Drugs reduce pain by poisoning enzymes or blocking pain receptors in the body, but they do nothing to address its cause(s). In fact, drugs usually make the underlying situation worse and create additional undesirable outcomes called “side effects.” A holistic approach uses natural pain suppressants with only beneficial effects on the body while it mobilizes and supports the body to heal itself of underlying causes. Structural issues should be treated with physical therapy and other types of bodywork. But tissue injury and inflammation causing pain are best addressed with healthy lifestyle, excellent overall nutrition, and specific nutrients that stimulate the body’s own repair mechanisms, reduce inflammation and build tissue integrity. Numerous studies show that vitamin C and the bioflavonoid quercetin do all three, creating a powerful intervention when used together. For maximum benefit, use our uniquely pure and potent vitamin C and our quercetin fortified with additional tiss…

Perhaps you’ve been pleased with how you’ve been eating. You’re following Raymond Francis’s book, Never Be Fat Again, eating a nutrient dense diet, taking good supplements, avoiding toxins and exercising. You’ve given up counting calories and diets that made you feel deprived, stressed and irritable, and you’re quite happy losing weight slowly but steadily.  You’re feeling like you’ve finally got a handle on this thing called food. Then it happens. At the Farmers Market you’re hungrier than you anticipated. A baker there sells organic, gluten-free, whole grain muffins.  Although carbohydrates are a problem area for you, you’ve had these particular muffins before without difficulty, so you eat one, and it hits the spot. Back home you get a distressing phone call from a friend that makes you feel anxious. Making lunch, you add wild rice to your chicken-vegetable soup.  You mean to add only half a cup, but end up adding a cup and a half. After finishing the soup you’…

Berkeley, California nutrition writer Clara Felix was one of the early trailblazers in using nutrition to fight disease. In the late 1990s, when vitamin D researchers discovered we needed much more vitamin D than had previously been thought, Clara upped her intake to 4,000 IU per day. After three months, an arthritic knee that had failed to improve with exemplary lifestyle, good supplements and avoidance of allergens alone became completely normal again! She was delighted to report being able to squat and do deep knee bends for the first time in eight years. It's not surprising.  Vitamin D is anti-inflammatory and also plays a role in the synthesis of synovial fluid, which lubricates the joints and prevents their wear and tear.   Studies have shown that having higher levels retards the deterioration of arthritic knee and hip joints. Clara also related this story about two chimps suffering from a "mysterious illness" who were…

Feeling tired all the time? Cold intolerant? Depressed? Constipated? Losing your hair? Do you gain weight easily, or have muscle or joint pain, or are you forgetful and unable to concentrate? These are some of the major symptoms of hypothyroidism, a condition in which your thyroid gland is not producing enough thyroid hormone or not enough hormone is getting into your cells to do its job. If hypothyroidism is a problem for you, you may be surprised to learn that fluoride, which is dumped by the ton into much of our public water, was once used as a medication for deliberately suppressing thyroid function in cases of overactive thyroid. Why are we dumping a thyroid-suppressing drug into our public water?  Good question! Even the government’s National Research Council voiced concern about fluoride’s effects on the thyroid in a 2006 report. They found “clear evidence” that amounts of fluoride at or near levels added to US water present potential risks to the th…

Vitamin D Deficiency and the Rising Risk of Rheumatoid Arthritis in Women Recent research from the Mayo Clinic has identified a concerning trend: rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is increasing among Caucasian women, and vitamin D deficiency appears to be a significant contributing factor. While rheumatoid arthritis is a complex autoimmune condition influenced by genetics, lifestyle, and environmental factors, researchers noted that the most plausible explanation for the rising incidence is the increasing prevalence of vitamin D deficiency, particularly among women. Why Vitamin D Matters in Rheumatoid Arthritis Vitamin D plays a critical role in: Immune system regulation Inflammation control Bone and joint health Low vitamin D levels have been associated with increased autoimmune activity, which may help explain its link to rheumatoid arthritis. As vitamin D deficiency has become more common—due to indoor lifestyles, sun avoidance, and inadequate dietary intake—rates of im…

A Healthier Year Starts With the Right Foundation No matter your age or current health status, every year offers a new opportunity to build better health than the year before. We know this is possible because we’ve worked with thousands of individuals who didn’t just recover from health challenges—but continued to improve year after year as they learned how to support their bodies properly. We’ve also seen people who began in good health move toward exceptional wellness by making consistent, informed choices. Across these success stories, one factor shows up again and again: A properly designed supplement program. Why Diet and Lifestyle Alone Are Often Not Enough A healthy diet, regular movement, stress management, detoxification, meaningful relationships, and minimizing toxic exposure are all essential pillars of wellness. But there’s one non-negotiable truth: Your body cannot build healthy new cells without the raw materials it requires. Vitamins, mi…

Flu Prevention: Building Immune Resilience the Smart Way Preventing seasonal flu isn’t about relying on a single strategy—it’s about supporting immune resilience consistently, especially during winter months when infections are more common. While vaccines remain one public-health tool, Beyond Health has always emphasized that strong immunity begins with nutritional sufficiency, metabolic health, and lifestyle foundations. A Note on Vaccine Safety Discussions Concerns about vaccine safety have historically emerged when unexpected adverse events appear after widespread use. For example, following the 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccination campaigns, safety monitoring agencies in several countries—including Swedish Medical Products Agency and public-health authorities in Finland—investigated reports of narcolepsy occurring after vaccination with a specific adjuvanted vaccine. Key context: Investigations focused on specific formulations, not all flu vaccines The…

Chances are you’ve never even heard of the most critical molecule in your body: glutathione.  Identified back in 1888, it wasn’t until the mid 20 th century that scientists began to realize the full significance of this simple protein, made by most of our cells out of the amino acids cysteine, glutamic acid and glycine. However, more than 100,000 studies have now shown that glutathione is the most important molecule you need to optimize your health and prevent disease. The more glutathione you have in your body, the healthier you are and the longer you’re going to live. Virtually every chronic disease is characterized by glutathione depletion.  Young, energetic, healthy people have tons of it, while the hospitalized elderly have the least. Among glutathione’s critical roles in the body are:  1) Master Antioxidant in our body’s antioxidant system; 2) Chief detoxifier; 3) Regulator of cell synthesis, growth, maintenance and function; 4) Responsible…

New kinds of burgers made from plants, with the look, taste, smell and “mouth-feel” of real meat, are showing up in mainstream restaurants and grocery stores. They reportedly pass taste tests, even among die-hard carnivores, but are they healthy? Current levels of meat consumption are unhealthy as well as environmentally unsustainable. An international commission of leading scientists assembled by the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, concluded that, “The current global food system is unsustainable and requires an agricultural revolution …” if we hope to feed all ten billion people projected to inhabit the earth by 2050.  According to the Commission, cutting back on red meat production is an essential part of this revolution.  A major consumer of land and water, and a major producer of greenhouse gas emissions, red meat, they say, should be limited to half an ounce per person per day, and other animal proteins should be reduced in our diets as well. Ente…

Why Supplement Access Depends on Public Action Right Now From time to time, legislation appears that has the potential to significantly reshape the supplement industry not by banning products outright, but by changing the rules in ways that only the largest corporations can afford to navigate. In mid-2011, such a moment emerged. What Happened On July 1, 2011, Dick Durbin introduced S.1310, titled the Dietary Supplement Labeling Act of 2011. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a draft guidance document addressing dietary supplement ingredient approval processes. Individually, each action was presented as a consumer-safety initiative.Taken together, they raised serious concerns across the natural health community. Why This Matters The proposed changes would have required additional, costly safety substantiation for ingredients that have long histories of safe use. The concern was not safety itself responsible supplement companies already prioritize quality…

diet is by far the most important factor in keeping your skin hydrated, smooth and supple In winter, we may go from icy cold winds outside to dry, forced air heat inside. Extreme temperatures – both hot and cold – dry the skin. Add age to the mix (as we age, our skin becomes less efficient at producing lubricating oils), and it’s not surprising that many people suffer from dry skin during the winter months. Dryness intensifies fine lines on your face, making you look older; the skin can feel rough and appear dull and flaky. In some people, skin dryness gets so bad that the outer skin layer becomes leathery and cracks, especially on hands and feet. Apart from being quite painful, these lesions compromise the skin’s barrier function, permitting entry to germs and other irritating substances, often leading to infections. Here are 8 ways to keep your skin soft, supple and well-hydrated, even during winter: 1.  First and foremost, consume enough healthy fat, esp…

. . . more centenarians per capita than anywhere else on earth In making decisions about our own diet and lifestyle, it would probably be wise to take some hints from a culture that boasts more centenarians per capita than anywhere else on earth. Many people on the island of Okinawa, off the coast of Japan, follow a traditional diet and way of life that makes them among the happiest, healthiest, and longest-lived people alive today. There’s a very worthwhile documentary called “Happy.” It interviews social scientists who’ve been studying happiness and travels the earth to find examples of truly happy cultures, trying to answer the question “what makes human beings happy?” (Hint: the common assumptions that lots of money, beautiful appearance and status can make us happy turn out to be wrong!)  One group that brims over with joy in the film are the Okinawans, both young and old, who have a strong sense of community and a simple diet and way of li…

The Real Problem Isn’t One Toxin It’s the Total Load Most people worry about a single exposure: a chemical in food, something in tap water, or an ingredient in toothpaste. But the real issue is cumulative toxic load. Small exposures add up. And when they exceed your body’s detox capacity, the excess must be stored somewhere usually in tissues and fat cells. Over time, this buildup can affect: energy levels resilience to stress immune efficiency metabolic balance long-term health outcomes Why Toxins Accumulate in the Body Your body is designed to detoxify. The liver processes compounds so they can be eliminated through urine, stool, sweat, and breath. However, detox systems can become overwhelmed when: exposure is constant nutrition is insufficient stress is high sleep is poor physical activity is low When detox pathways are overloaded, toxins are temporarily stored instead of eliminated. The Liver: Your Primary Detox Organ The liver is the body…

. . . What's the difference? If you get the 25(OH)D test for vitamin D status that we urge everyone to get, you’re likely to find you’re deficient. It’s also likely your doctor will offer you a prescription for Drisdol, a synthetic form of vitamin D. Thank your doctor, but call us rather than fill that prescription. Drisdol is vitamin D2, a form of vitamin D that is less effective than vitamin D3 (the form of vitamin D we carry) and may even be harmful. There are two basic forms of vitamin D – vitamin D2 and vitamin D3. D3 (cholecalciferol) is the preferred form. It’s what’s made in our skin from sunlight; it’s also found in eggs, organ meats, animal fat and fish oil. Vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) is synthesized by irradiating yeast or fungi. It isn’t generally found in the human body. Because it’s easier and less expensive to manufacture, D2 is the form most often used for food fortification and in medications. But it’s more di…

Sometimes the simplest health practices are the most powerful.  Unfortunately we tend to forget or minimize them as we run after the latest supplement du jour.  But if you want strong immune protection against the COVID-19 virus, getting plenty of pure water is critical. Even a small amount of dehydration will negatively affect all the chemistry in your body. Yet studies show that most people are chronically dehydrated, especially over the age of fifty. In addition, we’re all under extra stress these days, and stress itself is dehydrating.  Here are eight ways staying well-hydrated supports your immune system: Almost all biochemical reactions involve water, and every cell depends upon water to wash away waste and toxins (including viruses) and to supply nutrients.  Your immune system relies on your bloodstream to transport oxygen and other nutrients and important communication signals to your organs. This transportation is less efficient when…

. . . a rebounder could be just what you need! Some of you may have conditions that greatly limit your ability to exercise. Arthritis, a “bad back”, sciatica, severe fatigue, frailty, considerable excess weight and other handicaps can make you feel that exercise is beyond you. In such cases, doing infrared saunas can provide some of the benefits of exercise, not just the sweating, which is so beneficial to detoxification, but also by dilating blood vessels, saunas improve circulation and reduce blood pressure. If you’re trying to lose excess weight, saunas can burn up to 600 calories in just half an hour! Meanwhile, they can improve energy and alleviate joint stiffness. But no matter what condition you’re in, moving is still important for you. Spending a few minutes several times a day moving what you can move comfortably and easily – never pushing yourself into pain – is extremely valuable and can lead to gradually extending your range of movement.…

. . . time to retire this old saw Although you’ll still hear the old saw about getting all the nutrition you need from food, in fact it’s virtually impossible today. (For the reasons why, see my report, The Roadmap to Choosing Supplements.) More and more establishment sources are calling a multivitamin a necessity. Case in point is the lead researcher in a new study from Harvard on multivitamins and cancer, J. Michael Gaziano, MD, MPH, who said in a recent news briefing, “Our main message is that the main reason to take a multivitamin is to prevent nutritional deficiency.” This study, by the way, which followed 15,000 men over the age of 50 for four years, found  that taking a low-cost multivitamin reduced their risk of getting cancer by 8% (prostate cancer by 12%). Those are good results, but just imagine what that percentage could be on one of our high-quality multis plus the vitamin C and essential fatty acids found in the Basic Wellness Kit! In addition…

Kale is a sturdy winter green that is chock full of nutrition. Combining olive oil with kale is a nutrient bonanza! Both supply lots of phytonutrients (kale alone provides over 45 different flavonoids) and antioxidants. As well as being higher than most green vegetables in vitamin C, kale is rich in carotenoids, like eye-healthy lutein, zeaxanthin and beta-carotene, and in vitamin K; olive oil facilitates the absorption of these fat-soluble nutrients. Kale also contains several times as much calcium as milk per calorie, and about half as much per unit of volume; the bioavailability of calcium from kale is better than from pasteurized milk. SIMPLE KALE SALAD Ingredients: 1 bunch of dinosaur kale (it’s less bitter than curly kale). 3 tablespoons Beyond Health Olive Oil Pinch or two of Selina Celtic Sea Salt Juice from 1 lemon Serves 2 unless you add more ingredients In a large bowl, combine kale, olive oil, lemon juice and sea salt. Massage kale with your hands for a few minutes un…