals have been identified. Until fairly recently, we thought these chemical messengers wer…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by William Grant, Ph.D. Humans evolved with the sun. That is obvious from the variation of skin pigmentation depending on ancestral roots: skin is very dark in the tropical plains regions of Africa, brown in the tropical forests, becoming paler with increasing latitude in Europe. The evolution of human skin pigmentation was a balancing act between the health benefits and the risks of solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation. UV light produces vitamin D, which has many health benefits, including enhancing immunity. On the other hand, it also produces free radicals involved in skin aging and skin cancer, destroys folate and vitamin A, and damages immunity. As long as people lived in their ancestral homelands and spent plenty of time out of doors, they produced enough vitamin D for optimal health. The only exception to the requirement of sufficient UV light for vitamin D production was for those living near the poles, who obtained their vitamin D fro…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis The problem of bioaccumulated toxins is reaching crisis proportions. Thousands of chemicals permeate our everyday life and we are bioaccumulating unprecedented amounts of them. Recent medical and scientific studies are showing disturbing correlations between chronic low-level exposure to synthetic chemicals and diseases such as allergies, asthma, autoimmune diseases, birth defects, developmental problems, cancer, and a host of other problems. Medical doctors are mystified by the growing list of undiagnosable problems being caused by toxic accumulation. Too often the medical response to such problems is prescription medications that only add to the toxic load. Fortunately, we can minimize these toxins through education and common sense. We must learn how to stop bringing toxins into our homes, to rid ourselves of toxins we have already introduced, and to help our bodies detoxify. We accumulate toxins from air, water and food…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Chronic fatigue, chemical sensitivity and fibromyalgia syndromes (CFS/MCS/FM)—I had all of these at the same time and more. The 36 medical specialists I went to could not help me, and two came so close to killing me that death was a virtual certainty. With life hanging by a thread, I used my knowledge of biochemistry to save my life, and then to learn how to get well and stay well. Amazingly, more than two decades after my healing, people suffering from these multi-system diseases are still unable to obtain the help they need. They suffer needlessly even though the biology of these syndromes is sufficiently well understood to reverse them. Unfortunately, our physicians are hopelessly behind the science, and patients must learn to help themselves. Physicians believe there are thousands of diseases. This results in a system so complex and baffling, they don’t even try to identify and correc…