You are What You Eat…and It’s Killing You

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News by Raymond Francis A pandemic of chronic and degenerative disease is sweeping our country—diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, arthritis, Alzheimer’s are all out of control. Even our children are sick, so sick that they are not expected to live as long as their parents and average life expectancy is expected to decrease. The largest single cause of this human tragedy is—malnutrition. In the best-fed country in the world, malnutrition is our leading cause of disease. Given the reality of today’s nutritionally- depleted foods, one of our biggest fallacies is the myth that you can get all the nutrients you need by eating a so called “balanced diet.” Foods no longer contain what we need for good health. Depleted soils, resulting from intensive farming, the use of artificial fertilizers, and poor crop rotation practices plus premature harvesting, long transit times to market, processing and other factors, have dramatically reduced the nutritional quality of our food. The average American gets only a fraction of the nutrition they need for optimal health, but most people are totally unaware of this. They think that the produce they buy at the supermarket is of the same quality as what our ancestors ate—not so. Nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling once said, “You can trace every sickness, every disease and every ailment to a mineral deficiency.” Unfortunately, the 1992 Earth Summit Report found that 99% of Americans are mineral deficient. If the minerals are not in the soil, they will not get in you. Over the last half century, due to soil depletion, fresh carrots have lost 75% of their magnesium, 48% of their calcium, 46% of their iron, 75% of their copper, and up to 95% of their zinc, with similar kinds of losses for other vegetables. The situation for vitamins is not any better. Today food is harvested before it is ripe so it can be shipped, but this drastically reduces the nutritional content. The time spent in getting to market reduces nutrition. Fresh produce is days-to weeks old before it gets to the store, and some of it has been in storage for a year or more. Food is remarkably hardy, but nutrients are not; they are easily lost or destroyed. For example, spinach loses 60% of its folic acid in three days. Vegetables such as asparagus, broccoli, and green beans lose 50% of their vitamin C even before they reach the produce counter. Cooking these vegetables results in even more losses, including another 25% of the vitamin C, 70% of vitamin B1 and 50% of B2. No wonder more than three-out-of-four Americans have a diagnosable chronic disease. In June of 2002, a paradigm-changing study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that everyone needs a daily multivitamin regardless of age or health. In 1998, the National Academy of Sciences issued a shocking statement saying that most people will not get all the vitamins they need even if they eat a good diet with lots of fruits and vegetables. Supplementing has become essential. Supplements are necessary for health, but the problem is most supplements are not worth what you pay for them. You can get a sense of this from a 1999 study in the Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association, which found that only 2.5% of commonly available nutritional products were both nontoxic and effective. In other words, 97.5% of supplements they studied were either toxic and/or ineffective. What America needs is supplements that address common deficiencies with ingredients that are extremely pure, safe, biologically active and effective. Further, these products should be assembled into packages that address specific needs, making it easy for the consumer to choose products without knowing a lot of biochemistry. Beyond Health to the rescue with its Wellness Kits—the Basic, Advanced and Ultimate. These kits have been scientifically designed with one purpose in mind—to provide the average American with the basic nutrients that we know are lacking in our diet. These kits represent the purest, most powerful, most effective, safest and most cost-effective nutritional supplements on the market. In fact, I challenge anyone to show me something better. The Basic Kit consists of three products: a multi, vitamin C and essential fatty acids. The Beyond Health Multi Vit/Min Formula is the most highly bioavailable multi on the market. In fact, we consider it to be the “gold standard” of multi-vitamin/mineral formulas. Eighty percent of all Americans are deficient in vitamin B6 with similar deficiencies for B1, B2 and B12. This formula contains all the Bs in the correct biological forms and in the correct ratios—a feat very few formulas achieve. The correct chemical form is absolutely critical. For example, most multis use food-grade vitamin B6, which contains analogs that interfere with vitamin B6 metabolism, creating a vitamin B6 deficiency. Yes, taking a vitamin containing food-grade vitamin B6 can actually cause B6 deficiency. The problem is most vitamin brands are made from such cheap, ineffective and even toxic ingredients. More than 70% of Americans do not consume the recommended daily allowance of zinc and 75% do not get sufficient magnesium. Most supplements contain chemical forms of these and other minerals that have extremely poor bioavailability. They can list the mineral on the label, but if your body can’t use it, it doesn’t do you much good. Calcium, for example, is usually found in the form of calcium carbonate, which is about 10% bioavailable. This means you are paying a dollar and getting 10 cents worth of value. The second product in the Wellness Kit is vitamin C. Vitamin C’s many roles in the body are so basic to healthy function that it is almost a wonder drug. It is a powerful antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antibiotic and anticancer compound. Vitamin C is essential to help protect against free radicals. The pollution in our environment and our stressful lifestyles has tripled our need for antioxidants since 1970. Meanwhile the antioxidant level in foods has been cut in half! Oranges are often measured with no vitamin C whatsoever. In addition to being an antioxidant, vitamin C also works to neutralize the effects of toxins and helps to repair damage done by toxins. Vitamin C may be our most important single molecule to get well, stay well, and maintain optimal health. Regardless of what disease you may have, vitamin C is so basic to human biochemistry that obtaining adequate amounts of vitamin C should be the foundation of any wellness strategy. A minimum of 2000 mg of vitamin C per day is recommended, but most adults may need more like 6,000 to 20,000 mg per day. Any vitamin C you take must be in the correct chemical form, but only half of most vitamin C products are in a form that is useful to the body. You are paying a dollar, but getting only 50 cents worth of value. Further, such unpurified vitamin C usually contains oxidized vitamin C, which is a free radical that can do you harm. Do not take vitamin C unless it says the following on the label: 100% L-ascorbate, fully reduced, corn free—this is what your body wants and needs. The third product in the Basic Kit is an essential fatty acid (EFA) formula. The human body needs EFAs to manufacture and repair cell membranes, enabling the cells to obtain optimum nutrition and expel harmful waste products. An estimated 90% of all Americans are deficient in essential fatty acids, which affects our ability to control inflammation, as well as affecting mood and behavior and cell-to-cell communications. The Life Essentials Basic Kit is designed to cover the waterfront in basic nutrition and to aid in detoxification. The Advanced Kit adds an extra powerful detoxification capability. The Ultimate Kit adds vitamin E, a bone support formula and a cellular repair capability. The Ultimate Kit is essential for anyone suffering from a diagnosable disease. Beyond Health’s products often cost more than other supplements, but when you pay a dollar, you get a dollar’s worth of value as their extraordinary bioavailability and superior biological activity offer the best value to the consumer. Beyond Health products help you to give your body what it needs to get well, stay well and never be sick again. No matter how little you pay, a supplement that doesn’t work is the most expensive supplement you can buy. Supplements that do not dissolve on time to be of any use to the body (almost half of them), or one that is toxic or only 5 to 10% biologically active, is an extremely expensive product. I have found nothing in the world that is biologically superior or a better value than Beyond Health supplements. Raymond Francis is an MIT-trained scientist, a registered nutrition consultant, author of Never Be Sick Again, Never Be Fat Again, Never Fear Cancer Again, and an internationally recognized leader in optimal health maintenance. Reprinted with permission from: Beyond Health® News email: mail@beyondhealth.com Copyright 2006, Beyond Health