REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Back in the mid-80s, when I was deathly ill, struggling to save my life and working to restore my health, almost every supplement I took made me sick. I got sick because my chemical sensitivities were being triggered by the low quality, poor combinations of ingredients and toxicity of most supplements. I had to learn the hard way that most supplements are junk. I looked for a reliable source to supply me with all that I needed to get well. I couldn’t find one. This is why I created one to help you; it’s called Beyond Health. In today’s world, nutritional supplements are a necessity, but choosing supplements can be a daunting experience. Going to a vitamin or health-food store, and selecting what your body needs and which brands to choose, can bewilder almost anyone. This is exactly how I felt when I made my first visits to such establishments, given the number of brands and different types of supplements. I didn’t know what…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Do you get enough iodine in your diet? Every cell in the body uses iodine; it affects the production of all the body’s hormones, and even has anticancer properties. Iodine deficiency contributes to increased infant mortality, chronic fatigue, fibrocystic diseases, infertility, impaired growth, impaired immunity, and autoimmune disorders such as Hashimoto’s and Graves disease. Iodine deficiency also causes mental retardation and poor academic performance—even a mild deficiency has been reported to reduce IQ by 10 to15 percent. Since antiquity, iodine deficiency has been associated with thyroid problems such as goiter. After the thyroid, the breast is the second largest user of iodine. Studies show that iodine deficiency coupled with excess estrogen and exposure to environmental chemicals leads to cancer. Given the importance of iodine to your health, are you getting enough? The National Health and Nutrition Examination Su…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Throughout the history of humankind, people have done some strange things. Perhaps one of the strangest of all is that half of all American adults voluntarily take poison on a daily basis. We call these poisons prescription drugs. They are making us sick and slowly killing us, but people are taking them anyway in the mistaken belief that they are being helped. More than half of Americans over age 65 take multiple drugs per day, causing an appalling calamity of disease, suffering and death. Properly prescribed prescription drugs are the acknowledged third-leading cause of death in America. Hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of injuries could be prevented every year if we were to just say “no” to drugs. Almost every prescription drug is harmful in some way, and when you take more than three drugs, no one in the world understands what is going on in your body. It throws your body into biochemical chaos, and chaos is t…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Modern medicine ranks cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death, killing almost a million people per year. Yet heart disease used to be a rare disease, and it is almost entirely preventable and reversible— no one should have this disease. The heart is a pump, beating about 100,000 times a day, pushing blood through 60,000 miles of pipes (blood vessels). It is important to keep the pump in good operating condition and to keep the pipes clean and unobstructed. Mother Nature knows how to do this and do it well—it is we who screw it up by causing deficiency and toxicity. The heart is a hardworking organ, and in order to function well, it requires large amounts of essential nutrients and energy daily. Since most Americans are nutrient deficient, this helps explain our epidemic of heart disease. For the most part, heart disease is a nutritional‐deficiency disease, which is reasonably simple to prevent as well as revers…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Russell L. Blaylock, M.D Over 460,000 people per year are now dying of a disorder called sudden cardiac death according to CDC statistics. This is a condition striking otherwise healthy people, who have experienced no obvious symptoms of heart disease prior to their deaths. An alarming number of these deaths are occurring in young athletes, both in high schools, colleges, as well as among professional athletes. While cardiologists have found coronary disease and suspect previous scars from silent heart attacks in a number of these individuals, one mechanism is getting no attention at all, and that is excitotoxic damage caused by food additives and the artificial sweetener aspartame. This is despite growing evidence that the excitotoxic mechanism plays a major role in cardiac disease. Previously, it was thought that excitotoxin food additives, such as monosodium glutamate and aspartic acid in aspartame, cause their damage in the cardiova…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis What is MSM, and why should you care? A healthy body is made of healthy cells, and healthy cells need sulfur. It is essential that the body have a plentiful supply of this mineral in its usable form. MSM (Methyl sulfonyl methane) is an organic form of sulfur that is easily absorbed and utilized by the body. It is a naturally‐occurring compound that is found in many foods including meat, seafood, fruits and vegetables. MSM plays an essential role in heavy metal detoxification. It mitigates allergies, reduces joint pain, improves digestive ailments, alleviates emphysema and helps with diabetes. MSM is found in every cell in the body, and because sulfur is so important, supplementing with MSM is a good idea, especially for people over age 50. Some say we don’t need to supplement because MSM is found in so many foods. However, storage, cooking and processing destroy MSM, so most of us need to supplement. Sulfur is an essenti…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis AIDS is only one small part of the largest epidemic in history, the epidemic of immune dysfunction disease that is sweeping the planet. This pandemic is affecting not only humans, but marine mammals, birds, fish, frogs, and virtually all living creatures. Because this epidemic doesn't yet have a name, I call it 20th Century Syndrome. The reason this epidemic is going unrecognized is that we give it a variety of conflicting and confusing names including: AIDS, allergies, asthma, arthritis, chronic fatigue, chemical sensitivities, chronic herpes, chronic hepatitis, eczema, Grave's Disease, lupus, migraine, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma, Sjogren's Syndrome, and other immune dysfunction diseases. Immune dysfunction syndromes are complex. They affect every system in the body, and have no single cause. They result from a combination of factors including poor nutrition, toxic overload, chronic distress, and antigenic overload. A…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Mother Nature is so wonderful. It automatically provides us with all the things we need to be healthy. Our job is to recognize this and work with nature. Instead, the norm in the modern culture is to work against nature, which is why we have so much disease. One of the wonders of nature is a spice called turmeric. Turmeric is a member of the ginger family, and it is used as a yellow food coloring and as a traditional Indian curry spice. It has also been used as a traditional medicine in Egypt and India for at least 6000 years. The biologically active ingredient in turmeric is called curcumin. Curcumin makes up about 2-to- 3 percent of the turmeric and consists of a number of biologically active compounds called curcuminoids. Modern research has found curcumin to be an amazing substance that both helps to prevent and reverse numerous diseases, including cancer. A wealth of scientific data now shows that curcumin has powerful…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Alcohol has been woven into the fabric of human culture for millennia, but for millions of Americans alcohol has become something more—it has become the center of their lives. The U.S. Office of Technology Assessment estimates that alcohol abuse may add $150 billion to our health-care costs, and cause over $50 billion in losses in the workplace. Alcohol is involved in 50% of our traffic fatalities, 64% of suicides, 86% of murders, 50% of rapes, 69% of drownings, and 83% of burn victims. Despite this destruction, more and more young people are abusing alcohol every year. Low doses of alcohol can both relax and exhilarate, and a glass of wine with a meal doesn't appear harmful. But at higher doses it can impair and stupefy. Alcohol is extremely toxic to virtually every organ system. Alcohol poisons and impairs the function of the brain, heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, gut, and pancreas. It depresses the central nervous system a…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Last May, the World Health Organization issued a report warning that common diseases are popping up in incurable strains. "We are standing on the brink of a global crisis in infectious diseases," said Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima, WHO's director general. The report warns that the spread of untreatable infections is threatening to undermine modern advances in health care. In an amazing display of candor, the report said that the reason for the increase in drug resistant microbes is the "inappropriate use of antibiotics." The report went on to say that in the developed countries the overuse of antibiotics and other prescription drugs has weakened people's immune systems. In short, we are facing an infectious disease crisis because antibiotics have produced super bugs and also damaged our immune systems. A Rand Corp. study concluded that up to 32% of all disease is caused by physicians, and this estimate is conservative. How is thi…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Here's a wakeup call for all Americans—local anesthetics are one of our major cancer risks! Local anesthetics are among the tens of thousands of man-made chemicals we have introduced into our environment. Many of these are known to be toxic and even carcinogenic. Unfortunately, we know little about what each of these chemicals do in our bodies and have almost no understanding of how they all interact. Tragically our medical professionals, who are supposed to know better, are responsible for putting some of these chemicals, including local anesthetics, directly into our bodies. What we do know is cancer has become the leading cause of death for Americans ages 35 to 53, and in just a few years, according to the American Hospital Association, will become the leading cause of death for all Americans. We need to ask why this is happening. New information on how local anesthetics metabolize in our bodies is genuinely alarming.…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis According to the United States Centers for Disease Control, asthma rates in the U.S. have increased 75% since 1984. In fact, all the industrialized countries have experienced a sharply increasing rate of asthma mortality in the last 10 to 15 years. The CDC now estimates more than 15 million Americans suffer from asthma, and the number of deaths per year has nearly doubled since 1976. While genetic factors are important in asthma, they simply can't explain the increases we have been experiencing. Asthma is primarily an allergic disorder and it manifests as a reversible obstruction of the airway resulting from inflammation. In each person, unique factors trigger a hyper-responsive state producing both immediate and delayed allergic reactions. Acute episodes of asthma can be triggered by diverse stimuli including air pollution, tobacco smoke, exercise, viral infections, emotional factors, cold air, and a variety of allergens.…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Diabetes is a disease condition distinguished by an inability to control blood-sugar levels, due to insufficient production of or heightened resistance to the hormone insulin. Interestingly, diabetes researchers induce diabetes in laboratory animals by feeding them small doses of a chemical called alloxan. Alloxan poisons insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, killing those cells and thus creating the conditions of diabetes. Knowing this, imagine the surprise of Dr. Alfred Nickel, an oral surgeon with degrees in biochemistry and pharmacology, who discovered in the scientific literature that alloxan is produced in the body from caffeine. Dr. Nickel theorized that caffeine could be a significant cause of diabetes in humans. People who consume a lot of caffeine will produce a lot of alloxan; this could cause diabetes or make existing diabetes worse. Dr. Nickel was a heavy coffee drinker himself and had also developed adult d…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis When we exercise it promotes our healing, boosts our immunity, improves circulation, and enhances overall health. But prolonged and intense exercise, like that of high-performance athletes, can actually reduce immune function and damage bodily tissues. Athletes push their bodies to the limit, and this creates special needs that go beyond what a typical person requires. To optimize performance, you must give the human machine all the raw materials it needs for proper function, while simultaneously preventing exposure to anything that interferes. Extraordinary physical activity produces a special situation: An increase in physical performance demands more raw materials than sedentary activity; this same increase in activity creates a multitude of toxins which require even more raw materials to detoxify. Those who provide for these specialized needs will improve their performance, while minimizing damage to their health. If yo…

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis Cancer is probably the single most feared disease in America, and with good reason. Our cancer rate has been steadily increasing. From 1973 to 1987, lung cancer increased by 32% and is now the leading cancerous killer for both men and women. During this same period, melanoma increased 83% and non- Hodgkin's lymphoma by 51%. Despite the expenditure of more than 50 billion dollars on cancer research, the percentage of cancer patients who die from cancer has remained essentially unchanged. We have got little value for our money, and the standard cancer treatments of radiation and chemotherapy almost always do more harm than good. In the face of this colossal failure, with billions of dollars squandered, even cancer experts are beginning to say that we should pay attention to prevention instead of treatment. Cancer is an extremely complex, multifactorial disease which no one fully understands. This said, there are at least some…

. . . with an infrared sauna Some pesticides take up residence in human fatty tissue, where they persist and accumulate year in and year out. According to chemical sensitivity expert Dr. William Rea, two organochlorine pesticides are detected in the average person, whereas those with multiple chemical sensitivities will generally have three or more. According to the Pesticide Action Network, although many of the worst organochlorine pesticides, like DDT, have been banned for decades, they continue to show up in food samples tested by the US Food and Drug Administration. These chemicals are associated with many chronic diseases including various types of cancer, neurological damage (several are known neurotoxins) Parkinson’s disease, birth defects, respiratory illness, and abnormal immune system function. Low levels in the womb can cause damage to the reproductive, neurological and immune systems of the developing fetus. The best way to eliminate organochlorine pesticides from…

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 correct the causes of disease. Instead,…

. . . with antioxidants Want to never get Parkinson’s Disease? Avoid pesticides! Many studies have shown a connection between pesticides and brain damage. Because it’s impossible to avoid all pesticides (some even make their way into organic produce), the best way to protect yourself is by minimizing your exposure where you can and then getting plenty of antioxidants, like vitamins C and E and curcumin. Diazinon is a common organophosphorus pesticide. Like other pesticides, it damages the brain and nervous system with free radicals causing lipid peroxidation (fats in cell membranes become oxidized, or “rusted”). It has been linked with Parkinson’s Disease and other neurological problems. A 2012 study found that exposing rats to diazinon caused this kind of free radical damage to their brains. But rats who were protected with vitamin C and vitamin E had reduced levels of lipid peroxidation damage and their antioxidant status actually improved. In a later study, curcumin a…