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What’s the Difference Between Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis?

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Osteoarthritis affects more than 2.1 million Australians, and that number is rising fast.¹ Joint pain, stiffness, and lost mobility are now routine problems for aging adults, but not all joint pain has the same cause. If you’re experiencing stiffness in the morning, pain in your hands, or swelling in your knees, it matters which kind of arthritis you’re dealing with.

Rheumatoid arthritis, though far less common, behaves very differently than osteoarthritis. It often strikes earlier, spreads faster and triggers symptoms beyond joint pain. Your immune system is the culprit, not aging or overuse. Too many people wait until the damage is done. That’s why this article breaks down exactly how to tell the difference between these two conditions — and more importantly, what to do about it.

What Sets Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis Apart

The root causes of these two conditions differ significantly. Osteoarthritis is the most common type of arthritis and occurs when the protective cartilage that cushions the ends of your bones gradually breaks down. Rheumatoid arthritis, by contrast, is an autoimmune condition where your immune system mistakenly targets the lining of your joints, causing inflammation and joint damage.²

• They affect people at different life stages — Osteoarthritis usually shows up later in life, often after age 60. Rheumatoid arthritis tends to appear earlier, usually between ages 30 and 60, but it can strike at any age.

• Progression patterns vary widely — Osteoarthritis develops slowly over years, while rheumatoid arthritis tends to worsen rapidly over a matter of weeks or months.

• Affected joints aren’t the same — Osteoarthritis commonly impacts weight-bearing joints like your knees, hips, spine, and fingers. Rheumatoid arthritis often begins in small joints, such as those in your hands, wrists, and feet — and it’s usually symmetrical.

• One type stays local, the other systemic — Osteoarthritis pain is typically limited to the affected joint. Rheumatoid arthritis often causes fatigue, appetite loss, and low-grade fever — clear signs your entire immune system is involved.

• Diagnosis tools differ — Osteoarthritis is diagnosed primarily through clinical exams and history. Rheumatoid arthritis is often confirmed with blood tests detecting specific antibodies, in addition to imaging.

Osteoarthritis Isn’t Just ‘Wear and Tear’ — It’s a Whole-Joint Disease

An article from The Conversation explains that osteoarthritis is a complex condition that impacts cartilage, bones, ligaments, and joint lining, not just the cartilage cushion between bones.³

• Early symptoms don’t always show up on scans — Pain, swelling, and stiffness are often present even if your x-rays or MRIs look normal. Conversely, advanced structural damage doesn’t always correlate with severe pain, adding to diagnostic confusion. This mismatch between symptoms and imaging makes early diagnosis challenging, and it’s one reason osteoarthritis is often ignored until it becomes debilitating.

• Commonly affected joints are weight-bearing ones — Your knees, hips, and big toes carry the brunt of the condition, though fingers and thumbs are also common sites. These are the areas that take the most mechanical load and wear out faster.

Over time, joint shapes change, especially in your hands, where osteoarthritis often visibly distorts knuckles and limits hand function. For most people, these symptoms get worse with movement, though stiffness after inactivity is common too.

• Risk increases sharply with age and weight — One-third of adults over 75 have osteoarthritis. When you carry more weight than your joints are designed to handle, especially in your knees and hips, it increases wear on the joint structures. Obesity also drives systemic inflammation, which adds fuel to the fire and accelerates damage.

• Genetics matters — especially for hand osteoarthritis — If your family members have had it, your risk rises significantly. While injuries, surgery, and repetitive stress on joints increase your risk overall, genetic predisposition appears particularly strong for finger and thumb joints.

Why Osteoarthritis Diagnosis and Treatment Need a Smarter Approach

Osteoarthritis is often dismissed as a natural part of aging, but that’s misleading. This mindset is outdated and counterproductive.⁴ Osteoarthritis is a degenerative disease process driven by a combination of mechanical, inflammatory, and metabolic factors. Framing it as “just part of getting older” delays action, which is the exact opposite of what’s needed.

• Progression isn’t predictable — Some people live for years with minimal symptoms, while others rapidly deteriorate. Injuries or stress to a joint accelerate the damage.

• Scans often don’t match how you feel — One of the more confusing aspects of osteoarthritis is that severity on scans doesn’t always match your symptoms. You might have severe joint pain with little visible damage, or minimal pain despite major degeneration. Treatment should focus on your experience, not your imaging.

• Movement isn’t dangerous — it’s necessary — Exercise reduces stiffness, improves joint lubrication and strengthens the muscles that stabilize joints. It’s one of the most effective and safest tools for managing osteoarthritis.

• Every pound lost eases the burden — Shedding even 10 pounds reduces up to 40 pounds of stress on your knees. That change alone makes a major difference in pain and mobility.

How Your Symptoms Show Which Type of Arthritis You’re Facing

According to MyHealth.Alberta.ca, the Alberta Government and Alberta Health Services' platform for health and wellness information, patterns help reveal the diagnosis.⁵ Rheumatoid arthritis tends to cause widespread, symmetrical pain that hits both wrists or both knees. Osteoarthritis usually starts in one joint and moves slowly.

• Onset speed and systemic symptoms matter — Osteoarthritis creeps in over years. Rheumatoid arthritis often escalates in a matter of weeks or months and is usually more aggressive early on. Fatigue and fever also signal rheumatoid arthritis. If you’re feeling rundown or losing your appetite alongside joint pain, it’s likely autoimmune-related. Osteoarthritis rarely affects the rest of your body.

• Morning stiffness is a major clue — One of the most telling differences between rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis lies in how your joints feel when you first wake up. Rheumatoid arthritis stiffness tends to last more than an hour and can leave you feeling locked up until your joints begin to loosen with movement.

In contrast, osteoarthritis-related stiffness usually fades in less than 60 minutes and tends to return after periods of rest or inactivity later in the day.

• Small joints vs. big joints — Rheumatoid arthritis commonly targets the small joints in your fingers, hands and feet before affecting larger areas like knees or elbows. Osteoarthritis shows up more often in places that bear the most mechanical load, like hips, knees, or your spine.

This pattern helps differentiate the two conditions before advanced testing is needed. If you’re feeling pain or swelling in the balls of your feet, knuckles, or wrists, and it’s happening on both sides of your body, that’s a red flag for rheumatoid arthritis.

• Inflammation and swelling tell the story — Inflammation and visible swelling are much more common in rheumatoid arthritis. Your joints often look puffy or feel hot to the touch. Osteoarthritis causes some tenderness or joint thickening over time, but doesn’t usually cause the pronounced swelling seen in rheumatoid arthritis flares. If swelling is your dominant symptom, especially if it’s sudden or painful, it’s worth checking for autoimmune involvement.

• Symmetry in joint pain is a hallmark of rheumatoid arthritis — If you have it in one wrist, you’ll likely have it in the other. Osteoarthritis doesn’t follow this rule. Instead, symptoms often appear in a single knee or hip and spread slowly, sometimes never reaching the opposite side. That symmetry versus asymmetry rule is one of the simplest self-checks to better understand what kind of arthritis you’re facing.

How to Reduce Inflammation and Protect Your Joints Naturally

If you’ve been living with joint pain or stiffness, whether it started suddenly or crept in over the years, it’s time to take steps that address the real root of the problem, not just mask it.

Whether your symptoms are from osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis, one thing’s clear: your joints are under attack, and ignoring it won't stop the damage. You need to lower inflammation, protect the tissue that’s still healthy and help your body rebuild what it can. Here’s how to get started.

1. Cut out vegetable oils to stop feeding the inflammation cycle — Vegetable oils like soybean, canola, corn, safflower, and sunflower oil are loaded with linoleic acid (LA), which fuels oxidative stress and chronic inflammation. Eliminating these from your diet is foundational to calming joint inflammation. Switch to saturated fats like grass fed butter, ghee, or tallow.

2. Boost vitamin K2 to block cartilage damage and protect joints — Research confirms vitamin K2 helps keep your joints healthy by preventing cartilage cell death and stopping inflammatory damage.⁶ It works by increasing levels of protective proteins and blocking calcium from building up in your joints.

This helps reduce stiffness, maintain cartilage thickness, and slow the progression of osteoarthritis. The best sources are grass fed egg yolks, aged cheeses and fermented foods like natto or homemade sauerkraut. For added support, take 180 to 200 mcg daily of MK-7, a highly absorbable form of K2.

3. Start sipping real bone broth to repair your connective tissue — Homemade bone broth delivers collagen, glycine, glucosamine, and chondroitin — compounds that rebuild cartilage and soothe inflammation. Use grass fed, organic bones, and add cartilage-rich parts like chicken feet for best results. Sip slowly throughout the day for consistent absorption.

4. Drop excess weight if you're carrying more than your frame supports — Every extra pound on your body adds 4 pounds of force on your knees, so shedding even a few pounds dramatically reduces joint stress. Focus on cutting LA, walking daily and getting morning sunlight to support your metabolism.

5. Support your mitochondria to calm autoimmune inflammation — Healthy mitochondria help regulate your immune system by producing superoxide — a molecule that triggers IL-10, your body’s “off switch” for inflammation.⁷

When mitochondria malfunction, IL-10 levels drop and inflammation spirals out of control. To keep them strong, eat fiber-rich foods like whole fruit that increase butyrate, move your body daily, get sunshine exposure and eliminate vegetable oils.

These steps help your macrophages control inflammation and reduce autoimmune flares. Research also shows that dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) increases joint flexibility in rheumatoid arthritis by 20 to 30 degrees in some cases, without relapse.⁸ That’s a simple, powerful tool worth considering.

FAQs About Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis

Q: How can I tell the difference between osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis?

A: Osteoarthritis typically develops gradually with age and affects weight-bearing joints like knees, hips, and your spine. It often causes stiffness that improves within an hour of waking and worsens with activity.

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that progresses rapidly, often affects both sides of your body symmetrically, and causes systemic symptoms like fatigue and low-grade fever. Morning stiffness with RA usually lasts more than an hour and often includes joint swelling and warmth.

Q: What causes each type of arthritis?

A: Osteoarthritis results from wear-and-tear, mechanical stress, inflammation, and metabolic changes that damage joint cartilage and surrounding tissue. Rheumatoid arthritis is caused by an overactive immune response that mistakenly attacks joint linings, leading to inflammation and tissue destruction throughout your body.

Q: Why is early diagnosis important for both OA and RA?

A: Early detection helps limit permanent joint damage and guides appropriate treatment. Osteoarthritis doesn’t always show up clearly on early scans, making symptom awareness important. RA often shows up in blood tests before severe joint damage occurs. Knowing the difference allows for faster action and better outcomes.

Q: What natural steps help manage joint pain and inflammation?

A: Cutting out vegetable oils from your diet, increasing vitamin K2 intake, sipping bone broth, maintaining a healthy weight and supporting mitochondrial health all help reduce inflammation and protect joints. These strategies target the root causes, whether mechanical or immune-driven, rather than just masking symptoms.

Q: What are the early warning signs I shouldn’t ignore?

A: Persistent joint pain, especially if it’s symmetrical or accompanied by swelling, fatigue, or morning stiffness lasting more than an hour, signal rheumatoid arthritis. In osteoarthritis, watch for stiffness that eases with movement, joint tenderness after activity and gradual loss of flexibility. Visible joint changes, like enlarged knuckles or a shifting thumb joint, are also red flags.

FDA Approves Merck RSV Shot for Infants — Despite High Rates of Serious Reactions

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recently approved clesrovimab, Merck’s new shot touted to “protect” infants against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).¹ This approval comes despite clinical trials showing adverse reactions associated with the shot.

What’s more, clesrovimab is designed to be given in a single dose, unlike previously approved RSV shots, which are given as a two-dose series. The shot is only available in a standard, 105-milligram (mg) dose — so whether your child is 12 months old or 12 weeks old, they will receive 105 mg of the drug. In medicine, one-size-fits-all dosing rarely ends well, and in this case, the data shows that it causes real harm.

Clinical Trials Reveal Alarming Side Effects Linked to Clesrovimab

Marketed as Enflonsia, clesrovimab is said to protect against RSV, a common respiratory virus that nearly every child in the U.S. contracts by age 2. It will be launched during this year’s RSV season, to compete with Beyfortus (nirsevimab), the “blockbuster” RSV shot from Sanofi and AstraZeneca.²

In a press release, Merck said that clesrovimab’s safety profile is “generally comparable” to placebo;³ however, if you look more closely at the clinical trial results,⁴ you’ll find severe side effects buried in the data.

• The research paints a different picture regarding clesrovimab’s effects — The trials involved 2,409 babies who received the injection and 1,202 who were given a placebo. These were healthy infants, ranging from early and moderate preterm to full-term.

The results were sobering. Among the babies given clesrovimab, there was a 50% higher risk of death compared to those in the placebo group. That’s three deaths in the shot group versus one in the placebo.

• Serious neurological adverse reactions were reported — According to a report from the Children’s Health Defense (CHD), “These included febrile convulsions, seizures, facial paralysis and brain injury at about three times the rate in the vaccine group (25 of 2,409) as the placebo group (4 of 1,202).”⁵

• The risk of respiratory tract infections (RTIs) also soared — According to the data, infants who received the shot had a 350% higher risk of getting an upper RTI and a 63% higher risk of lower RTIs. This is particularly ironic, considering this shot is supposed to prevent exactly these types of infections.

• Overall, the serious adverse event rate is 11.71% — Dr. Peter Selley, a general practitioner from the U.K. who has closely followed this drug’s development, notes that these effects are “concerning.” He also warns against the standardized dosing of this drug and its implications on very young children.

More Is Not Always Better — Especially with Infant Shots

It’s clear that Merck is eager to break into the RSV drug market, and for an obvious reason — Beyfortus, being the lone RSV antibody shot approved for children, raked in a whopping $1.8 billion in 2024 alone, following its approval in 2023.⁶

• Merck proudly notes that Enflonsia has about the same efficacy rate as Beyfortus — “In clinical trials, the shot reduced RSV-related hospitalization by 84.3% compared to placebo, and the incidence of RSV that needed to be medically attended by 60.5% versus placebo, through age 5 months in the clinical trials,” the CHD reports.

• These two shots have certain differences — Both clesrovimab and nirsevimab are monoclonal antibody shots; however, they bind to different antigenic sites — this complicates any comparison between the two. Another, as mentioned above, is the dosage per shot.

• One-time, uniform-dose shots carry risks — Unlike Beyfortus, which is given in a two-dose series in amounts that vary depending on the infant’s weight, Enflonsia is administered as a one-time, fixed-dose injection.⁷ Selley cautions against this standardized dosing, saying:

“The implications of this are that with only one dose of clesrovimab, tiny preterm babies under 5 kilograms are going to be injected with a relatively much bigger dose of the monoclonal antibody, leading to massive levels of the drug in their circulation. In most other fields of medicine, the aim is to find the lowest dose of a drug that is effective, as most side effects are dose-related.”⁸

The Problem with Monoclonal Antibody Shots

Unlike conventional vaccines, monoclonal antibody injections work by providing passive immunity as they directly supply antibodies to fight a specific pathogen. In contrast, a vaccine stimulates your body's immune system to produce its own antibodies, creating active immunity that develops over time. This means that monoclonal antibodies fall into a different category for safety monitoring.

• Adverse reports could be underreported — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) doesn't directly monitor injuries from medications that are not vaccines; Instead, they rely on the FDA's MedWatch system.⁹ This discrepancy not only leads to confusion among health care providers and the public about where and how to report side effects, but could also lead to adverse events being underreported, making it more difficult to accurately assess the injection’s safety profile.

• The rush to implement widespread use of these injections raises questions about long-term safety and economic feasibility — When Beyfortus was first released, internist and biological warfare epidemiologist, Dr. Meryl Nass expressed her concerns about the unknowns of the drug. On her Substack, Nass points out that no monoclonal antibody product has ever been given on a mass scale to children before.¹⁰

• The safety profile of nirsevimab is questionable — Nass points out that monoclonal antibodies are associated with numerous side effects, from changes in blood pressure and increased heart rate to cytokine release syndrome — yet the product label mentions only rashes and anaphylaxis as potential side effects of this drug.¹¹

• Deaths during clinical trials may have been underreported — Nass points out that there was an "imbalance" in deaths between the treatment and placebo groups during clinical trials. The FDA reportedly "judged" that these excess deaths were not due to the monoclonal antibody, but it's unclear how they reached this conclusion without more comprehensive safety data.¹²

Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) Is Another Possible Risk

ADE is a condition that was noted in a preprint study by French scientist Hélène Banoun, Ph.D.,¹³ and it occurs when antibodies actually help a virus infect cells more easily instead of neutralizing it. ADE has been observed with other respiratory viruses and vaccines, and it's a theoretical risk with nirsevimab and clesrovimab as well.

• Antibodies in these shots could be engineered in a way that makes them more ineffective — Monoclonal antibody shots target the RSV fusion protein, but, here’s the catch — they are engineered to last longer in your baby's body, with a half-life of 80 to 120 days.¹⁴ This unnatural modification could increase the risk of ADE as antibody levels gradually decline over time.

This is because the antibodies, at low concentrations, might not be able to fully neutralize the virus, instead facilitating its entry into cells. This could lead to more severe disease in some infants who receive the shot. Studies have shown that ADE can occur with RSV antibodies, particularly when they're present at sub-neutralizing levels.¹⁵

• RSV antibodies can weaken your immunity by making your immune cells more prone to infections — Laboratory experiments have demonstrated that these antibodies enhance infection of certain cell types, such as macrophages, which are important immune cells in the lungs. This raises concerns about whether monoclonal antibody shots could make RSV infections worse in some babies as the antibody levels wane over time.

• Clinical trials conducted on nirsevimab have limitations that do not clearly assess its safety — Banoun's study points out that many of the trials done on nirsevimab were conducted during periods of low RSV circulation — this means there weren't many cases of severe RSV to compare between the treatment and placebo groups.¹⁶ This raises doubts about the shot’s reported accuracy, especially its effectiveness and safety.

For more about the research findings about nirsevimab and monoclonal antibody shots, read “Is the RSV Shot Worth the Risk to Your Baby?”

RSV Season Is Coming Soon — Should You Be Alarmed?

According to the CHD report, even though CDC’s vaccine advisory committee has yet to give its recommendation regarding clesrovimab, Merck is gearing up to take orders, so supplies can be shipped out in time for the 2025 to 2026 RSV season — from October to April.¹⁷ But just how lethal is this virus, and do the risks of these antibody shots truly outweigh the dangers of this illness?

• RSV symptoms are similar to a mild cold — These include runny nose, coughing, sneezing, wheezing, and fever. Most children recuperate from RSV without any issues.

• In fact, 97% of all babies become infected with RSV by the time they turn 2 years old — This gives them partial immunity, so that when they become reinfected, the symptoms are less severe.

• However, in some infants, RSV can be dangerous — Babies that are born prematurely or with weakened immune systems are at risk of bronchiolitis or pneumonia when they acquire RSV and may need to be hospitalized. In U.S. babies younger than 1, RSV is the leading cause of hospitalization.¹⁸

• The mortality rate is significantly lower than expected — According to a 2021 study from the CDC,¹⁹ only a small percentage of children — 25 or fewer babies per year — succumb to the virus.

What to Do to Avoid RSV Shots and Protect Your Baby Naturally

The good news is there are safer, smarter ways to protect your baby from RSV without exposing them to the risks of these injections. It goes beyond eliminating every germ — it's about creating a foundation of resilience. Here are some key strategies:

• During RSV season, avoid crowds and indoor daycares if you can — If you have a newborn — especially if your baby is a preemie or has any underlying health issues — avoid crowded indoor settings. This includes daycare centers, waiting rooms, and busy stores. The fewer RSV exposures your baby gets during the early months, the more time their immune system has to mature naturally.

• Breastmilk is best — Breastfeeding gives your baby passive immunity without the risks of injections. Your breast milk contains antibodies that help fight off RSV and many other infections. Many of breastfeeding’s benefits actually stretch out until adulthood. For more information, read “The Power of Breastfeeding.”

• Prioritize your own health during pregnancy to boost natural protection — The state of your health during pregnancy plays a central role in shaping your baby’s early immunity. Make sure to optimize your nutrient status (focusing on getting key nutrients like folate), avoid exposure to toxins, and improve your gut health — these all directly affect your baby’s development. Get sufficient high-quality sleep and reduce your stress as well.

• Get regular safe sun exposure for both you and your baby — Sunlight helps your body create vitamin D, which is foundational for immune strength and respiratory health. Aim for short, gentle sun exposure daily — especially morning sun. If your baby is old enough, allow them short periods of direct sun on their skin.

For you, daily morning walks outside without sunglasses or sunscreen support both vitamin D and melatonin production, which regulate your baby’s sleep cycles and immune rhythm.

• Keep your home environment clean, warm, and hydrated — Dry indoor air increases the chance that RSV will infect your baby’s respiratory tract. Use a clean humidifier to keep indoor humidity between 40% to 60% during the colder months. Keep your baby’s nose clear with saline drops and a suction bulb if needed. Wipe down commonly touched surfaces often — but skip harsh chemical cleaners.

Stick to natural disinfectants like vinegar or hydrogen peroxide to reduce toxin exposure while keeping your environment safe.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Clesrovimab (Enflonsia)

Q: What is clesrovimab, and why is it controversial?

A: Clesrovimab, marketed as Enflonsia, is Merck’s newly approved monoclonal antibody shot for preventing RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) in infants. It’s controversial because clinical trial data revealed a serious adverse event rate of 11.71%, including seizures, brain injuries, and even death. Despite these findings, the FDA approved it for use in all infants, regardless of weight or health status.

Q: How does clesrovimab compare to other RSV shots like nirsevimab (Beyfortus)?

A: While clesrovimab and nirsevimab are both monoclonal antibodies aimed at preventing RSV, clesrovimab is administered as a single fixed 105 mg dose for all infants. Nirsevimab, on the other hand, is dosed based on weight. Experts have warned that standardized dosing with clesrovimab, without taking into account the infant’s weight or size, could lead to overdosing in smaller or premature babies, increasing the risk of serious side effects.

Q: What types of side effects were seen in babies who received clesrovimab?

A: The trial reported a wide range of serious reactions: a 50% higher death rate, a 350% increased risk of upper respiratory infections, a 63% increase in lower respiratory infections, and three times the rate of severe neurological effects — such as seizures, febrile convulsions, facial paralysis, and brain injury — compared to the placebo group.

Q: How serious is RSV in most infants, and do these risks outweigh the benefits?

A: RSV is a common virus that nearly all children contract by age 2. It usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms. While it can be serious in a small number of cases — particularly in premature or immune-compromised babies — CDC data shows that only about 25 infants die from RSV each year in the U.S. For most families, the documented risks of clesrovimab far exceed the danger posed by RSV itself.

Q: What are safer alternatives to protect babies from RSV?

A: You can reduce RSV risk without resorting to injections by focusing on natural immunity: avoid crowded indoor spaces during RSV season, support infant immunity with breastfeeding, prioritize your own health during pregnancy, ensure regular gentle sun exposure for both you and your baby, and maintain a clean, well-humidified indoor environment. These steps help build true resilience without the documented risks of monoclonal antibody shots.

Fiber Found in Everyday Foods Helps Remove Forever Chemicals from Your Body

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Most people have no idea they're carrying around a hidden chemical load that their bodies weren't designed to handle. But the reality is, we're living in a world saturated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as PFAS. These synthetic compounds are engineered to resist heat, water and oil — and they don't just stay on the surface.

Once these substances enter your bloodstream, they're incredibly hard to get rid of. That's why researchers are searching for real, practical solutions. Many believe that detoxing PFAS is a lost cause — that once they're in your body, they're in for good. But new evidence suggests otherwise.

It turns out your gut, not your liver or kidneys, is one key to turning this around. And the solution doesn't involve harsh protocols or extreme diets. It starts with something as simple as how you digest your food — and whether the right kind of fiber is present to help carry these chemicals out.

If you've ever wondered why you're dealing with persistent fatigue, inflammation, hormone problems or chronic digestive issues, PFAS could be part of the story. These chemicals hijack your system slowly and silently. But there's now a realistic path to lowering that burden, and it starts by focusing on what's happening in your gut.

Four Weeks of Fiber Lowered Toxic PFAS in the Blood

A study published in Environmental Health evaluated 72 adult men with elevated LDL cholesterol who were already enrolled in a trial testing oat beta-glucan's effects on cholesterol.¹

Beta-glucans are a type of soluble fiber found in oats and barley that form a gel-like substance in your gut, helping to trap and remove compounds like bile acids and, as this study explored, PFAS as well. PFAS chemicals, also known as "forever chemicals," are notoriously hard to remove from the body, so the researchers wanted to know: could a fiber intervention make a dent?

• Participants received either a fiber-rich supplement or a placebo for four weeks — All participants followed the original protocol, consuming either an oat beta-glucan drink (1 gram (g) of beta-glucan and 1.9 g total fiber per serving, three times daily) or a brown rice drink with no active fiber. Blood samples were collected at baseline and after four weeks to measure 17 different PFAS types.

• PFAS levels dropped significantly but only in the fiber group for legacy PFAS — While short-chain PFAS decreased in both groups, likely due to their shorter half-lives, the study found that only the group consuming beta-glucan showed significant reductions in long-chain PFAS known to persist for years in the body.

These included perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS) — two of the most studied PFAS compounds, both associated with increased cancer and hormone disruption risks.

• PFAS reductions occurred even in men with exposure levels typical of the general population — Researchers noted that all participants had detectable PFAS levels at the start of the study. The levels of certain PFAS were higher than previously reported in Canadian populations, suggesting rising background exposure. Despite this, the beta-glucan intervention still reduced PFAS levels, showing promise even for people without known occupational or high-dose environmental exposure.

• Only the fiber group saw a drop in the most concerning types of PFAS — These specific PFAS, identified by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), are known to increase the risk for serious health issues like thyroid disease, kidney problems, ulcerative colitis and certain cancers.

If your blood level of these seven PFAS reaches just 2 nanograms per milliliter, doctors are advised to monitor your cholesterol, blood pressure during pregnancy and breast cancer risk. At 20 nanograms per milliliter, the recommendations expand to include regular screening for thyroid disease, testicular cancer and more. In the study, only the fiber group had a meaningful reduction in this high-risk PFAS group.

• The proposed mechanism is the fiber's ability to trap PFAS in your digestive tract — Researchers believe the gel-forming fiber worked because PFAS share biochemical properties with bile acids — compounds already known to bind to beta-glucan and get flushed out in feces. PFAS and bile acids are both amphipathic, meaning they have both water-loving and fat-loving parts. This allows them to interact with fiber gels and get excreted rather than reabsorbed.

Most PFAS don't leave your body easily. Once excreted into the bile, they're typically reabsorbed in your intestine, returning to your liver in a loop. Beta-glucan breaks this cycle by holding PFAS in your gut, giving your body a chance to eliminate them through stool rather than cycling them back into your bloodstream.

Oat Beta-Glucan Helped Mice Eliminate PFAS

In a related study published in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, researchers from Boston University used mice to examine whether oat beta-glucan could reduce the body's PFAS load.² They exposed mice to a mixture of seven PFAS compounds in drinking water while feeding them diets that included either inulin, a non-gel-forming fiber, or oat beta-glucan — a gel-forming fiber.

• Despite drinking more contaminated water, fiber-fed mice had lower PFAS in their blood — The mice fed beta-glucan consumed more PFAS-contaminated water, yet ended up with lower blood levels of some of the most harmful PFAS. This suggests that the fiber helped block reabsorption of PFAS in the gut. In other words, even when these mice took in more of the toxic chemicals, their bodies were better at flushing them out before they could circulate back into the bloodstream.

• Mice on the fiber diet had better fat metabolism and lower liver fat — The beta-glucan-fed mice showed lower liver triglycerides and reduced fat accumulation in the small intestine and fat tissue overall. This matters because PFAS have been linked to metabolic disruption and fatty liver disease. These findings suggest that fiber offers a double benefit: lowering toxic load while improving fat regulation in the body.

• Fiber-fed mice experienced better lipid balance without triggering other stress responses — The researchers also looked at markers of liver stress and detoxification. A key enzyme linked to chemical detox was lower in the fiber-fed group during the cleansing phase, indicating that their bodies were under less toxic stress after PFAS exposure.

How to Reduce Your PFAS Burden with Targeted Fiber and Smarter Food Choices

If you're dealing with fatigue, hormone issues or unexplained weight gain, and you've already cleaned up your water, cookware and household products, you could be missing the last piece of the puzzle: what's stuck inside your body. PFAS aren't just external threats; they're internal ones too.

Once these forever chemicals get in, they linger for years unless you take direct steps to push them out. Here's where smart, gut-focused nutrition comes in. The right type of fiber, at the right time, makes a meaningful difference in your toxic load. But timing and your gut's condition matter. So, if you're trying to reduce PFAS levels in your system, start here:

1. Check your gut health first — If you regularly feel bloated after meals, go days without a bowel movement or have frequent loose stools, your gut likely isn't ready for high-fiber foods. Don't guess — listen to your symptoms. These are signs that your microbiome is imbalanced and your gut lining is inflamed or damaged. For now, avoid complex carbs and stick to simpler ones like fruit and white rice while your gut settles down.

2. Avoid fiber and fermentable carbs if your digestion is impaired — A damaged gut can't handle even "healthy" foods. Beans, leafy greens, cruciferous veggies and whole grains all ferment quickly and feed the wrong microbes when your gut is compromised. That drives more bloating, inflammation and gas. In this phase, you want fuel that doesn't backfire — whole fruit and cooked starches that digest cleanly without fermenting too fast.

3. Reintroduce fermentable fibers in small amounts once your gut calms — When your bloating stops and your digestion becomes regular, that's your green light. Start with resistant starches like cooked-and-cooled white potatoes or green bananas. These feed butyrate-producing bacteria — the kind that protect your gut lining and regulate inflammation. Slowly add in garlic, leeks and onions. Keep portions small and build up as your tolerance improves.

4. Eat foods high in beta-glucans once your gut is stable — Oats and barley contain beta-glucan, which binds to PFAS in your digestive tract and helps your body eliminate them through your stool. Once your digestion is in good shape, make this fiber part of your daily routine. Other good sources include organic rye, maitake and shiitake mushrooms, and seaweed like kombu.

Be mindful of your portions though, as most seaweeds contain polyunsaturated fats, including linoleic acid, which is harmful to your health in excessive amounts. Choose whole, minimally processed forms of beta-glucans whenever possible to get the most benefit.

5. Cut off PFAS exposure at the source — While you work to flush them out, don't let more in. Use a water filter certified for PFAS. Stop storing food in nonstick containers or wrappers. Replace your nonstick cookware with stainless steel, ceramic or enameled cast iron. Skip stain-resistant treatments on clothes and furniture. PFAS are everywhere, but the more you avoid them now, the less your body has to fight later.

FAQs About Removing PFAS with Fiber

Q: What are PFAS and why are they dangerous?

A: PFAS are synthetic chemicals used in nonstick cookware, food packaging, stain-resistant fabrics and firefighting foams. They build up in your blood, liver and fat tissues and don't easily break down. Long-term exposure has been linked to liver damage, hormone disruption, cancer, immune suppression and infertility.

Q: How do PFAS stay in my body for so long?

A: Once PFAS enter your system, usually through contaminated water or food, they're reabsorbed in your intestines and recirculated back to your liver in a loop. This recycling is what gives PFAS such long half-lives — many remain in your body for years unless that cycle is broken.

Q: Does fiber really help remove PFAS from my body?

A: Yes. Clinical research in humans and animals has shown that gel-forming fibers like oat beta-glucan bind PFAS in your gut and stop them from being reabsorbed. This allows your body to eliminate them through stool, reducing your overall PFAS burden over time.

Q: Should I add fiber to my diet immediately?

A: Not necessarily. If you have symptoms of gut dysfunction, like bloating, constipation, loose stools or food intolerances, you need to heal your gut first. Starting fiber too soon makes things worse. Begin with simple, low-fiber carbs like whole fruit or white rice, then reintroduce fiber slowly once your digestion stabilizes.

Q: What are the best ways to lower PFAS exposure and support detox?

A: Avoid sources of new PFAS exposure. Use PFAS-certified water filters, stop using nonstick cookware and stain-resistant products, and limit packaged foods. Once your gut is ready, include small amounts of beta-glucan-rich foods like organic oats or barley. Over time, this helps reduce PFAS levels while also improving your gut health and immune resilience.

Test Your Knowledge with Today's Quiz!

Take today’s quiz to see how much you’ve learned from yesterday’s Mercola.com article.

What habit can disrupt your immune system’s natural rhythm?

Staying up late and using screens at night
Staying up late and using screens at night disrupts your immune rhythm by exposing you to artificial light, weakening your body’s infection-fighting ability. Learn more.
Getting morning sunlight exposure daily
Eating a balanced diet throughout the day
Exercising moderately in the evening

Why more doctors are leaving clinical practice and how it helps health care

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Why starting with why can transform your medical practice

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Vitamin B1 Enhances Motivation for Exercise by Raising Dopamine

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There may have been days when you find yourself wanting to move but not quite able to begin. Your body isn’t resisting, but the drive to act isn’t strong enough to push things forward. Sometimes, what’s missing isn’t physical strength or even time — it’s mental momentum. The kind that gives you the subtle internal signal to get up, start moving, and keep going.

That momentum starts in your brain. It’s guided by systems that regulate alertness, attention, and motor initiation, and those systems rely heavily on neurochemicals, particularly dopamine. Among the nutrients that support this process is thiamine, commonly known as vitamin B1.

While it’s long been recognized for its role in supporting metabolism, new research published in The Journal of Physiological Sciences¹ shows that certain forms of thiamine also influence how the brain supports mental drive, thereby making it a key player not just in energy production, but in the deeper mechanics of motivation and movement.

Understanding the History of Thiamine and Its Role in Your Body

Thiamine supports one of the most basic functions of life — converting food into usable energy. Every cell depends on it to run core metabolic processes, especially those involved in breaking down glucose. Without it, energy production slows and symptoms begin to emerge in systems with the highest fuel demands — namely, your nervous system, brain, and heart.^2,³

• Thiamine deficiency explains previously mysterious disorders — When thiamine was first identified in the early 20th century, it shed light on conditions like beriberi, which affects movement, coordination, and circulation, and Wernicke’s encephalopathy, which impairs brain and nervous system function. These disorders have long plagued populations around the world without a clear cause.

• Early treatments focused solely on correcting deficiency — Once the link was established, public health efforts prioritized food fortification and basic thiamine supplementation. Medical use was aimed at reversing deficiency-related symptoms, especially in clinical settings or regions with limited dietary access to thiamine-rich foods.

• Symptoms of deficiency appear gradually — Symptoms of thiamine deficiency often emerge slowly as levels decline. These include fatigue, brain fog, irritability, poor appetite, muscle weakness, digestive issues, and light sensitivity.

If left unaddressed, it progresses to more serious forms of beriberi affecting the heart, nerves, or brain. For a more detailed look at what thiamine deficiency can feel like, read “Common Signs of Vitamin B1 Deficiency.”

• Researchers in Japan developed new thiamine derivatives — Standard thiamine is water-soluble and depends on active transport systems in the gut. These systems are easily saturated and often compromised by stress, illness, or alcohol use. As a result, absorption is not always reliable when demand is high.

To address these limitations, scientists created fat-soluble forms of thiamine that cross cell membranes more easily. One of the most notable was thiamine tetrahydrofurfuryl disulfide (TTFD), designed to improve absorption and reach target tissues more efficiently, including the brain.

• Allithiamine, a naturally occurring derivative, was found in garlic — Discovered in the allium family of plants, allithiamine shares similar properties with TTFD. These derivatives act as prodrugs, converting into active thiamine once inside the body and crossing the blood-brain barrier more effectively than standard forms.⁴

• These developments shifted how thiamine was studied — With improved delivery, researchers began exploring the role of thiamine in areas beyond basic metabolism. The focus expanded to include mood, cognition, and physical performance — domains not traditionally linked to vitamin deficiency.

• TTFD showed early benefits for energy and recovery — Animal studies found that TTFD supported endurance and reduced fatigue.^5,⁶ In human trials, participants reported lower perceived exertion and faster recovery from physical stress. These effects were observed even in those without diagnosed deficiencies.⁷

These findings helped expand how researchers viewed thiamine’s role in the body. It was no longer just a remedy for severe deficiency — it became a tool for supporting resilience when physical or mental energy is under strain. TTFD, in particular, became a focus for understanding how targeted nutritional support helps restore the internal readiness that movement depends on.

How TTFD Stimulates Motivation and Physical Activity

Given thiamine’s effects on mental energy and endurance through the brain’s arousal systems, the featured study, conducted by researchers at the University of Tsukuba, set out to examine whether TTFD could enhance physical activity and promote a more activated waking state following its administration.⁸

• Activity rose sharply following TTFD administration — In this animal study, researchers administered either TTFD or saline, then tracked the animals’ physical activity and sleep-wake states. Compared to controls, animals that received TTFD showed a clear and immediate increase in physical movement.

The surge happened in two phases, with an early peak between 10 and 20 minutes and a second surge between 60 and 90 minutes after injection. Sleep data confirmed that animals rested between these two peaks, indicating that TTFD triggered two distinct bursts of activity rather than one prolonged effect.

• Wakefulness increased alongside physical movement — Animals that received TTFD spent significantly more time awake, while both slow-wave sleep (SWS) and rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep temporarily declined. These changes tracked closely with periods of heightened movement, suggesting the brain entered a more alert state without sacrificing overall rest.

TTFD is mostly excreted within 12 hours, which matches the observed duration of increased activity and alertness. Follow-up recordings showed no rebound in sleep, indicating that this shift was part of a balanced, time-limited response.

• TTFD’s effects align with the central fatigue model — According to an analysis by bioenergetic researcher Georgi Dinkov, the featured study offers evidence for what’s known as the central fatigue hypothesis.⁹

This framework suggests that fatigue often originates in the brain, not the body, triggered by shifts in dopamine and serotonin that suppress motivation and movement. By restoring dopamine activity in key brain regions like the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), TTFD helps re-engage the systems responsible for movement, alertness, and behavioral momentum.

• Other components of the arousal system are involved — The locus coeruleus (LC), which produces noradrenaline and projects to the same brain areas, is known to promote wakefulness and reduce REM and SWS when activated. The coordination between these systems explains the simultaneous rise in movement and alertness observed in this study.

• TTFD may also support recovery after exertion — Beyond enhancing exercise motivation, thiamine plays a key role in how your body clears fatigue once activity ends. It regulates pyruvate dehydrogenase, the enzyme that links glycolysis to the Krebs cycle. When this enzyme becomes sluggish, lactate builds up and the energy cost of movement increases.

At the same time, carbon dioxide (CO₂) production drops, which reduces tissue oxygen delivery and impairs the cellular environment needed for recovery. These shifts make exertion feel heavier and prolong post-exercise fatigue. By supporting efficient glucose oxidation, thiamine helps prevent this metabolic bottleneck, lowering excess lactate, restoring CO₂ output, and promoting a faster, more complete rebound.¹⁰

The findings point to a role for TTFD in supporting your mental and physical vitality. Because the arousal response was internally driven, not forced by external stimulation, TTFD may help you regain motivation, focus, and behavioral drive when energy feels low or engagement is hard to access.

Other Health Benefits of Thiamine

Aside from increasing your motivation to exercise, thiamine also supports a wide range of processes that keep your body and mind functioning smoothly. Its role extends into many essential aspects of your health, including:

• Nerve function — Thiamine is sometimes called an “antistress” vitamin because of how it supports your central nervous system. It helps maintain healthy nerve cells and keeps your nervous system functioning properly.

In conditions like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), thiamine levels in the brain and peripheral nerves drop by as much as 60%, leading to major disruptions in glucose metabolism.¹¹ There’s also early evidence that high doses of thiamine and biotin may help reverse nerve damage in Huntington’s disease by restoring the brain’s ability to process energy.¹²

• Long-term cognitive health — Keeping thiamine levels steady supports long-term brain health, especially as you age. Research has linked adequate thiamine to better cognitive function and a lower risk of disorders tied to cognitive decline, including Alzheimer’s.^13,¹⁴

As explained by the Alzheimer’s Association, “Thiamine helps brain cells produce energy from sugar. When levels fall too low, brain cells cannot generate enough energy to function properly.”¹⁵

Impaired glucose metabolism is a well-established feature of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Some researchers believe this disruption stems from a decline in thiamine-dependent processes that normally keep energy production running smoothly.¹⁶

• Cardiovascular function — Thiamine plays a role in producing acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter your body uses to send signals between nerves and muscle tissue, including the heart. This signaling is essential for keeping your heartbeat steady and coordinated.

• Prevention of diabetes complications — Thiamine helps protect against complications of diabetes by reducing oxidative stress and supporting healthier glucose metabolism. Some research also suggests it could improve glucose tolerance over time.¹⁷

• Immune resilience — Low thiamine levels have been associated with worse outcomes in conditions like sepsis, pneumonia, and COVID-19. Because of its role in metabolic recovery, thiamine is now included as an essential part of treatment protocols, such as Dr. Paul Marik’s sepsis treatment.¹⁸

For a closer look at how thiamine supports your overall health, check out “Vitamin B1 Is Vital to Protect Against Infectious Disease.”

How to Make Sure You're Getting Enough Thiamine

If you’ve noticed signs like low energy, irritability, slowed recovery, or brain fog, it’s time to assess your thiamine intake. Supporting healthy levels doesn't require overhauling your diet, but it does mean being intentional about both food and supplementation.

1. Prioritize whole-food sources of thiamine and limit what depletes it — Focus on nutrient-dense, minimally processed foods that naturally contain a broad spectrum of B vitamins to avoid creating an imbalance. Grass fed liver, pasture-raised eggs, nutritional yeast, and traditional fermented foods like natto are excellent options.

At the same time, avoid refined sugars, alcohol, and sulfite-preserved products, such as commercial wine and processed meats, which place stress on thiamine metabolism and impair absorption.

2. Use targeted supplementation when needed — Even with a good diet, stress, illness, and environmental exposures can raise your body’s demand for thiamine beyond what food provides. Supplementing is especially helpful if you’ve experienced brain fog, low mood, high sugar intake, or prolonged fatigue.

Thiamine hydrochloride is the standard form found in most multivitamins, but forms like benfotiamine and TTFD offer better absorption. When using TTFD, keep in mind that it promotes a more alert waking state, so it’s best taken earlier in the day.

3. Adjust your dose based on your body’s demands — While standard daily requirement for thiamine is 1.2 mg for men and 1.1 mg for women, actual needs rise with exertion, illness, and metabolic strain. In these situations, higher doses may help restore balance, especially if signs of deficiency are present.

Thiamine is water-soluble and nontoxic, even in large amounts. In clinical settings, doses between 3 and 8 grams per day have been used for conditions like Alzheimer’s with no adverse effects.

Based on an analysis by Dinkov, the dose used in the featured University of Tsukuba study translates to roughly 7.5 mg/kg in humans, or about 100 mg of TTFD or allithiamine daily for the average adult. Taken over a seven- to eight-day period, this protocol mirrors the study’s dopamine-enhancing, energizing effects without requiring long-term or extreme dosing.

4. Support thiamine activation with magnesium — Correct any suspected magnesium insufficiency or deficiency, as magnesium is required as a cofactor in the conversion of thiamine into its active form. Without adequate magnesium, even high doses of thiamine may not be fully effective. Read this article for my recommended strategy regarding magnesium supplementation.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Vitamin B1 and Exercise Motivation

Q: What is thiamine and why is it important for energy and motivation?

A: Thiamine, also known as vitamin B1, is essential for converting food into usable energy at the cellular level. It also plays a key role in brain function, supporting dopamine production and the systems that regulate alertness, focus, and physical drive. Low levels lead to fatigue, brain fog, and lack of motivation.

Q: How does thiamine deficiency affect physical activity and exercise motivation?

A: Thiamine deficiency impairs dopamine signaling in the brain, which reduces mental momentum and the drive to act. According to research from the University of Tsukuba, certain forms of thiamine, like thiamine tetrahydrofurfuryl disulfide (TTFD), help restore this drive and increase physical activity by engaging arousal centers in the brain.

Q: What are the signs of low thiamine levels?

A: Common symptoms include fatigue, brain fog, mood swings, irritability, poor appetite, light sensitivity, and slowed recovery from exertion. More severe deficiency leads to cardiovascular, nerve, or brain dysfunction known as beriberi.

Q: What foods are high in thiamine?

A: Dietary sources include grass fed liver, pasture-raised eggs, nutritional yeast, and fermented foods like natto. Avoiding alcohol, refined sugar, and sulfite-preserved products will also help protect your thiamine reserves.

Q: When supplementing, how much thiamine should I take per day?

A: The standard RDA is 1.2 mg for men and 1.1 mg for women, but demand increases with stress, illness, and other factors. For therapeutic support, short-term doses of around 100 mg/day of TTFD or allithiamine may replicate the benefits demonstrated in the study, according to Georgi Dinkov.

The Central Role of Gut Inflammation in Insulin Resistance

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Insulin resistance doesn’t start with sugar. It starts with stress — inside your gut. You won’t feel it at first. Your labs might even look normal. But deep inside, your system is already under pressure. Long before your blood sugar climbs, your body is working overtime to keep it steady. That effort begins with an invisible shift in how your organs communicate, driven by inflammation and a damaged gut barrier.

When your gut loses its ability to block harmful substances, your liver picks up the warning signs. And from there, a silent signal is sent that alters how your pancreas functions, and not in a good way. A study published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation Insight has uncovered how this hidden signal starts in your colon and ends with insulin imbalance.¹ But it’s not just about where the problem begins. It’s about how to stop it.

Understanding your gut’s role in insulin resistance opens the door to a different kind of solution, one that begins with healing the root cause instead of masking the symptoms. Let’s break down how this chain reaction unfolds and what to do to interrupt it before damage takes hold.

Colonic Inflammation Activates Your Pancreas Before Your Blood Sugar Ever Rises

The Journal of Clinical Investigation Insight study explored a nerve-based feedback system that connects your gut, liver, and pancreas — and uncovered a new reason your insulin system gets overwhelmed during obesity.² The research focused on how inflammation in your colon, also called colonic inflammation, triggers changes in your liver that then send nerve signals to your pancreas.

This isn’t a blood sugar issue. It’s your gut setting off a chain reaction that causes your pancreas to grow more insulin-producing beta cells to prepare for metabolic damage, even before glucose levels go up.

• The findings reveal a new early warning system in your body that doesn’t depend on blood sugar — Scientists triggered gut inflammation in mice using a chemical that causes leaky gut, or a compromised gut barrier. Even without causing weight gain or elevated glucose, this inflammation turned on a stress response in the liver and led to pancreatic beta cell expansion.

When they stopped the gut inflammation — or interrupted the nerve signals between the liver and pancreas — the insulin-producing cells stopped multiplying. That means the gut inflammation alone was enough to activate this response.

• This beta cell expansion is your body’s attempt to stay ahead of the damage — The pancreas responds to this gut-triggered nerve signal by increasing beta cell mass — the cells responsible for producing insulin. The study used markers that tag dividing cells to show how fast beta cells were growing.

What’s important to understand is this: the animals didn’t even have high blood sugar yet. Their bodies were reacting to the threat of insulin resistance before the condition showed up in lab results.

• Colonic inflammation was present even without changes in diet or weight — In this study, gut inflammation was induced chemically, independent of obesity or sugar intake. That means even if you’re not overweight, chronic inflammation in your gut still pushes your body toward insulin resistance.

Shortened colons, decreased gut barrier proteins and elevated levels of lipopolysaccharides (LPS), a toxic type of endotoxin, in the portal vein were all clear signs of leaky gut.

• Your liver sees gut inflammation as a red alert — When your colon is inflamed, harmful substances like the endotoxin lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and other inflammatory messengers leak into your bloodstream and head straight to your liver.

Your liver treats this like an emergency and flips on a stress response called the ERK pathway. That signal doesn’t rely on blood sugar. It tells your nervous system to send a message straight to your pancreas, pushing it to start making more insulin-producing cells.

Your Liver and Pancreas Are Linked by a Nerve Signal

The study showed that your liver and pancreas are connected by a built-in nerve circuit.³ When inflammation in your gut kicks off that signal, your pancreas reacts fast. But when researchers blocked either part of that nerve connection, the whole response stopped. That means your body uses nerve messages, not just hormones or immune chemicals, to react to gut inflammation.

• Shutting off the liver’s stress signal stops the problem at the source — Researchers tested what would happen if they turned off the liver’s ERK stress response — and it worked. Even though the gut was still inflamed, the pancreas didn’t get the signal to grow more insulin-producing cells. This proved the liver is the control center in this chain reaction.

• A high-fat diet triggers the same damage — Mice fed a high-fat diet had the same gut damage and pancreas response as those given a chemical to inflame the colon. Their gut lining broke down, harmful toxins leaked into the bloodstream and the liver flipped on its stress signal. But when researchers calmed the gut with an antibody that reduced inflammation, the pancreas stopped overreacting.

• Toxins like LPS directly stress your liver — Inflammation from the gut sends out toxic signals like LPS and a molecule called IL-23. These hit the liver and instantly switch on its stress system. Lab tests showed that just exposing liver cells to these toxins was enough to activate the ERK pathway. That’s a direct link between gut inflammation and liver overload.

• This isn’t just about blood sugar — it’s a full-body stress loop — What’s happening in your gut sets off a chain reaction across your entire system. Long before your blood sugar rises or diabetes shows up, your body is already in damage control mode.

If your gut is leaking or inflamed, your pancreas is already under pressure, working overtime to keep your blood sugar in check. That’s why insulin resistance often starts silently, even when your lab results still look normal.

Heal Your Gut to Stop the Chain Reaction That Leads to Insulin Resistance

If your gut is inflamed or your blood sugar has been creeping up, there’s a deeper issue at play, and it starts in your colon. Even if you don’t feel it yet, the damage is already happening. One of the earliest warning signs your body gives off isn’t high glucose. It’s your gut losing the ability to make enough butyrate, a key compound your colon needs to stay strong and sealed.

Butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid your gut bacteria make when they break down certain types of fiber. It fuels the cells lining your colon and helps keep your intestinal barrier tight, so toxins and inflammatory molecules don’t leak into your bloodstream. When butyrate levels drop, your gut lining weakens, toxins leak out and your liver switches into stress mode. That stress signal then travels to your pancreas, pushing it to crank out more insulin, even before your blood sugar spikes.

If you want to know whether this process has already started in your body, one of the best tools I recommend is a simple lab marker called HOMA-IR — short for homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance. It gives you a real picture of how hard your body is working to keep blood sugar in check.

• How to get your HOMA-IR score — Ask your doctor or lab for a fasting glucose test and a fasting insulin test. You’ll need to do this first thing in the morning before eating or drinking anything besides water. Once you have the results, plug them into this formula:

HOMA-IR = (Fasting Glucose in mg/dL × Fasting Insulin in μU/mL) / 405

• What your score means — A result under 1.0 suggests your body is using insulin efficiently. But once you go above 1.0, it’s a sign your system is struggling, even if your glucose looks “normal.” Most people with a HOMA-IR over 1.0 are already on the path toward insulin resistance, whether they know it or not.

Rebuild Your Gut Barrier to Break the Inflammation-Insulin Loop

Now, here’s how you start healing your gut and reversing the signals that lead to metabolic stress:

1. Start with carbs that are easy on your gut — Most adults need 250 grams of healthy carbohydrates a day. But if you’re bloated, gassy, or constipated, jumping into high-fiber foods will only make things worse. Begin with gentle carbs like white rice or whole fruit. These give your cells the glucose they need without overwhelming your colon. Once your gut calms down, you’ll be in a better position to add in more fiber.

2. Introduce resistant starches and root vegetables once stable — Next, introduce small amounts of cooked and cooled white potatoes or green bananas — both rich in resistant starch. If you tolerate those, add in foods like garlic, onions, and leeks, which feed butyrate-producing bacteria. This is when many people begin to feel steadier energy, fewer cravings, and better blood sugar regulation.

3. Cycle in cooked vegetables, beans, legumes, and whole grains — but go slow — As your gut becomes more resilient, rotate in small portions of root vegetables before progressing to leafy greens or whole grains. Once your digestion feels balanced — meaning bowel habits, bloating, and overall comfort are under control — diversify your fiber sources.

Slowly introduce non-starchy vegetables, starchy options like sweet potatoes or squash, legumes, and eventually whole grains. Just don’t eat them every day right away. Your gut bacteria need time to adjust.

4. Cut the foods and habits that damage your gut lining — Adding in healthy foods won’t help if you’re still consuming vegetable oils, which are high in linoleic acid, drinking alcohol or eating ultraprocessed foods. These damage your gut barrier and feed the wrong bacteria. I recommend sticking to saturated fats like grass fed butter, ghee or tallow — these help heal your gut instead of harming it.

These steps help you shut down the silent inflammation loop that leads to a high HOMA-IR score, metabolic stress, and insulin resistance. Healing your gut from the inside out gives your pancreas and liver the break they’ve been waiting for.

FAQs About Gut Inflammation and Insulin Resistance

Q: How does gut inflammation lead to insulin resistance?

A: When your colon becomes inflamed, it weakens your gut lining, allowing toxins like LPS to leak into your bloodstream. These toxins travel to your liver, triggering a stress response that sends nerve signals to your pancreas. This sets off a chain reaction that causes your pancreas to overproduce insulin, even before your blood sugar rises.

Q: What is butyrate and why does it matter for your gut and blood sugar?

A: Butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid made by gut bacteria when they ferment fiber. It fuels your colon cells, strengthens your gut barrier and helps prevent harmful substances from leaking into your body. Without enough butyrate, inflammation rises and insulin resistance follows.

Q: How do I know if this process is already happening in my body?

A: A test called HOMA-IR is one of the best ways to see how well your body handles insulin. It uses your fasting insulin and fasting glucose levels to show how hard your body is working to maintain blood sugar. A score above 1.0 often means you're heading toward insulin resistance, even if your glucose is still normal.

Q: How do I increase my butyrate levels without making gut symptoms worse?

A: Start with easy-to-digest carbs like white rice and whole fruit. As your gut improves, slowly add in root vegetables and eventually beans and whole grains. Each step feeds your good bacteria without overwhelming your system.

Q: What foods or habits should I avoid if I want to stop this inflammation cycle?

A: Cut out vegetable oils, fried foods, alcohol, and processed snacks, all of which damage your gut lining and feed harmful bacteria. Stick to saturated fats like ghee, grass fed butter and tallow to support healing and reduce inflammation at the source.

Study Shows How Daylight Boosts Your Immune System

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

You're most vulnerable to infection when your immune system is out of sync with the light-dark cycle of the day. A study published in Science Immunology reveals that your body's internal clock, or circadian rhythm, determines how effectively neutrophils — your first-line immune defenders — destroy bacteria.¹ These immune cells are most powerful in the early morning and significantly less effective at night, a timing controlled by a newly discovered molecular timer sensitive to light.

Researchers found that neutrophils don't just respond to threats; they prepare for them based on light cues. This internal programming helps them deploy their antibacterial weapons precisely when you're most likely to encounter pathogens. But when this system is disrupted, such as by artificial lighting, shift work or late-night screen use, your immune defenses drop off at exactly the wrong time, when bacteria have the upper hand.

This discovery flips our understanding of immunity on its head. It's not just about whether your immune cells fight bacteria — it's about when they do it best. And if your light exposure is off, that timing gets scrambled. The implications are especially important for anyone dealing with recurring infections, poor wound healing or chronic inflammation.

What this means is that restoring a strong circadian rhythm isn't just good for sleep; it's essential for frontline immune protection. Now, let's look at what this study uncovered about the cellular mechanics behind this clock-driven immune boost.

Light Turns on Your Immune Defenses Like a Switch

The study, led by researchers at the University of Auckland, revealed that neutrophils — your body's most abundant white blood cells — have a built-in circadian timer that makes them most effective at killing bacteria shortly after dawn.² Using transparent larval zebrafish to track immune cells in real time, the research team demonstrated that light exposure directly sets the clock for these immune cells, optimizing their performance early in the day.

• Daylight signals your immune cells to get to work — The researchers found that when the fish were exposed to light, their immune cells became more active and better at fighting off bacteria. The fish kept in constant light had a much stronger immune response and were more likely to survive infection. Those kept in darkness had weaker defenses and were more likely to die. In other words, without exposure to daylight, your immune system doesn't get the signal to activate properly.

• Your immune system needs a "wake-up call" to respond to infection, and light provides it — During the day, your body turns on an internal signal that acts like an alarm, helping immune cells recognize and attack bacteria more quickly. When that signal wasn't working in the fish, they couldn't respond in time, and the infection spread more easily. Light was essential for flipping that switch and giving the immune system its go-ahead.

• Your immune system is naturally strongest during the day — The study showed that infection-fighting cells work best during daylight hours. At night, or when animals were kept in darkness, the immune cells weren't as effective at killing bacteria. So, it's not just about what invades your body — when it happens matters too. Your body is wired to defend itself more aggressively when you're awake and exposed to light.

Light Activates the Right Immune Tools at the Right Time

The researchers found that certain internal switches only work when the body is exposed to light. These switches help activate your immune response while also keeping it under control so it doesn't go overboard and cause damage. Without light, those switches stay off, and your immune system stays in low-power mode.

• A group of built-in signals work together to manage inflammation — Your body uses a team of internal messengers to decide when to trigger inflammation — its way of fighting off harmful invaders. This study found that those messengers work together during the day to launch a healthy, targeted response to infection. At night or in darkness, that teamwork falls apart, and the response becomes slower or weaker.

• Without light, your immune system can't fully turn on — When the internal light-sensitive signal was missing, the fish's immune cells didn't respond. They stayed in standby mode, even when bacteria were present. That shows how essential light is, not just for boosting your immune response but for starting it in the first place.

• Spending too much time inside or using screens late at night makes you more vulnerable — If you don't get enough daylight, or if you're constantly exposed to artificial light at night, your body loses track of time. That throws off your immune rhythm and keeps your infection-fighting cells from being ready when you need them. This helps explain why people who work night shifts or don't sleep well often get sick more easily or take longer to recover.

How to Reset Your Immune Clock with Light

If your neutrophils are out of sync, you're fighting infections at half strength. The latest research shows that your immune system's most powerful white blood cells run on a light-based internal schedule.³ When your light exposure is off, so is their timing. That means you're not just tired from staying up late — you're more vulnerable.

If you work late, travel often or struggle with a consistent routine, you're lowering your body's natural defenses without realizing it. Here's how to get your immune rhythm back on track using simple, light-based cues. Your immune system is already programmed to fight smarter in the morning. These steps help it keep that promise, giving you stronger, faster protection when you need it most.

1. Get at least 30 minutes of natural light within an hour of waking — Morning light is a powerful trigger to reset your circadian rhythm. When light hits your eyes, it signals your brain and immune cells that it's daytime. If you wake before sunrise, turn on full-spectrum indoor lights to mimic daylight, then step outside when the sun rises. This morning signal tells your immune system it's go time, jump-starting your infection-fighting cells for the day ahead.

2. Avoid bright lights and screens after sunset — Artificial light after sunset throws off the same timer that tells your neutrophils when to act. If you're watching TV or scrolling on your phone late at night, you're telling your immune system that it's still daytime. Use warm, dim lighting in the evening and install blue light filters on all devices. Even short exposures to artificial light at night affect your immune system's clock and function, reducing its ability to protect you.

3. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, even on weekends — Irregular sleep schedules confuse your body's internal clock, leading to poor immune coordination. You don't have to be perfect, but aim for a one-hour window. This regularity reinforces the natural peaks in neutrophil activity, giving you a daily immune advantage. A stable sleep schedule helps your immune system run like clockwork — ready to fight infections before they take hold.

4. Block out all light while you sleep — Even small amounts of light — from street lamps, chargers or digital clocks — disrupt your circadian rhythm. Use blackout curtains, remove electronics from your bedroom and consider a sleep mask if needed. The darker your sleep environment, the more robust your light-reset the following morning. Remember, just a sliver of light is all it takes to confuse your immune system, weakening its ability to hit full strength the next day.

5. If you're a shift worker, use timed light strategically — You're not doomed, but you do need to get intentional. Use bright lights during your "day" and wear blue light-blocking glasses when your shift ends to prepare for sleep. Try to sleep in a dark room and gradually shift your light exposure on off-days to realign with a more natural rhythm when possible. With the right timing and tools, your immune cells will learn to work night shifts with you, without falling behind.

FAQs About Daylight and Your Immune System

Q: What did the new study reveal about how daylight affects immunity?

A: The study published in Science Immunology found that your immune system's infection-fighting white blood cells are most active and effective in the morning. Their timing is directly influenced by your exposure to light. When you don't get enough natural daylight, or you're exposed to artificial light at the wrong times, your immune system's response becomes weaker and slower.⁴

Q: Why does timing matter when it comes to your immune system?

A: Your body's internal clock, or circadian rhythm, controls when immune cells respond to threats. Neutrophils are programmed to work best during the day, especially in the early morning. If that timing is off, due to shift work, jet lag or too much screen time at night, your immune cells don't activate properly, leaving you more vulnerable to infections.

Q: How does light "switch on" immune defenses?

A: The researchers discovered that light acts like a wake-up signal to your immune system. It flips internal switches that allow neutrophils to detect bacteria and launch a response. Without that light exposure, those switches stay off and immune cells stay in standby mode, even when there's an infection to fight.

Q: What kind of light exposure is most helpful for immunity?

A: Morning sunlight is a powerful signal for setting your immune rhythm. Getting at least 30 minutes of natural light within an hour of waking helps align your immune system to peak activity. Conversely, artificial light at night, including from screens, disrupts that timing and weakens your defenses.

Q: What can I do to strengthen my immune rhythm?

A: Stick to a consistent sleep schedule, get outside in the morning, limit screen time at night and sleep in a dark room. If you work night shifts, use bright lights strategically during your shift and block light when it's time to sleep. These habits support your body's natural immune timing and improve your ability to fight off infections.

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It slows detoxification so the liver can rest

Why your most heroic act might be in a department meeting [PODCAST]

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 23:00:02 +0000

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes! Cardiologist Lauren Weber and critical care physician Jess Bunin, co-founders of All Levels Leadership, discuss their article, “Not all heroes wear capes: Sometimes they just speak up in meetings.” They reframe medical heroism, arguing that the most courageous acts often happen

Life’s detours may be blessings in disguise

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 19:00:51 +0000

This past weekend, my wife and I made our way to Winnipeg, a sleepy town nestled in the Canadian province of Manitoba. The occasion? A family celebration. My niece and her husband had just welcomed a beautiful baby girl, and they insisted, almost reverently, that my wife become the godmother. It was a request we

Life’s detours may be blessings in disguise originally appeared in KevinMD.com.

Inside the heart of internal medicine: Why we stay

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 17:00:22 +0000

I’ve practiced outpatient internal medicine for over a decade, joining my current group straight out of residency. Since then, I’ve watched the landscape shift—corporate takeovers, tightening regulations, staffing shortages, and endless debates over salary, documentation, and work-life balance. And yet—I still believe in this work. Reimbursements have been cut. Morale has taken hits. But that’s

The quiet grief behind hospital walls

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 15:00:49 +0000

The slow beeping of the monitor comes to a halt and someone eventually shuts it off. Click clack. The machines are quiet now. I take one more look at the innocent, boyish young face and wonder what kind of life he had led. I leave the room, along with the rest of the team. A

The quiet grief behind hospital walls originally appeared in KevinMD.com.

Why peer support can save lives in high-pressure medical careers

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 13:00:43 +0000

Locums can be a very challenging space, at least for anesthesiologists. Environments are frequently disrupted. There is often animosity between clinicians coping long-term with turmoil and inadequate staffing, and the temporary locums who fill a gap and are often paid substantially more for their intrusion. In anesthesia, the quality of the relationship between clinician and

Bundled payments in Medicare: Will fixed pricing reshape surgery costs?

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 11:00:28 +0000

Imagine going to a restaurant where, instead of being charged separately for your appetizer, main course, and dessert, you pay a fixed price for the entire meal. That’s the idea behind a bundled payment plan in health care. Instead of billing patients and insurers for every individual test, treatment, or doctor’s visit during a medical

A Change in Diet Alone Already Benefits Your Cardiometabolic Health

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Cardiometabolic diseases refer to a cluster of related conditions such as diabetes, kidney disease, fatty liver disease, heart attack, and stroke. And while medicine continues to advance, research shows that young adults in America do not have ideal behaviors that contribute to better health, increasing their risk for the conditions mentioned earlier.¹

Since obesity is prevalent in the mentioned demographic, the usual treatment experts suggest is exercise.² While helpful for cardiometabolic health, it takes time for its benefits to appear. Now, research shows that there’s another way for you to achieve better metabolic function without needing to lose weight — switching your diet to healthy food.

Healthy Food Lays the Foundation for Optimal Metabolic Health

In a study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, researchers investigated how a healthier diet improves metabolic health even when weight remains unchanged. The team, composed of members from Harvard University and Ben-Gurion University, analyzed data from three large-scale dietary trials involving 761 adults with abdominal obesity to test their hypothesis.^3,⁴

After analysis, approximately one-third of these participants did not lose significant weight over the two-year intervention period, but many showed remarkable metabolic improvements. This finding is important because it highlights that your internal health dramatically improves even if your weighing scale still shows the same numbers.

• Cholesterol levels improved — This was particularly seen in HDL cholesterol (often called “good” cholesterol). HDL increased substantially among those who maintained their weight but adopted healthier dietary patterns. However, those who were able to slim down developed better health markers. For every kilogram lost, there was a 1.44% increase in HDL cholesterol.

• Triglycerides dropped — This is a type of blood fat that, when elevated, strongly predicts heart disease.⁵ High levels typically accompany abdominal fat accumulation, but healthy dietary shifts notably reduced these harmful fats even without any weight loss. But again, those who lost weight had better levels — a 1.37% drop for every kilogram lost.

• Liver fat was reduced — Liver fat, a key marker of fatty liver disease, dropped despite no reduction in body weight. Lower liver fat levels enhance liver health, reducing your chances of liver damage in the future.

• Understanding the metabolic improvements that occur without weight loss — According to the study authors, the key lies in biological adjustments triggered by dietary shifts. They highlighted leptin, a hormone that signals hunger in your body — lower levels of it, observed in the study's weight-stable individuals, resulted in reduced hunger.

• Improved insulin management — Healthier dietary choices led directly to improved insulin sensitivity. This means your body requires less insulin to move glucose into your cells, which is a major step toward healthy glucose metabolism.

• The role of genetics in weight loss — Lastly, the researchers identified fascinating insights related to DNA methylation, which is a process that influences how your genes express themselves. They found that participants with certain methylation patterns in their DNA showed significantly greater metabolic improvements without weight loss. “This novel finding shows that some people may be biologically wired to respond differently to the same diet,” one of the researchers said.⁶

These findings highlight a powerful message for those struggling to lose weight at the start of their health journey — even if your scale doesn't show progress, significant internal improvements are likely unfolding when you focus on a healthier diet.

More Evidence Showing Your Diet Matters

In a meta-analysis published in Cardiovascular Diabetology, researchers reviewed multiple studies to clarify how different dietary patterns impact cardiometabolic health. The review included evidence from diverse groups — general populations to people already managing chronic diseases. The goal was to find out which dietary changes truly benefit your heart, blood sugar, and overall metabolic wellness, going beyond the typical fixation with calorie counting or macronutrient ratios.⁷

• The findings about eating a healthy diet are clear — Shifting your food focus toward high-quality, nutrient-rich choices significantly improved key markers of metabolic and cardiovascular health, even if calories or macros stayed roughly the same.

For example, researchers highlighted the rate of improvement seen when participants adopted diets rich in whole foods, particularly those emphasizing fruits, vegetables, and quality proteins. These dietary shifts delivered measurable improvements in cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and insulin sensitivity, often within just months of implementation.

• Specifics on health improvements — Researchers noted substantial drops in triglycerides, increased HDL cholesterol, and consistently lower fasting glucose levels. Such changes dramatically lower your risk of heart disease and diabetes, giving you long-term protection without necessitating severe calorie restriction or drastic lifestyle upheavals.

• The greatest benefits occurred among those participants already at risk — These include individuals with pre-existing diabetes or elevated cardiovascular risk. These participants often saw improvements in cardiometabolic markers, especially when vegetable consumption was increased. “Vegetarian dietary patterns have also been associated with a lower risk of metabolic syndrome and a protective effect against T2DM,” the researchers noted.⁸

• Not all dietary elements had equal effects — The research pointed out that lowering your intake of ultraprocessed foods and refined carbohydrates delivered more health gains compared to simply reducing carbohydrates or fats overall. In other words, improving the quality of your food choices mattered significantly more than restricting certain macronutrients or aggressively cutting calories.

• A major player is the reduction of inflammation — Chronic inflammation, driven largely by ultraprocessed foods and refined sugar, damages blood vessels, elevates insulin resistance, and sets the stage for cardiometabolic diseases. According to researchers, optimal protein intake contributes to this benefit:⁹

“Proteins are composed of amino acids, which are essential for synthesizing new proteins and fulfilling multiple metabolic functions. Numerous studies highlight the importance of dietary protein in regulating metabolic pathways, including those related to muscle synthesis, inflammation, and satiety.

These effects are mediated primarily through signaling pathways involving glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), peptide YY (PYY), insulin, and leucine-induced activation of mTORC1, which stimulates skeletal muscle protein synthesis following protein-containing meals.”

• Improved insulin signaling — Higher-quality diets naturally boost your body’s sensitivity to insulin. Enhanced insulin sensitivity means your body handles carbohydrates efficiently, stabilizing blood sugar levels and reducing the risk of Type 2 diabetes.

• Fermented foods support cardiometabolic health — The researchers also singled out the role of your gut microbiome. For instance, they cited two studies showing improved glucose metabolism once the gut microbiome was optimized.

Top Strategies for Improving Your Metabolic Health

Based on the published research, it’s clear that your diet alone drastically influences your health. In other words, eating healthy foods will translate to a healthier body and even help you lose weight in the long run before other common interventions are implemented, such as exercise.

That said, don’t lose hope if regular tests show that your metabolic function is impaired at the start of your journey to optimal health. It just needs to be retrained in using nutritious food for fuel, allowing you to be the best version you can be. The key here is boosting your metabolic rate, allowing you to enhance energy production and burn more calories. Bioenergetics expert Ashley Armstrong provides eight helpful tips that help boost your metabolism:

1. Choose high-quality foods — Whenever possible, source the best-quality food you can afford to reduce exposure to pesticides and environmental toxins that may disrupt metabolic signaling. For tips on how to scrutinize organic foods, as well as where to buy them, read “Organic Food Safety — Navigating Labels and Finding Local Sources.”

2. Prioritize whole foods — Focus on cooking most of your meals at home and reducing processed foods and takeout meals. Whole foods are nutrient-dense, do not contain added gums/preservatives/vegetable oils, and support optimal metabolic function.

3. Maintain consistent eating habits — When it comes to metabolism, one size doesn’t fit all. You need to find a rhythm that works for your body, your energy, and your digestion.

Time-restricted eating (TRE) offers a middle ground between constant grazing and extended fasting. It gives you many of the metabolic benefits of fasting — like improved insulin sensitivity and fat-burning — while avoiding some of the downsides of longer fasts. A typical TRE schedule involves eating within an eight- to 10-hour window, then fasting the rest of the time. But this window isn’t set in stone.

Some people feel better with a 12-hour eating window and 12-hour fast, especially if symptoms like fatigue or hair loss show up, which is often a sign you’re not eating enough healthy carbohydrates. To keep your energy levels up, aim for 200 to 250 grams of carbs a day from sources like rice, fruit, and well-cooked vegetables.

If TRE still causes issues, such as low energy or mood dips, switching to a more traditional eating schedule — three meals a day, or even every four hours — can be helpful. This approach supports steady blood sugar and energy levels, especially for people dealing with chronic fatigue or thyroid conditions. The key is to choose your carbs wisely.

Ultraprocessed snacks every few hours won’t help your metabolism. Instead, focus on whole-food carbs like clean grains, fruit, and vegetables. If your gut is sensitive or sluggish, start with low-fiber carbs and gradually reintroduce higher-fiber foods as your digestion improves.

In the end, the best eating pattern is the one that works for you. TRE can be powerful, and so can regular meals. Choose the option that supports your energy, digestion, and long-term well-being.

4. Moderate dietary fat — Keep fats at a moderate level, and limit polyunsaturated fats (PUFs), which can negatively impact metabolic health. That’s because fats, even when they’re healthy, eventually become harmful when eaten in excess.

5. Stay active daily — Aim for 8,000 to 12,000 steps per day and include two to four planned exercise sessions per week. Find a routine that works for you and allows for proper recovery. Remember, more exercise isn’t always better — balance is key.

6. Prioritize sufficient carbs — Ensure your carbohydrate intake is adequate and consists of foods that digest well for you. Carbs are vital for fueling your metabolism and supporting thyroid function.

7. Build muscle — Muscle tissue boosts your basal metabolic rate because it requires more energy to maintain than fat. Increasing your muscle-to-fat ratio is a long-term investment in your metabolism.

Muscle growth takes time — sometimes years — but small, consistent efforts to build lean muscle mass will pay off over time. To help you on your journey, your protein should make up approximately 15% of your daily caloric intake (0.6 to 0.8 grams per pound of your ideal body weight), with a third of that coming from collagen-rich sources like bone broth.

8. Monitor and gradually increase caloric intake — Your maintenance calories usually fall within a range (e.g., 1,800 to 2,300 calories), so aim to move toward the higher end of that range over time. The goal is to create a robust metabolism that supports more food intake without weight gain.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on the Impact of Diet on Metabolic Health

Q: Can I improve my metabolic health without losing weight?

A: Yes. Studies show you can significantly enhance your metabolic health by simply adopting a healthier diet, even if your weight stays the same.

Q: How quickly can dietary changes improve my metabolism?

A: Metabolic improvements, including better cholesterol, lower triglycerides, and improved insulin sensitivity, develop within weeks after you begin eating a healthy diet.

Q: Is calorie counting essential for improving metabolic health?

A: No. Research emphasizes that prioritizing food quality, characterized by choosing nutrient-rich whole foods over processed options, offers stronger benefits for heart and metabolic health than strict calorie counting or macronutrient tracking.

Q: Why does diet quality matter more than macronutrient ratios?

A: High-quality diets reduce inflammation, enhance insulin sensitivity, and support healthy gut bacteria. These effects significantly lower risks of cardiometabolic diseases like diabetes, fatty liver disease, and heart disease, independently of specific macronutrient adjustments.

Q: Besides dietary changes, what else can I do to boost my metabolism?

A: To optimize your metabolism further, combine a nutrient-rich diet with consistent eating habits, daily physical activity (8,000 to 12,000 steps), muscle-building efforts, moderate dietary fats, and adequate carbohydrate and protein intake.

Vitamin D Deficiency and Fatty Liver — A Growing Health Concern with Actionable Solutions

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One of the fastest-rising metabolic disorders today affects your liver, quietly and without warning. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, or NAFLD, is becoming alarmingly common worldwide, yet most people have no idea their liver is in trouble until serious damage sets in.

This isn't just a condition that strikes the unhealthy or overweight. A growing body of research is uncovering hidden drivers behind fatty liver, including something that rarely gets enough attention: nutrient depletion. And topping that list is vitamin D.

Vitamin D is often framed as a bone-health vitamin, but that's just a fraction of the story. Your liver relies on it to manage fat metabolism, regulate inflammation and maintain energy production inside your cells. As your vitamin D levels drop, which happens with age and indoor living, your liver's ability to function properly starts to break down.

The newest science reveals something even more urgent: vitamin D doesn't just support liver function; it controls it at the genetic level. This discovery has major implications for how to prevent, manage and even reverse liver disease tied to aging and metabolic stress.

Vitamin D Turns on a Key Switch That Stops Liver Fat in Its Tracks

A study published in Experimental & Molecular Medicine investigated how vitamin D3 supplementation affects age-related NAFLD.¹ Researchers focused on the role of a mitochondrial protein that helps keep your liver cells' energy systems working. The goal was to understand how aging disrupts this process and how vitamin D restores it.

• Older animals with low vitamin D had more fat in the liver — The study looked at 22-month-old mice, roughly the equivalent of humans in their 70s, compared with younger adult mice. Older mice with lower vitamin D levels had much higher fat accumulation in their livers, while those given high-dose vitamin D3 (20,000 IU/kg) saw marked improvement. Liver fat decreased, liver weight normalized and inflammation dropped significantly.

• Fat-burning genes turned off with age but vitamin D turned them back on — In older animals, genes that break down fat were significantly suppressed. These are the genes your liver uses to burn fat for energy. Vitamin D supplementation switched them back on. It also lowered genes that drive fat storage. This dual action helps your liver shift away from fat storage and back into fat burning.

• Fatty acid levels in the blood dropped with vitamin D — The aged mice supplemented with vitamin D had much lower circulating free fatty acids, which means the liver wasn't overwhelmed by incoming fat. It also indicated improved balance between fat uptake and fat breakdown, which is often lost in older adults with metabolic issues.

• Vitamin D fixed mitochondrial structure — A mitochondrial protein that helps organize the mitochondria's inner structure was almost completely lost in the livers of older mice. Without it, mitochondria lose their ability to generate energy and burn fat. Vitamin D directly boosted levels, which helped mitochondria recover their normal structure and function. This was confirmed through imaging and molecular testing.

• Aging cells hoard fat, but vitamin D turns that around — To test whether the specific mitochondrial protein loss alone caused aging, researchers gave healthy liver cells a dose of the drug doxorubicin to simulate aging. The mitochondrial protein tanked, and the cells quickly began storing fat and showing signs of cellular aging. Vitamin D helped undo the damage by clearing out fat and turning off the signs of cell aging.

Vitamins Regulate Liver Function at a Deep Molecular Level

In a related study published in Liver Research, scientists examined how key vitamins impact the progression of NAFLD.² They explored how vitamin deficiencies, particularly in vitamins D, E, B9 and B12, play a role in disrupting liver metabolism. The study emphasized that without adequate levels of these nutrients, your liver's ability to manage fat breaks down, triggering a cascade of inflammation, insulin resistance and oxidative stress that accelerates disease progression.

• Connections exist between vitamin levels and the severity of liver damage — The researchers found that people with lower levels of vitamins D and B12 had more advanced liver damage, and vitamin E deficiency was linked to a greater risk of inflammation and scarring in liver tissue.

• Different vitamins impact your liver in very different ways — Vitamin E emerged as a powerful antioxidant, helping to cool down inflammation, stop fat buildup and even prevent cells from dying.

Meanwhile, vitamin D helped regulate immune responses and insulin sensitivity, while folate and B12 influenced methylation — a process that helps your liver detoxify and metabolize nutrients. Each of these vitamins played a distinct role in either worsening or improving NAFLD outcomes, depending on whether you were getting enough.

• Vitamin D deficiency was strongly linked to insulin resistance and poor liver function — The researchers explained that vitamin D deficiency appears in 55% of people with NAFLD, and that low levels of this nutrient worsen insulin resistance, one of the main drivers behind fat buildup in your liver.

Vitamin D was found to improve how the pancreas secretes insulin and how cells throughout the body respond to it. Without enough vitamin D, your liver becomes more insulin-resistant, meaning it stores more fat instead of burning it.

• Vitamin D also modulated the immune system's activity in the liver — Your liver is deeply involved in your immune function. The study showed that vitamin D helps regulate immune cells in the liver, especially through a family of receptors that are often activated by toxins and bacterial fragments in the blood. When these receptors are overstimulated, as they often are in vitamin D deficiency, they produce a flood of inflammatory molecules that damage liver cells.

• Deficiencies in these vitamins disrupted liver repair and worsened metabolic damage — Without enough of these nutrients, your liver struggles to regenerate, detoxify and balance fat metabolism. These disruptions are compounded by modern diets and environmental stressors, making a healthy whole food diet and vitamin support helpful for those facing liver health issues.

How to Restore Your Liver Health and Reverse Vitamin D Deficiency

By understanding how vitamin D interacts with your liver at the cellular level, you gain the power to intervene early and change the trajectory of your liver health before irreversible damage sets in.

If you've been diagnosed with NAFLD, or you suspect your liver is under stress from poor metabolic health, the first thing you need to know is this: fixing the underlying damage — the inflammation, oxidative stress and metabolic imbalances that are keeping your liver stuck in survival mode — is key.

Most people focus only on reducing fat in their liver, but they ignore an important cause of NAFLD: vitamin depletion. As your liver stores and regulates key vitamins, deficiencies make it nearly impossible to heal. The latest research shows that vitamin D plays a powerful role in calming inflammation, fighting oxidative damage, improving insulin sensitivity and clearing fat from liver cells. To give your liver a chance to heal, here's where to start:

1. Start by fixing the root: Cut out vegetable oils — If you're still using canola, soybean, sunflower or generic "vegetable oil," you're flooding your cells with linoleic acid (LA), a polyunsaturated fat that oxidizes easily, builds up in your skin and increases your risk of skin damage if you get sun exposure during peak hours (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.).

Cut these oils from your diet for at least six months before getting peak sun exposure. Replace them with healthier fats like tallow, grass fed butter and ghee. Once LA levels drop, your skin and liver begin to work the way they're supposed to.

2. Use sunlight strategically to rebuild your vitamin D stores — Your skin was designed to make vitamin D from the sun. To optimize your vitamin D levels, spend time in direct sunlight with bare skin exposed daily, ideally outside peak hours if you're still transitioning off vegetable oils. Use the "sunburn test" — cover up just before your skin starts to turn pink.

This lets you harness the sun's benefits without causing damage, helping your liver and immune system operate more efficiently.

3. Test your vitamin D levels and personalize your approach — Get your vitamin D levels tested at least twice a year and aim for a level between 60 and 80 ng/mL (150 to 200 nmol/L). This isn't just about bone health — it's about reducing insulin resistance, calming liver inflammation and restoring immune balance. Testing gives you a starting point and helps you track real progress.

4. Supplement smart: Always combine vitamin D3 with magnesium and K2 — If you're indoors often or live far from the equator, supplementation is often necessary. But vitamin D3 works best when combined with magnesium and vitamin K2.

In fact, people not using these co-factors needed 244% more vitamin D just to maintain healthy blood levels.³ This trio works as a team, improving absorption, reducing arterial calcification and helping your liver process fat more efficiently.

5. Use food as your medicine to replenish liver-healing vitamins — Real healing happens through real food. Eat liver-supportive nutrients daily, like pasture-raised eggs and grass fed beef liver. Think of your meals as nutrient delivery systems, not just fuel, but repair tools your liver depends on. You don't need a prescription to start healing your liver, you just need to give it what it's missing, and remove what's hurting it.

FAQs About Vitamin D and NAFLD

Q: What's the real connection between vitamin D and fatty liver disease?

A: Vitamin D plays a key role in keeping your liver metabolically active. Recent research shows that it directly turns on a gene that helps your mitochondria burn fat. Without enough vitamin D, your liver cells switch into fat-storage mode. This silent shift leads to the development of NAFLD, even in people who eat reasonably well or don't drink alcohol.

Q: Does vitamin D supplementation really reverse liver damage?

A: Yes, especially in older adults. In studies with aged mice, high-dose vitamin D3 dramatically lowered liver fat, restored mitochondrial function and even reversed some cellular aging markers. The effects were specific to animals that were already deficient, which means this strategy is particularly useful for people over 60 who don't get enough sun or have low vitamin D levels.

Q: What other vitamins are important for healing fatty liver?

A: In addition to vitamin D, research highlights vitamin E, B12, folate (B9), C and A as essential for liver repair. Vitamin E helps calm inflammation. B12 and folate regulate fat metabolism and gene expression. Vitamin C supports antioxidant defenses and lowers liver-damaging compounds. Each vitamin plays a unique role in keeping your liver resilient against metabolic stress.

Q: What happens if you block vitamin D in the liver?

A: When the vitamin D receptor (VDR) is turned off in liver cells, inflammation skyrockets, immune cells overreact and scarring accelerates. This was confirmed in a mouse study that showed blocking VDR caused the liver to stiffen, lose function and start producing proteins typically seen in cancer. Vitamin D helps prevent that destructive cycle by regulating healing and immune balance at the genetic level.

Q: How do I raise my vitamin D levels and support my liver naturally?

A: Start by cutting out vegetable oils like canola, soybean and sunflower oil. These flood your system with LA, which worsens liver damage. Spend time in the sun each day, exposing your skin until just before it starts to turn pink (not burn).

Test your vitamin D levels regularly and aim for 60 to 80 ng/mL. If you need to supplement, always pair D3 with magnesium and K2 for optimal absorption. And eat real food rich in liver-healing nutrients like pastured eggs and colorful produce.

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Why might you find it harder to access alternative health websites today?

They are less popular and naturally rank lower in searches
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Inhaled Microplastics Impair Lung Immunity and Spread to Organs

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

You breathe in thousands of particles each day, including dust, pollen, and fumes, but one of the most dangerous is something you can’t see, taste, or feel: microplastics. These microscopic fragments, shed from synthetic clothing, packaging, and polluted air, have become a constant part of the air around you. Whether you're indoors or out, you're inhaling them with every breath.

What makes this especially concerning is how little attention this invisible threat gets. You won’t notice symptoms right away. There’s no cough, no wheeze, no obvious irritation to warn you something’s wrong. But inside your lungs, a much quieter breakdown is happening — one that impacts how your body defends itself, how it manages inflammation and how it responds to everyday pathogens.

Over time, this silent overload of plastic waste builds up in your immune system and starts to affect organs far beyond your lungs. If you’ve been struggling with fatigue, strange inflammatory symptoms or issues that no one seems able to explain, microplastic exposure could be one piece of the puzzle. The latest research points to a disturbing reality: these plastic particles aren’t just building up in your body; they’re interfering with the very cells meant to protect you.

Tiny Plastics Shut Down Your Lung’s Defense System Fast

A study presented at the 2025 American Thoracic Society International Conference, led by Adam Soloff of the University of Pittsburgh, explored what happens when you breathe in microplastics — tiny particles shed from synthetic clothing, packaging, and polluted air.¹

The research focused on pulmonary macrophages, a type of immune cell in your lungs that normally clears out bacteria, toxins, and dead tissue. These cells are essential to your respiratory health because they keep inflammation in check and protect you from infection.

• Even short exposure causes major immune suppression — The study exposed mice to microplastics through inhalation and also tested the effects of different particle sizes and concentrations on cultured macrophages in the lab. Within just 24 hours, the macrophages were no longer able to perform the basic function of surrounding and digesting harmful invaders.

According to Soloff, “I was really surprised to see that not only did the macrophages struggle to break down the plastics in vitro, but macrophages in the lung retained these particles over time as well.”²

• The plastic didn’t just stay in the lungs — Researchers found that after inhalation, microplastic fragments migrated to other major organs. Trace levels of these particles showed up in the liver, spleen, colon and even in the brain and kidneys. This means the plastics you breathe don’t stay in your lungs. They spread through your entire body, increasing your risk of disease far beyond your respiratory system.

• Plastic exposure caused lingering, not temporary, immune damage — Macrophages didn’t recover their function on their own. Instead, they held onto the plastic particles, which interfered with their normal job of clearing out cellular waste and infectious particles. When those functions are impaired, your risk of chronic inflammation rises sharply, and with it, the risk of tissue damage and cancer.

Your Immune System Holds Onto Microplastics, Spreading the Damage

When macrophages tried to process the microplastic particles, they failed to break them down. These particles aren’t biodegradable, and the cells became overloaded and dysfunctional. The researchers were surprised by the degree of impairment. The longer the macrophages retained the plastics, the more their immune function declined.

• Immune system’s cleanup process disrupted by microplastics — Phagocytosis is your immune system’s cleanup process. It’s how your cells grab, engulf, and digest harmful invaders. Disrupting this one action disables your ability to mount a defense against everyday threats like airborne bacteria, viruses, and pollutants. When this happens in your lungs, inflammation builds, pathogens linger and healing slows.

• Systemic effects of microplastics could explain widespread inflammation — The study revealed that the body not only fails to remove inhaled plastic but actually distributes it through the bloodstream to sensitive tissues. This helps explain rising rates of inflammatory diseases that don't always have a clear origin. Because plastic particles resist breakdown and removal, the damage accumulates over time.

• Macrophages are central to maintaining lung health — These immune cells act as environmental sensors, waste removers and regulators of inflammation. Without their proper function, the lungs can’t stay clean. This leads to persistent irritation, tissue damage and an increased risk of disease.

• Researchers now aim to use this data to develop early warning tools — The next step is to examine lung tissue from human patients to confirm the presence of plastic particles. The research team hopes to identify biomarkers to detect early signs of microplastic-induced lung damage and cancer risk. That way, people who are unknowingly exposed could be screened earlier and take proactive steps to protect their health.

Use an Air Filter and Ditch Plastic to Stop the Damage at Its Source

You’re not powerless against airborne microplastics. Once you understand how they infiltrate your lungs and disrupt your immune system, the next step is to stop the exposure at its root. That means making small but strategic shifts in your environment, especially where you live, breathe, eat, and sleep.

Every move you make to limit contact with plastic particles helps lighten the burden on your lungs, immune system and every organ downstream. I’ve laid out five specific changes that target your biggest sources of exposure and give your body a better shot at protecting itself.

1. Upgrade your air filter so your lungs stop doing all the work — If you live near traffic, manufacturing, or even just wear synthetic clothes indoors, you’re inhaling plastic fibers. Invest in a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) purifier that specifically filters microplastics and ultrafine dust.

Place it in your bedroom and main living space. These are the areas where you breathe the most. If you already have respiratory symptoms or chronic inflammation, this is one of the fastest ways to lower your internal plastic load.

2. Switch to a water filter that removes microplastics, and ditch plastic bottles for good — Drinking water, whether from the tap or in bottled form, is a constant source of microplastic ingestion. Choose a filter that’s tested for microplastic removal, not just heavy metals and other contaminants. If you have hard water, boiling it first before filtering helps break down microplastic fragments and improves filtration.³ Use glass bottles for storage and drinking.

3. Stop heating food in plastic; it’s contaminating every bite — Plastic wrap and takeout containers release microplastics and plastic chemicals directly into your meals when heated. If you’re storing leftovers, skip the plastic containers and grab a glass or stainless-steel option instead. Microwaving or oven-heating in plastic is one of the worst offenders. If you use meal prep services, look for ones that use natural compostable or paper-based packaging.

4. Replace plastic kitchen tools with long-lasting alternatives — Your plastic cutting board, spatula, or soup ladle leaches plastic fragments into your food. Plastic boards degrade every time your knife scrapes across them. Switch to a wood or tempered glass cutting board, and replace any plastic utensils with stainless steel. If you cook daily, this one move eliminates thousands of microplastic particles each year from entering your body.

5. Balance estrogenic damage with natural progesterone if needed — Microplastics often mimic estrogen in your body. This disrupts your hormonal balance and increases inflammation. If you’re struggling with symptoms like bloating, fatigue, irritability, or stubborn belly fat, these may be signs of estrogen dominance. In these cases, natural progesterone helps restore balance. It acts as a countermeasure to the hormonal confusion that plastic exposure creates.

FAQs About Inhaled Microplastics

Q: What happens when I inhale microplastics?

A: When you breathe in microplastics, they weaken your lung’s immune cells — specifically pulmonary macrophages — within just 24 hours. These cells normally clear out harmful bacteria and waste, but exposure to plastic particles shuts down that function.

Q: Do microplastics stay in my lungs or spread throughout my body?

A: Microplastics don’t just affect your lungs. Once inhaled, they spread through your bloodstream and accumulate in other organs like your liver, spleen, colon, kidneys, and brain, where they contribute to inflammation and long-term health problems.

Q: Why is this dangerous to your health?

A: When macrophages can’t remove toxins, your immune system gets overwhelmed. This leads to chronic inflammation, tissue damage and greater risk for conditions like lung disease, hormone imbalance and even cancer.

Q: How do microplastics end up in my body in the first place?

A: You’re exposed to microplastics through more than just the food you eat or water you drink. They’re in the air around you, especially if you live near heavy traffic, industrial zones, or wear synthetic fabrics indoors. These plastic particles break off from tires, clothing, packaging, and dust, then enter your lungs with every breath. Once inhaled, they travel through your bloodstream and settle in other organs, including your brain and liver.

Q: What steps can I take to protect myself from microplastics?

A: Lower your exposure by using HEPA air filters, drinking filtered water stored in glass, avoiding plastic containers for food storage and heating, replacing plastic utensils with stainless steel and using natural progesterone if you show signs of estrogen imbalance due to microplastics exposure.

How Project ECHO is fighting physician isolation and transforming medical education [PODCAST]

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 23:00:32 +0000

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes! Pediatrician Daniel Johnson discusses his article, “From isolation to innovation: the power of learning communities in health care.” He reflects on the collaborative, case-based learning that makes medical training exciting and contrasts it with the professional isolation many physicians experience after

Why clinical research is a powerful path for unmatched IMGs

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 21:00:09 +0000

For thousands of International Medical Graduates (IMGs) every year, the third week of March is defined by a single, gut-wrenching question: Did I match? The entire future seems to hinge on a single email. We spend years navigating exams, clinical rotations, and visa applications, all for a shot at a residency spot in the United

Addressing menstrual health inequities in adolescents

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 19:00:59 +0000

Menstrual health is one of the most neglected aspects of adolescent care—especially for teens living in poverty. For these adolescents, getting a period doesn’t just mean discomfort—it means missing school, hiding pain, and facing daily choices between basic needs and menstrual products. In both low- and high-income countries, period poverty is a quiet crisis. In

How to advance workforce development through research mentorship and evidence-based management

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 17:00:19 +0000

In the current era of rapid health care changes, a very effective tool for workforce development is research mentorship based on evidence-based principles. As the health care industry faces a worsening shortage of professionals, the need to cultivate talent, empower early-career clinicians, and guide them through structured research and professional development is becoming more urgent.

The truth about perfection and identity in health care

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 15:00:26 +0000

As we move through life, questions of identity echo through our minds—bouncing like a pinball, scattered and relentless. Am I a doctor? A friend? A colleague? A leader? A husband? A parent? A son? These questions don’t just arise—they linger. Because every day, we’re asked to balance who we truly are with who we’re expected

Civil discourse as a leadership competency: the case for curiosity in medicine

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 11:00:31 +0000

In the high-stakes, knowledge-driven world of medicine, we’re taught from day one to project an aura of certainty. From the anatomy lab to the hospital wards, the message is clear: know the answers, lead with confidence, and never let them see you sweat. But what if that fixation on “knowing” is holding us back? What

Novel Strategies to Relieve Eye Strain

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Are you experiencing tired, achy eyes lately? You’re not the only one, as modern technology, particularly the excessive use of screens and rampant exposure to blue light, has caused a massive increase in eye strain. Not even children¹ are safe from this problem. That said, protecting your vision is important especially as you age, and there are many strategies available to help you.

What Causes Your Strained Eyes?

Many factors influence eye strain, but one of the biggest contributors is using your eyes too much. Below are the most common causes:

• Non-blinking causes eye strain — Blinking is an instinctive action that helps keep your eyes moist. According to Dr. Chantal Cousineau-Krieger, an ophthalmologist at the National Institutes of Health, not blinking enough causes your eyes to dry out.²

In relation to this, computer screens have been pointed out as a top cause of eye strain because they make us blink less. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO), humans normally blink 15 times per minute. However, computer screens reduce this to five to seven times only.

• Air exposure — Being exposed to air blowing directly in your face will contribute to eye dryness. Examples include sitting in front of a fan, air vents from a car, or windy weather.

• Presbyopia — Commonly known as age-related farsightedness, this condition causes you to have trouble focusing on objects up close. It usually affects people in their early- to mid-40s, and progressively worsens until the age of 65 years.³

• Undiagnosed eye conditions — According to the Cleveland Clinic, an underlying problem such as uncorrected vision or eye muscle imbalance increases the risk of eye strain.⁴ While corrective glasses are employed to fix these problems, there may be times when they cause more problems.

Have Your Eyeglasses Checked

If you’re wearing eyeglasses, you probably only have one pair that you use for everything, from driving a car to reading and walking. However, there are certain cases when relying on them too much isn’t ideal, as they can worsen your vision.

• Consider removing your eyeglasses if you have presbyopia — Wearing glasses encourages your eyes to stay in one place instead of moving around, which is what you want to keep your eyes healthy. In my interview with optometrist and eye health coach Taylor DeGroot, she explains the downside of using eyeglasses:

"Healthy eyes like to move a lot and they don't like to just stay in one place and stare. That's another bad habit people have. They stare and keep their eyes in one place. That's also what glasses train the eyes to do.

Glasses have an optical center, so there's one part in the glasses where you see most clearly. Glasses in a way are kind of visual confinement because they lock your eyes into one place."

• Consider using two pairs of eyeglasses — If your prescription lens is based on your vision at 20 feet, it’ll actually become 20 times stronger when working on something nearer, such as using a computer. She explains:

“I would say if you're spending most of the day on the computer and you can go without the glasses, obviously, do that. But if your prescription is too high and you can't see anything at near, just get another prescription that's set for that distance.

I prefer two separate pairs of glasses. The problem with bifocals and progressives is that they lock your eyes. You can only see from a very specific part of the glasses, so that locks your eyes into that one position. That's locking up your posture, and that's also locking up the nervous system because eye movements obviously correlate with emotions.”

• Train your brain — There’s evidence that targeting perceptual learning by repeatedly practicing a demanding visual task may improve visual performance in people with presbyopia. In one study, the brain training enabled subjects to "overcome and/or delay some of the disabilities imposed by the aging eye."⁵

5 Helpful Strategies to Reduce Eye Strain

Putting yourself in front of a screen is now an inevitable part of modern life. That said, it’s important you be conscious of your screen time to minimize your risk for eye strain before your vision problems worsen. Here are other practical tips to help you manage it:

• Try the 20-20-20 rule — Simply put, your eyes should take a break every 20 minutes by looking far into the distance about 20 feet away for 20 seconds. While this is a start, research shows that this is not enough to prevent nearsightedness.^6,7

Rather, I suggest you take a five-minute break every hour you face a screen. As you rest, don’t just switch to another screen. Instead, take a real break — get up, take a walk, and stretch your body so you’re not completely sedentary to allow your eyes from taking a break at looking things up close. This is important to relieve eye strain and let your blink rate return to normal.⁸

• Avoid blue light exposure — It’s becoming more common for people to scroll through their phone while lying in bed, thinking it’ll help them fall asleep faster. In reality, the opposite occurs because screens emit blue light, which throws your circadian rhythm off. As noted by Harvard researchers:

“While light of any kind can suppress the secretion of melatonin, blue light at night does so more powerfully. Harvard researchers and their colleagues conducted an experiment comparing the effects of 6.5 hours of exposure to blue light to exposure to green light of comparable brightness. The blue light suppressed melatonin for about twice as long as the green light and shifted circadian rhythms by twice as much (3 hours vs. 1.5 hours).”

That said, I recommend you make it a habit to minimize screen exposure after sunset. During the evenings, use warmer light sources instead of bright lights to signal your body to go to sleep. If you absolutely need to use devices at nighttime, I recommend using blue light filters or wearing specialized sunglasses that block blue light.

• Reduce screen time usage wherever possible — This is probably one of the most practical ways you can reduce your exposure to devices that emit blue light. Ask yourself how much time do you really need to spend in front of screens for work and leisure, and commit to areas where you can cut back.

For example, try to schedule specific times for checking emails or messages rather than scrolling through the internet during idle time. In addition, consider adopting hobbies that do not need to use screens, such as reading books or learning a musical instrument. Consider visiting your family or friends instead of talking with them through a screen, too.

• Try pencil push-ups — According to ophthalmologist Dr. Colman R. Kraff, this exercise is commonly used to train your eyes to converge when looking at an object near you, which can help improve eyesight.⁹ Here’s how to perform this exercise:¹⁰

1. Hold a pencil at arm’s length. The pencil should be vertical, with the eraser pointing upward just below eye level. Then, position it in front of your nose.

2. Move the pencil to your face while concentrating your vision on the eraser. Stop after you see two pencils rather than one.

3. Slowly move the pencil back to arm’s length while focusing on keeping a single image.

4. Begin the exercise for 30 seconds, then build up to 60 seconds three times a day.

• Get your body moving — Interestingly, research has shown that exercising regularly helps reduce your risk for various eye-related because of its positive effects throughout your whole body. As noted in a study published in Frontiers in Medicine:¹¹

“[I]t can be inferred that for individuals suffering from DED (dry eye disease), myopia, cataracts, glaucoma, DR (diabetic neuropathy), and AMD (age-related macular degeneration), or those at high risk, when physical activity is appropriately tailored to their conditions, long-term, regular exercise of moderate to vigorous intensity can help delay the onset and progression of these diseases or alleviate their symptoms.

This offers a promising avenue for the prevention and treatment strategies of a variety of ocular diseases.”

That said, I recommend that you start going for daily walks, aiming to get around 10,000 steps. After that, the benefits of exercise start to plateau. For a more detailed look at the benefits of walking, read “Don’t Underestimate the Power of a Good Walk.”

Your Diet Sets the Foundation for Optimal Eye Health

Lastly, I want to emphasize the importance of carotenoids found in food, which contribute to optimal eyesight. These include lutein, zeaxanthin and astaxanthin, which act as antioxidants to protect your eyes from the damaging effects of oxidative stress and harmful light wavelengths.

• Lutein and zeaxanthin are concentrated in the macula¹² — This is a small area in your retina that is needed for central vision. More importantly, these nutrients help filter out harmful blue light from digital screens, which, as I’ve discussed earlier, interrupt your circadian rhythm.

• Lutein reduces damage caused by blue light — According to a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School and The University of Hong Kong, writing in the journal Nutrients:

"As the peak wavelength of lutein’s absorption is around 460 nm which lies within the range of blue light, lutein can effectively reduce light-induced damage by absorbing 40% to 90% of incident blue light depending on its concentration.

The outer plexiform layer of the fovea, where the majority of axons of rod and cone photoreceptor cells are located, is the retinal layer having the highest density of macular carotenoids including lutein. Hence the photoreceptors are protected against photo-oxidative damages from blue light."¹³

• Only lutein and zeaxanthin cross the blood-retina barrier — One of the most interesting properties about lutein and zeaxanthin is their ability to concentrate in the macula compared to form macular pigment, “which is essential for maintaining optimal visual performance and is often used as a proxy for predicting the risk of developing macular diseases.”¹⁴

Higher levels of lutein and other carotenoids are linked to a lower risk of AMD. To showcase their importance in eyesight, research noted that people with increased levels of lutein and zeaxanthin have a 65% lower incidence of neovascular AMD compared to those who consumed less.¹⁵

• Load up on leafy greens — The best dietary sources of lutein and zeaxanthin are leafy greens such as spinach and kale. Research shows that even a half-cup serving of spinach (around 60 grams) every day for four weeks already increased macular pigment density.¹⁶ In addition, pasture-raised eggs, as well as yellow and orange fruits, contain these important carotenoids.

• Minimize linoleic acid intake — Lastly, DeGroot noted that your eyes are susceptible to damage caused by a high intake of polyunsaturated fat (PUF). That said, keep your LA intake below 5 grams daily, but if you can get it below 2 grams, that’s even better for your health.

To help you achieve this goal, I recommend using the Mercola Health Coach app, which will be released later this year. It contains a special feature called the Seed Oil Sleuth, which will help track your LA intake to a tenth of a gram.

For more foods that contain lutein and zeaxanthin, refer to the list below:¹⁷

Dark leafy greens, such as spinach and kale
Carrots
Broccoli
Egg yolks

Red and yellow peppers
Leeks
Parsley
Basil

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Relieving Eye Strain

Q: What are the main causes of eye strain?

A: Eye strain is often caused by excessive screen time, not blinking enough (especially when using devices), exposure to blowing air (fans or vents), presbyopia (age-related farsightedness), and undiagnosed vision conditions like eye muscle imbalances.

Q: Can wearing glasses contribute to eye strain?

A: Yes. Wearing glasses excessively can restrict eye movement, locking your vision into one place, which worsens eye strain. It’s recommended you try removing eyeglasses or having separate pairs for different distances, rather than using bifocals or progressive lenses, to allow your eyes more movement.

Q: How can I reduce eye strain from screen use?

A: Implement the 20-20-20 rule (every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds), take longer breaks hourly to stretch and move, avoid blue light exposure especially in the evening, reduce overall screen time, perform pencil push-up exercises, and maintain regular physical activity.

Q: Why is blue light from screens harmful?

A: Blue light from screens significantly disrupts your circadian rhythm by suppressing melatonin production, making it harder to fall asleep. Harvard researchers indicate blue light exposure can shift sleep patterns significantly more than other kinds of light.

Q: What dietary changes help improve eye health?

A: Eating foods rich in carotenoids, especially lutein and zeaxanthin found in leafy greens (spinach and kale), carrots, pasture-raised eggs, and colorful fruits and vegetables, support optimal eye health. These nutrients protect the eyes from oxidative stress and damage caused by harmful blue light, helping to prevent conditions like age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Weekly Health Quiz: Arsenic in Rice, Lead in Toothpaste, and Risks of Long-Term PPI Use

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

1 Which type of rice is least likely to have high levels of arsenic?

Brown rice from the southeastern U.S.
White basmati rice from India
White basmati rice from India, along with Thai jasmine and California-grown white rice, has some of the lowest heavy metal levels. Learn more.
Wild rice from the Midwest U.S.
Brown jasmine rice from Thailand

2 What percentage of tested toothpaste brands contained lead?

65%
47%
90%
Independent testing revealed that 90% of 51 popular toothpaste brands contained lead, highlighting the widespread issue of contamination. Learn more.
35%

3 What health risks are associated with long-term PPI use?

Decreased bone strength and nutrient absorption
Kidney damage, weakened bones, and increased infection risk
Long-term PPI use can damage kidneys, weaken bones, impair nutrient absorption, and increase infection risk due to reduced stomach acid. Learn more.
Hampered immune function and cardiovascular health
Dysfunctional digestion and increased inflammation

4 How do diets high in processed carbs like white bread affect your health as you age?

They are linked to worse mental, physical, and metabolic health
Diets high in white bread, sugary snacks, and processed carbs are linked to significantly worse mental, physical, and metabolic health in older age. Learn more.
They aren't likely to affect mental and physical health
They have no impact on aging outcomes
They enhance metabolic health but not mental health

5 How might increasing your intake of healthy salts benefit you?

It can cause fatigue and lightheadedness
It primarily improves digestion but not energy
It has no effect on your overall well-being
It can dramatically improve your health and energy
Consuming healthy salts can dramatically improve health and energy by avoiding complications like fatigue and lightheadedness caused by low sodium. Learn more.

6 Why does fructose in sugary drinks like soda contribute to health issues more than fructose in whole fruit?

Fructose in soda is processed faster by your stomach
Fructose in whole fruit is absorbed slowly due to fiber and nutrients
Unlike processed fructose in soda, which floods the liver and can lead to fat accumulation, fructose in whole fruit is absorbed slowly with fiber, reducing strain on your liver. Learn more.
Soda contains more fructose than fruit
Fruit fructose is converted to glucose before reaching the liver

7 How have powerful medical organizations impacted your access to COVID-19 treatments?

They have not promoted all effective treatments equally
They have supported patient choice and free speech
They have suppressed free speech and patient choice
Powerful medical organizations have suppressed free speech and patient choice, limiting access to certain effective treatments. Learn more.
They have focused solely on vaccine development

Test Your Knowledge With

The Master Level Quiz

1 Why might you choose white rice over brown rice if you have gut issues?

White rice is less inflammatory and easier to digest
White rice is easier to digest and less inflammatory than brown rice, making it a better choice for those with gut issues or mitochondrial dysfunction. Learn more.
White rice has more fiber, aiding digestion
White rice contains more nutrients for gut health
White rice has higher protein content

2 How does working more than 52 hours a week affect your brain?

It slightly impacts emotional control and decision-making
It does not improve mitochondrial energy and intuition
It alters regions tied to emotional control, decision-making, and focus
Working over 52 hours a week physically alters brain regions linked to emotional control, decision-making, and focus. Learn more.
It has no impact on brain function

3 What health risks are associated with high arsenic exposure from rice?

Improved kidney function and brain development
Harm to brain development and kidney function
High arsenic exposure can harm brain development, kidney function, and long-term health, making it critical to reduce exposure. Learn more.
Decreased bone growth and immune response
Decreased energy and muscle development

4 Which health issues can result from exposure to lead and cadmium in toothpaste?

Reduced bone density and energy levels
Altered immune function and dental health
Kidney damage, osteoporosis, and anemia
Lead and cadmium in toothpaste can disrupt cellular functions, leading to serious health issues like kidney damage, osteoporosis, and anemia. Learn more.
Better digestion and muscle growth

5 How do egg white proteins help lower your blood pressure?

They increase cholesterol levels to stabilize circulation
They release peptides that relax blood vessels and boost nitric oxide production
Egg white proteins release peptides that relax blood vessels and enhance nitric oxide production, naturally lowering blood pressure. Learn more.
They reduce blood vessel flexibility to control pressure
They block nitric oxide production to regulate blood flow

6 What does Texas Senate Bill 25 require on processed foods containing certain ingredients?

A label listing all nutritional content in detail
A warning label stating they are "not recommended for human consumption"
Texas Senate Bill 25 mandates a warning label on processed foods with 44 harmful ingredients, stating they are "not recommended for human consumption." Learn more.
A label indicating they are safe for consumption
A label showing the country of origin for ingredients

7 What is a common misconception about the cause of most acid reflux?

It’s caused by too little stomach acid
Contrary to common belief, most reflux is caused by too little stomach acid, and PPIs worsen this by further suppressing acid production. Learn more.
It’s caused by too much stomach acid
It’s caused by excessive bile production
It’s caused by low serotonin levels

8 How can you naturally increase your klotho levels to support healthy aging?

Engage in overtraining and high-intensity workouts
Rely on processed foods and minimal physical activity
Practice moderate exercise and eat a whole-food diet rich in antioxidants
Regular moderate exercise and a whole-food diet rich in antioxidants significantly boost klotho levels, supporting healthy aging. Learn more.
Reduce screen time and increase sleep

9 What percentage of new drugs approved by the FDA between 2013 and 2022 failed to meet its own basic scientific standards?

Nearly 25%
Nearly 75%
A two-year investigation found that nearly 75% of new drugs approved by the FDA from 2013 to 2022 did not meet the agency’s basic scientific standards. Learn more.
Nearly 50%
Nearly 90%

10 How can you safely include carbs in your diet if you have a compromised gut?

Start with high-fiber whole grains immediately
Avoid all carbs, including fruits, permanently
Begin with simple carbs like fruit and white rice, then slowly reintroduce fiber
If your gut is compromised, start with simple carbs like fruit and white rice, then gradually reintroduce fiber once your gut heals. Learn more.
Eat processed carbs to reduce gut strain

11 How does brief exposure to junk food branding affect children’s calorie intake?

It has no impact on their eating habits
It causes them to eat 130 more calories that day
Just five minutes of exposure to junk food branding leads children to consume an average of 130 extra calories on the same day. Learn more.
It reduces their calorie intake by 50 calories
It only affects their cravings for healthy foods

12 When is cold water most beneficial for your body?

During meals to aid digestion
Before bed to promote relaxation
During illness to support recovery
After exercise to cool the body and boost alertness
Cold water helps cool the body after exercise, provides a mild metabolic effect, and boosts alertness. Learn more.

13 Why is the medical focus on salt restriction considered misguided?

It is supported by strong evidence linking salt to better health
The dangers of low salt intake are rarely addressed despite evidence
The dangers of low salt intake, such as increased mortality risk, are rarely discussed despite evidence, making salt restriction misguided. Learn more.
Salt restriction only affects those with existing heart conditions
Salt has no role in health complications

14 How does the bacterium Porphyromonas gingivalis contribute to atrial fibrillation (AFib)?

It improves heart electrical signaling
It reduces blood pressure, lowering AFib risk
It travels to the heart, causing scarring and arrhythmias
Porphyromonas gingivalis, linked to gum disease, travels to the heart, causing scarring and interfering with electrical signaling, increasing AFib risk. Learn more.
It strengthens heart tissue, preventing damage

15 Which essential oils are best for improving your sleep quality?

Peppermint and rosemary
Lavender, jasmine, clary sage, and cedarwood
Lavender, jasmine, clary sage, and cedarwood have been shown in studies to improve sleep quality and reduce anxiety. Learn more.
Eucalyptus and lemon
Tea tree and grapefruit

16 What health impact might you face from drinking just one sugary beverage daily, even if you maintain a healthy weight?

A 25% increased risk of Type 2 diabetes
Consuming one sugary drink daily raises your Type 2 diabetes risk by 25%, regardless of weight, due to its impact on insulin resistance. Learn more.
A 34% increased risk of high blood pressure
A 17% increased risk of kidney disease
A 25% increased risk of heart disease

17 How much microplastic does the average person consume weekly?

A teaspoon’s worth
A credit card’s worth
The average person consumes about a credit card’s worth of microplastics weekly, which can cause hormone disruption and organ damage. Learn more.
A tablespoon’s worth
A cup's worth

18 When is dragon fruit an ideal snack for you?

As a pre-workout snack or midday pick-me-up
Dragon fruit’s natural sugars provide steady energy without blood sugar crashes, making it ideal as a pre-workout snack or midday pick-me-up.

'Nonagination' — Google's Attempt to Suppress Alternative Health Information

In his Substack page, Bill Dembski, a researcher, design theorist, and mathematician, wrote an extensive exposé on "the evilization of Google,"¹ and how this nefarious company strategically dismantled the reach and visibility of alternative health websites, including Mercola.com. Dembski introduced the term "nonaginate" to describe a tactic that goes far beyond censorship.²

• What does "nonaginate" mean? Dembski says this word was inspired by "decimate," which dates to the old Roman practice of eliminating "one-tenth of an unruly band of Roman soldiers." However, what Google does is so much worse, so using the word decimate is a grave understatement.

• It's much worse than decimation — Dembski then turned to the Latin term for 90, "nonaginta," and from here, he coined the word "nonaginate," saying that this was a better-suited word for what this company does.

"Nonaginate — hat tip to Google for inspiring the term — is thus defined as destroying at least ninety percent of a thing. Nonagination is therefore much more extreme than decimation (in decimation's strict literal sense of only destroying ten percent). Google prefers to nonaginate sites it doesn't like," he writes.

• I first-handedly experienced nonagination back in 2019 — Six years ago, on June 3, 2019, to be exact, Google implemented a broad "core update" that eliminated most Mercola.com pages from its search results. Virtually overnight, Google traffic to my site dropped by approximately 99.9%.

• Decades of valuable health information has been buried — Since 1997, Mercola.com has been considered a highly relevant source of health content, and has been one of the top natural health websites worldwide. But in one fell swoop, Google removed all our high-ranked results, and replaced them with health information from advertising companies that promote junk food and drugs instead.

Google Hides Behind Its So-Called 'Policies'

Mercola.com wasn't the only victim of nonagination — countless alternative health websites were also hit with similar penalties, losing their visibility, reach, and revenue streams. For many, this meant bankruptcy. Yet, Google does not publicly admit to this bias; instead, it hides behind abstract policy language.³

• Bias is hidden behind policies that claim neutrality — To justify its move to downrank alternative health websites, Google invokes content guidelines like "Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness" (EEAT), and "Your Money or Your Life" (YMYL).⁴

• On paper, these standards sound like they exist to protect users — But in practice, they create a false sense of objectivity that allows Google to bury dissenting voices without admitting to any ideological filtering. Even licensed physicians and researchers are downgraded if they suggest that healing might come from something other than patented drugs.

• This suppression is systemic, not incidental — EEAT and YMYL policies are enforced by both machine algorithms and human raters, all trained to flag anything outside of conventional dogma as untrustworthy — even if that information is backed by clinical experience or published studies.

• The result? Websites that promote natural, research-backed concepts like real food, mitochondrial health, sunlight exposure, or EMF reduction are treated the same way as snake oil scams. Google nonaginates them in the name of "safety."

From Crowdsourcing to Crowd Control

In the past, google search results were based on crowdsource relevance. An article's rankings on Google search would ascend based on the number of people who clicked on it. Basically, if you produced unique and high-quality content that matched what people were looking for, you were rewarded by ranking in the top of search results.

• To help you ideate this, here's an example — Let's say you have an article about Akkermansia that is found on the seventh page of Google's search results, and then your competitor also has an Akkermansia article on the fifth page of search results. If more people click on your article than your competitor's, your article will move up in rank. So, in a nutshell, these search results are based on popularity.

• But this is no longer the case — Now, Google is manually lowering the ranking of undesirable content with the help of "quality raters." These raters are basing their feedback largely on Wikipedia's assessment of the author or site (more on this in the next section).

• Who are these so-called quality raters? According to the company's Search Quality Rater Guidelines, they have 16,000 external search quality raters working for them to "provide ratings based on our guidelines and represent real users and their likely information needs, using their best judgment to represent their locale."⁵

• However, these raters are not Google employees — Rather, they are employed by external firms who have contracted them to Google. According to an article by ARS Technica:

"They're carefully trained and tested staff who can spend 40 hours per week logged into a system called Raterhub, which is owned and operated by Google. Every day, the raters complete dozens of short but exacting tasks that produce invaluable data about the usefulness of Google's ever-changing algorithms.

They contribute significantly to several Google and Android projects, from search and voice recognition to photos and personalization features."⁶

Google Quality Raters Rely on Wikipedia for 'Expertise' and 'Trustworthiness'

As mentioned earlier, one of the primary sources Google's quality raters are instructed to use when assessing the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of an author or website is Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia."

• Wikipedia is highly biased against natural health — Unfortunately for many of us in the field of alternative health, Wikipedia's founder and editors are well-known to have extreme bias against natural health content and authors.

• What's more, the editors are completely anonymous — Wikipedia's editors are purely volunteers, and there are a few who have reached the most powerful editing status. They're known as the administrators. However, you will not know their identity as they hide behind pseudonyms and usernames.

So, basically, you have no idea whether the editors who are editing your content are truly experts on the topic. So how can we consider Wikipedia to be an authority of credibility when the editors are anonymous and uncredentialed?

Wikipedia Is Aggressive When It Comes to Censorship

While Google's censoring of content started just several years ago, Wikipedia has been censoring information and blocking editors since the beginning. About 1,000 users are blocked from the platform on any given day.

• Wikipedia is often edited by people with a very specific agenda — According to investigative journalist Sheryl Attkisson, anyone who tries to clarify or clear up inaccuracies on the site is simply blocked. The reality is a far cry from Wikipedia's public promise, which is to provide readers with unbiased information.

• Google is funding Wikipedia — Considering its history of bias and its incredibly effective blocking of opposing views, no matter how factual, it's not surprising that Wikipedia is Google's chosen arbiter of expertise and credibility. And Wikipedia is profiting from this partnership, financially speaking. In January 2019, Google donated $2 million to Wikimedia Endowment, Wikipedia's parent organization, and another $1.1 million to the Wikimedia Foundation.

• So what does this mean? Since Google's freelance raters rely on Wikipedia, it means the whole "quality rating" system they've set up is rotten from the ground up, as its quality raters are instructed to base their quality decisions on an already biased source.

Google Is the World's Biggest Monopoly

There's no doubt that Google is now one of the largest and clearest monopolies in the world. It monopolizes several different markets, including search and advertising. In the case of search, it controls 90% of the market; its closest competitor, Bing, only has 2% of the market.⁷ Google also controls about 60% of the global advertising revenue on the internet.

• Google's primary business is the harvesting of user data — Google catches every single thing you do online if you're using a Google-based feature, and this data is then used to build powerful personality profiles that are sold for profit and used in a variety of different ways.

This data gathering goes far beyond what most people realize was even possible and is one of the primary reasons smaller advertisers cannot compete — they don't have the user data Google has.

• Google also owns DeepMind, the world's greatest artificial intelligence (AI) company — With nearly 6,000 employees worldwide,⁸ many of them AI researchers, it is not hard for them to sort through all your data with their deep learning algorithms to detect patterns that can be exploited for profit.

• Unfortunately, many still fail to see the problem Google presents — Its services are useful and practical, making life easier in many ways, and more fun in others. However, the complete and utter loss of privacy is a high price to be paid for such conveniences. Ultimately, your user data and personal details can be used for everything from creating personalized advertising to AI-equipped robotic warfare applications.

Say Goodbye to Google Today

Today, being a conscious consumer includes making wise, informed decisions about technology, and one of the greatest personal data leaks in your life is Google. If you need an extensive list on just how pervasive Google is, I recommend reading my article, "Goodbye Google."

Here's a summary of action steps for you to take right now to protect your privacy. I recommend sharing them with your friends and family so they too can protect themselves from Google's data theft practices.

• Swap out your browser — Uninstall Google Chrome and use Brave or Opera instead. Everything you do on Chrome is surveilled, including keystrokes and every webpage you've ever visited. Brave is a great alternative that takes privacy seriously.

• Switch your search engine — Stop using Google search engines or any extension of Google, such as Bing or Yahoo, both of which draw search results from Google. Instead, use a default search engine that offers privacy, such as Presearch, Startpage, DuckDuckGo, Qwant and many others.

• Use a secure email — Close your Gmail account and switch to a secure email service like ProtonMail. If you have children, don't transfer their student Google account into a personal account once they're out of school.

• Switch to a secure document sharing service — Ditch Google Docs and use another alternative such as Zoho Office, Etherpad, CryptPad, OnlyOffice or Nuclino, all of which are recommended by NordVPN.⁹

• Delete all Google apps from your phone and purge Google hardware — Better yet, get a de-Googled phone. Several companies now offer them, including Above Phone.

• Avoid websites that use Google Analytics — To do that, you'll need to check the website's privacy policy and search for "Google." Websites are required to disclose if they use a third-party surveillance tool. If they use Google Analytics, ask them to switch!

• Use a secure messaging system — To keep your private communications private, use a messaging tool that provides end-to-end encryption, such as Signal.

• Use a virtual private network (VPN) such as NordVPN or Strong VPN — This is a must if you seek to preserve your online privacy.

• Don't use Google Home devices in your house or apartment — These devices record everything that occurs in your home, both speech and sounds such as brushing your teeth and boiling water, even when they appear to be inactive, and send that information back to Google. The same goes for Google's home thermostat Nest and Amazon's Alexa.

• Don't use an Android cellphone, as it's owned by Google.

• Ditch Siri, which draws all its answers from Google.

• Don't use Fitbit — It was recently purchased by Google and will provide them with all your physiological information and activity levels, in addition to everything else that Google already has on you.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Google's Search Rankings

Q: Why is it harder to find alternative health websites on Google?

A: Google's algorithm deliberately downranks websites that promote natural health approaches or question pharmaceutical narratives. Even licensed doctors are penalized if their content contradicts mainstream medical guidelines.

Q: What does the term "nonaginate" mean and how does it relate to this issue?

A: Coined by design theorist William Dembski, "nonaginate" means to destroy 90% or more of something. It describes how Google decimates the visibility of alternative health websites by wiping out their search traffic.

Q: How does Google justify removing these websites from top search results?

A: Google hides behind policies like EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) and YMYL (Your Money or Your Life), claiming these filters protect users. In practice, they are used to silence dissenting health voices.

Q: Who decides what health content is trustworthy on Google?

A: Google employs 16,000 quality raters who rely heavily on Wikipedia to judge credibility. Since Wikipedia is openly biased against natural health, this creates a feedback loop of censorship and misinformation.

Q: What can I do to protect my access to reliable health information?

A: Avoid using Google products and search engines. Choose alternatives like DuckDuckGo for browsing, ProtonMail for email, and Opera for web access. Being intentional with your tech choices helps protect your privacy and access to honest health content.

Test Your Knowledge with Today's Quiz!

Take today’s quiz to see how much you’ve learned from yesterday’s Mercola.com article.

What methods did Dr. Bowden use to successfully treat over 6,000 COVID-19 patients?

Put patients on ventilators and followed standard hospital protocols
Rapid PCR tests and early interventions like monoclonal antibodies and ivermectin
Dr. Bowden used rapid PCR tests and early interventions like monoclonal antibodies and ivermectin to effectively treat thousands of patients. Learn more.
Expensive antiviral drugs promoted by government agencies
Delayed testing with high-dose corticosteroids

Healing beyond the surface: Why proper chronic wound care matters

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 23:00:44 +0000

An excerpt from Heal Your Wound: A Doctor’s Guide For Hard-To-Heal Wounds. Chronic wounds are more than just a medical issue, they can be a daily challenge that can impact every part of a person’s life. From physical discomfort to emotional stress, these wounds often linger for weeks or months, especially when tied to conditions

Why specialist pain clinics and addiction treatment services require strong primary care

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 19:00:58 +0000

Specialist pain clinics and addiction management services are vital in addressing some of the most complex and costly health care conditions. However, their success depends on stable and robust primary care systems. Without strong primary care as a foundation, these health care initiatives risk fragmentation, poor continuity, and low patient accountability. Stable primary care ensures

Dear July intern: It’s normal to feel clueless—here’s what matters

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 17:00:37 +0000

It’s July—the official new year for medicine. You’re either a brand-new intern, wide-eyed and exhausted, equal parts proud and terrified, or maybe you’re stepping into fellowship, wondering how you’re suddenly supposed to be the expert. You’re navigating hallways you haven’t mapped yet, still figuring out whether your badge works on the north wing or the

Who gets to be well in America: Immigrant health is on the line

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 13:00:36 +0000

As lawmakers debate cuts to Medicaid and restrictions on care for undocumented immigrants, the question isn’t just what America covers—it’s who. Proposals like the No Medicaid for Illegal Immigrants Act of 2025, and related attempts to embed its provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, aim to block federal funding for Medicaid services to

When a medical office sublease turns into a legal nightmare

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 11:00:40 +0000

An excerpt from The Doctor is Out—Justice vs Injustice in America. In the hug of a crisp autumn morning, with the world adorned in the warm hues of changing leaves, the seed of an idea took root within me—an idea born from the necessity of expanding my medical practice to accommodate the growing needs of

What You Need to Know About Estrogen and Serotonin

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published October 22, 2023.

In this interview, Bulgarian bioenergetic researcher Georgi Dinkov discusses the downsides of estrogen and serotonin, both of which are generally considered beneficial for physical and mental health.

The drug industry is making a mint on the idea that depression is caused by low serotonin, for example. However, a closer look reveals both estrogen and serotonin can cause severe problems and you do not want high levels of either of them.

Estrogen Is an Obesity Promoter and Known Human Carcinogen

The original name for estrogen was adipin, so called because it was known to make you fat, as in adipose (fat) tissue. In the mid-‘50s, when the drug industry started pushing synthetic estrogens, this knowledge faded from memory. One of the most infamous early synthetic estrogens prescribed was diethylstilbestrol (DES), which caused fetal malformations and deaths, and cancers in the mothers who took it.

DES was eventually withdrawn and banned for use in humans. DES is not estrogen. It’s an estrogenic chemical, and it does activate estrogen receptors, but more potently than estrogen does, and it has no other mechanisms of action except through its estrogenic effects.

This gives us a strong signal that estrogen excess is of serious concern. That estrogen can cause cancer is well-established. In December 2002, the National Institutes of Health added steroidal estrogens used in estrogen replacement therapy and oral contraceptives to its list of KNOWN human carcinogens.¹

"Even mainstream doctors will admit that there is this thing called estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer," Georgi says. "The role of estrogen there is well known. Nobody's denying it, but the story has always been, it's a localized-only effect. It's a tissue-specific effect.

If you look at the estrogen levels of menopausal women ... it’s undetectable. However, if you take a tissue biopsy from the tumor or the breast tissue around it, you'll see that estrogen levels are sky-high there.

Begrudgingly, medicine said, ‘OK, yes, estrogen is involved as a causal agent in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. However, this effect is specific only to the breast. Elsewhere, estrogen is really beneficial, and that's the reason why we're seeing ovarian uterine atrophy, vulva atrophy and all these menopausal women need more estrogen.’"

However, the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) studies, which began in 1991,² showed estrogen replacement therapy in menopausal women significantly increased the risk of heart attacks, strokes, dementia, Parkinson's disease and cancer, not just in the breast but all female reproductive organs. In the interview, Georgi also reviews evidence showing that estrogen can play a role in all types of cancer, not just reproductive ones.

Estrogen Therapy Has Seen a Revival, with Dire Consequences

The publication of the WHI results led to a significant decline in estrogen replacement therapy, starting in the late 1990s, early 2000s, until about 2015, when studies refuting those earlier results started coming out. Scientists argued estrogen could be safely used if dosed and timed better. Cancer rates don’t bear that out though.

Some people and clinicians believe that bioidentical estrogen solves the problem but it does nothing of the sort. Bioidentical estrogen still has all the negative characteristics described in this article. It increases the risk of all cancers, not just breast and prostate, lowers your metabolic rate, and increases your risk of obesity, diabetes and osteoporosis.

"If you look at cancer rates, not just for breast cancer but for all of the female reproductive organs, you'll see there was a drop in deaths from these cancers over the last 20 years, and then that rate started going up, and not just up, but exponentially up over the last five or six years," Georgi says.

"This coincides perfectly with the gap, which is about 15 years of not using estrogen on a mass scale, and then ... reintroducing it back into the treatment protocols. Both the rates of the cancers and the deaths from these cancers plummeted over this 15-year period, and now it's back, and actually exceeds what it used to be."

Estrogen Myths

According to Georgi, the biochemical role of estrogen is to aid in wound healing. In cases of tissue trauma, estrogen reverts the differentiated cells in that specific tissue back to a stem cell-like condition, to repair the damaged tissue.

In young, healthy women, progesterone will tend to antagonize estrogen’s activity. In men, that pro-differentiation factor is androgens. Both pro-differentiation factors (progesterone and androgens) decline with age. However, estrogen synthesis typically does not.

"That's another big myth that we need to address," Georgi says. "Talk to any doctor and they'll tell you, ‘Menopause is a condition of severe progesterone and estrogen deficiency. We've done countless tests of the blood and we've seen that estrogen levels and progesterone levels are undetectable.’

That's expected because most of the estradiol — which is the main estrogen both for males or females — and progesterone are of ovarian origin in females. In other words, if the ovaries atrophy, yes, you will expect to see declining levels of the steroids in the blood because the ovaries are not working so well. In fact, eventually they fail.

However, another thing that's probably not well known, even among doctors, is that every cell in the body expresses the enzyme aromatase and contains the machinery to synthesize its own estrogen from circulating precursors. And those circulated precursors are always there, usually cholesterol which, by the way, rises with age.

So that would imply that if we test tissues, even in menopausal women, we should see increase in estrogen — especially in women that are having problems with their health — versus decrease, which is what's seen in the blood. And every test I've seen on biopsies done confirms that.

In 2022, a Chinese group published a very large study with Chinese women where they measured the levels of more than 20 different hormones in hair ... which is kind of like a surrogate for what's going on in the tissues because hair grows out of cells called follicular cells.

Basically, the levels of steroids in these cells are probably representative of what gets deposited into a hair. If you look at the estrogen levels of these women, which span all age groups, estrogen levels not only did not decline with age, they actually slightly increased ...

Progesterone did decline, almost to undetectable levels. Thyroid hormone, the active portion, T3, also declined. Reverse T3 increased, and there was an inverse correlation between body mass index (BMI) and the levels of either T3 and progesterone, and a positive correlation between BMI and the levels of estrogen.

So, to me, that gives you very strong evidence that estrogen is really not what we're being told it is, in the sense that you can freely administer it and will restore youthfulness in menopausal women."

Estrogen Summary

So, to summarize, low estrogen levels in your blood is not an indictment of estrogen deficiency. This is because most cells can synthesize estrogen from common precursors that are widely available in your body, including cholesterol.

The problem is that the estrogen that these cells produce doesn’t equilibrate with the blood, but stays within these cells and gives a false impression of estrogen deficiency. And, while estrogen is an essential component in tissue repair, that growth and repair process needs to be turned off when the job is completed, and if it isn’t, the risk of cancer rises dramatically.

The problem is that progesterone and androgens — the off-switches for estrogen in women and men respectively — do decline with age, because cells do not have a comparable enzyme like aromatase, to synthesize them. Their synthesis is restricted to gonadal tissues. This leads to elevated estrogen levels and decreased progesterone and testosterone, which typically results in unregulated cell growth, the essence of cancer.

Making matters worse, estrogen is antimetabolic and radically reduces the ability of your mitochondria to create cellular energy in a form of ATP by depending on aerobic glycolysis (the Warburg effect) which radically impairs oxidative phosphorylation. This further contributes to its carcinogenic effect. Georgi explains:

"When you have to repair tissue, you can forego, for a little bit, the oxidative phosphorylation, but it always needs to come back, because that is the differentiating factor. Stem cells stay in ‘cancer metabolism’ because ... it’s the way cells have to be in order to divide at the maximum rate possible with the minimum consumption of resources possible.

But if you want this tissue to become an organ instead of a blob of cells that consumes all your energy, you need to turn off that estrogen signal, and either high metabolism and/or progesterone, and/or thyroid [hormone], both of which also prometabolic, are known as the main differentiating factors in humans."

The Many Health Benefits of Progesterone

As explained by Georgi, progesterone is the main endogenous and most direct and potent glucocorticoid receptor antagonist. This is a profound important point that I was unaware of until Georgi mentioned it. As such, it’s also a cortisol blocker, with a similar activity as the anticancer drug and cortisol blocker RU-486, which is now virtually impossible to get.

The primary difference between them is that RU-486 also blocks progesterone, so when you take it you have to be very careful about supplementing. Taking progesterone bypasses this issue, and Georgi believes it has about the same effectiveness as mifepristone (RU-486).

Georgi goes into great detail about RU-486. As I said, it’s virtually impossible to get a hold of this compound outside the mifepristone these days, which is why I won’t expound on it here, but if you want to learn more about it, listen to the interview.

Progesterone is also a GABA agonist and could be useful to take concomitant with a GABA supplement. You may even be able to use much lower doses of both if you combine them together. This affinity for GABA accounts for some of progesterone’s psychological benefits. Georgi explains:

"The strongest GABA agonist in the body, slightly stronger than progesterone, is a progesterone derivative, a metabolite, known as allopregnanolone. It was approved by the FDA for postpartum depression.³

A company is developing an oral formulation with the long-chain fatty acids called LYT-300, and now they're applying to the FDA for clinical trials for post-traumatic stress disorder, psychosis, sleep disturbances, anxiety — all of these things GABA is known to relieve.

They're saying, ‘Oh, we have the most potent endogenous GABA agonist here, allopregnanolone, for all these conditions.’ But we can say, ‘Well, you don't have to get allopregnanolone by prescription. You can do it with progesterone, maybe a slightly higher dosage, but still in the same ballpark.’"

As mentioned, progesterone also inhibits cortisol, and cortisol has been well-documented to play a major role in depression.

On a side note, GABA and allopregnanolone also appear to have anticancer activity. According to Georgi, GABA is known to improve mitochondrial energy production and inhibit excessive glycolysis. Excessive glycolysis and impaired mitochondrial function just happen to be the classic hallmarks of cancer. In older studies, injecting GABA directly into tumors was found to trigger complete regression in a matter of days.

Progesterone Dosing

In my view, what mature women really need are progesterone and pregnenolone, not estrogen. So, in practical terms, you’ll want to make sure your levels of progesterone and pregnenolone are within healthy limits, which are the levels you’d have in your 20s.

According to Georgi, "a physiological dose for a young healthy child before they actually reach puberty is about 30 milligrams of progesterone daily ... so, 30 milligrams seems to be a decent dosage prophylactically."

Ideal Way to Administer Progesterone

Please note that when progesterone is used transmucosally on your gums as I advise, the FDA believes that somehow converts it into a drug and prohibits any company from advising that on its label.

However, please understand that it is perfectly legal for any physician to recommend an off-label indication for a drug to their patient. In this case progesterone is a natural hormone and not a drug and is very safe even in high doses. This is unlike synthetic progesterone called progestins that are used by drug companies, but frequently, and incorrectly referred.

Dr. Ray Peat has done the seminal work in progesterone and probably was the world's greatest expert on progesterone. He wrote his Ph.D. on estrogen in 1982 and spent most of his professional career documenting the need to counteract the dangers of excess estrogen with low LA diets and transmucosal progesterone supplementation.

He determined that most solvents do not dissolve progesterone well and discovered that vitamin E is the best solvent to optimally provide progesterone in your tissue. Vitamin E also protects you against damage from LA. You just need to be very careful about which vitamin E you use as most supplemental vitamin E on the market is worse than worthless and will cause you harm not benefit.

It is imperative to avoid using any synthetic vitamin E (alpha tocopherol acetate — the acetate indicates that it's synthetic). Natural vitamin E will be labeled "d alpha tocopherol." This is the pure D isomer, which is what your body can use. There are also other vitamin E isomers, and you want the complete spectrum of tocopherols and tocotrienols, specifically the beta, gamma, and delta types, in the effective D isomer.

There are also other vitamin E isomers, and you want the complete spectrum of tocopherols and tocotrienols, specifically the beta, gamma, and delta types, in the effective D isomer. As an example of an ideal vitamin E you can look at the label on our vitamin E in our store. You can use any brand that has a similar label.

You can purchase pharmaceutical grade bioidentical progesterone as Progesterone Powder, Bioidentical Micronized Powder, 10 grams for about $40 on many online stores like Amazon. That is nearly a year's supply, depending on the dose you choose. It is currently unavailable on Amazon and does not show up. Check back later.

However, you will need to purchase some small stainless steel measuring spoons as you will need a 1/64 tsp which is 25 mg and a 1/32 tsp which is 50 mg. A normal dose is typically 25 to 50 mg and is taken 30 to 60 minutes before bed as it has an anti-cortisol function and will increase GABA levels for a good night's sleep.

If you are a menstruating woman, you should take the progesterone during the luteal phase or the last half of your cycle, which can be determined by starting 10 days after the first day of your period and stopping the progesterone when your period starts.

If you are a male or non-menstruating woman you can take the progesterone every day for four to six months and then cycle off for one week. The best time of day to take progesterone is 30 to 60 minutes before bed as it has an anti-cortisol function and will increase GABA levels for a good night's sleep.

This is what I have personally been doing for over a year with very good results. I am a physician so do not have any problems doing this. If you aren't a physician, you should consult one before using this therapy, as transmucosal progesterone therapy requires a doctor's prescription.

DHEA Dosing and Considerations

For optimal health, you also want to keep an eye on your cortisol-to-DHEA ratio.

"The cortisol-to-DHEA ratio — whether in blood, tissue, hair or nails — has now been established as the single most reliable predictor of all-cause mortality and morbidity throughout the entire lifespan," Georgi says.

"That ratio should be less than 0.3. In other words, heavily in favor of DHEA. Anything over 0.5 is known to start causing mood disturbances [like] depression. Anything over 1, you're probably at risk of diabetes or cardiovascular disease, or worse."

That said, DHEA is a precursor to estrogens, so you don’t want excessive amounts of DHEA. For most people, 10 mg to 12 mg of DHEA is more than adequate. That’s how much you produce in your mid-20s.

It would be highly unwise to simply swallow DHEA, as 85% will be broken down by your liver and we have no idea how harmful the liver metabolites are. You can use the same butter trick described above for pregnenolone, to avoid this. But it would also be wise to not take doses over 10 mg without professional supervision. You do not want to increase your estrogen and prolactin levels.

You must be careful, though, as taking DHEA can easily be converted to estrogen by aromatase and subsequently increase prolactin levels. It you are going to take DHEA it would be best to take it with progesterone as that will inhibit DHEA’s conversion into estrogen since progesterone is a potent aromatase inhibitor.

"As far as dosages [are concerned] … if you're still producing DHEA, which you can verify on blood tests, you can calculate the delta between what the optimal interval was when you were young [and what it is now].

Let's say the optimal level was 500, and now you are in your 60s. The [lab] range says you're fine, but your level is 200. The delta is about 60%, so you need to take 60% of that daily [amount] that you used to produce when you were in your 20s.

Sixty percent of 12 mg is what you really need to be taking in order to restore the level to the youthful level without running into the risk of raising estrogen too much. And if you combine it with progesterone, you should be getting an even stronger anti-cortisol effect while further preventing the conversion of DHEA into estrogen."

Pregnenolone Benefits and Dosing Suggestions

Pregnenolone, which your body makes from cholesterol, converts first to progesterone and then to allopregnanolone. Pregnenolone is also converted to DHEA, which is a precursor for estrogens and androgens.

"Pregnenolone is really unique in the sense that if you have an excess of a specific steroid, it will likely lower it," Georgi says, "and if you have a deficiency of a specific steroid, it will probably raise it.

About 100 mg is probably enough because, being the top level hormone, it’s going to convert downstream into whatever you need ... I know of a study with schizophrenia where 50 mg decreased significantly both the symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder."

While most people opt for oral pregnenolone, I prefer rectal suppositories. I make my own by mixing the pregnenolone with cacao butter, a very long chain fat that facilitates absorption. For most people, 100 mg is sufficient. If you opt for oral pregnenolone, mix it into half a teaspoon of butter to make an emulsion.

Low Serotonin Is Not the Cause of Depression

Next, we discuss serotonin, which used to be called enteramine because it’s produced in the gut. Enteric refers to things related to your intestines. Serotonin has been incorrect

Intimidation and Censorship — A Doctor’s Personal Account of the Pandemic

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In a three-hour interview with Joe Rogan, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden recounts her experience in the trenches during the COVID-19 pandemic.¹ While she has saved thousands of lives, the establishment vilified her by refusing to use treatments they endorsed. I encourage you to watch the entire episode, as it's an eye-opening story of what went on behind the scenes.

Early Testing and Treatment Save Lives

According to Bowden, early pandemic testing delays were severe, often lasting up to two weeks. These delays allowed the virus more time to spread, exacerbating illness and overwhelming health care systems.

• Quick testing helps the appropriate patients — Bowden contributed to widespread testing by adopting saliva-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, dramatically reducing waiting times to just 24 hours:

"I was already working with a lab for patients with chronic sinusitis, they were doing a PCR testing for chronic sinusitis. So, tests for bacterial and fungal infections of the sinuses. It's called Microgen DX, and they came out with a saliva test for COVID.

So, we were able to get the results back the next day. So, I started offering that and my little clinic exploded …"

• Doctors still helped whenever they could — Even if patients already had a full-blown infection, Bowden was still bound by her oath to help treat them with whatever tools were available:

"I also had patients come in that were really sick in the second week. And that, that was such a learning experience for me because, you know, normally, if somebody walked into my office with an oxygen saturation in the low 80s, I would call an ambulance. But I had patients who were refusing to go to the hospital, and I had to give them the option to possibly die in my office, which is scary, but we saved them."

• Monoclonal antibodies worked — Simply put, monoclonal antibodies are lab-grown antibodies² designed to stimulate your immune system. Bowden recounts how they "worked very well" for her patients, and she would notice improvement the following day.

• Early treatment increases survival outcomes — Bowden says that patients coming in during the beginning phases of the disease helped improve their chances of full recovery:

"[O]nce I knew it was safe, then I started using [ivermectin] and found it worked ... All in all, I treated well over 6,000 patients and everybody that got early treatment stayed out of the hospital."

What Happens When Doctors Speak Out Against the Narrative

Bowden personally encountered severe side effects of the COVID-19 jab while treating patients. But when she spoke out, she was met with vehement opposition:

• More and more athletes are dying due to myocarditis — In 2023, I wrote about how athletes suddenly experiencing heart attacks when the shots were rolled out. Now, the situation has gotten worse, Bowden says:

"So, it used to be 29 per year. Now it's 290 per year, [a] growth [of] 10 times … And I worry about these kids because myocarditis, the primary symptom is chest pain. But if you've got a kid who's not even speaking yet, you have no idea if they have myocarditis, and myocarditis can leave a permanent scar on the heart and then lead to a lifelong increased risk of sudden cardiac death and we have no idea if these kids have been affected."

• The government schemed to hit ivermectin — In addition to the rollout of the shots, Bowden believes there was a concerted effort by different parties to suppress ivermectin:

"[T]he Federation of State Medical Boards, which is this private entity — they're actually located in Texas — who oversees all the state medical boards, they sent out a directive to all the state medical boards concerning ivermectin, concerning misinformation, and basically encouraging the medical boards to go after doctors like myself."

• Opposition will have a hard time prosecuting lifesavers — While Bowden has been maligned, she is proud of what she did to help patients. In turn, her attackers have no leverage because in the end, she saved lives:

"They can't find an expert witness to testify against me. There have been three continuances. They finally were awarded summary judgment against me. So, they've decided I'm guilty. And now I'm waiting for my punishment. There was a hearing about a month ago to find out what they're going to find me with and that sort of thing. And I'm just waiting on that, but I do plan on appealing."

Going deeper into the censorship angle, Bowden shares that the big players are working together to bring down cheap, effective treatments for patients suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic:

• Money was involved in propaganda and censorship — Bowden recounts that all the pieces moved very quickly at the start of the pandemic to usher in the shots as the primary solution:

"If you look at the timing, in March, the government put out the big information on ivermectin and why you should not take it for COVID. They put that on the FDA 's website. At the same time, they launched COVID-19 Community Corps, and this was April 1st, 2021.

This was an $11.5 billion slush fund to feed out propaganda and censor people. And the day that they launched the COVID-19 Community Corps was the same day that Houston Methodist, which is where I had privileges, mandated the COVID shots for all their employees, and they were the first in the country."

• The government purposefully made it hard for doctors to do their jobs — This led to the suppression of effective treatments, such as monoclonal antibodies. Bowden said she didn't even use ivermectin until the government took over distribution of monoclonal antibodies. After that, it became increasingly difficult to get them.

Were Hospital Protocols Helping or Hurting Patients?

Early pandemic hospital protocols often used ventilators aggressively and universally, regardless of patient-specific needs, frequently worsening outcomes for many individuals:

• Ventilators were forced on patients — Despite leading to worsened pulmonary function, hospitals still put patients on ventilators:

"You don't look at a number to put somebody on a ventilator. And unfortunately, the people in the hospital didn't learn. They didn't experiment in that fashion. They just went by this protocol and automatically put people on ventilators. They also didn't give people breathing treatments. They thought that breathing treatments would spread the virus."

• Hospitals were indiscriminately harming patients — During the height of the pandemic, Bowden recounts that hospitals were essentially euthanizing patients to make room for others:

"They'll justify giving morphine because they'll say, 'Oh, well, they're struggling to breathe.' Well, guess what? Morphine actually depresses your drive to breathe. Like this one case I remember, this patient, he was sick, he looked like he was dying, but they just pushed morphine. He had no pain. They do a pain score, so zero to 10.

This guy had zero pain. And then they pushed insulin to drop his sugar, and his glucose was fine. And then he died three minutes later ... I reviewed this chart and turned him in the medical board. Nothing. They didn't do anything."

• Profits over lives — In the end, Bowden believes that greed ultimately won out, with the COVID shots linked to the deaths of countless people:

"[W]e have hard facts showing it should be pulled off the market. I mean, any other product would have been pulled a long time ago. If this were an antibiotic and we'd seen all the carnage from an antibiotic, it would have been yanked off long ago. It should have been yanked off in the first month. There's no other explanation than there's just fraud, there's corruption, there's ego, there's money. But it's not science."

Medical Freedom Is Constantly Under Threat

Recent victories for medical freedom, such as Idaho's ban on jab mandates,³ demonstrate growing support for patient autonomy. Yet powerful medical organizations remain opposed to broad reforms.

• More like-minded politicians are needed — Bowden formed the Americans for Health Freedom to increasingly influence policy discussions, advocating strongly for the restoration and protection of medical freedoms:

"I started an organization called Americans for Health Freedom to try to find the politicians with moral courage to simply state that the COVID shot should be pulled off the market. It has been slow-growing, but we are up to 252 politicians who will go on record just to state that these shots should be pulled off the market."

• Politicians have been bought — Rogan and Bowden agree that money has caused many politicians to stay quiet about the efficacy and safety of the shots, most likely because of Big Pharma's bribery:

"[T]hese politicians are not getting these shots anymore and they're not giving them to their kids, and yet they're fine just staying quiet and not saying anything. They're fine letting their constituents get these shots when we know all the complications, we know that it doesn't work.

We know that the risk far outweighs the benefit, and the politicians are staying quiet. So, our goal is to support the ones who will speak up and get them more power."

• Organizations continue to suppress free speech — Bowden frequently clashed with mainstream medical experts during the pandemic. She called out the Texas Medical Association, saying:

"They are anti-free speech for physicians. They are pro-mandate. They've gone after me, and they have a tight control over the people in our House and State. So, I just think we need to be careful. I mean, you saw it during the pandemic and the economy of our state is dominated by health, and people don't realize that. They just think oil, but health is a huge dominating factor in our economy and, you saw what they did to me, what they're still doing to me."

The Best Ways to Protect Yourself

Despite the assault on physicians and patient medical freedom, Bowden hasn't given up. Things are looking up, and she hopes that the new Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, "will save us all." In the meantime, there are things you can do to protect yourself against the ever-evolving SARS-CoV-2 variants, as well as other diseases by boosting your immune system.

As noted in Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong's interview with Tucker Carlson, your immune system is everything, especially against chronic diseases. However, many people have compromised immune function nowadays due to getting the shot. To rebuild your resilience, here are my recommendations:

1. Prioritize sleep — Ensure you're getting at least seven to nine hours of high-quality sleep every night. Sleep is when your body heals and rejuvenates. Lack of proper sleep weakens your immune system and increases inflammation. But that's not all — you also need to consider sleep quality. For simple, actionable fixes that will help you get the rest you need, read "Subtle Signs You Are Not Getting Enough Sleep."

2. Dietary adjustments — Your diet plays a huge role in your overall health. If you're eating unhealthy foods, it's time to change. Limit ultraprocessed foods, refined sugar, and linoleic acid (LA), which is an inflammatory polyunsaturated fat (PUF). Focus instead on healthy carbohydrates to optimize your metabolic health and reduce immune-damaging inflammation.

3. Sunlight exposure — In a previous article, I noted that vitamin D from sunlight exposure helps prevent respiratory infections. I recommend you get daily sunlight exposure at solar noon, but only after you've been off vegetable oils for two to six months.

4. Add C15:0 fat to your diet — In relation to the point above, did you know that after you eat enough LA, it becomes embedded in your skin? Once it's exposed to sunlight, inflammatory metabolites are produced, leading to increased risk of chronic disease and inflammation.

Taking 250 milligrams of pentadecanoic acid (C15:0) daily may help shorten the time it takes for your skin to safely interact with sunlight again, but emerging research suggests much larger doses may be even better.

The logic behind this strategy is to push out the existing LA from your tissues, replacing them with healthier fat. If you simply followed a low-LA diet, it would take two to three years for the strategy to work. But if you add C15:0, the LA clearance significantly shortens to 12 to 18 months. To understand this strategy in more detail, read "The Skin Microbiome Secret to Sun Protection and Radiant Health."

5. Manage your stress — Chronic stress weakens your immune response due to elevated cortisol levels. Engage in daily stress-relief activities like meditation, deep breathing exercises, gentle yoga, or simply spending more time in nature. For more information, read "Key Strategies to Reduce Your Cortisol Levels."

6. Don't get the COVID shot — Given concerns raised by Bowden about serious side effects, opting out of the COVID jab and focusing instead on natural strategies to boost your immunity provides a safer, more effective approach.

If you or a loved one has already gotten the jab, I recommend you go over the I-RECOVER program by the Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), formerly known as the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). It provides extensive information about how to treat long COVID⁴ and post-jab injuries.⁵

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About the Doctors During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Q: What was Bowden's approach to COVID-19 testing and early treatment?

A: Bowden emphasized that early testing and intervention were crucial in saving lives during the pandemic. She implemented saliva-based PCR testing with a 24-hour turnaround, enabling faster diagnosis compared to the then-common two-week delays. She treated patients with monoclonal antibodies and ivermectin, and that early intervention kept thousands out of the hospital.

Q: Why did Bowden face backlash from the medical establishment?

A: Bowden publicly challenged the mainstream COVID-19 treatment protocols, questioned the shot safety, and promoted off-label use of ivermectin. As a result, she was targeted by medical boards and hospital administrators who allegedly acted on federal directives to suppress dissent. She claims that propaganda, financial incentives, and censorship motivated the backlash, not science.

Q: How did hospital protocols during the pandemic impact patient outcomes, according to Bowden?

A: Bowden criticized hospitals for over-reliance on ventilators, often administered without patient-specific evaluation. She alleges that some institutions essentially euthanized patients through unnecessary morphine and insulin use, and even withheld supportive care like breathing treatments. She argues that these decisions were driven by protocols, profit motives, and flawed incentives — not patient welfare.

Q: What role does Bowden believe government and pharmaceutical interests played in shaping the pandemic response?

A: She asserts there was a coordinated effort to suppress effective, low-cost treatments like ivermectin in favor of shot mandates. She points to initiatives like the $11.5 billion COVID-19 Community Corps, claiming it was used to spread propaganda and enforce censorship, while pharmaceutical interests influenced both policy and the public's perception.

Q: What is Bowden's stance on medical freedom and jab mandates today?

A: Bowden founded Americans for Health Freedom, an organization aimed at supporting politicians who oppose COVID-19 shot mandates and advocate for medical autonomy. She celebrates moves like Idaho's decision on mandates and criticizes institutions like the Texas Medical Association for suppressing physician free speech.

Test Your Knowledge with Today's Quiz!

Take today’s quiz to see how much you’ve learned from yesterday’s Mercola.com article.

By age 17, what health issue might boys face from consuming sugary drinks daily during childhood?

A 34% increase in insulin resistance and higher fasting glucose levels
Daily sugary drink consumption in childhood can lead to a 34% rise in insulin resistance and elevated fasting glucose levels by age 17, increasing Type 2 diabetes risk. Learn more.
A 25% increase in insulin resistance and lower blood sugar levels
A 34% increase in cholesterol levels and higher blood pressure
A 17% increase in insulin resistance and higher fasting glucose levels

The Keys to Trusting Your Gut

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published May 5, 2024.

In this video, I interview Gary Vaynerchuk about his family roots and how his upbringing contributed to his current success. Vaynerchuk, often known as Gary Vee, is a prominent entrepreneur, author, speaker, and internet personality.

He’s best known for his work in digital marketing and social media, leading his own company VaynerMedia, a digital agency focused on social media-first approaches. He first gained prominence by revolutionizing his family's wine business through innovative online marketing, which included creating one of the first e-commerce platforms for alcohol and hosting a daily webcast called "Wine Library TV."

His efforts dramatically increased the business's annual revenue from $3 million to $60 million. Vaynerchuk has also authored several books, including "Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion" and "Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World," which provide insights into leveraging social media to build personal brands and businesses.

He is also involved in venture capital, having invested in companies like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Uber early on. Through his personal brand and his company, he’s become a leading influencer among marketing professionals and entrepreneurs.

Family, Faith, and Health

Vaynerchuk was born in Babruysk, Belarus, which was part of the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. His family emigrated to the United States when he was 3 years old. His father opened a liquor store and Gary, even as a young boy, would help out, because that’s how families in Belarus work. They work together.

Eastern Europeans also tend to have deep spiritual family values, which is relatively rare in the U.S. these days. I heard him on a few other podcasts and was intrigued by the fact that he was so tuned into the spiritual aspect of reality.

I'm not as interested in WHAT he does, as HOW he does it. Where does the passion come from? I’m also intrigued by how the love of one’s parents can contribute to a person’s success in life. Are the two connected? I believe so.

Natural Healing — Your Body Knows What to Do

Eastern Europeans also tend to be far savvier about natural health than many Americans. Vaynerchuk recounts the story of how his great grandmother would wake him and his sister up when she came to visit and make them go outside and walk on the grass in their bare feet. Today, this is known as “grounding” or “earthing.”

“I'm very affected by my upbringing,” he says. “It’s my framework. I was also taught to never go to the doctor, ever, for my whole life. And also, no foreign chemicals. If I take two Advil right now, I'm unconscious.

Whether it's the foods, or the things you put into your body, or how you interact with nature. I also remember my family being weird — or so I thought as a kid in the 80s in America.

We'd go to Sandy Hook, the beach, and my family would immediately run in and grab sand from the bottom of the ocean and scrub their faces with it. The other thing, literally anytime I wasn't feeling well, for the first 15 years of my life, my mom or my grandma would say ‘Drink some tea and go to sleep ...’

If you asked 18-year-old me in 1993, ‘Talk about medicine,’ my initial answers would be ‘ginger, cinnamon, mint, red beets.’ When I used to have a chest cold, my mom would put vodka on a rack and heat it up and put it on my chest. Not Vicks VapoRub. Just real ancient, historical ways of doing stuff ...

I just remembered something I haven't thought about 30 years. I used to think of my body like a superhero. If the superhero character got their thumb cut off, the thumb would just grow back in. I literally grew up thinking that if I did nothing, that it would fix itself.

Three weeks ago, I jammed my thumb playing basketball very badly. My friends were like, ‘Let's put some ice on it.’ It swelled up. I didn't do it.

A week later, my trainer said, ‘You know, it's interesting that you didn't do the ice thing, because I've been reading a lot about how the body naturally does it. It swells up to protect you. It's a natural cast.’ It was just interesting the way he was talking about it. And he said, ‘Some people are now debating that you're actually better off not icing it.’”

Healthy Body, Healthy Mind

Indeed, your body is designed to stay healthy. It’s not designed to get diseased. That only happens because you’re not providing the foundational elements required for self-healing. If you have a healthy metabolism, you will not have chronic pain anywhere, and energy to spare.

Metabolically healthy people also tend to be perpetually curious. You need to have enough energy to be curious, and most people don’t have enough energy because they’re metabolically poisoned. Like Vaynerchuk suggests, optimism is another feature commonly found among healthy people.

“I believe my optimistic point of view on everything has an incredible impact on my life,” Vaynerchuk says. “So, it goes both ways. I grew up in my dad's liquor store, and so, I got into very bad habits and really hurt my back. My QL.

But I would say soft tissue and fascial work has given me a new lease on life. I've always felt healthy. But I definitely had aches and pains and mobility issues until I got serious about that seven, 10 years ago.”

Foundational Basics Pay Off

The challenge most of us have is that our work doesn't in any way, shape, or form resemble the work of our ancestors, whose work forced them to move about all day long. We don't do that. Most people are stuck behind a desk most of the day. There are serious consequences of this, including aches and pains.

I'm in the process of developing something called 22nd Century yoga, which is a form of mobility medicine where you engage in daily movements that will help you stay limber. Also, as noted by Vaynerchuk, when you violate your own inner wisdom, your body will communicate your mistake to you, frequently in the form of pain, discomfort or fatigue.

For example, most people realize that they feel better after spending time outdoors in a natural setting. Just being in the sun has tremendous healing benefits, not only because it prompts vitamin D production but also because the near-infrared rays in sunlight nourish your body in other ways.

Sunlight interacts with light receptor proteins called chromophores in your body. When light hits the chromophores, they activate a variety of biological processes, including mitochondrial chelating systems in the cells, nitric oxide release and ATP production, all of which, together, promote DNA repair and cellular regeneration. Most of the Eastern European patients that I treated instinctively knew that the sun is a source of nutrition and were outside regularly.

The same thing goes for getting dirty, which helps strengthen your immune system. “I still have a very good relationship with germs,” Vaynerchuk says. “It’s incredible to me how infrequent I struggle with any kind of cold.” Today, we know that as the hygiene hypothesis, which suggests that if you're overly hygienic and too assiduous about cleaning with antiseptics, your immune system becomes weaker.

Finding Balance

In the interview, we also talk about the role of media and how it’s being used for propaganda, including health propaganda.

“One of the great things that happened to me was I was born in the Soviet Union, but I grew up in America. So, propaganda was something I thought about all the time. Like when Reagan was president, I could sense that he was doing a good PR job. At 10, I understood.

I was also very entrepreneurial, and very quickly, in my early 20s, I'm like ‘Everything is business.’ We now talk about Big Food, Big Pharma. It was very, very intuitive to me in my 20s. And so, I've lived my adult life taking everything with a grain of salt.

I feel like that's becoming a more modern conversation as people are trying to figure out east-west, historical versus modern. And you know, I do think people overcorrect the other way.

I've got personal [friends] who so have demonized modern medicine that they are no longer with us, because they didn't do some things that they should have that probably could have helped them. So, I think a lot about finding the middle.”

As mentioned, while not a health expert, Vaynerchuk’s perspective on health tends to be intuitively spot-on, thanks to his upbringing. Ultimately, you’d want to trust your body to figure it out. It is not that you abandon rationality and data — you certainly need to take that into consideration — but to blindly trust experts other than your body is a foolish choice in my opinion.

On Marketing Well

Next, our conversation transitions into areas that Vaynerchuk is most known for, namely marketing and entrepreneurship. He comments:

“I think what I've done well is communicate to people about incredible truths [that] in marketing ... have been fruitful. I think people are getting a lot more alternative knowledge from the way the internet works and things of that nature. But I think I'm incredibly practical.

It's funny, I think about business and marketing the way that you and I are discussing health right now. If you're worried about your body, why on earth would you not listen to your body? I find something very interesting about the medical industry, which is they like to fight each other on who's right.

And I see it in marketing. I tell a lot of marketing ideological professors or pontificators who also write books like I do — ‘Wait a minute, if you're so good at marketing, why doesn't your book sell?’ I grew up learning marketing by trying to help my father's liquor store do more business, because that's what you do for your family business.

And so, since I was 6 years old, I've been obsessed with attention. Let me explain what I mean. What I find amazing about what you and I are doing right now is we couldn't do this 40 years ago. Humans that have passion or expertise for things couldn't get into the world. We needed to have a gatekeeper say that we’ll interview you or will give you three minutes on this show.

But no one had platforms. And so, I've been focused on attention my whole life. And now, every platform allows for attention. That is a remarkable change in the world. So, for example, I believe that what I was doing at 6, which was paying attention to what the cars that were driving by my lemonade stand would most likely look at to see that my lemonade was 25 cents.

From that day on to today, I spend all of my time trying to understand where consumer attention is. What are they paying attention to? What do they look at? Which platforms? Is it direct mail? Is it Google? Is it YouTube? Is it TikTok? And so, my great passion is understanding where attention is and then communicating in practical, optimistic terms what we are talking about.”

3 Keys to Marketing Success

In the early 2000s, Vaynerchuk broke out with a wine show on YouTube called Wine Library TV. He cites three reasons for the success of that show.

“One, I was deeply knowledgeable and passionate about wine at that point, and I spoke about wine in a way that no one had ever spoken about it before. Wine was put on a very elitist pedestal. And as you probably know, through your life, people are intimidated by wine, right? ...

So, I wanted to make it less intimidating. I spoke about it in very casual terms, and I would compare it to things that people knew. Instead of talking about a wine tasting like ‘an esoteric cassis from the south of France,’ I would say, ‘You know that grape Jolly Rancher you loved as a kid?’ I made it relatable.

And finally, I used a new medium. I was able to use YouTube when it first came out when nobody really knew how big it was going to be to reach a lot more people than, let's say, The New York Times’ dining section.

I believe the framework that I started for wine is what I do now. I have a marketing company called VaynerMedia that works with the biggest companies in the world to do their marketing and social and traditional channels. But I feel passionate for the people that are listening that are entrepreneurial.

I just wrote a new book called ‘Day Trading Attention,’ which is really my thesis. I couldn't explain to everyone here how great of an opportunity everybody has to reach an audience for the first time, really, in the history of distribution, [in a way that’s] immediate and creative.

For the first 15 years, it was email marketing. You would have to amass a lot of followers, and then you would post and a percentage of them would see it. We now live in a new era where it's really profound.

Every individual piece of content on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on Instagram, has the potential to reach a very broad audience based on the quality of the piece of content, not on how many followers you have.

This is a level of meritocracy of information and entertainment that we have never seen in the history of the world. And I could not recommend more for people to get very serious about organic social media, meaning you just post — you don't even have to run media ads on it — for you and your platform.”

The Hidden Connection Between Your Gut and Your Intuition

Vaynerchuk continues:

“I turned on Netflix the other night and saw a documentary about gut health trending in the top 10. I was happy to see that. I'm personally fascinated by intuition and the fact that — I believe — the gut is your primary brain, and your brain is second.”

He’s, again, spot-on. Your gut is the primary way that you obtain health, and I would say 97% to 98% of the public do not have good gut health. It correlates really strongly with metabolic flexibility, the ability to optimally generate cellular energy. They're intimately related, and if you don't have good gut health, you can't connect to your gut, which is sort of a euphemistic way of saying you can't connect to your energy or your intuition.

AI Will Revolutionize Information Sharing yet Again

Of course, we now stand at the precipice of yet another revolution, in terms of information gathering and sharing. In the last several years, we’ve seen the rise of tremendous censorship, especially pertaining to natural or alternative health, which is in direct competition with Big Pharma.

For a time, after being deplatformed everywhere, I feared the knowledge I and many others have and share would eventually be lost forever. Now, I realize that’s not the case.

Artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT is rapidly overtaking traditional search engines, and there’s a tremendous opportunity in that. Just about anyone can create their own AI chatbots trained on the material YOU want it to know, and at present, there doesn’t appear to be a way to put that genie back in the box.

More Information

To learn more, you can pick up any one of his books, listen to his podcast, or follow him on Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, or TikTok.

In addition to "Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion," "Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World" and “Day Trading Attention: How to Actually Build Brand and Sales in the New Social Media World,” he’s also coming out with a children’s book called “Meet Me in the Middle.” It’s a story about a patient pig and an eager eagle.

“Patience is [among] my top five favorite traits in a human being,” he says. “However ... a lot of people, when they hear me talking about patience, think that I'm talking about non-action, or that I'm talking about laziness. And I keep telling people, there's a reason that there are separate words. Laziness and patience are not the same ...

I created V Friends, it's my Sesame Street-meets-Pokémon, to help kids and parents finally find the middle, because everything can be great and balanced, and most things aren't, really, where they’re at.”

Why the heart of medicine is more than science

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 23:00:40 +0000

Take a moment—not just to see where you are, but to remember how far you’ve come. Through obstacles that once felt impossible. Through stress that nearly broke you. Through moments when the weight of it all made you question everything. But still—you kept going. Because medicine isn’t just a job. It’s a calling. And here,

Why the heart of medicine is more than science originally appeared in KevinMD.com.

How Ukrainian doctors kept diabetes care alive during the war

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 19:00:23 +0000

When the full-scale war broke out in Ukraine, the country’s health care system was suddenly thrown into chaos. Hospitals were destroyed or severely damaged by missile attacks. Medical professionals were forced to flee, relocating to relatively safer areas in the western regions of the country. Millions of civilians became internally displaced. Amid this disruption, doctors

Why Grok 4 could be the next leap for HIPAA-compliant clinical AI

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 17:00:41 +0000

When ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, many clinicians glimpsed the future then ran smack into a wall of red tape labeled “HIPAA.” Since then, large-language models (LLMs) have matured from clever chatbots into workhorse tools that summarize admission notes, draft prior-authorization letters, and even suggest antibiotic dosing. Yet most models still sit

How women physicians can go from burnout to thriving

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 15:00:27 +0000

I’ve been working with women physicians intensively now for six years, and I’ve noticed a few things. The women I work with are amazing. They are altruistic and caring. They are resilient, independent, and able to put others’ needs before their own. They are smart, detail-oriented, and care about getting things right. If you’re a

What a childhood stroke taught me about the future of neurosurgery and the promise of vagus nerve stimulation

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 11:00:45 +0000

I had a stroke at the age of five. It was an ischemic event, rare in children, difficult to diagnose, and often missed in early stages. I experienced a sudden loss of motor function that led to a long period of rehabilitation. I spent months relearning how to walk, balance, and perform basic movements, guided

Okra and Fenugreek Extracts Remove Most Microplastics from Water

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ingesting microplastics has become unavoidable. These particles — smaller than five millimeters — have already been found in drinking water, food, and even blood. Scientists estimate that the average person now consumes the equivalent of a credit card’s worth of plastic every single week.¹ These plastics are not just littering the environment; they’re accumulating inside your body.

Microplastics act like sponges, absorbing, and concentrating toxic pollutants such as heavy metals, pesticides, and industrial chemicals. Once swallowed, these contaminated particles cross cell membranes, damage gut lining and disrupt your endocrine system. Some are even small enough to pass through your blood-brain barrier. And because they mimic estrogen and other hormones, their long-term presence is tied to everything from infertility to neurodegenerative disease.

Conventional water treatment plants weren’t designed to remove particles this small. Worse, the water treatment chemicals currently used, like polyacrylamide, carry toxicity risks of their own. They don’t break down easily, and their byproducts linger in ecosystems long after the water leaves the plant. You’re not just drinking the residue of industrial plastic; you’re drinking the chemicals used to try to clean it up. That’s why a new breakthrough caught my attention.

In a 2025 study published in ACS Omega, researchers at Tarleton State University in Texas demonstrated that natural plant extracts, specifically from okra and fenugreek, removed up to 93% of microplastics from water sources.² These weren’t purified lab samples. This was groundwater, freshwater, and seawater from real-world locations. So, how exactly do these humble plants outperform synthetic chemicals? That’s where the following set of findings comes in.

Okra and Fenugreek Beat Chemicals in Removing Microplastics from Water

The ACS Omega study examined the microplastic removal ability of natural polysaccharides extracted from okra and fenugreek.³ The research involved both lab-simulated and real-world water samples, including surface water, ocean water and groundwater from different U.S. regions.

Unlike earlier lab-only trials, this study assessed the effectiveness of these natural water treatment agents in actual environmental conditions — rivers, wells, and coastal waters — contaminated with different shapes, sizes, and types of microplastics.

• The study focused on how well each plant worked individually and in combination — Using what’s called a jar test — essentially a small-scale lab method to simulate water treatment — the researchers compared three natural treatments: fenugreek alone, okra alone and a 1:1 mix of both.

The team evaluated how long each treatment took to work, how much of the plant extract was needed and which water conditions yielded the best results. They also tested against the synthetic chemical polyacrylamide, which is currently used in many industrial water treatment systems.

• Fenugreek removed the most microplastics overall, especially in groundwater — In groundwater samples, fenugreek achieved removal rates between 80% and 90%, outperforming all other materials, including the commercial chemical polyacrylamide.

Okra worked best in seawater, removing around 80% of microplastics. When the two were combined, they performed best in freshwater, capturing roughly 77% of contaminants. That means you’d be getting cleaner water in under an hour using a natural, plant-based method instead of relying on synthetic chemicals with known risks.

• The best results were achieved with just 1 gram (g) of plant extract per liter (L) of water — The optimal concentration was 1 g/L, and the sweet spot for contact time was 60 minutes. That’s how long it took for most of the particles to bind with the polysaccharide and settle out.

This makes it a practical method for everyday use. You don’t need a large quantity of the plant extract, and you don’t have to wait all day for it to work. Even a short soak of 30 minutes led to 70% removal in some tests.

• These plants also removed other pollutants — The study noted that fenugreek and okra were also capable of reducing total dissolved solids and suspended solids in the water. These include toxins, heavy metals and industrial runoff. So, you’re not just removing microplastics — you’re stripping out the very chemicals that ride along with them into your bloodstream.

• Polyacrylamide, the commercial standard, lagged behind on every metric — Synthetic water treatment agents like polyacrylamide only removed about 54% of microplastics in the same water and under the same conditions. On top of that, they leave behind trace molecules called monomers that aren’t biodegradable and are suspected to carry long-term health risks.

In contrast, fenugreek and okra are not only nontoxic but also biodegradable and sourced from renewable agriculture.

These Plants Trap Microplastics by Clumping Them Together

Unlike synthetic chemicals that work by neutralizing electrical charges, these plant-based water cleaners worked through "bridging." That means the long-chain sugars in the plants wrapped around and trapped the plastic particles like nets. Over time, the trapped particles got heavier and sank, allowing them to be filtered out of the water more easily.⁴

• Plant extracts with a high molecular weight did better at binding plastic particles — Fenugreek had the highest intrinsic viscosity and molecular weight, which helped it form stronger and longer-lasting bridges with microplastic particles. That’s likely why it showed the highest removal efficiency in every water type tested. The study showed that when plant extracts are larger and more viscous, they’re better at grabbing and bundling contaminants.

• The researchers used lab tests to show how the plants remove microplastics — They took close-up microscope images to show the plant extracts physically trapping the plastic particles. They also measured the electrical charge on the particles before and after treatment. Since the charge didn’t change much, they confirmed the plants worked by clumping the plastics together, not by changing their charge.

• Different types of plastic responded better to different plants — The researchers found that fenugreek was especially effective at capturing polyvinyl chloride (PVC), one of the most toxic forms of plastic. Okra worked better on lighter types of plastic commonly found in seawater. Matching the plant extract to the plastic type makes the treatment more precise and more effective.

How to Protect Yourself from Microplastics Using Natural, Proven Solutions

If you’re serious about protecting your body from microplastics, the most effective strategy is to control your environment. That means cleaning up your water, ditching plastic in the kitchen, switching out synthetic fabrics, and using smarter tools and storage for everything from leftovers to laundry. Once you know what to look for, these swaps are simple, but they have a massive impact.

1. Upgrade your water filtration and ditch plastic bottles — Drinking contaminated tap water or buying bottled water in plastic exposes you to microplastics every single day. I recommend installing a certified filtration system that’s been proven to remove particles under 5 microns.

This includes systems with sub-micron filters. If you have hard tap water, boiling it for five minutes cuts microplastic levels by up to 80%.⁵ Always choose bottled water in glass if you’re buying it on the go, and avoid plastic bottles.

2. Make smarter food packaging choices and don’t microwave plastic — Heat and plastic don’t mix. Microwaving food in plastic containers causes those containers to leach microplastics and endocrine-disrupting chemicals directly into your meal. Store leftovers in stainless steel, glass, or ceramic — not plastic tubs or plastic wrap. Choose grocery items in glass jars instead of soft plastic. Use cloth wraps at home instead of zip-top bags or cling film.

3. Re-evaluate your kitchen essentials — Every time you use a plastic cutting board, it sheds microscopic pieces into your food, especially when you’re slicing acidic or hot foods. Switch to wooden or tempered glass boards. Also replace plastic utensils with stainless steel or bamboo. These changes don’t just reduce your microplastic intake — they make your kitchen cleaner and safer over time.

4. Choose natural fibers and rethink how you wash clothes — If you’re wearing polyester, acrylic, or nylon, you’re wearing plastic, and it’s ending up in your water supply. Every wash releases synthetic microfibers that enter rivers, oceans, and drinking water. Start transitioning to natural fabrics like cotton, wool, or linen.

For synthetic items you already own, wash them less often, on colder settings, and use a microfiber-catching laundry bag or washing machine filter to trap the fibers before they escape.

5. Check your personal care products and go food-grade when possible — Many cosmetics, exfoliants, toothpaste brands, and skincare products still contain plastic microbeads or emulsifiers made from petroleum-based compounds. These aren’t just bad for the environment — they end up in your mouth, bloodstream, and organs.

Look for all-natural, food-grade personal care items. Read labels and avoid anything with polyethylene, polypropylene, or acrylates. If you wouldn’t eat it, don’t put it on your skin.

You’re not powerless in the face of environmental microplastic exposure. With every plastic-free choice you make, from what you store your food in to how you wash your clothes, you’re protecting your health, your hormone balance and your long-term resilience.

FAQs About Okra and Fenugreek for Removing Microplastics from Water

Q: How do okra and fenugreek remove microplastics from water?

A: These two plants contain natural polysaccharides — long sugar chains — that act like sticky nets. When added to water, they bind microplastic particles together through a process called "bridging." This makes the particles heavier so they settle to the bottom, allowing cleaner water to be poured off or filtered. Fenugreek was most effective in groundwater, okra worked best in seawater and the combination excelled in freshwater.

Q: Are okra and fenugreek more effective than synthetic water treatment chemicals?

A: Yes. In the study published by ACS Omega, fenugreek removed up to 93% of microplastics, while okra achieved 80% removal in seawater.⁶ Their combination cleared about 77% from freshwater. By comparison, polyacrylamide — the most common synthetic treatment — only removed 54% under the same conditions.

Q: What kind of water filter do I need to remove microplastics from tap water?

A: To effectively remove microplastics, your filter needs to handle particles smaller than 5 microns. Look for systems that use sub-micron carbon block filters or ceramic filters specifically rated for microplastic removal. Standard pitcher filters and faucet attachments won’t do the job. If you have hard water, boiling it for five minutes before use also removes 80% of microplastics.

Q: What else can I do to avoid microplastic exposure?

A: Avoid bottled water in plastic and don’t microwave food in plastic containers. Use glass or stainless steel for food storage, switch to wooden cutting boards and choose clothing made from natural fibers like cotton or wool. Install a water filter certified to remove sub-5-micron particles, and use a microfiber-catching bag when washing synthetic clothes.

Q: Why are microplastics dangerous to human health?

A: Microplastics act as sponges for toxic chemicals like pesticides, heavy metals, and hormone disruptors. Once ingested, they damage your gut lining, cross into your bloodstream and accumulate in organs. They’ve been found in human blood, lungs, and placentas, posing long-term risks to metabolic, hormonal, and immune health.

Drinking Soda Raises Diabetes Risk Even Without Weight Gain

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Americans are drinking more sugar than ever before, and it's not just the amount that's fueling today's metabolic crisis. It's the form. When refined sugar is consumed in liquid form, whether in sodas, flavored waters or sports drinks — it bypasses your body's natural defenses. There's no chewing, no fiber, no fullness. Just a rapid flood into your bloodstream that forces your pancreas and liver to respond instantly.

This kind of metabolic ambush happens quietly at first, but over time, it rewires how your body handles insulin, stores fat and manages energy. You might assume sugar only becomes a problem if you're overweight. But research now shows that even lean people are at risk when that sugar comes from a bottle or can. The damage starts below the surface, long before you feel symptoms or see changes on a scale.

If you're drinking soda daily, or if your children are, this isn't just about empty calories. It's about how those drinks hijack your metabolism, starting with the very first sip. And if you want to protect yourself from insulin resistance and its many downstream effects, understanding how different types of sugar behave in the body is the first step.

Why Processed Fructose Wrecks Your Liver, Energy, and Blood Sugar Balance

If you've been told that "sugar is sugar," forget it. Not all sugars are processed the same way in your body. One type in particular, refined fructose, such as high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), poses unique risks when it's stripped from whole foods and dumped into drinks and processed snacks. Your liver is the one that ends up paying the price. Here's why this matters for you:

• Whole fruits don't cause this problem — When you eat an apple or a handful of berries, the fructose inside them is wrapped in fiber, water and antioxidants. That natural packaging slows absorption, giving your body time to respond in a balanced way. It's not just slower; it's safer. Your liver doesn't get slammed with a sugar overload.

• Processed fructose shows up as a flood, not a trickle — The HFCS in sugary sodas, fruit punches and energy drinks isn't attached to fiber or nutrients. It's isolated, concentrated, and absorbed rapidly. Once it's in your system, your liver has no choice but to process the entire load at once.

• Your liver is the only organ that handles fructose, so it gets overwhelmed fast — Unlike glucose, which your muscles and brain use immediately, fructose heads straight to your liver. When your liver receives more than it can handle, it turns the excess into fat. This leads to fatty liver disease and starts a domino effect: more fat in your liver, more insulin resistance and more inflammation across your entire system.

• Fructose overload damages your cellular energy factories — Your mitochondria — the parts of your cells responsible for generating energy — are also impacted. They get hit with a surge of damaging byproducts when your liver processes too much fructose.

This causes what's known as reductive stress, which leaves your cells inflamed, tired, and unable to function efficiently. If you're dealing with fatigue, belly fat, or rising blood sugar, processed fructose is likely playing a central role. Pulling it out of your daily diet isn't optional — it's essential.

Sugary Drinks Spike Your Diabetes Risk, but Whole Food Sugars Do the Opposite

A meta-analysis published in Advances in Nutrition examined how different sources and forms of sugar affect your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.¹ The researchers analyzed 29 prospective cohort studies that tracked people's diets and health outcomes over time, pooling data from a large population base. Their goal was to separate the effects of added sugar — especially in drinks — from the sugars naturally present in whole foods.

• People who drank sugary beverages daily had a sharply higher risk of Type 2 diabetes — The most consistent and alarming finding was that consuming sugar in liquid form significantly raised the risk. Each additional daily serving of sugar-sweetened beverages, like soda or sweetened iced tea, was associated with a 25% higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

• Sugars in solid whole foods showed the opposite trend — In stark contrast, sugar from whole foods like fruits did not increase risk. In fact, the data showed that total sugar intake and sucrose intake were inversely associated with diabetes risk, meaning that when people got their sugars from natural, solid food sources, their odds of developing the disease went down.

• The difference lies in how your body processes liquid vs. solid sugar — When you drink sugar, your body absorbs it extremely fast, flooding your bloodstream with glucose and overwhelming your pancreas. Unlike solid food, sugary drinks bypass chewing and satiety signals — so you don't feel full, and you're more likely to overconsume. That rapid absorption spikes insulin levels, which over time contributes to insulin resistance, a key factor in Type 2 diabetes development.²

• Fructose's effects varied depending on its source — While some studies within the meta-analysis reported that high fructose intake increased diabetes risk, others showed no effect or even protective effects, largely depending on whether the fructose was consumed in processed form, like HFCS, or in whole fruit. This variation underscores that fructose from fruit is not the same as fructose from soda, both in terms of how your body responds and how it impacts long-term health.

• Sugary drinks were the most consistent predictor of risk across studies — The strongest and most consistent relationship observed across all the studies was between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and increased Type 2 diabetes risk. This relationship held true across age groups, geographies and even when controlling for other dietary and lifestyle variables.

Sugary Drinks Drive Early Blood Sugar Problems in Boys

Research presented at the American Heart Association's Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Scientific Sessions summarized findings from a long-term adolescent health study.³ It showed that boys who regularly consumed sugary drinks had a significantly greater risk of developing insulin resistance and elevated blood sugar markers by their late teens. This research adds to growing evidence that the metabolic effects of sugary beverages begin far earlier than most people realize.

• The study focused on a large group of school-age children over several years — Boys with the highest intake of sugary drinks were already showing signs of prediabetes, including higher fasting glucose and lower insulin sensitivity. Each daily 8-ounce serving of sugary beverages was associated with a 34% increase in insulin resistance, a 5.6 mg/dL rise in fasting glucose, and a 0.12% increase in HbA1c levels, a marker of average blood glucose levels over the past two to three months.

• The metabolic changes were already underway by age 17 — Importantly, these weren't hypothetical risks. The adolescents in this study had already developed measurable changes in their blood sugar regulation by the end of the study period. This suggests that the damage begins long before any symptoms of diabetes appear, and long before any formal diagnosis is made. That makes early prevention key, especially for families with a history of diabetes or metabolic disease.

• Prevention needs to start in childhood — The article emphasized that small dietary shifts in childhood, like cutting back on soda, could delay or even prevent serious problems later on. The earlier families make these changes, the more likely they are to protect their children's long-term metabolic health.

Men Who Drink Soda Daily Face a Steadily Rising Risk of Diabetes, Even Without Weight Gain

A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition examined how daily consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages affected Type 2 diabetes risk in 40,389 U.S. men.⁴ Researchers followed participants over a 20-year period, collecting data on their diet, lifestyle habits and health outcomes. The purpose was to determine whether sugary drinks were an independent risk factor for diabetes, even after accounting for weight, activity levels and overall diet quality.

• The results showed a clear link between soda and diabetes, independent of body weight — Men who drank one or more servings of sugar-sweetened beverages per day had a 16% higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes compared to those who rarely drank them. This increased risk remained even after adjusting for body mass index, smoking, exercise and total calorie intake.

• Even small daily habits had a measurable effect on long-term health — Replacing just one sugary drink per day with a healthier alternative, like water or coffee, led to a 17% lower risk of developing diabetes over time. This finding is especially empowering if you're looking to make small, sustainable changes. You don't need to overhaul your entire diet overnight. Just cutting one daily soda makes a measurable difference in your future health.

• Cola was the worst offender among all sugary beverages studied — While all sweetened drinks raised risk, colas were the most damaging. The study found that drinks like fruit punches and lemonades had a weaker association, possibly because they were consumed less often or had different sweetener profiles. But colas, with their combination of high sugar and additives like caramel coloring, were consistently tied to the greatest increase in diabetes risk.

How to Protect Your Metabolism from Refined Sugars

If you're trying to avoid diabetes, or reverse early signs of insulin resistance, the first and most important step is to stop flooding your system with liquid sugar. That's what every piece of research we've looked at makes crystal clear. Refined sugar in soda, including HFCS, is absorbed fast and hits your pancreas hard.

If you drink soda and other sugary drinks daily, you're giving your body zero time to recover between hits. What you do now matters. You don't have to overhaul everything overnight, but you do need to stop the source of the damage before real improvement occurs. Start with these five steps:

1. Cut out sugary drinks, including soda — If you're a soda drinker, this is the biggest favor you can do for your long-term health. Replace sugary beverages with water, unsweetened iced tea or sparkling water with lemon or lime. Remember, it's not about total sugar — it's about how it hits your bloodstream.

2. Replace one soda a day with black coffee or green tea — If you drink one or more sugary beverages per day, replacing just one of them with unsweetened coffee or tea significantly lowers your risk of Type 2 diabetes. That's a small effort with big payoff. While the goal is to eliminate soda entirely, cutting back by one drink a day is a good start.

3. Eat your fruit — While HFCS in soda should be avoided, natural fructose in fruit is not problematic. Whole fruit is packed with fiber that slows sugar absorption, plus it fills you up and provides beneficial carbohydrates and fiber.

4. Stay hydrated to prevent automatic sugar grabs — Sometimes when you reach for a soda, you're not craving sugar — you're just thirsty. I recommend carrying a refillable glass or stainless-steel water bottle with you all day. Add lemon, lime or cucumber slices for flavor. Once you're consistently hydrated, you'll notice fewer cravings and less temptation to default to sweet drinks.

5. Find replacements you enjoy so you don't feel deprived — The key to long-term change is making it sustainable. Try different healthier options like herbal teas, unsweetened iced teas, or flavored sparkling waters until you land on something you actually like. Once you've found a go-to drink you enjoy, it's much easier to skip the soda without feeling like you're giving something up.

FAQs About Soda and Other Sugary Beverages

Q: What's the biggest risk of drinking sugary beverages like soda every day?

A: Daily consumption of sugary drinks floods your bloodstream with fast-absorbing sugar, overwhelming your liver and pancreas. Over time, this leads to insulin resistance, a key driver of Type 2 diabetes, even if you're not overweight.

Q: Is fructose from fruit the same as fructose from soda or processed foods?

A: No. Fructose in whole fruit is bundled with fiber, water and antioxidants, which slow absorption and protect your metabolism. Processed fructose, such as high-fructose corn syrup, hits your system all at once and forces your liver to convert the excess into fat, triggering metabolic dysfunction.

Q: Do sugary drinks affect kids as much as adults?

A: Yes — likely even more. A long-term study found that each daily 8-ounce sugary drink raised insulin resistance in boys by 34% and increased fasting glucose and HbA1c levels. The damage often begins in childhood, before any symptoms appear.

Q: Can I lower diabetes risk just by changing my drink habits?

A: Absolutely. Replacing just one daily sugary drink with water, black coffee or unsweetened tea lowered diabetes risk by 17% in a 20-year study. Small changes in what you drink create big changes in your long-term health.

Q: What's the best way to protect myself and my family from the effects of liquid sugar?

A: Start by eliminating soda and sweetened drinks from your daily routine. Stay hydrated with water, enjoy whole fruits when you're craving something sweet and experiment with healthier alternatives, like sparkling water with lime, you actually enjoy. The goal is to stop the metabolic stress before it turns into chronic disease.

Test Your Knowledge with Today's Quiz!

Take today’s quiz to see how much you’ve learned from yesterday’s Mercola.com article.

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Dragon Fruit Boosts Gut and Heart Health

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Bright pink, spiky-skinned, and often overlooked, dragon fruit has been used for centuries in traditional Central and South American cultures as a healing food, praised for its cooling properties and digestive benefits. Today, it’s rapidly becoming a functional food in modern health circles and not just for its exotic appearance. This fruit, from the cactus family Hylocereus, delivers far more than color and crunch.

You’re probably already trying to eat cleaner, cut down on junk food, or get your digestion back on track. Dragon fruit helps check all those boxes — and then some. It’s easy to add to your routine and supports real changes in how your body manages energy, inflammation, and gut function.

If you’ve been struggling with fatigue, stubborn weight, or skin issues that won’t budge, this may be the simple shift that finally moves the needle. Let’s take a closer look at why dragon fruit has earned its status as a true functional food.

What Makes Dragon Fruit Worth Eating

Eating dragon fruit is a smart, low-effort way to get more of the nutrients you're likely not getting enough of.¹ Harvard experts point out that only 12% of Americans meet the recommended 1.5 to 2 cups of fruit per day. If dragon fruit helps people close that gap, it serves a functional purpose in everyday nutrition.

• Dragon fruit delivers multiple nutrients with very few calories — Just 3.5 ounces (about half a cup) gives you:

◦ 14 milligrams (mg) of magnesium (roughly what you’d get from a half cup of cooked kale)

◦ 206 mg of potassium (close to half a medium banana)

◦ 2 grams of fiber (comparable to one kiwi)

◦ Only 82 calories total

• Dragon fruit also contains a spectrum of antioxidants — These include vitamin C, selenium, and plant pigments like anthocyanins and carotenoids. While the individual amounts aren’t sky-high, the variety matters. Antioxidants help reduce inflammation and support long-term protection against diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and even some cancers by neutralizing free radicals before they damage cells.

• Frozen dragon fruit is just as nutritious as fresh and requires zero prep — It’s harvested at peak ripeness and immediately frozen, locking in nutrients. Because it’s already peeled and cubed or puréed, it’s a time-saving way to add fruit to smoothies or bowls without dealing with a knife. Choose varieties without added sugar or other additives.

• It’s simple to eat with no fuss

◦ Scoop the flesh with a spoon straight from the rind

◦ Cut into rounds or cubes for salads or sides

◦ Use it in fruit salsas or smoothies for flavor and eye appeal

◦ Freeze it into popsicles or use it as a garnish

Dragon Fruit Targets Inflammation, Liver Stress, and Metabolic Damage

A review published in Pharmaceutics analyzed how dragon fruit influences inflammation, oxidative stress, and chronic disease markers.² The study compiled data from randomized controlled trials, animal models, and cell research to explore the bioactive properties of several dragon fruit species. It focused on how compounds in dragon fruit impact blood sugar, antioxidant levels, and microbial balance — key factors in metabolic and cardiovascular health.

• Human and animal research showed improvements in multiple chronic disease markers, including blood sugar and liver health — The review highlighted five human clinical trials using red dragon fruit, mostly in Southeast Asia. Participants with elevated blood sugar and cholesterol saw reductions in fasting glucose, triglycerides, and LDL cholesterol, alongside increases in HDL cholesterol and total antioxidant capacity.

• The biggest benefits were seen in people and animals with metabolic dysfunction — In animal models of diabetes and obesity, dragon fruit pulp reduced liver fat buildup, lowered blood pressure, and improved insulin sensitivity. In one study, the use of dragon fruit pulp helped rebalance gut bacteria, specifically boosting Akkermansia muciniphila, a beneficial microbe linked to lower inflammation and improved weight regulation.³

• Several trials measured meaningful changes within weeks — For example, participants consuming 100 grams (g) of red dragon fruit powder daily experienced significant reductions in total cholesterol (26%), triglycerides (20%), and LDL (69%), while increasing HDL by over 60%.⁴ These shifts occurred within a matter of weeks, making it a rapid-acting dietary strategy for people with metabolic risk factors.

• Some effects appeared dose-dependent — Larger quantities of dragon fruit led to stronger results. Studies comparing 50 grams versus 100 grams servings showed the higher dose had significantly greater effects on lipid and glucose markers. This suggests that you need a threshold amount of dragon fruit to see measurable improvements, especially if you’re already metabolically compromised.

• Vascular health also got a boost — One U.K. study found that dragon fruit extract improved blood vessel flexibility and decreased arterial stiffness in just 14 days.⁵ These are important early warning signs for heart disease, and improving them lowers your long-term cardiovascular risk.

Health Effects Stem from Dragon Fruit’s Antioxidant and Anti-Inflammatory Compounds

These include betacyanins — pigments that give the fruit its red color — and other compounds that help neutralize free radicals, reduce liver inflammation, and protect cells from oxidative stress, processes that underlie many chronic diseases.⁶

• Dragon fruit also contains prebiotics that feed gut bacteria and modulate inflammation — Specifically, oligosaccharides, a type of plant sugar, in dragon fruit resist digestion and instead act as food for microbes like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria. These microbes produce short-chain fatty acids that reduce inflammation and improve insulin sensitivity.

• The skin and seeds add further value — Dragon fruit peel is rich in flavonoids and squalene, both shown to inhibit pro-inflammatory enzymes. The seeds offer mild laxative effects, liver protection, and functional oils that reduce cholesterol absorption in the gut. In lab studies, even the flower buds and bark showed promising anti-inflammatory activity.

The Everyday Healing Power of Dragon Fruit

An article from Metropolis India showcases the practical health benefits of dragon fruit for daily use, focusing on dragon fruit’s role in boosting energy, supporting digestion, and promoting skin health.⁷

• Dragon fruit supports glowing skin, a calm gut, and stable energy — This is due to the fruit’s antioxidant load and hydration properties, especially its vitamin C and water-rich content. These features help reduce inflammation in skin tissues and speed up collagen production, which keeps skin firm and youthful. Dragon fruit’s high water content aids in hydration, making it particularly beneficial during hot weather or pregnancy.

• Dragon fruit has a positive influence on digestion — Fiber from both the flesh and the seeds acts as a mild natural laxative, helping relieve constipation and support more regular bowel movements. The fiber in dragon fruit also helps cleanse the digestive system, reducing bloating and discomfort. These effects make dragon fruit a good choice for people with mild digestive issues or sluggish elimination.

• Dragon fruit’s natural sugars provide steady energy without crashing — Unlike processed sugary snacks that spike and crash blood sugar, dragon fruit’s sugars are paired with fiber and water, leading to a slower, more stable rise in energy. This is helpful for people dealing with midday fatigue or looking for a natural pre-workout snack.

• Dragon fruit helps reduce the risk of Type 2 diabetes — Drinking a dragon fruit-based beverage daily for four weeks significantly lowered blood pressure and C-reactive protein levels, suggesting it reduces inflammation and helps prevent Type 2 diabetes.⁸

How to Make Dragon Fruit Part of Your Healing Strategy

If you’re dealing with sluggish digestion, blood sugar spikes, low energy, or dull skin, your first step should be removing the everyday foods and habits that are contributing to those issues — and then bringing in the ones that help reverse them. Dragon fruit isn’t just a trendy snack. It’s a real food that works behind the scenes to calm inflammation, rebalance your gut, support your liver, and regulate your metabolism. Here’s how I recommend making dragon fruit part of your routine:

1. Start eating it regularly — If you’re someone who likes structure, aim for two to three half-cup servings per week to see metabolic results. Research shows that larger amounts — around 100 grams, or about 1/2 cup — are more effective than smaller ones. Frozen cubes, purée packs, or whole fresh fruit all work, but skip anything with added sugar or other additives.

2. Use it as a morning meal or mid-afternoon energy boost — Dragon fruit gives you a steady rise in energy without crashing. Try using it in a smoothie with a protein source like collagen or raw, grass fed yogurt if you need something fast. It’s especially useful when your blood sugar and energy tend to dip.

3. Freeze it into cubes or popsicles for a cooling anti-inflammatory treat — If you deal with heat-related issues like inflammation, skin irritation, or hot flashes, frozen dragon fruit serves as a soothing snack. It’s a refreshing way to stay consistent with your intake while helping your body cool down and reduce oxidative stress.

4. Use it to replace processed snacks or desserts — If your usual go-to is a granola bar, cookie, or fruit-flavored yogurt, swap in a bowl of dragon fruit with cinnamon or lime. It satisfies your sweet craving but helps lower blood sugar and inflammation instead of driving it up.

5. Try it for gut healing or pregnancy support — If you’re working on rebuilding your microbiome or supporting a healthy pregnancy, dragon fruit is a gentle, fiber-rich option that hydrates and nourishes without digestive strain. The prebiotics feed good gut bacteria, and the folate it contains supports fetal development if you're pregnant or thinking about conceiving.

FAQs About Dragon Fruit

Q: What makes dragon fruit a healthy addition to my diet?

A: Dragon fruit is rich in fiber, antioxidants, magnesium, potassium, and vitamin C — all in a wholesome package. It supports gut health, stabilizes blood sugar, and reduces inflammation, making it useful for digestion, metabolism, and skin repair.

Q: How much dragon fruit should I eat to see benefits?

A: Studies show that 100 grams per day — about half a cup — improves insulin sensitivity and antioxidant status within a few weeks. Larger amounts yield stronger effects, especially for people with metabolic issues.

Q: Does dragon fruit help with blood sugar control?

A: Yes. Its combination of fiber and natural plant compounds helps reduce sugar spikes and improve insulin sensitivity. It’s a smart swap for processed, sugary snacks.

Q: Can dragon fruit support gut health?

A: Absolutely. It acts as a prebiotic, feeding beneficial bacteria like Akkermansia muciniphila and Lactobacillus, which support digestion, reduce bloating, and help regulate weight and inflammation.

Q: What’s the easiest way to add dragon fruit to my routine?

A: Enjoy it fresh, frozen, or puréed in smoothies, bowls, or even on its own with a spoon. Pairing it with healthy fats — like raw, grass fed yogurt — boosts nutrient absorption and makes it more filling.

Beyond burnout: Understanding the triangle of exhaustion [PODCAST]

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Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes! Physician coach Nicole Perrotte and physician advocate and physical therapist Kim Downey discuss their article, “Love, empathy, and the triangle of exhaustion: Why humanity must come first.” Nicole introduces her powerful framework, the Triangle of Exhaustion, which describes the profound fatigue

Facing terminal cancer as a doctor and mother

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 19:00:20 +0000

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Facing terminal cancer as a doctor and mother originally appeared in KevinMD.com.

Online eye exams spark legal battle over health care access

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Pharmacists are key to expanding Medicaid access to digital therapeutics

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 11:00:51 +0000

More than 78 million Americans rely on Medicaid or CHIP for their health care. Yet many still cannot access FDA-approved digital therapeutics because their state does not include them in covered benefits. Prescription digital therapeutics (PDTs) are software-based treatments authorized by the FDA. They are delivered through smartphones or tablets and are used to manage