What People Are Saying About 
Never Be Sick Again . . . “Raymond Francis will give you the information you require— and if you
combine it with inspiration, self-esteem and self-love, you will accomplish wonders. Take your health into your own hands—choose life and 
Never Be Sick Again
!”
—Bernie Siegel, M.D. author of 
Love, Medicine & Miracles 
and 
Prescriptions for Living
“The world is a better place for Raymond Francis and his work. He brings hope
and inspiration to those who seek the path out of illness to sustained health and well-
being. For the many health mysteries caused by nutritional deficits, overload of
toxins and neuro-immuno-hormonal dysfunctions, this book is a necessary and
joyful treasure.”
—Russ Jaffe, M.D. fellow, Health Studies Collegium 
fellow, National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry
“You must read this inspiring story and learn how one man overcame his own
illness to become a fine educator in the science of health maintenance. With our
current medical system failing miserably to treat or prevent a wide variety of
illnesses, this book is a timely contribution.”
—Hyla Cass, M.D. author of 
Natural Highs 
and 
St. John’s Wort: Nature’s Blues Buster
Raymond Francis’s brush with death as a patient draws the reader to appreciate
the lessons he has learned. Never Be Sick Again 
paints a clear picture of the choices
that you can make to attain a healthier life. With the skill of a master teacher, he
places these choices within reach.”
—Richard Kunin, M.D. president, Society for Orthomolecular Health Medicine 
author of 
Mega-Nutrition
“
Never Be Sick Again 
presents a revolutionary new understanding of health and
disease. Raymond Francis empowers readers and puts them back in charge of their
health. This important book offers keen insights into the shifts in thinking about
health; it is a prelude to what medicine in the future must become.”
—Al Lemerande Jr., M.D.director of medical programs, 
Advanced Physicians Medical Group 
author of 
Dynamic Health Through Nutrition
“Reading 
Never Be Sick Again 
is like learning health in one lesson. This book cuts
through the complexity of health and disease with the simple, yet revolutionary,
concept of 
one disease, two causes 
and 
six pathways. This is future medicine now!”
—Len Saputo, M.D. medical director, Health Medicine InstituteNEVER 
BE SICK 
AGAIN
O
NE
 D
ISEASE
 • 
T
WO
 C
AUSES 
• 
S
IX
 P
ATHWAYS
H
EALTH
 I
S A 
C
HOICE
L
EARN
 H
OW TO 
C
HOOSE
 I
T
Raymond Francis, M.Sc. with Kester Cotton
Foreword by Harvey Diamond 
Coauthor of the #1 
NY Times Bestseller 
Fit for Life
Health Communications, Inc.
Deerfield Beach, Florida 
www.hcibooks.comNever Be Sick Again 
and the information contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for the advice
and/or medical care of the reader’s physician, nor are they meant to discourage or dissuade the reader from the
advice of his or her physician. The reader should regularly consult with a physician in matters relating to his or
her health, and especially with regard to symptoms that may require diagnosis. Any eating or lifestyle regimen
should be undertaken under the direct supervision of the reader’s physician. Moreover, anyone with chronic
or serious ailments should undertake any eating and lifestyle program, and/or changes to his or her personal
eating and lifestyle regimen, under the direct supervision of his or her physician. If the reader has any
questions concerning the information presented in this book, or its application to his or her particular medical
profile, or if the reader has unusual medical or nutritional needs or constraints that may conflict with the
advice in this book, he or she should consult his or her physician. If the reader is pregnant or nursing she
should consult her physician before embarking on any nutrition or lifestyle program. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Francis, Raymond, 1937– 
   Never be sick again : Raymond Francis with Kester Cotton ; foreword by Harvey 
Diamond. p. cm. eISBN-13: 978-0-7573-9628-1   eISBN-10: 0-7573-9628-3 
      1. Health—Miscellanea. 2. Self-care, Health. 3. Healing—Miscellanea. 4. Health—Philosophy. 5. Mind and body. I. Cotton, Kester. II. Title. RA776.5 .F736 2002 
613—dc21
2002033399
© 2002 Raymond Francis
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. HCI, its logos and marks are trademarks of Health Communications, Inc. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc. 
  3201 S.W. 15th Street 
  Deerfield Beach, FL 33442-8190
R-02-07
Cover design by Larissa Hise Henoch 
Inside design by Lisa Camp and Dawn Von Strolley GroveCONTENTS
Foreword
 by Harvey Diamond
Acknowledgments
Introduction 
1. I Almost Died
2. Your Potential for Health
3. The New Theory of Health and Disease
4. Choosing Healthy Cells
5. The Nutrition Pathway
6. The Toxin Pathway
7. The Psychological Pathway
8. The Physical Pathway
9. The Genetic Pathway
10. The Medical Pathway
11. A Shift in Perspective
References
Author’s Note: Going Beyond Health
Appendix A: Health Information
Appendix B: Vitamin Supplements
Appendix C: Foods and Personal Products
Appendix D: Alternative Cancer Treatments
Appendix E: Improving Vision
Appendix F: Health-E-America FoundationF
OREWORD
N
ever Be Sick Again 
takes the mystery out of disease. This groundbreaking book
presents a revolutionary theory of health and disease: There are not thousands of
different diseases, but only one disease: malfunctioning cells. Put simply, if the cells
that make up your body are healthy, then you are healthy. Take care of your cells by
providing them with all the nutrients they need, keep them free of injurious toxins,
and disease will not happen. That concept is what this book is all about. Never Be Sick Again 
is health made simple, written by someone who figured it out
the hard way. In 1985, author Raymond Francis (a chemist and a graduate of MIT)
suffered a near-fatal health condition. He used his knowledge of biochemistry to
save his own life, and during his recovery, Francis asked himself fundamental
questions like, “Why do people get sick?” and, “How can disease be prevented or
reversed?” The answers to these questions are the essence of Francis’s new theory:
One disease, two causes 
of disease and 
six pathways 
between health and disease. Explained in easy-to-understand language, this concept of health and disease is
scientifically grounded in cutting-edge cellular biochemistry and molecular biology. Never Be Sick Again 
is the distilled wisdom of hundreds of books, thousands of
scientific journals and over sixteen years of experience and observation. Francis’s
book provides a simple and holistic approach that can help to prevent and/or reverse
almost any disease—the ultimate triumph over disease. A book like this is needed now more than ever. Health-care costs continue to rise
while the health of the American people continues to decline. The average person is
lost in a glut of complex and confusing health information. When we do get sick,
though, not understanding why we are sick or how to become well, we feel like
powerless victims, subject to seemingly random infections and genetic
predispositions. We feel helpless because our understanding of disease remains
stuck in the archaic germ theory. We worry too much about our bodies being
invaded by microorganisms and not enough about building and maintaining the
overall health and function of our cells. Disease is not a random event. We can
choose to prevent it, provided that we know how. Health is determined by what we,
as individuals, are willing to do for ourselves; it is our responsibility. Rather than being a game of chance, health is a choice. Whether we realize it or
not, the daily choices we make have a direct impact on the health of our cells. When
we make the wrong choices, and our health takes a turn for the worse, we blame
genes or germs or the aging process rather than the way we live our lives. In truth,
the only way to heal any disease is to normalize cellular function by correctingcellular malfunction, the common denominator of all disease. Modern medicine has a poor understanding of disease and relies on suppressing
the symptoms of disease rather than addressing its true causes. Little wonder most of
us die from chronic and degenerative diseases—such as cancer and heart disease—
that are “treated” but seldom healed. As a society, our applying the principles of the
six pathways outlined in this book is crucial. Doing so will improve the health of our
population to where most of existing medical practice can become irrelevant. Even
now when we recognize the existence of only one disease, breaking medicine up into
medical specialties becomes obsolete and counterproductive. Raymond Francis provides real answers for real life, regardless of who you are or
your state of health. By providing a powerful framework for maintaining optimal
health, this book ties all the basics together in a way that anyone can put to
immediate and practical use. Francis simplifies the health equation to the lowest
common denominator—each individual cell. If you take care of each cell in your
body, disease cannot happen. An island of clarity in a sea of confusion, 
Never Be Sick Again 
is a one-stop
solution for health professionals and laymen alike. Think of this book as health in
one lesson. Everyone, especially our children, should learn about this cutting-edge
approach to health and disease. In the past, health and disease have seemed like
mysteries over which we have little control, but no longer. Now, we do have control. Knowing of just one disease and only two causes of disease gives us the power to get
well and stay well. Francis’s title says it all: 
Never Be Sick Again. Harvey Diamond 
coauthor of the #1 
New York Times 
bestseller, 
Fit for LifeA
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
N
o one works in isolation; the seventeen-year journey that led up to this book
attests to that. I have many individuals to thank, in addition to my wonderful
publisher Health Communications, Inc., for making 
Never Be Sick Again 
a reality. I
want to express my gratitude to the great thinkers who came before me and upon
whose work I have built, pioneers such as Hippocrates, Claude Bernard, Antoine
Bechamp, Renè Dubos, Alexis Carrel, Hans Selye, Walter Cannon, Linus Pauling,
Roger Williams, Emanuel Cheraskin and many others. I want to thank my professors
and colleagues at M.I.T., who helped to sharpen my critical thinking skills. I want to
thank Dr. Russell Jaffe, who pointed me in the right direction as I was searching for
answers to my questions about health and disease. Many thanks to my mother and father for their love and for helping me to become
who I am. Many thanks to my family and friends for their encouragement and for the
many hours they spent reading and commenting on various drafts of chapters. In
particular, I would like to gratefully acknowledge Mark Baird, David Buttaro, Joan
Carole, Br. Camillus Chavez, Mark Choquet, Kathleen Cotton, Peter DeTomi,
Bernard Friesecke, Pascal Girard, Dr. Peter Litchfield, Kathleen Martuza, Robert
Menkemeller, Mollie Meyers, Dr. David Rovno, Brandon Soule, Pamela Strong,
Nancy Talbot, and Alec Wilson, who helped to make this book more understandable
and useful to the reader. Thanks also to my two wonderful editors, Linda Hall and
Beatrice Trum Hunter, who contributed so much to making this a better book. I am also grateful for the hundreds of people I have worked with as a health
advisor. Each and every one of them taught me something important about health
and helped to cement my understanding of the importance of diet and lifestyle in
preventing and reversing disease. Last, but far from least, I would like to thank my cowriter Kester Cotton. Without
your support, there would be no book to read. Thank you for your friendship,
encouragement, patience, forbearance and years of hard work. The days we have
spent creating 
Never Be Sick Again 
will always be cherished memories.I
NTRODUCTION
I
 was too sick to leave my bed. In fact, I was too weak even to lift my head from the
pillow. At age forty-eight, at the peak of an international business career, I found
myself on the brink of death. I had lost forty pounds from an already thin frame; I
looked skeletal. My vital signs were failing. My doctors expected me to die. I chose to live. I say “chose” because on my own, relying on my knowledge of
biochemistry and my determination not to die, I saved my own life. I took some
fairly simple steps, but I also took one profound leap. I made a powerful discovery:
Almost all disease can be prevented or reversed. As a result, health is a choice and
no one has to be sick. This book presents an entirely new theory of health and disease that will
ultimately change the way medicine is practiced. This book offers a revolutionary
way to perceive health, a guidebook for living based on cutting-edge science that is
simple to understand. This guide gives you the power to control your own health in a
way that you perhaps never imagined possible. In reality, humans experience only one disease. All disease is the result of
malfunctioning cells, 
no matter if the disease is a “common” cold, a mental illness
such as depression or a life-threatening cancer. This theory of malfunctioning cells
cuts through the confusion of health and disease and provides a unifying
understanding of what keeps people well or makes them sick. The two causes of disease, the two reasons that cells malfunction, are 
deficiency
(insufficient nutrients) and 
toxicity 
(excessive toxins). These two causes work
through six areas of daily life: the six pathways each person travels toward health or
disease. If you take care of your body’s needs along these six pathways, you give
your cells what they need and you avoid what is toxic. You will not become sick. The theory presented in this book—a unifying theory of disease—is the most
important health discovery to emerge in the last few hundred years. No such theory
existed during the evolution of what we now call “modern medicine,” which
explains why the medical establishment cannot cure nor prevent disease as
effectively as it might. My theory of health offers power, simplicity and clarity in
place of powerlessness, which is what most people now feel. Most people are
overwhelmed and confused by the constant flood of conflicting health information,
the thousands of different diseases that physicians “treat” with drugs and surgery. This swirl of specialists, symptoms and side effects leaves people without cures for
their disease and, too often, either growing sicker or facing death. We end up
powerless because we have no idea why we are sick or how to make ourselves wellagain. My new approach asks you to make profound shifts in what has been conventional
thinking about illness and health care. By preventing and reversing disease through
the six pathways, you put the power to get better and stay well into 
your 
hands. If
you are so sick that you have given up hope, this approach is the light of choice. Had
I this level of understanding years ago, I would never have become sick in the first
place. I have shared my ideas with thousands of people around the world, including
hundreds of medical doctors. I have seen people who have been sick for a decade or
more apply this information and quickly become well again. I have seen people who
have fruitlessly tried endless doctors, hospitals, clinics, medications and even
gimmicks. They become well again by applying logical, sound, scientific approaches
to enhancing health at the cellular level. This book asks you to think outside the box of traditional medicine—a box that
may have you stifled by misinformation and cut off from the kind of understanding
that will truly make you well. Consider how conventional thinking can trap us: Why
do we easily accept that stress can make us sick, but we have difficulty embracing
the idea that love, laughter and a balanced life can make us well? Why are we
willing to ingest chemicals in the form of prescription drugs that are alien to our
body, but we are skeptical that natural substances—primarily the right foods—can
heal? Why are we willing to recognize the damage of an obvious poisoning—a
major chemical spill, for instance—but we ignore the devastating effects of small
amounts of toxic substances, which accumulate in our bodies and make us a little bit
sicker every day? Our bodies have an amazing capacity to heal, but they are more vulnerable than
you may realize. This book teaches you how to tap that capacity for healing and how
to avoid the toxins and the stresses—in the environment and inside your own body—
that make you sick. Many dangers around us go unrecognized, but they take a toll
every day. My theory of wellness takes you to the front lines of the battle between health and
disease: the cell. Your body is made up of trillions of cells. Cells have needs, which
I identify, that must be met if they are to function well. If your cells are healthy,
your body will not become sick. If your cells do not receive what they need or if they
are damaged or poisoned, they will stop working right and you will become sick. (You may be surprised to discover what is toxic to your cells.) Cells that receive
what they need and avoid harm can function well and provide for healthy life,
regardless of your age, the genes you have inherited or the “germs” to which you
have been exposed. Healthy cells refuse disease; no one with healthy cells has any
reason to become sick, not even to contract a cold. People alive today are far sicker
than most of us recognize, and they die decades sooner than their genetic potential.Healthy life, well past one hundred years old, should be our birthright. We do not usually think about health in this way. We don’t knowingly choose
disease, but we do choose diets and lifestyles that lead to disease. Unable to predict,
prevent or conquer disease, most people and most physicians pursue treatment—
such as prescription or over-the-counter drugs— once obvious symptoms have
presented, after massive cellular malfunction has already occurred. Patients and
their physicians treat body parts or body systems as unrelated. The mainstream
medical community has no unifying theory of disease, no unifying treatment and no
plan for prevention, and therefore true and lasting health is an illusion. This book describes how to keep your body—all your cells—truly healthy. Understanding the six pathways toward health and following them in the right
direction will change your life. You will learn things about nutrition that you have
probably never heard before, including how the way you shop, the way you cook or
the foods that you combine at a meal spell the difference between health and disease. You will learn to recognize hazards in your home and how to stop toxins from being
created 
within your own body. You’ll learn specifics, down to the kind of vitamin supplements you should take,
the toothpaste you should use and the olive oil you should buy. I name names and
identify brands based on how the products affect cells, because buying the wrong
products does nothing to keep you healthy. Certain products, in fact, make you
unhealthy. Consider your own life: Do you suffer from a health condition that you have given
up trying to cure and now accept as fate? Do you bounce from one medical specialist
to another, dizzy with conflicting diagnoses and different ideas about which
treatments are best? Is your cabinet full of medications that you take regularly
without any sense that you are healing? Are you tired most of the time? Do you
expect to live past your eighties? This book guides you out of the maze of medical specialists and on a path toward
wellness. This book teaches you how to question your doctors’ advice and how to
evaluate, on your own, the medicines you should take, if any. You can regain the
kind of energy for living that you may have thought was lost forever. With this book
you can learn how to live beyond one hundred years of age. By looking at health and disease in entirely new ways, and understanding how to
choose health, you can reevaluate illnesses that you may have come to accept as
unavoidable. You may be shocked to discover how often you choose not to be
healthy. My code for living shows you, in big ways and in small ways, how to stop
making yourself sick. I describe a potential for human health—and long life—that
you never thought possible. Horizons will open up as you consider the possibility
that you can live, fully and vigorously, decades beyond what you now consider old
age.Many people know more about how their automobiles work than about what their
bodies need in order to function, and people often pay more attention to maintaining
their cars than themselves. People feel they just don’t have the knowledge or
medical training to figure out what is wrong with their own bodies or how to heal. The truth is that knowledge and power are within one’s reach. No theory about health is so simple yet so powerful. This approach clears up the
confusion surrounding thousands of so-called “diseases,” and eliminates most
modern medical treatments—drugs and surgery—as toxic, invasive and rarely
necessary. The focus, instead, is on the common problems of disease and how to
solve them. This book bypasses the complex and confusing world of illness and
remedies and simplifies our understanding of health and disease, enabling people to
prevent and reverse disease by addressing its causes. From the tangle of all the
complexity emerges a straightforward approach to becoming well and staying well
—an island of clarity in a sea of confusion. In its simplest terms, how health is determined can be expressed as an 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. This concept is not complicated,
sexy or original; it is simply the truth. The problem is that accurate information
about the factors that affect this equation is hard to obtain. Accurate information
about what is positive and good for you and what is not does not come easily. Contradictory information and myths circulate, and people disseminate opinions as
if they were facts. Many health writers, untrained in science, misinterpret scientific
information or parrot each other. The blind are often leading the blind. To choose
health, you must know how to distinguish between good choices and bad choices
regarding diet, toxic exposure, exercise, prescription and recreational drug use,
stress and other factors. This book shows you how to make these distinctions. You may already read the labels on the foods you buy, the warnings on the
prescriptions you take and the coverage limits of your health plan, but if you are to
achieve health and stay healthy, you must first understand what your body needs. Many health books provide recipes, diet lists, exercise regimens and the like—
routines to be blindly followed with no real understanding of the rationale behind
them. This book is different. This book provides a powerful and logical conception
of health, a framework that assists you in coming to your own conclusions and
making your own choices. With this framework, you will have a basis for
understanding which choices need to be made, when you should make them and why. Your body is made of cells. When a large number of your cells malfunction, body
systems become disrupted, leading to the 
one disease: cellular malfunction. Cellular
malfunction has only 
two causes: deficiency, 
cells not getting what they need, andtoxicity, 
cells poisoned by something they do not need. Finally, 
six pathways 
exist
between health and disease through which the health of our cells can change for
better or worse. We can become healthy or sick (i.e., deficient and/or toxic) through
the following pathways:
• Pathway 1—Nutrition You are what you eat. Learn how to select and prepare
the types of foods that will enable your cells to function at their best. • Pathway 2—Toxin A toxin is a substance that interferes with normal cellular
function, thereby causing malfunction, which is disease. Learn where toxins are
found and how you can avoid them. • Pathway 3—Psychological The body and mind are inseparably connected;
they are one and the same thing. The way we react to life events and respond to
our thoughts and emotions directly affect our cells. • Pathway 4—Physical Our cells and bodies need physical maintenance, like an
automobile. Do you have enough exercise, rest, sunlight and fresh air? • Pathway 5—Genetic Genes affect our cells, but not nearly as much as modern
medicine would have us believe. Learn how to optimize your genetic potential
and avoid genetic damage. • Pathway 6—Medical Modern medicine kills and injures millions of people
every year. Learn how medicine affects your cells, and make educated decisions
about which treatments you need and which you do not. All you need to know at any point in time is in which direction you are going
along each of the pathways—toward health or disease—and to make corrections. You cannot make good choices along only one or two of the pathways and expect to
achieve optimal health; this approach limits many health plans and books, useful
though they may be. Many approaches are on the right track, but they do not look at
the whole picture. Making healthy choices with respect to all six pathways is what
empowers the body to regulate and repair itself. That said, each choice you make in a positive direction, toward health, on any
pathway at any time will improve your life. Each step toward health puts you closer
to your true potential and further away from the risk of disease or illness. Each
contribution, no matter how small, is still significant.1
I A
LMOST 
D
IED
“The next major advance in the health of the American people
will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for
himself.”
John Knowles 
former president, The Rockefeller Foundation
N
ot too many years ago, no one would have been able to convince me that I would
be writing a definitive book about human health and performance. I was no health
expert; in fact, I gave little thought to the subject. I assumed I was healthy and that I
could do little to improve upon it. Yet, here I am today, devoting my life to
researching and improving health. Concern for our health is something we all have in common. We all would like to
live a high-quality, disease-free life, no matter how long that life may be. But most
of us have no idea that a disease-free life is possible, so our priorities become out of
whack, and we form habits that jeopardize our health. Then we ignore the early signs
of ill health and, without knowing it, we lay the groundwork for disaster. That is
exactly what I did. At the height of my former career, I was president of an international management
consulting firm specializing in international competitiveness, industrial quality and
productivity. I was a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, the State Department, the
United Nations and to the prime ministers of several foreign governments. Life had
been good to me. Then the early warning signs that things were changing came in 1983. I began to
slow down, requiring more sleep and tiring more easily. I began to experience
frequent allergic reactions, including runny nose, itchy eyes, sneezing, heart
palpitations and skin rashes. I suffered muscle aches and joint pain. I felt as though I
was losing my edge, losing some of the mental and physical capacity that had
allowed me to operate at the highest levels of international business and
government. Life was becoming less fun and more like a chore. I brought these complaints to the attention of my physician, a man who the
medical community rated as “one of the best.” He examined me, did many tests and
pronounced me in “excellent health.” When I protested, saying I did not feel like I
was in excellent health, he replied, “You are just getting older.” I protested again,
saying that in my whole life I had never felt this way before. He continued, “Well,
you have never been this old before.” I was forty-six years old. I would later discover that physicians have no protocols or established procedures
for measuring early decline in health. Instead they blame “getting older” for so
many feelings of ill health, even at ages when human beings have the potential to be
in their prime (remember, I was only forty-six when I began suffering fromproblems attributed to my age). Physicians consistently assume that the patient is
“well” until his or her condition deteriorates into symptoms that the doctor
recognizes as a diagnosable disease. Over the next year and a half, my symptoms worsened. My fatigue became more
pronounced; I required ever-increasing amounts of sleep, and even then I felt tired. The fatigue made it increasingly difficult to travel, as my job required. My allergic
reactions were becoming more severe. I would experience sneezing fits so dramatic
that I would have to rest after them. My heart palpitations were more frequent and
pronounced. I would see colored rings around lights and my vision would blur. I finally decided to seek the assistance of an allergy specialist. Little did I realize,
as I entered the doctor’s office that fateful morning, that it would be the last day of
life as I had known it. The allergist administered a diagnostic test called an
intradermal test, whereby an allergen is injected into the skin with a hypodermic
needle. The procedure is much more provocative and sensitive than the typical
scratch tests familiar to most people. Intradermal tests may identify allergies that
might otherwise be missed. However, if someone is especially sensitive to an
allergen, this type of test can provoke a serious reaction. My doctor neglected to tell
me that the FDA regularly receives reports of injuries and deaths from these tests. My condition and the fact that I was experiencing significant allergic reactions at the
time should have prompted this physician to be more cautious and anticipate that an
intradermal test might provoke a serious reaction. It did. The reaction was catastrophic, causing my immune system to spin out of control. During the next week I slept almost constantly and appeared to have aged about ten
years. I suffered fatigue and disability unlike anything I had ever experienced. Prior
to the test, although I had some serious allergy problems, I was still able to function
relatively normally; afterward, I was seriously ill and almost completely
dysfunctional. Years later, another physician—one considerably better informed—gave me a
meaningful description of what had happened to me. He described my state of
compromised health as rather like standing on the edge of a precipice. My allergist
did not recognize my vulnerability and the need to work initially with nutritional
support and conservative treatments to back me away from that edge. The allergist’s
decision to administer a provocative test pushed me off the precipice and into an
abyss of catastrophic health decline. Ten months later, I was still in that abyss of illness and anxiety, with my health in
a downward spiral. In the past, whenever I had been sick, I had always recovered in a
matter of days or weeks. This time was different indeed. I experienced chronic
fatigue, multiple chemical sensitivities and allergic reactions to almost everything. I
also developed several autoimmune syndromes, including Sjogren’s syndrome,Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and lupus. In these syndromes, the immune system attacks
the body’s own tissues, causing a cascade of serious problems. In my case, my
immune system was attacking my salivary glands, lachrymal glands, thyroid gland,
kidneys and connective tissue. I had an extensive list of debilitating symptoms
including dizziness, impaired memory, depression, heart palpitations, blurred vision,
muscle and joint pain, diarrhea, bloating, nausea, numbness and even seizures. I was
unable to perform any meaningful activity. My health was gone, and life, as I had
known it, was over. During those ten nightmarish months, I visited thirty-six medical doctors. I had so
many different symptoms that I was referred to specialists for each one, including
ophthalmologists, gastroenterologists, neurologists, endocrinologists, cardiologists,
allergists, rheumatologists, psychiatrists, internists and immunologists. Being
bounced from one specialist to another, sometimes seeing two or even three in a day,
was very frustrating. I certainly heard plenty of second, third and fourth opinions,
often conflicting, but none particularly helpful. My multitude of symptoms totally
baffled those learned specialists. (How much easier it would have been had they
known what I know now: that there is only one disease and that symptoms are not
important.) They performed many expensive diagnostic tests, which served little
purpose other than to give fancy names to my symptoms, such as neuropathy, colitis,
arrhythmia, arthralgia, keratitis sicca, thyroiditis and others. They were merely describing my symptoms with a technical name, the usual
diagnosing, and then sending a bill. A few suggested that I was a hypochondriac,
imagining ill health. Many physicians assume that if they do not understand what is
wrong, the patient must be imagining his illness. At the time, I thought all of my
doctors were baffled because my case was so complex. In the end, however, the
answers proved to be simple. The answers had been there all along. One just needed
to know where to look. From Bad to Worse
As sick as I was after ten months of illness, things were about to become much
worse. One of the last physicians I went to see made a decision that nearly killed me. He prescribed an antiparasitic drug, metronidazole, which turned out to be
heptatoxic (poisonous to the liver). I suffered a severe reaction to the drug. In my
weakened and chemically sensitive condition I should never have been given this
drug, as I would later learn from the medical literature. Perhaps I should have known
better, given my prior experiences with medical doctors, but trusting the doctor and
knowing of no other options, I took the drug. Metronidazole is known to be stressful
to the liver, and my liver was already under a lot of stress. I could not handle the
additional toxic load. My liver failed, and I was at death’s door.As I lay in bed, deathly ill with chemical hepatitis, my weight dropped from an
already trim 160 pounds (at 6-foot-2) to a positively skeletal 120. I was too weak
even to lift my head. My vital signs were failing, and my physicians doubted that I
would survive. Death appeared certain. Had I continued to rely on conventional medicine, I would not be here today, and
you would not be reading my story. As weak as I was, something inside of me was
not ready to let go—not without a fight. But I did not know where to turn for help. As I look back, I am amazed at the chain of events that saved my life and allowed
me to regain control of my health. My brother, bless his heart, started the process. During my illness, he had flown
across the country to be with me. He gave me a book that proved instrumental in
saving my life: Norman Cousins’s bestseller, 
Anatomy of an Illness. In 1964,
Norman Cousins, a layman with no medical or scientific training, was diagnosed
with ankylosing spondylitis, a connective tissue disease that deteriorates collagen
(the “glue” that holds our cells together). Cousins’s disease was literally causing his
body to fall apart. His illness, like mine, was deemed by his physicians to be
incurable and fatal. Unwilling to accept such a prognosis, Cousins sought whatever
knowledge he could to help himself. He succeeded. Not only did he find ways to
save his own life; he later became a professor of medicine at UCLA. Cousins took action in four areas. First, like myself, Cousins recognized that he
was being harmed by his medical treatment. He concluded that the drugs his
physicians were prescribing were so toxic that they were accelerating his decline. He
stopped taking the drugs. Second, he discovered the enormous power of the mind
over the body. The excruciating pain he was experiencing was affected by his
attitude toward the pain. By learning to change his attitude, he could reduce his pain. Third, he found laughter to be helpful; ten minutes of genuine, hearty laughter would
cause his pain to go away for hours. He started watching funny movies, and when the
effect would wear off, he would switch on the projector and laugh some more. The
laughter had profound and beneficial effects on his body chemistry and contributed
to his recovery. Fourth, he discovered the powerful anti-inflammatory properties of
vitamin C. He decided to take twenty-five grams a day administered by intravenous
drip. This action had a profoundly beneficial effect on his highly inflammatory
condition. By avoiding toxic prescription drugs, changing his attitude, laughing and
administering plenty of vitamin C, Cousins made a miraculous recovery. Lying on what had been pronounced my deathbed, I thought about Cousins’s book
in relation to my graduate school days doing scientific research at MIT. I wondered
how Cousins managed to find the pertinent information he needed to save himself. If
Cousins, a dying man with no scientific training, could obtain such critical, life-
saving knowledge, why couldn’t his physicians? After all, these professionals had
devoted their entire careers to medicine. Knowing that Cousins had found a way tosave his own life encouraged me; I hoped that my scientific training as a chemist
might enable me to do the same. As I lay there with a poisoned liver, dying from chemical hepatitis, I realized that
if I wanted to live I must act quickly. Not much time was left. Thinking about how
instrumental vitamin C was in Cousins’s recovery, I remembered from my study of
biochemistry that vitamin C plays an essential role in liver detoxification. Because
my liver had been poisoned by a toxic drug, perhaps some vitamin C would help it
detoxify. It seemed like an experiment worth doing, and besides, I knew of no other
options. It worked. Twenty-four hours after starting oral doses of vitamin C (about four grams a day),
my vital signs began to stabilize. In forty-eight hours I was able to sit up in bed. A
few days before, death had been a certainty. Now, I could sit up, which was the first
time I had experienced a measurable improvement in all those months. Progress,
even in the form of something as simple as sitting up in bed, can be incredibly
inspiring. At that point, I knew I could take action that would make a difference. Meanwhile, my physicians could not understand why I not only survived but actually
improved. I was still far from well, though. I was a frail skeleton. I had difficulty performing
the simplest tasks, such as dressing, or tying my shoelaces. I had no energy and
became fatigued from the slightest exertion. My hands and feet were numb; I had
difficulty walking and moved slowly. I was lightheaded and tended to fall over
easily. Worse, my brain had trouble functioning; I felt like I was in a mental fog. I
had difficulty with short-term memory and simple calculations. Even as I improved
enough to venture out again, I could not make correct change at the grocery store
and easily forgot what I intended to do. Perhaps worst of all was the horrific chemical sensitivity that I continued to
suffer, causing me to become weak, disoriented and debilitated. The toxic assault on
my body by the metronidazole had left me with acute chemical sensitivities. For
instance, when I turned on a water faucet the subtle chlorine fumes coming out with
the water were enough to cause me to become weak, lightheaded and disoriented. I
could not read or be near printed materials because of the chemical fumes coming
from the ink and paper. I used only a speakerphone because I would react to the
fumes off-gassing from the plastic telephone receiver. My gas water heater had to be
replaced with an electric unit because I reacted to the combustion fumes diffusing
into the surrounding living space. I had to wear clothes made only from natural
fibers, to avoid the toxic fumes from synthetics. I had to purchase special water and
air filters. But even with these many precautions, I was debilitated by my relentless
reactions to a myriad of environmental chemicals. Someone who has not personally experienced chemical sensitivity has a hard timeunderstanding how just a whiff of certain chemicals can create total havoc in a
matter of seconds. I remember once taking a piece of Scotch tape off a roll and being
devastated for the rest of the day by the seemingly inconsequential chemical odor
from the tape! With chemical sensitivity, the nervous system develops a “memory”
of past reactions. This effect is called 
classical conditioning 
(i.e., biological
learning) and upon detecting these reactive agents again, even in infinitesimal
quantities, a full-scale response is produced. Our modern world is permeated with
chemicals that can produce such reactions in susceptible people. In this hideous state of health, I fell into a deep depression. I thought about taking
my life. Although I had made some progress, I was allergic to almost everything,
and I was in a constant state of debilitating reactions. My life was ruined. No doctor
could help me. I was unable to do any meaningful activity and had nothing to look
forward to. I could not even watch television because of the chemical fumes off-
gassing from the TV set as it heated up. Choosing to Live
One beautiful afternoon, I was sitting out in the sun and contemplating the
meaning of life. Illness has a powerful way of providing perspective and time to
think about the really important things. I asked myself whether or not I wanted to
continue living. I decided that I did not want to die—I wanted to live. However, life
was not worth living in such a debilitated state. My only option was to find a way to
become healthy again. How could I do this? The doctors could not help. In large measure, doctors had
brought me to my failing condition. I recall thinking about the explosion of
knowledge in the world—about all the new scientific data being published every
day. Surely somewhere, some key bit of information would help me. I became
determined to find out whatever I could, but it was not easy. My vision was blurred
and my eyes hurt. Given that I was unable to be near printed materials because of the
ink fumes, how could I study? My mind didn’t work right, either: Contemporary
literature about chemically sensitive people describes this debilitating type of “brain
fog.” In my early quests to research my health condition, I would find myself lost in
a mental fog, spending hours reading the same material repeatedly without realizing
it. Ironically, I was reacting to the very materials I was using to learn how to restore
my health. Still, I remained determined. I purchased a respirator mask to protect me from the
chemicals coming from the ink in my study materials. Unfortunately, the rubber part
of the mask gave off toxic fumes. I took the mask apart, boiled the rubber pieces in
water for two days and then reassembled it, which made the mask tolerable so I
could wear it while I did the necessary work.Next, I purchased a portable electric oven and one hundred feet of outdoor
extension cord. I placed the oven downwind from my house and baked all of my
reading materials in order to drive off the ink chemicals. Bizarre, but it worked. Now
at least I could handle and read my rapidly accumulating piles of medical and
scientific literature. I began to educate myself, looking for clues that might help to
restore and improve my health. Thus began a new phase of my life, which continues to this day. I came across fascinating information as I searched for the answers to my
questions. I read technical papers written by a biochemist who, like myself, had
become chemically hypersensitive. No physician had been able to help him either,
and his sensitivity was so great that he was forced to move to a distant location that
harbored no man-made chemicals. He moved into a small wooden shack on a remote
beach. Eventually, through his understanding of biochemistry, he was able to take
steps to restore his health. Knowing that someone else had been able to heal himself of this horrendous
condition gave me the hope I needed so much. His example convinced me that I, too,
would be able to help myself to understand the biochemistry of my illness and apply
sound scientific principles to solve my problems. It took me two years of learning
and experimenting to raise myself from the depths of liver failure, chronic fatigue,
autoimmune diseases and chemical hypersensitivity. Recovery took a great deal of
persistence, willingness to try new things and acceptance of many setbacks. In particular at the height of my chemical sensitivities, I had to be extremely
careful about the products I selected. Even minute amounts of toxins were enough to
make me ill. I ended up with a kitchen full of vitamin supplements that I could not
take because of toxic impurities and my level of susceptibility. Even healthy people
are harmed by these impurities, though it may not be as evident to them. I learned the hard way how suffering can come when health is failing, and when
you try remedies that do more harm than good. Even with my scientific training,
finding the answers was difficult. Particularly with vitamin supplements and
personal care products, a great deal of conflicting information abounds, and
consumers remain confused about how to make the best choices. Accurate health
information is in great demand, and that is precisely what this book provides. I want
to share what I have learned about getting well and staying well. In 1991, I resigned from all my business and community activities and devoted
myself to teaching others how to be healthy. I started by speaking to groups—at
first, the same support groups to which I had belonged during the depths of my
illness. Then I branched out with a wider audience, which evolved into a regular
evening workshop series that continued for years. Later, a publisher became aware
of my work and invited me to write a column for his newspaper. After that, I started
a radio show called 
An Ounce of Prevention 
and began publishing my ownnewsletter, 
Beyond Health News. This book is the next step. Reaching Our Potential
One of the most profound conclusions I have reached is that 
health is a choice;
virtually no one ever has to be sick. The potential for human health and longevity is
far greater than we are now achieving. Scientific studies describe populations who
lived longer and healthier lives than we do, simply because their societies made
dietary and lifestyle choices that supported human health. With just a little
knowledge and effort, we can do the same. We can choose health, but first we must
educate ourselves. My own quest for an understanding of how the body maintains and heals itself
continues to this day. Throughout my research, I continue to ask myself basic
questions, such as:
• What is health? • What is disease? • Why do people get sick? • How can disease be prevented or reversed? • How long can people live in good health, and what does it take to achieve
this? • What is the potential for human health and longevity? Please allow me to pass on to you a truly revolutionary theory of health and
disease, one that is so simple and powerful that it gives you the choice to never be
sick again.2 
Y
OUR 
P
OTENTIAL 
FOR 
H
EALTH
“There is no reason in the world why over 75 percent of the
American people should be suffering from degenerative and
deficiency diseases. Disease never comes without a cause. If a
person is sick and ailing it is because he has been doing
something wrong. He needs an education in how to live a healthy
life.”
Jay M. Hoffman, Ph.D. 
Hunza
M
ost people expect to be sick at least one or more times each year, to cope with at
least one serious illness by midlife, and in all likelihood, to die of one or several
diseases by their eighties, if not sooner. Most people also think poor health is mainly
the result of bad luck and that their longevity is a matter of good fortune. Nothing could be further from the truth. Poor health is not a matter of luck; poor
health is a matter of choice. We do not “get” sick. We make ourselves sick by
making bad choices and, conversely, we get healthy and stay healthy by making
good ones. Most people feel that they are “healthy” as long as they have no
symptoms of disease. Few people realize what optimal health really feels like—and
even fewer accept the notion that a vigorous and healthy life beyond 100 years old is
within reach. In reality, that kind of long life is what we should all routinely expect. Meet the face of optimal health. His name is Jose Maria Roa, and he is 131 years
old. Jose lives with his family in a small village, high in the Andes Mountains of
Ecuador. While his face is weatherworn, his mind is keen, his heart is healthy, his
teeth are strong and the lines around his face are born of smiles and the joy of a
loving wife and family. Still working on his small farm every day and enjoying an
active sex life, Jose fathered his last child at the age of 107. When asked if he’d ever
been sick, he replied, “Yes, I have been.” Jose had a few colds—that’s it—in 131
years! Until his death at 137, Jose remained in perfect health. Surely this is not normal. Isn’t Jose a medical miracle, an aberration of nature? Not so. In his remote village, Jose’s health and longevity are far from unusual
explains Morton Walker, D.P.M., whose 1985 book 
Secrets of Long Life 
is based on
his study of these hardy people native to the Vilcabamba Valley. For instance, in his
queries to the Vilcabambans about the mental health of their society, Walker asked
if the older people suffered memory loss due to dementia. These long-lived people
had never experienced anything like dementia. They didn’t understand the question
and, in fact, did not even have words in their language to describe such a condition. Meanwhile, we are told that dementia is a disease of aging and the price we must
pay for our so-called “longevity.” As I studied Jose—and people like him—I began
to understand the potential that all humans have to be healthy.In America today, we are usually told—and believe—that illnesses like cancer,
arthritis, dementia, osteoporosis, diabetes and heart disease are “diseases of aging,”
but these chronic conditions are not the inevitable result of growing older. Rather,
they are the inevitable result of living lifestyles that cannot support human health. In
America today, these conditions are epidemic. Having achieved enormous advances
in science and medicine, why are we experiencing the largest epidemic of chronic
disease in human history? As I studied patterns of health and disease, I made a profound discovery. I learned
that disease does not just randomly happen; it occurs for specific reasons. We are
not typically perfectly healthy until we “get” sick, nor does perfect health return
once disease has run its course. Although we tend to perceive life this way, the
distinctions between health and disease are far less black and white. Remember your
cells. Only after massive numbers of cells malfunction or die do you begin to notice
symptoms of disease. In other words, you are already sick before you “get sick.”
People who are truly healthy do not “get sick.”
If you stop to consider what it might be like to live in good health to a ripe old
age, everything begins to seem different. This potential for health can be described
as 
optimal 
health, where your cells are functioning as well as they possibly can. This
level of health is almost guaranteed to keep disease at bay. A Poor Record
Very few Americans grow old in good health and die naturally from the aging
process. Instead, we get sick and die from entirely preventable diseases such as
cancer, heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Preventing these health problems is
simple, and I will teach you how to do it, but first realize how dire our health
problems really are. The United States spends far more on health, in total and per capita, than any
other nation in the world, but our overall health still ranks quite poorly. According to
the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States ranks thirty-seventh in
overall health quality. It should serve as a wake-up call for all Americans when a
third-world country like Oman spends only $334 per person per year on health and
ranks eighth in the world, while the United States spends more than ten times that
much and we are thirty-seventh. Considering what we spend on health care,
shouldn’t we be the healthiest nation on Earth? We are not. People in their teens or early twenties should be at peak levels of health, right? Not in our society. Autopsies performed on accident victims of this age group in Los
Angeles revealed that nearly 80 percent had early stages of heart disease; 15 percent
had arteries that were more than half blocked. Had these young people survived, they
would likely have been victims of a stroke or heart attack. They may have appearedhealthy and lived normal lives, but they were definitely not healthy. It’s a matter of perspective. Our own ill health does not stand out when compared
to our unhealthy friends and neighbors. The allergies, the colds, the flu, the arthritis,
the premature aging—all of these seem perfectly normal. Because it is so common
in our society, we have come to believe that disease is an inevitable, natural,
“normal” part of the aging process. We mistake being able to function for being healthy. We perceive “sick” as being
bedridden or housebound, and “healthy” as being able to go about our normal
activities. Healthy does not merely mean being ambulatory and free of obvious
disease symptoms. Healthy means functioning at the highest level that genetic
capacity allows. As in other areas of life, recognizing and admitting the problem is
half the battle. Unfortunately, we are a sick population, growing sicker by the day
and, worse yet, blind to our sickness. According to recent estimates in medical journals, including the April 1999
Effective Clinical Practice, 
three-fourths of the American population has a
diagnosable chronic disease. We suffer from many health problems, and most of us
take medications to deal with these problems. A 1997 national survey sponsored by
Parade 
magazine found that about two-thirds of us regularly take prescription or
over-the-counter drugs. This survey also reported that about two-thirds of Americans
believe themselves to be in “good” or “excellent” health. My question to you is this:
How is it possible to be in good health if you are taking medications and
experiencing symptoms of sickness? Even when statistical evidence is presented, many people fail to recognize their
own sickness on a personal level. For example, most people with allergies don’t
think of themselves as having a chronic disease. Did you know that chronic allergic
reactions tax the body and the immune system, making one much more susceptible
to infections and other diseases? Allergies are a serious immune dysfunction
disease, not just a benign inconvenience. Every allergic reaction does long-term
damage to the body; allergies reduce overall quality of life and ultimately reduce
longevity. Healthy people do not have allergies. We think we’re healthy, but we’re not. At a seminar I was leading, a man stood up
and talked about how he jogged every day and how healthy he was. A few pointed
questions later, it was revealed that this man had diabetes—the seventh-leading
cause of death in America! Some groups assert that we are now healthier and living
longer, but that claim seems like propaganda to me. The incidence of virtually every
chronic disease continues to increase, and the health of the American people is in a
long-term downtrend. In 1996, the 
Journal of the American Medical Association
documented that 25 percent of Americans under age eighteen had at least one
chronic disease. The disease rate increases to 45 percent between ages forty-five and
sixty-five, and to 88 percent over age sixty-five.Take diabetes, for example. In August 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) announced its most recent statistics on the increases in rates of
diabetes. In 1980, 2 percent of newly diagnosed cases of adult-onset diabetes were in
people under age nineteen. In 2000, that number was approaching a staggering 50
percent. Separately, in just eight years from 1990 to 1998, diabetes jumped 33
percent nationally and went up a whopping 70 percent among people ages thirty to
thirty-nine. According to Dr. Frank Vinicor, the director of the CDC, “This kind of
an increase in just eight years is almost unheard of.” The experts at the CDC
cautioned that even these numbers understate the problem, because about one-third
of American diabetics do not realize they have the disease. Asthma is another example of how fast we are becoming sicker. The CDC reports
that the number of Americans with asthma increased 61 percent between 1982 and
1994. Mortality from asthma increased 45 percent between 1985 and 1995. Asthma
is now the leading cause of school absenteeism, and the death rate from asthma is
increasing at a rate of 6 percent per year. Obesity is another increasing problem that we must face. Childhood obesity
doubled from 1980 to 2000, and most children do not outgrow this problem. Childhood and teenage obesity affects lifelong health with a risk seven times higher
for developing clogged arteries later in life. Did you know that more than one in five
teenagers are overweight and that almost two of three adults are overweight or
obese? Other diseases are increasing, too, including allergies, autoimmune disease,
attention deficit disorders, birth defects and chronic fatigue. Cancer is now, after
accidents, the leading cause of death for children, and cancer used to be rare in
young people! Would you believe that we have come to expect disease? That we believe in the
certainty of sickness more than we believe in the certainty of wellness? That people
expect to get sick to such a degree that they hold on to jobs they dislike, just to keep
their health benefits? Talk about mixed-up priorities! We are accustomed to disease,
and we expect it to occur. When we do get sick, we often feel victimized or helpless,
as if struck by a bolt of lightning. We never think that we have done it to ourselves
or that we might choose to do otherwise. Leaving the Good Life
Our lifestyles have changed along with the evolution of what is broadly called
“modern civilization.” Since the Industrial Revolution, changes have occurred in
how we grow our foods, what kinds of food we consume, what we take into our
bodies, the lifestyles we live and what we put into the environment. Many of these
changes rob us of the nutrients our cells need in order to be healthy and expose us to
toxins that interfere with normal cell function. An editorial by Joseph Scherger,M.D., in the January 2000 
Hippocrates 
said that “lifestyle factors now loom as the
leading cause of premature death.”
As I began to discover the incredible health and longevity of certain healthy
populations around the world and to look at how these people lived their lives, I
began to understand the potential for health. In contrast to the historically healthy
populations I will tell you about (such as the Hunzas in northeastern Pakistan and
other groups, such as the Vilcabambans and Cuenca Indians in Ecuador), the average
American is not doing well at all. We significantly compromise our health with
nutritionally deficient diets, environmental toxins, sedentary lifestyles, chronic
stress, bad habits such as smoking and drug use, and lack of positive emotions and
meaningful relationships, not to mention the damaging outcomes of symptom
management by modern medicine. In terms of deficiency and toxicity (the two
causes of disease), here are examples of how lifestyle factors make us sick:
Nutrition Failures
• Fruit and vegetable plants are now grown with artificial fertilizers that
produce more food per acre, but these foods are not nearly as rich in nutritional
content. Use of artificial fertilizers has led to depletion of minerals in the soil
because they do not add minerals to replace those being lost with each new
crop. Soil depletion leads to nutritional deficiency in all of us. • Since foods are not eaten fresh off of the plant, many must be harvested
before they are ripe in order to prevent spoilage during transportation and
distribution. This premature harvesting does not allow food to reach its full
nutritional maturity, thereby contributing to nutritional deficiency. • The nutritional content of the food then further deteriorates as the food ages
during storage, transportation and distribution. • Food is often processed, further depleting its nutritional content, in order to
make it easier to store and consume. Among these foods are flour, pasta, bread,
sugar, and canned and packaged foods. • Cooked foods are also nutritionally inferior to raw ones, and most of the
American diet consists of both processed and cooked foods. Toxic Assaults
• The farming of large single crops has created new and serious problems of
insect infestations, necessitating the use of insecticides. These insecticides,
along with the use of herbicides and fungicides, have made food production
methods a significant contributor to our toxic environment and food supply. • The modern processed-food industry adds man-made preservatives, flavors,
colors and other toxic chemicals to our foods. No one knows what thecombination of all these chemicals is doing to our bodies. • Energy demands, first for coal and now for gas and oil, are constantly
polluting our environment. • Virtually all of our industrial processes—from printing our daily newspapers
to painting our homes and building cars and computers—have led to the
introduction of tens of thousands of man-made chemicals into our environment,
all of which put toxic loads into our bodies. Over the past century or so, dramatic changes in diet and environment have
created a society of nutritionally deficient and chemically toxic Americans. Virtually all of the food we can buy in a modern supermarket is nutritionally inferior
to the foods our ancestors consumed. The purity of the air and water our ancestors
enjoyed no longer exists. But all is not lost. Sources do exist today where we can
find quality foods with high nutritional content. We can lower our daily toxic
exposure, but first we need to learn where to look and how to take charge. What I
found helpful was to study those people who have already shown us the way. Small populations of people in remote areas around the world have shown us how
simply meeting the body’s needs along each of the six pathways can result in
tremendous energy, stamina and lack of disease until age 120, 130 or even older. I
will tell you more about these remarkable people, and I will also tell how the
intrusions of “modern civilization” into those populations since the 1970s have
robbed them of their stunning health and longevity. Recognizing Our Potential
While 75 is considered a ripe old age in our modern society, traditionally healthy
societies considered 75 more “middle age.” People in these societies rarely died
before their 90s and commonly lived well into their 100s, reaching 120, 130 and
older—free of disease. In March 1961, an article in the 
Journal of the American
Medical Association 
reported on evidence that men in Hunza lived to be 120 and
even 140 years old. Hunza men and women over 100 exhibited robust energy, in
striking contrast to the epidemic of fatigue in our society. These people lived simply
and without doctors or hospitals, without nursing homes. In America today we spend
$1.5 trillion a year on health care and tens of billions of dollars studying disease. What is it buying us? Certainly not a long, disease-free life. Here’s an idea: Study
health instead of disease! So what is our potential for health? In his 1968 book 
Hunza, 
J. M. Hoffman,
Ph.D., who had spent years studying the people of the remote Hunza Valley in the
Himalayas, quoted prominent physicians and scientists, including the presidents of
the American Medical Association and the International Association of Gerontology,
as saying that humans should live to be 120 to 150 years old. Recent estimates inbiology journals project human life expectancy to exceed 135 years. Even the Bible
itself prophesizes a long life span: “[Man’s] days shall be a hundred and twenty
years” (Gen. 6:3). Long life is our birthright. We should live to be at least 120, in
vigorous health, maintaining physical and mental acuity.
Never_Be_Sick_Again_by_Raymond_Francis.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        What People Are Saying About 
Never Be Sick Again. “Raymond Francis will give you the information you require— and if you
combine it with inspiration, self-esteem and self-love, you will accomplish wonders. Take your health into your own hands—choose life and 
Never Be Sick Again. ”
—Bernie Siegel, M. D. author of 
Love, Medicine & Miracles 
and 
Prescriptions for Living
“The world is a better place for Raymond Francis and his work. He brings hope
and inspiration to those who seek the path out of illness to sustained health and well-
being. For the many health mysteries caused by nutritional deficits, overload of
toxins and neuro-immuno-hormonal dysfunctions, this book is a necessary and
joyful treasure. ”
—Russ Jaffe, M.
The book presents a revolutionary new understanding of health and disease, emphasizing that there is only one disease, and that it is caused by malfunctioning cells. The author, Raymond Francis, shares his personal experience of overcoming his own illness and developing a new theory of health and disease.
What is the main message of the book "Never Be Sick Again"?
The book has been endorsed by several medical professionals, including Dr. Bernie Siegel, Dr. Russel Jaffe, Dr. Hyla Cass, Dr. Richard Kunin, and Dr. Len Saputo.
Who are some of the experts who have endorsed the book?
The author, Raymond Francis, shares his personal story of becoming severely ill and then recovering through self-education and self-research, using his knowledge of biochemistry to treat himself.
What is the author's personal experience?
The book states that there are only two causes of disease: deficiency (insufficient nutrients) and toxicity (exposure to harmful toxins).
What are the two main causes of disease, according to the book?
The author argues that disease is not a random event, but rather a choice that people make through their daily decisions. He emphasizes that people have the power to choose health and wellness, and that they should take responsibility for their own health.
What is the author's main argument?