These days, despite countless dollars invested into medical research, more people live their lives managing chronic and acute illnesses and have a greater fear of the “big bad” that is still yet to come. Yet we claim that we are so much better off now than we were more than a century ago when modern medicine began. We look down on other nations and cultures who still consider traditional healing methods such as Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and herbalism uncivilized. They must not live as long as people who have the great benefits of Western Medicine, right? Their elders who don’t need statin drugs, acid-reducing drugs, and regular doses of anti-inflammatory medications just to get out of the house might disagree. They might have some turmeric, ginger, and cardamom tea though.
All of this money is spent in Western medical efforts to find THE CURE…all of these pills, vaccines, infusions, and radiologic treatments to make people live longer with their diseases—but how much of these efforts actually go into finding the cause of the diseases themselves? Instead, more money has to go towards new research to combat iatrogenic diseases (diseases caused by the medications and treatments themselves). It seems that today’s medical research is just digging our society deeper and deeper into disease. It frustrates me to no end that due to politics, “big pharma,” and “big food,” most people think this is all normal and that disease is inevitable.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
What if we take all of the politics, all of the marketing, and all of the confusion out of the equation? Western medicine, as it is today, has done a very good job at “educating” people to live with their diseases. They have successfully sent out the message that it’s OK to ingest food-like substances from boxes and cans, indulge in salty, greasy, sugary fast food meals to avoid food shopping and cooking meals, and ignore the body’s need for physical activity. It’s OK because one can just take a magic pill and any discomfort or symptoms caused by one’s poor diet and lifestyle choices will go away.
I prefer to do the opposite. I prefer to educate people so that they don’t have to get sick and suffer as they age. They don’t have to consume pillboxes full of medications on a regular basis just to go about their daily routines. It just takes a shift in awareness and in routine. One of my most recent revelations is that it’s just as easy to make a good decision as it is to make a bad one—therefore it is just as easy to choose health as it is to choose illness. Fortunately, I’m not alone in my thought process. I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing Raymond Francis—a true example of the human body’s ability to heal itself when given what it needs in order to function properly. He’s also a rockstar pioneer in holistic health—you’ll see.
Raymond Francis was supposed to die.
When he was 48, Raymond Francis was diagnosed with an illness that by all medical logic and explanation should have killed him, with or without treatment. It’s an illness that would have killed him had he not been an M.I.T. educated biochemist. Francis figured that if his death was inevitable regardless of treatment, then he’d take the time he had left and use his own knowledge of biochemistry to research his disease at a cellular level. He started asking the question of why people get sick…and once cellular or molecular damage has been done, how can that person get healthy again?
Raymond Francis is now almost 74 years old. In the last 27 years, the only illness he has had was two colds—he was quick to add that he had good excuses for each cold—I got a chuckle out of that. He is energetic and active, is the international chairman of The Project to End Disease, is the president of Beyond Health International, and has written several books—his most recent release is called Never Fear Cancer Again, which presents new findings on cancer prevention and the efficacy of using natural remedies and healthy food and lifestyle choices to heal the body from cancer. “Natural and dirt cheap substances like turmeric and ginger have consistently been found to shrink tumors and combat the spread of cancer effectively, but they don’t get the attention they deserve because there is little profit in them for the major drug companies.” Furthermore, “scientists discovered that chemotherapy actually heavily damages healthy cells and subsequently triggers them to release a protein that sustains and fuels tumor growth,” says Francis.
It took Francis two years to heal his body and restore his health, and he hasn’t looked back since. He very clearly states that he is a living miracle, and it is only due to his extensive academic and scientific knowledge as a biochemist that he was able to heal his condition. Without it, he would have died, and most members of the general public who have had the same diagnosis have died. He resigned from his high-level position in 1991 and has devoted his life to educating American people since. It is Raymond Francis’ mission to prevent this from happening to more people by sharing his knowledge in a way that is easy to digest and utilize—no degree from M.I.T. is necessary. In his own words, Francis’ theory and his Beyond Health Model “empower the average person to be able to do this for themselves. This system is so simple it can be taught to children. They can understand how and why this works in very concrete terms—they just get it. We need to teach people that it is possible to have this level of health—contrary to what we are taught by modern medicine.”
One disease, two causes.
Raymond Francis’ theory states that there is only one disease—the disease of the malfunctioning cell. Wherever the malfunction occurs is where the disease will manifest. If it occurs in the breast, breast cancer might occur. If it occurs in the motor part of the brain, Parkinson’s disease might occur. If the malfunction occurs in the hippocampus, Alzheimer’s might result. You get the idea. The malfunctioning cell is the only cause of disease, and everything else is just a symptom. This might be easy to believe for the common cold, but Francis’ research indicates that this is true for all symptoms and diseases, even tumors and cancer. Cancer is not something that can just be cut out or fried with radiation. “A tumor is a side effect of cancer. Cancer is the biological process that produces the tumor. Simply removing or ‘killing’ the tumor will not rid the body of cancer itself, because its process is still operating.”
Francis postulates that there are only two causes for this cellular malfunction: deficiency and toxicity. To explain deficiency, he uses the analogy that “the body is a huge chemical factory. To produce healthy, properly functioning cells, it needs the correct raw materials. If the wrong raw materials are ingested, a malfunction occurs.” To simplify it further, Francis explains that “Each cell has a grocery list that we must supply it with every day. If it doesn’t get every item on the list every day, something will go wrong.” To prevent deficiency, one must start with the diet first and foremost. Francis advocates a diet that is mostly plant-based, with very little amounts of high quality (meaning organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised) animal protein. Diets rich in Vitamin C, B vitamins, essential fatty acids, and minerals like magnesium and zinc are crucial cellular building blocks.
Supplementation is often appropriate for people in today’s society, and the quality of the supplement is paramount. According to Francis, who formulates the Beyond Health supplements, “Many inexpensive supplements found at drug stores and even in health food stores and websites are made from synthetic molecules which are theoretically identical to the same nutrients found in foods but are in fact fundamentally different in how they fit into the body’s metabolic system. It’s like trying to jam the wrong key into a lock—in the body’s case this jammed lock de-activates the body’s enzymes.” Other issues with commercial supplements are that they are likely to be synthesized from GMO foods like corn, might not be formulated in a stabilized way (meaning that they are likely to oxidize and produce free radicals in the body), or might be contaminated with solvent residue. High-quality, biologically correct supplements are expensive—but like many other things in life, you get what you pay for. Francis says, and I’ve said this before myself, that if money is an issue, people are better off buying no supplements at all than they are buying the cheap stuff. “The most expensive vitamin is the one that doesn’t work.”
The concept of the other cause, toxicity, is one that is more difficult for people to understand because unlike weight gain or a tumor, they can’t see toxins. Most people’s bodies are veritable “toxic dumpsites of 300 to 500 man-made chemicals—most of which did not exist years ago.” Toxins from vaccines, antibiotics, chemicals in foods, as well as environmental pollutants have the ability to destroy cells permanently. Lead and mercury, two of the most common heavy metals found in the human body, shut down the body’s metabolic and cellular processes. Therefore, detoxification is very important if the body is going to heal itself. In Francis’ own recovery, he relied heavily on the regular use of the sauna. After a decade of using the sauna for 90 minutes twice a week, his toxic load level was zero. I asked if he recommends using a far infrared sauna, and he said they are definitely more efficient, but if one is not available then a traditional sauna is fine.
The body is a self-repairing system.
That’s really the bottom line. It is never too late for the body to have the ability to heal itself—it’s all about maintenance. The body can only repair itself on a consistent basis if one gives it the proper repair tools and the repair system is functioning properly. Once the body stops self-repairing, it gets old. It’s important to keep the body in repair mode constantly because when you do more damage on a daily basis than repair, the systems shut down. Raymond Francis explains this concept best in his book Never Be Sick Again: Health is a Choice, Learn How to Choose It, with the following equation:
Health = Positive Things Minus Negative Things
“The quality of your health is determined by the positive things you do for your body minus the negative things you do to your body.” It really is that simple, and it really is a choice.
For more information about Raymond Francis, visit his own website www.raymondfrancis.com and his company’s website, www.beyondhealth.com.
Check out Raymond Francis’ books?HERE.
