... 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…

. . . 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…

. . . recent study sheds light on benefits of fasting to overall health Historically, fasting has been associated with religious rituals, political protests, and fad diets. However, research over the past decade suggests a larger, more significant role of fasting—commonly referred to as intermittent fasting (IF)—for losing weight and improving overall health. Scientists have known since the 1940s that IF promotes weight loss. Yet, it has only recently become popular as a diet plan since it’s re-introduction to the public in 2012 after the release of a book on the subject. Intermittent fasting does not equal “skipping a meal” IF is a form of calorie restriction. The premise isn’t to simply reduce calorie intake daily, or skip a meal here or there. But rather, to alternate days of eating one’s normal food intake with days of eating a reduced amount of calories during a specific window of your day…while choosing not to eat during the rest of that day. Two popular types o…

A growing body of exciting new research supports the old adage, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper, especially the “dinner like a pauper” part. It seems that human physiology works best when we consume most of our calories early in the day and have a light meal at night. And if you’re trying to lose weight, two studies have shown that when the number of calories consumed, energy spent and sleeping times were kept constant, dieters who ate a big breakfast or lunch lost considerably more weight than those who saved their calories for a big dinner. A Spanish study recruited 420 overweight/obese men and women to follow a 1,400 calorie per day diet for 5 months. However half of the group ate their main meal before 3:00 p.m., while the other half ate theirs after 3:00 p.m.. Those eating early lost an average of 22 pounds; the late eaters lost an average of 17. In a second study, 93 overweight/obese women with metabolic syndrome (a constellation…

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’…

As we all know, weight loss is a HUGE market. There are 1,001 products and programs out there that promise to help our increasingly obese nation shed excess pounds. But, as Raymond Francis pointed out in his breakthrough book, Never Be Fat Again, most of them miss the mark. The only truly effective way to lose weight and keep it off is by addressing excess weight as a health issue. By shifting your focus to becoming truly healthy, the pounds fall off by themselves or are lost with minimal effort. Our bodies were built to be self-regulating. When each one of our cells is operating as it should, our appetites are regulated to eat only what we need; our thyroid glands regulate metabolism so that we burn most of the calories we consume as energy to maintain body temperature and to use as fuel; and many other body systems that affect weight, such as blood sugar, hormone balance, and pH, are regulated as well. The result? An ideal weight. So the trick to losing weight and keeping it o…

Who wants to bet that a thick, juicy steak would satisfy your appetite more completely than a bowl of beans and peas? If you bet on the steak, you would be wrong. A recent study proved it. The reason beans and peas were more satisfying?  Fiber! Researchers fed 43 healthy, normal-weight young men a pork/veal dinner. The meal was 19% protein, 53% carbohydrate and 28% fat, and supplied 6 grams of fiber. The men’s appetites were then scored every half hour for the next three hours. At that point, they were given a second meal and told to eat as much as they wanted. The next day, the same men were fed the same meal, except that the meat was replaced by beans and peas. Although the percentages of protein, carbohydrate and fat were the same as in the first meal, the fiber content was now 25 grams.  The men’s appetites were again monitored, and after three hours they were given a second meal and told to eat as much as they wanted. The results? The men reported being less h…

Quercetin is a plant compound found in fruits & vegetables, especially apples, onions, and tea. It makes so many different contributions to good health that at Beyond Health we consider it a foundational supplement that everyone should take. It’s hard to think of a body system or chronic disease that quercetin will not help. Quercetin is especially useful if you’re trying to recover your health or just don’t feel as youthful & energetic as you’d like. Quercetin also helps fight the battle of the bulge!  If you’re overweight, it not only can help you lose excess weight, it can also minimize some of the damage done by excess body fat. Healthy body fat and harmful body fat Having some fat is healthy, but when too much body fat accumulates, its composition changes, and it becomes a harmful source of chronic inflammation. This inflammation does two things. First, it damages the metabolism of the fat cells, which makes them resist being broken down as energy.  So,…

Life is hard enough without making losing weight more difficult than it needs to be.  Some helpful scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School proved that you don’t need to restrict calories or saturated fat to lose weight as long as you’re getting adequate dietary fiber! These scientists found 240 pre-diabetic patients and assigned them to one of two groups. The first group followed a weight-loss diet that restricted calories and saturated fat. The second group was simply asked to get at least 30 grams of fiber daily from a high-fiber diet, including plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Neither group was asked to change their exercise habits. At the end of one year, both groups had lost the same amount of weight.  In addition, both groups had had similar drops in cholesterol, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and inflammation.  In other words, both groups reduced their risk factors similarly for diabetes…

Our bodies are designed to maintain us at a weight that is perfect for us (although perhaps not perfect by fashion model standards) by telling us when we’re hungry, what we’re hungry for, and when we’ve had enough. But while some people just naturally eat this way, many of us have become desensitized to our body’s signals and need to relearn Intuitive Eating (IE).In the past twenty years, IE has been the subject of many of scientific studies. They’ve found that rejecting diets, being supported to love and accept ourselves as we are and learning to trust our own intuition when it comes to food choices lead to substantial gains in emotional well-being and quality of life. IE also greatly reduces risks for compulsive eating, binge eating and other eating disorders, and it’s been linked to lower weight, lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels independent of weight loss, and increased glycemic control in type 2 diabetes. For those who are re-learning IE, Dr. Steven C. Straus, MD, sugge…

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…

Use it or lose it. No where is this more true than with our joints. Joint stiffness, joint pain, and a loss of range of motion has less to do with age than it has to do with lack of use.Our lives often lead us to a lot of sitting, which means our joints are not moving. How often do we allow our ankles, our knees, our hips to go through a full range of motion? Probably not often enough.When we have joint stiffness, joint aches, and joint pain it takes much more effort to do the simplest of activities, discouraging us from doing the very thing that will make us feel better.How do we break this cycle and make our joints be the levers that spring us into the joys of a more active life? Here are 8 simple tips to reduce joint pain and joint stiffness and fuel a more active life with less pain and more excitement. With each of these suggestions, make little improvements at a time. Gradual improvements allow our muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones to strengthen as they t…

A major reason we slow down as we age is that we’re carrying around a lifetime’s accumulation of toxins. When toxins coming in exceed our ability to detoxify and eliminate them, they get stored in our fat cells and in our liver. Toxins can remain for years—often a lifetime. These stored toxins constitute a “toxic load,” stealing our energy, compromising liver and immune functions, damaging DNA, and exerting other harmful effects. Lightening your toxic load will make you feel a lot younger, more energetic and just BETTER. In addition, toxicity is one of the two causes of disease (the other being nutritional deficiency). So the more you detoxify, not only the better you’ll feel today, the more disease you’ll prevent in your future! Of course, it’s best to avoid toxins as much as you can in the first place . Raymond Francis, Beyond Health’s founder, wrote at length in his books about how to avoid toxins in food, water, supplements, medications, h…

Gut HealthOne good thing about getting older is that we generally become more self-accepting, warts and all.  And if we’re getting a little paunchier in our mid-sections, in the broad scheme of things it’s just not the big deal it would have been in our greener years. Besides, as my good friend Alice says, “everybody’s fat now.” But cosmetic issues aside, gaining fat is an indication that our cells are in trouble. The fact that we’re hardly alone in this predicament doesn’t mean it’s not something to be concerned about. A spreading middle means we’re headed in the wrong direction—the direction of premature aging and chronic disease. Fat cells produce inflammatory chemicals, and chronic inflammation is a common denominator of chronic disease. Being overweight increases your risk of high blood sugar and is the single best predictor of developing type 2 diabetes. High blood sugar causes glycation—a “sugar-coating” of proteins, and since our bodies are made of protein, gly…