We all want to keep our immunity strong these days, and if you’ve been around Beyond Health for long, you know that means staying away from sugar. Sugar hammers your immunity in two ways. First, it competes with vitamin C to get into your cells. Immune cells cannot function without vitamin C, and they need lots of it—in an infection, your need for C can multiply by a factor of ten or more. But taking extra vitamin C isn’t going to help if you can’t get it into your immune cells. Too much sugar in the bloodstream blocks C’s entry into the cells, creating an artificial vitamin C deficiency. Second, sugar can create dramatic blood sugar spikes followed by deep dips. Your immune system also needs oxygen, and an erratic blood sugar level can weaken your immunity by preventing oxygen from getting into your cells. Wouldn’t it be nice, then, to have a sweetener that didn’t compete for with vitamin C or affect blood sugar levels? Well, there is such a s…

Every summer we warn against using sunscreens. First, sunscreens contain toxic ingredients. Some are better than others, but we haven’t found a single one we’d want to use or recommend. Second, sunscreens are designed to block out the sun’s ultraviolet rays. This prevents sunburn, but it also blocks out many of the sun’s benefits. We’ve been sold a bill of goods on sunlight being dangerous. Sunlight is essential to our health and well-being. While too much sun can give you a sunburn, too much of anything can be harmful. Used intelligently, sunlight is nourishing and energizing. Our bodies convert the sun’s rays into vitamin D. Sunlight increases production of the “happy hormones” that prevent anxiety and depression, it enhances immunity, and increases the oxygen content in our blood. It helps to prevent and reverse cancer. Sunlight has even been shown to lower blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides, and to heal wounds and any number of skin diseases. So what is “intelli…

“I believe that inflammation is at the basis of virtually every disease process.” – Nicholas Perricone, MDTake a deep breath. Fill your lungs with one of Mother Nature’s most precious gifts: oxygen! There is no life without oxygen. But oxygen can also be dangerous. Every chemical process that involves oxygen—and there are many in the human body, including extracting energy from food and attacking and killing pathogenic viruses and bacteria, and many outside the human body, including fire and rust—creates oxidative byproducts. Like the embers of a fire, these byproducts need to be quenched by antioxidants. It’s a matter of balance. In terms of Chinese medicine, oxygen is Yang—the active, heating, energizing force, while antioxidants are Yin—the restful, cooling, restorative force. We need both, but in the modern world we are getting too much Yang, not enough Yin. The body is not repairing itself from oxidative damage as it should, and this produces inflammation…