The most common complaint bringing patients to doctors’ offices these days is low energy.  Most often, if you go in complaining of fatigue, after a battery of tests, you will be told there’s nothing wrong with you. Well, although it may not show up in their tests, there is something wrong! Low energy means not only that you don’t have the energy to do what you want to do; it means your body doesn’t have the energy to do what it needs to do to keep you healthy. In fact, the amount of energy your body can make may be the single most important measurement of your health. It’s important to get to the bottom of what’s going on.  (A doctor who specializes in functional medicine may find answers that conventional doctors don’t.) One of the most common reasons for low energy today is a sluggish liver. The liver is the largest and most hard-working gland in your body, performing over 500 essential functions, and when it isn’t up to par, every other system in your body suffers as a…

Climate change is making life tougher for those with allergies, but it’s possible to be allergy-free. A European study published online concluded that allergic reactions to ragweed (the most common cause of what is known as “hay fever”) are in fact getting worse; people who are already sensitive to ragweed are becoming more sensitive, and more and more people who never had problems before are becoming allergic. In fact, in 25-40 years, these researchers estimate the population of Europeans sensitive to ragweed will double, from 33 million to 77 million. Although this study was done in Europe, similar factors, associated with climate change, are at work here in the US. As explained by Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist at the US Department of Agriculture, warmer temperatures and higher levels of carbon dioxide have encouraged ragweed growth, producing a larger plant and about ten times more ragweed pollen. In addition, it appears that this pollen is a more potent allergen.The Europea…

Vitamin E is an essential fat-soluble vitamin that we can’t do without. It’s known primarily as an antithrombic, preventing blood clots inside blood vessels, and as the body’s primary fat-soluble antioxidant, offering significant protection to the heart, brain, skin and immune system.But as crucial as vitamin E is to our health, well-known vitamin E researcher Magrit G. Traber has reported that an estimated 90% or more Americans don’t consume enough dietary vitamin E to meet the minimal government standard of 12 milligrams (mg) a day. Meanwhile, health experts recommend hundreds of mg daily for optimal health. Vitamin E is found in whole grains, nuts, seeds, and healthy fats and oils, such as pure, extra-virgin olive oil. If you included all these good foods regularly in your diet, you would likely meet minimum government standards, but for optimal health Beyond Health recommends 400 IU (268 mg) a day, an amount that can only be feasibly consumed by taking a nutritio…

Facts don’t cease to exist just because they’re ignored – Aldous HuxleyThe above quote introduces nutritionist Ann Louise Gittleman’s book Zapped, about the invisible pollution that is increasing exponentially all around us — electromagnetic fields (EMFs). Nutrition — what we eat and the supplements we take — can play an important role in protecting ourselves from EMFs’ potentially damaging effects. But first, what are EMFs? Anything that produces energy, including the cells in our own bodies, radiates that energy outwards, creating a field of energy, an EMF, that diminishes exponentially as you move away from its source. Some EMFs are healing and some are harmful. The earth radiates healing energy, which is why “earthing” — standing or sitting barefoot, with the soles of your feet in direct contact with the earth — is a scientifically authenticated healing therapy. Other EMFs can be harmful, depending on their intensity and proximity. These include the radio freq…

How much vitamin C do you need?The government’s Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA)—90 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C per day for adult men and 75 mg per day for adult women—is enough to prevent scurvy, a potentially fatal disease in which the body literally falls apart due to vitamin C deficiency. (Vitamin C is needed for making collagen, an essential component of the connective tissue that holds the body together.)But vitamin C does a great many more things in our bodies than help us make collagen. In fact, it probably does more to keep you well and vital than any other molecule you can put into your body. Vitamin C is essential to: detoxificationrepair of injuryimmune functionour ability to handle stresshealthy hormone activityhealthy neurotransmitter functionenergy productioniron utilizationnitrous oxide functions (which help with energy and also with healthy blood pressure)healthy bone formation, andoptimal brain functionAnd to top it all off,…

Would you like to be smarter? Of course, you would! Who wouldn’t want to be able to bring laser-like attention to the task at hand, assess all the elements in a situation quickly, analyze how they interrelate, and remain wholeheartedly engaged and absorbed until any problem is solved creatively and effectively?Well, vitamin C supplementation can help with that, especially if you’re at all deficient — and most of us are!Recently, Korean scientists assembled a group of 241 healthy, young (ages 20-39) adults to see if their serum vitamin C levels correlated with their “mental vitality.” Indeed, it did. So the researchers went a step further. About half of these young Korean men and women had “inadequate” levels of the vitamin, which the researchers defined as being less than 0.88 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). Fifty of these vitamin C-insufficient subjects were invited to participate in a four-week experiment. Half of them took 500 mg of vitamin C twice a day, fo…

Good habits are essential in being able to live the lives we desire. Still, we tend to approach willpower not as something we can build up and strengthen but, instead, as an innate characteristic that we either have or don't. We further perceive bad habits as reflective of our lack of willpower. But, as many know, it's not so easy to break bad habits or to start new ones, like regular exercise or a daily meditation practice. Too often, attempts to change habits fail. Repeated failures can create the unintended pattern of failing, which leads to losing hope and believing we're incapable of change. So, the first consideration in changing habits is to establish the habit of success! How can you get started? Treat Willpower Like a Muscle The will is like a muscle that needs training to be strengthened. Imagine if you began weightlifting by trying to press 200 pounds! You would certainly fail. But most people set self-improvement goals that are similarly much too…

"What you repeatedly do (i.e. what you spend time thinking about and doing each day) ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe and the personality that you portray." - James Clear, author of the New York Times bestselling book Atomic Habits You find yourself falling into certain patterns day in and day out. These are your habits, whether you realize them or not. Some support you toward your goals, while others, it seems, get you bogged down in less-beneficial behaviors. Our habits define us, but what exactly are habits? Defining "Habit" A habit is formed when we perform a certain behavior repeatedly over time because it rewards us in some way. This continual repetition literally etches neural pathways in our brains, so that eventually we respond to a given trigger automatically and mostly unconsciously with that behavior. For example, triggered by a feeling of thirst, we seek out water or some other beverage to drink. Triggered by entering a dark room, we swi…

Life tends to feel like you're always on the go: You're reaching for a new goal at work, attempting to squeeze in more time for your family or hobbies, and then you address your health by going to the gym or another form of physical activity. Even if you do it all, the hectic pace catches up to you, and you notice how exhausted you feel over time. But why should it be either-or? Rather than pull back or surge forward while ignoring your health, understand how to effectively balance rest and activity. This year, Beyond Health is focusing on maximizing energy in order to do all the wonderful and amazing things you want to do with your life. But to maximize energy, you first need to balance activity with deep rest and relaxation, to give your body a chance to settle and become quieter, and to heal and regenerate.Understanding Balance in the BodyIn Chinese medicine, there are two principles that govern all life, yang and yin. Yang is dynamic, active, hard, brilliant, quick, courageous and…

Neurodegenerative disease occurs when nerve cells in the brain or nervous system lose function over time and ultimately die. Alzheimer's disease, which affects as many as 6.2 million Americans, is the most common neurodegenerative disease, but there are hundreds of others, including other dementias, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, Huntington's disease and Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS). All have potential to affect an individual's quality of life in varying degrees - be it changes in personality, performing daily tasks, maintaining employment or remembering current and past information. Development of one of these conditions often requires significant modifications, medical treatment and, long term, extensive care from family members or professionals. Although conventional medical treatments help relieve some of the physical and mental symptoms associated with neurodegenerative diseases, there is currently no way to slow disease progression and no known cures.Light Therapy Interve…

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurological condition. Although it may start out with something as simple as a tremor in a single finger, it can progress over the years to complete disability. Its hallmark is the dying off of brain cells that make the neurotransmitter dopamine. Without sufficient dopamine, movement becomes increasingly difficult and finally almost impossible. PD's non-motor symptoms include anxiety, depression, fatigue, insomnia and other sleep disorders, hallucinations, cognitive impairment and dementia. Although dopamine replacement and enhancement drugs can control motor symptoms for a while, they don't reverse or stop the underlying disease process. When these medications lose their effectiveness, a surgery may be done to control symptoms. But again, because the surgery doesn't address the underlying disease process, it too becomes less effective with time.However, a novel therapy addresses both symptoms and the disease process. Using Thiamine (…

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurological disease in which brain cells that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine gradually die off. The result is an increasing loss of control of motor functions and other non-motor symptoms. Although it doesn't usually show up until after the age of 60, PD can afflict younger people, too. A case in point is the popular actor Michael J. Fox, who noticed the first signs of PD when he was only 30 years old.What Is Parkinson's Disease?PD is a progressive neurological condition often starting with tremors. With time, the body can experience a combination of uncontrollable shaking, stiffness and slower movement and difficulty with balance and coordination. Speech, meanwhile, may start to sound slurred or softer than usual. These physical developments may be accompanied by changes in mood, memory, sleep and energy. These symptoms occur due to decreased amounts of neurons transmitting dopamine to your brain and tend to first be noticed after the…

Beyond Health’s approach to weight loss, presented in Raymond Francis’ Never Be Fat Again, (NBFA) is based on the theory of one disease and two causes. We say there is really only one disease—malfunctioning body cells, and two reasons why cells malfunction—they are deficient in needed nutrients and/or they are being poisoned by toxins. Overweight is a type of disease, and as better health is achieved, the body will naturally lose excess weight.Intuitive eating (IE) is an anti-diet approach to weight loss which seeks to help people regain a lost or weakened ability to “hear” and respond to body cues relating to hunger and satiation. Regaining this ability, it is hoped, will lead to losing excess weight. Both IE and NBFA agree that diets don’t work. Thought they can lead to short-term weight loss, most of this weight is regained over time. They also agree that diets are usually harmful and enforce the bad habit of overriding internal body cues. Following the strategies of IE that we…

Nothing is more important in creating optimal health than our habits. We all know that we should be exercising regularly, eating a sensible diet, getting a good amount of sleep, minimizing stress and ideally establishing some kind of stress-reduction practice. It’s the actual doing that’s the problem. Too many lofty goals fizzle out, leaving feelings of shame and incompetence in their wake.One secret to successfully adopting and integrating a good health habit into your life is to put the lofty goal(s) aside for the moment and focus on taking small, but consistent steps in the right direction.See this one-minute TED talk by sociologist Christine Carter, who successfully eased regular running into her life by starting out small. And I mean small. Her initial commitment was one minute a day! But she did it consistently, and gradually it turned into more and more minutes. Consistency was the key. Because every time she put on her running shoes in the morning she etched the new habit…

A primary concern that prompted Beyond Health's mission to improve the health of the American people was that he feared our epidemic of chronic disease would bankrupt our economy.Nowhere is this concern more justified than in the case of Alzheimer’s disease. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, in 2021, 6 million Americans have Alzheimer’s, one out of every three seniors dies with the disease or another dementia, and dementias will cost the nation $355 billion, including $239 billion in Medicare and Medicaid payments combined. Without a major scientific breakthrough, by 2050 the Association projects there will be 13 million Alzheimer's patients, costing more than $1.1 trillion (in 2021 dollars) annually.Yet, as we have described previously, Dr. Dale E. Bredesen at UCLA, who was influenced by Raymond and his two causes-six pathways theory of disease, has shown that Alzheimer’s is preventable and reversible if treated early enough and addressing multiple factors that may be involved…

PFAS (per- and profluoroalkyls) are a group of toxic man-made chemical compounds used in a variety of non-stick, water-repellent, and grease and stain-resistant applications. Detrimental to just about every body organ, they’ve been associated with a host of diseases including weakened immune function, cancer, and developmental problems in children.Unfortunately, PFOA, the best known of the PFAS, is found in just about all Americans, and has a half-life in humans of about four years. After a lot of bad press, PFOA and its close cousin, PFOS, were banned by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), so their levels in our bodies are going down. But they’re being rapidly replaced by new PFAS that, according to environmental advocacy organization, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), are just as bad. No level of PFAS is desirable in the human body. And since there doesn’t seem to be any way to facilitate their removal (even sweating in an infrared sauna didn’t help to…

For years, Beyond Health has recommended limiting fruit consumption to two pieces of fruit per day and avoiding fruit juice altogether. Although fresh fruit is a good source of nutrients, it’s also high in sugar, and sugar, even from healthy sources, can be detrimental if you get too much of it.Although a diet high in fruits and vegetables is often recommended for lowering blood pressure, studies have found that high fruit consumption is not associated with lowered blood pressure and can even cause elevations in blood pressure.How would eating fruit lead to higher blood pressure? It’s the sugar in the fruit that’s the problem.Fruit contains two kinds of sugar—50% glucose and 50% fructose. And they each impact blood pressure. High fructose corn syrup is also composed primarily of glucose and fructose—42% glucose and 55% fructose. Under normal, healthy circumstances, if you eat a piece of fruit, the glucose will cause sugar levels in your blood to rise somewhat. In response, the body pr…

Do you seem to catch every cold or flu going around? Do you have an ongoing infection, like the yeast infection candida, that you can’t get rid of?  Or do you have the opposite problem—an overactive immune system leading to allergies or to an autoimmune disease? Do you have, or have you had cancer?  These are all indications that your immune system isn’t protecting you as it should, and it’s likely that a primary reason for that is that you don’t have enough glutathione. Glutathione is a critical protein that your body produces. It can also be obtained from food and supplements.  Glutathione has been called “the mother antioxidant” because our antioxidant system can’t function without it. Neither can our detoxification system. And neither can our immune system. Glutathione has the following six essential roles in immune function: Glutathione patrols the bloodstream directly killing many pathogens before they can begin…