Have you been to a local farmer's market lately? By being outside in the fresh air, surrounded by nature's colorful bounty and the good people who spend their lives tending farms and growing nutritious produce, you already feel healthier and inspired to include more delicious fruits and vegetables in your diet. Using your recently purchased produce to make lunch when you get home is a reminder of how much tastier (and healthier) fresh fruits and vegetables are. Health exists along a continuum, from near-death all the way to bursting-with-energy optimal health. Including more fresh fruits and vegetables in our diets is a major way to keep moving along that continuum towards greater vitality, strength, endurance, mental clarity and optimistic mood. Still, getting in fresh produce each day and adhering to a plant-based diet can feel like a hurdle. Including more fruit isn't hard - just remember to buy it and keep it where it's visible and handy. Fruit is the original…

If you’re between the ages of 23 and 38, you’re one of the nearly 73 million people in the US classified as “millennial.”  And chances are you think, like 83% of millennials, that you’re in excellent health. Think again! A 2019 report from Blue Cross Blue Shield indicates trouble is brewing beneath the surface. It found that millennials had far worse health than the previous Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1980). In fact, millennials are experiencing an unprecedented decline in their health when they reach their late 20s—sharply declining at age 27. This is alarming and unprecedented! The report showed that from 2014 to 2017 millennials, in just three years, experienced double-digit increases of eight of the top ten medical conditions. Millennials had 21% more cardiovascular problems, 18% more major depression, 37% more hyperactivity, 19% more diabetes, 15% more endocrine problems, 11% more “tobacco use disorder” and 11% more disease overall. Mill…

Our mission at Beyond Health is to help our customers go “beyond health.” This means going beyond what most people consider healthy.  Most people say they’re healthy if they’re basically functional: able to get up out of bed in the morning, hold a job, go to school, or take care of a family, and make some time for fun.  They may be plagued by allergies, digestive issues, headaches, fatigue, excess weight they can’t seem to lose, bad skin or hair, or other problems, and they may buy an over-the-counter medication to deal with one or more of these things, but they’ll still consider themselves healthy. Or, when they get a bit older and develop aches and pains, cognitive deficits, and diseases like arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes and heart disease, they “manage” their problems with prescription drugs and continue to say that they’re healthy.  We’ve known people on six different medications who consider themselves healthy! Then with old age, come full-fledged dis…

“Virtually every human being on earth can now be considered physiologically and biochemically polluted by human-made chemicals.” — Toxicologist James Siow, MD, PhD, of the Australian National Institute of Integrative Medicine. We’re all in toxic overload, and this is having a disastrous effect on our health! The body has wonderful detoxification systems, but they’re being overwhelmed by the unprecedented number of man-made chemicals they’re forced to deal with.  According to toxicologist James Siow , with our current exposure to toxins, the average individual can process and excrete only about 40-60% of the toxins they’re exposed to. The remainder bio-accumulates in tissues and organs, doing more and more damage over time. According to a 2016 report commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO ), about one quarter of the global disease burden and more than one third of the burden among children is due to modifiable environmental factors.…

"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet, and the winds long to play with your hair." -- Khalil Gibran Before reading any further, if you want to laugh and feel good about life for a few minutes, please click on this great video produced by nature-rx.org. The video tells us what scientists have recently started to document, and what we’ve known intuitively all along: Our relationship with nature is fundamental to our well-being. Nature heals and restores us, mentally, physically and spiritually. Without adequate “vitamin N,” we are somehow lost, disconnected from life and from ourselves, and this impacts us on every level, including having negative effects on our physical and emotional health. In fact, some doctors are beginning to prescribe “nature” to their patients, and some researchers are trying to determine what exact “dose” of time spent in nature would be optimal! So as we look this month at re-creating ourselves through rest and recreation, it is f…

Children’s energy and zest for living make us adults feel alive and joyful. They seem to epitomize good health. But appearances can be deceiving. Like most Americans today, our children are suffering from poor nutrition and toxicity, the two causes of disease. And while children may appear invulnerable, nutrient deficiencies and toxic exposures are taking a silent and sometimes not-so-silent toll. The truth is that even though the knowledge exists to raise strong, healthy children, it is difficult to find a truly healthy child. Child poverty is a significant problem in the US, but even the children of affluent and highly-educated parents have multiple nutrient deficiencies based on government standards, which are already too low. Meanwhile, chemical use in America has gone up 2,000% over the past half century. More than 85,000 synthetic chemicals (only a tiny fraction of which have been tested for safety in humans) are now found in our air, water, soil, food, household furnish…

How do you get your family to adopt better health habits?  At Beyond Health we get this question a lot, especially from people who’ve read one of Raymond Francis’s books and have become convinced they want to make some major changes in their lifestyle.  Here are some ideas. First, make time to talk with your spouse or other adult members of the family about your family’s health and what you’ve been learning. They may be “ripe for the picking” and enthusiastic about your ideas. Or they may be ready to make some changes, and not others. You may be excited about going raw and vegan; they may want hot, cooked meals for dinner. You may want to refuse vaccinations for your children; they may want to do more research first before taking such an unpopular stance. Encourage them to empower themselves by reading Raymond Francis’s book The Great American Health Hoax, so it’s not just you who’s supplying information. The Maintenance List chapter alone is worth the price of the boo…

. . . this silly article will scare some people into injuring their health Every so often the otherwise commendable Consumer Reports (CR) goes on an uncharacteristic rant about vitamins that is marked by ignorance, extreme bias, distortion of the facts and downright mean-spiritedness. In the new “Vitamins and Supplements, 10 Dangers That May Surprise You,” they’re at it again. The first “surprising danger” they cite is that “supplements are not risk-free.”  Well, no surprise there. Few things are completely risk free. The supplement industry has more than its share of charlatans and amateurs. But CR lumps everyone together, blaming all supplements it seems for the 6,300 supplement-related reports to the government’s Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) in the last 4 years, including 115 deaths. Now, although half the US population takes supplements, there hasn’t been a single death from vitamins in the last 27 years. Many of these adverse events and deaths have had to do with…

. . . with an infrared sauna Toxins are often responsible for common complaints like lack of energy, achy joints, brain fog, nausea, headaches, poor immunity, allergies, vision problems, and PMS – complaints that can foreshadow more serious illnesses. Scientists estimate that everyone alive today carries within their bodies at least 700 chemical contaminants. Doris J. Rapp, MD, past president of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine and author of Our Toxic World: A Wake Up Call, warned, “Everybody in this country needs to be detoxified because we’ve all become ‘toxic dumpsites.’” There are only two causes of disease:  nutrient deficiency and toxicity.  So it just makes sense to detox. The best way I’ve found is with an infrared sauna. Water-soluble toxins pass through the body relatively easily, but fat-soluble chemicals can persist and accumulate in our tissues for decades, doing more and more damage year after year. It’s difficult to get these fat-soluble toxins…

. . . the hose that extinguishes the fire of inflammationHealth begins in the gut - the intestines; and, thanks to antibiotics, chlorinated water, bad diet, food allergens, and vaccinations, almost everyone has a major problem in their gut. Chronic gut inflammation, raging like an out-of-control forest fire, causes digestion issues, skin eruptions, weak immunity, allergies, autoimmune illness and a host of other health issues. The Vitamin C Flush is the fire hose needed to subdue the flames so the gut can begin to heal itself.There are many factors today that irritate the lining of the gut, which by the way, is where 70% of our immune system resides. Antibiotics kill beneficial bacteria, allowing pathogenic bacteria to proliferate and produce toxins that damage the gut wall. Chlorine in our water is an irritant. A diet of processed and fast foods is an inflammation-producing diet; the Big Four are major inflammation inciters - sugar, wheat and refined flour, processed oils and dairy/ex…

... from weight loss to cancer preventionWhether you want to lose a few pounds, prevent or reverse diabetes, protect your bones, reduce blood pressure and heart disease risk, or boost your immunity and fight cancer, balsamic vinegar can help.Weight Loss and Blood Sugar RegulationJapanese researchers found that giving 1 or 2 tablespoons of vinegar to obese subjects for 12 weeks significantly reduced body weight, visceral fat, BMI, waist circumference and triglyceride levels. Researchers at Arizona State University found that people who took a tablespoon of vinegar with lunch and dinner lost an average of two pounds over 4 weeks. Vinegar helps with weight loss by keeping blood sugar levels from spiking and improving insulin resistance, which also helps prevent, reverse or manage diabetes. In fact, the Arizona researchers noted that vinegar may be as effective as the medications acarbose and metformin (glucophage) in controlling blood sugar.Mineral Absorption and Bone HealthVinegar helps…

. . . a special deal on 3 empowering books We have to give up on the idea that flu shots and medications are going to compensate for poor health. They not only don't compensate, they invariably make things worse, if not right away then long-term. But it's far from a hopeless situation! Although it takes some consciousness and effort to be healthy, almost everyone today suffers from an excess of powerlessness when it comes to health. We've been sold a bill of goods saying that we can't take charge of our health and be as healthy and vibrant as we want to be. The food and drug industries might like us to believe it, but it's just not true! You can take charge. Health is a choice you can make, but you have to know how. That's why I've written my three books: Never Fear Cancer Again, Never Be Sick Again and Never Be Fat Again.  Although all three present my one disease, two causes, six pathways model, each book has its own contribution to make to your self-empowerment and contains…