It’s been 12 years since Raymond Francis published his groundbreaking book, Never Be Sick Again (NBSA). At this point hundreds of thousands of dog-eared copies of this best seller are being used as trusted references for getting well and staying well. To incorporate all the new information that’s come out in the past decade, it was time for a revised edition. But Raymond wanted to create a new book with a more practical emphasis. The Great American Health Hoax will be available early in 2015. Like NBSA, it indicts the American “disease-care” system that focuses on alleviating symptoms at the expense of supporting the body’s inherent self-healing capacities. And, like NBSA, the new book presents a solution to the problem: Raymond’s one disease-two causes-six pathways model. But The Great American Health Hoax adds the equivalent of an automobile’s maintenance manual. Several “maintenance items” are introduced—health parameters we need to monitor. If they deviate too far f…

A credible scientist is worried about the high oxalic acid (aka oxalate) content in green drinks and vegetarian diets.  Should you be concerned?  Maybe. Oxalic acid is found in plant foods. It’s also produced by the body in the course of normal metabolism.  Pretty nasty stuff, it’s the most corrosive acid in the body, a pro-oxidant, and it can combine with most minerals and heavy metals to form oxalate crystals. The most well-known of these crystals are kidney stones, but, according to chemist William Shaw, PhD, formerly of the Centers for Disease Control, high levels of oxalate can form crystals just about anywhere in the body, including glands, heart and brain. Like tiny pieces of glass, these crystals cause tissue damage and inflammation and have been implicated in arthritis, fibromyalgia, interstitial cystitis and a painful condition in and around the vagina called vulvodynia. Fortunately the human body is well-equipped to dispose of oxalate. If you’re in go…

The major keys to supporting healthy blood sugar regulation are diet and exercise. Our primitive ancestors who were physically active and ate diets high in fiber and low in carbohydrates didn’t have to worry about blood-sugar problems. If we emulated them, neither would we. Refined sugar is the main dietary culprit. Many people think that they don’t eat much sugar because they don’t dip into the sugar bowl frequently. What they fail to appreciate is the enormous amount of sugar they get from desserts, baked goods and other treats, as well as from the 85 different forms of sugar found in processed foods, where sugar acts as a preservative, as well as to lure consumers with a sweet taste. Sugary soft drinks account for about 1/3 of sugar consumption in the US. Simply avoiding processed foods and soft drinks will go a long way towards eliminating added sugar in your diet and normalizing blood-sugar balance. If you must eat processed foods, check the label for the number of grams of…

How can you tell if you’re deficient in essential fatty acids (EFAs)? Here are some clues. There are two families of EFAs, the omega 6s and the omega 3s. Omega 6 Deficiency Dry, flakey skin is the cardinal sign that you aren’t getting enough omega 6, which maintains the skin barrier against excessive water loss. Your skin should be soft and velvety, but water loss can lead to “alligator skin,” “chicken skin,” thick patches of skin, cracked skin (especially on heels or fingertips), or frequent nosebleeds. Also look for brittle nails that break easily; dry eyes; dry, dull and unmanageable hair; dandruff or hair loss; itchy skin, eczema and other skin lesions. Canker sores in your mouth may be another sign. Water Loss can lead to excessive thirst. Other signs of deficiency include poor immunity, wounds that are slow to heal, PMS and other reproductive problems, kidney malfunction, joint pain and heart beat abnormalities. Omega 3 Deficiency Fatigue can be caused by many thin…

Allergic reactions are very taxing to the body (see Raymond Francis’ article, “The Shocking Truth About Allergies”) and getting them under control by reducing inflammation and restoring systemic alkalinity as soon as you can will not only make you more comfortable, it will minimize the serious damage that each allergic reaction causes to your overall health. Although if you’re prone to having anaphylactic type allergic responses, you should have an EpiPen handy, for most allergy attacks—itchy, tearing eyes; sneezing; congestion and fatigue—natural substances can do the job. Vitamin C and quercetin (Cell Repair Quercetin or Cell Repair Formula) are a powerful combination for subduing inflammation. Take maximum doses to nip those allergic reactions in the bud. For taking vitamin C “to bowel tolerance” click here for instructions. Allergic reactions make the body acidic, exacerbating inflammation and damage to body tissues. Many biochemical processes are hampered in an acidic…

As we arm ourselves for our battle with COVID-19, we must not forget zinc.  This is especially true for those over the age of 40, and the need increases with increasing age. According to the US Department of Agriculture, 73% of Americans are deficient in zinc, and deficiency is especially found in older people—even those who report taking zinc supplements.  Zinc is one of the foundation nutrients needed for building a strong immune system. Even a small deficiency can significantly impair immune function. Research over the past twenty years has shown that having adequate zinc reserves in cells inhibits replication of the coronavirus family of viruses, of which COVID-19 is a member. If a virus can’t replicate (reproduce itself), it can quickly and easily be eradicated by the immune system.  Zinc has also been shown to restore vigor to immune cells and to reduce excess inflammation. Controlling excess inflammation is extremely important in COVID-19 infections b…

Your body is harboring a couple of potential saboteurs! The words saboteur and sabotage come from French mill workers who would throw their wooden shoes, called sabots, into the machinery at work to make it break down or halt as a form of protest. The two potential saboteurs threatening to break down your body are inflammation and oxidation. Both are body processes that are helpful under normal circumstances, but if they get out of control, watch out!  If they’re allowed to develop into chronic inflammation and oxidative stress, they become health saboteurs of the first order and play a major role in every chronic disease, in problems with energy, and in the aging process itself. Unfortunately, almost everyone today is being damaged by these saboteurs. This is how it happens. Inflammation is the body’s response to injury, irritation or infection.  Cutting your finger, for example, will initiate an inflammatory process that enlarges blood vessels (the reason…

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,…

About one in 23 men and one in 25 women in the US will develop colon cancer during their lifetimes.  Although using colonoscopies to find and remove cancerous polyps has reduced the overall death rate from colon cancer, among people younger than age 55, deaths from colon cancer have increased 2 percent per year from 2007 and 2016. Could there be a relationship between colon cancer and the observation that almost all Americans are deficient in fiber?  We think so. So did a group of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, who joined forces with the University of KwaZulu in rural Africa to compare the diets of African Americans and rural Africans.  African Americans have especially high rates of colon cancer, 13 times higher than rural Africans; and the researchers hypothesized that the rural Africans’ high-fiber, low-fat diets had something to do with this. To test their ideas, the researchers compared the diets and also the microbiota (gut bugs) of a…

There’s a good reason why Asians who consume lots of curries retain sharp mental function and little cognitive decline with age. It’s turmeric, the spice that gives curries their golden color. More specifically, it’s the curcumin found in turmeric. The best way to maintain a healthy, highly functional brain is to prevent out-of-control brain oxidation (“brain rust”) and its partner in crime, brain inflammation (“brain on fire”). And one of the best supplements you can take to do this is curcumin, an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory that is uniquely beneficial to the brain. A recent double-blind, placebo-controlled trial done at UCLA found that when older adults with mild memory complaints were given just 180 milligrams of curcumin a day for a year and a half, they significantly improved their performance on memory and attention tests, enhanced their mood, and had less amyloid and tau (associated with Alzheimer’s disease) in the parts of their brains that control memory and…

“Controlling the triggers of age-related inflammation could extend healthspan.”–Yale School of Medicine. Allergies, arthritis, cancer, diabetes, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease—almost every American today is already suffering or will suffer at some point in their lifetimes from an inflammatory-related disease like these. But it doesn’t need to be that way! You can spot inflammation and subdue it before it gets out of control and leads to a chronic disease! What exactly is inflammation? Inflammation is the body’s healing response to injury, illness or infection. It brings heat and extra blood supplies where repairs are needed. After the job has been done, the inflammatory process should shut down.  But sometimes it doesn’t.  Instead, it smolders on, becoming chronic inflammation. Nutrient deficiencies and toxicities encourage chronic inflammatory fires that smolder and build until one day they flare up and burn out of control, producing disease. I…

The secret to erasing arthritic pain is reducing inflammation. This is because inflammation does two things: it produces the swelling and sensitivity that causes pain, and it releases chemicals that break down protective cartilage around your joints, which causes even more pain over time. So if you can reduce inflammation, you can both alleviate pain and disability now AND prevent further deterioration of your joints.  Anti-inflammatory drugs like Advil and Tylenol are generally recommended for this purpose, however every one of them has serious harmful side effects, one of them being long-term destruction of joint cartilage ! As the drugs cause your joints to continue to deteriorate, you will of course need more and more of the drug to manage your pain, and this will cause even more deterioration. The good news is that it’s possible to live a pain-free life even with advanced osteoarthritis! In fact, patients with no cartilage left to cushion one or m…

When I first found the second-floor flat in San Francisco that I’ve called home for the past 25 years, I was thrilled that it had a backyard and that I could see neighboring yards with trees and gardens as well as distant green hills from my back windows. I didn’t know then that scientists had begun investigating the benefits of nature and greenery to the human body and psyche. I just knew that looking out on or being in my backyard fed my soul.More recently, when a Chinese Massage (Chi Nei Tsang) therapist found my liver was tight and congested, she recommended a daily practice of looking at something living and green—as close as possible to the color of new grass—with my palm over my liver, and visualizing inhaling the color into my liver to soothe and heal it. Was it just my imagination or could I actually feel the color filling my liver, releasing and revitalizing it?As the world’s population has exploded, cramming more and more of us into crowded cities, we’re getting less and les…

"Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food." - Hippocrates Do your meals leave you feeling light and full of vitality, or do they weigh you down, making you feel sleepy and dull? Although all food supplies calories, how well your body utilizes those calories to provide you with energy depends on the "life force" in the foods you eat. And foods vary widely along a continuum in this respect, from producing vitality, rejuvenation and healing to sapping your energy, adding unwanted weight and contributing to premature aging and disease.Food also influences mood and mental abilities, from raising your spirits, making you optimistic and heightening your awareness and mental function to bringing you down and dulling your brain.A number of factors determine a food's vibration or life force. Overall, foods are most energizing and health-promoting when they're consumed raw, or as close as possible to their natural state. This gives pride of place to the multicolored fruits and vegetable…

You never feel like you have enough time. Your day seems like it just doesn't have enough hours, or you're too tired to tackle everything on your list. However, rather than attempt to speed up your pace or try another time management technique, consider addressing your sleep - specifically if and how much restorative sleep you're getting in each night. What Is Restorative Sleep?To operate at top energy and efficiency, getting a good night's sleep - seven to nine hours of "restorative sleep" that leaves you waking up feeling rested and refreshed - is essential.The body is self-healing, self-repairing and self-detoxifying - but only if it gets enough rest and sleep, because all this healing, repairing and detoxifying work is done when the body is at rest.To put it straightforwardly, when you wake up feeling alert, rested and ready to start your day, you've had a night of restorative sleep. Restorative sleep applies to the period lasting from deep sleep and rapid eye movement (REM), durin…

The Opioid Epidemic is big news these days. Committees are meeting to discuss ways to get Americans off these dangerous drugs, while scientists look for new drugs with less destructive side effects than our current choices. Too bad Dr. Stanley W. Jacob, MD, one of the great innovative scientists of our time, was never given the attention he deserved. Dr. Jacob helped to develop two sulfur-based natural supplements—DMSO and its derivative, MSM—and spent his life advocating for them and using them to help thousands of patients alleviate pain. But he died in 2015, at age 91, without having managed to convince conventional medicine in the US of the value of these two compounds. However, that didn’t stop people from coming to his DMSO Clinic at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland from all over the world for treatment. This clinic-of-last-resort for pain problems that nothing else had helped had an estimated success rate of about 70%. Jacob became interested in using DMSO…

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…

If you want to maintain your best health or fight back against a wide range of common health complaints, you should consider taking curcumin. This natural component of turmeric has a distinguished history in folk medicine for its many health benefits. Modern studies have associated curcumin with a variety of healing benefits.The more you know about curcumin, from its effects on the human body to the best ways of obtaining and consuming it, the more effectively you can incorporate it into your daily health and wellness routine. Take a look at the answers to these frequently asked questions about curcumin.Where Does Curcumin Come From?Curcumin occurs naturally in the rhizome—or root-like underground stem—of the turmeric plant. The substance gets its name from turmeric's botanical classification, Curcuma longa. Turmeric has become a staple of kitchens everywhere for its bright yellow color and distinct flavor, especially in Indian cuisine.Ancient healers saw more in turmer…