There’s a lot of focus on personalized nutrition, but maybe we should focus on taking personal responsibility for our health. “Personalized nutrition (PN) is rooted in the concept that one size does not fit all,” and who doesn’t want to think they’re special? The idea of personalized nutrition is inherently appealing to our ego; that’s […]

Is the brain damage associated with milk consumption due to the banned pesticide heptachlor or the milk sugar galactose? Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative brain disorder that affects millions of people. What causes it? Well, if you look at lifestyle factors associated with Parkinson’s disease, dairy consumption is the strongest dietary factor associated with an

Let’s talk about treating weight loss, cholesterol, and PCOS with diet. What can an eighth of a teaspoon a day of onion powder do for body fat, and what can raw red onion do for cholesterol? In one of my previous videos about onions, I talked about the data supporting—or not supporting—the role of onions

Let’s discuss the safety and efficacy of various weight-loss methods, ranging from Botox and corsets to siphons and tapeworms. A moderately obese person doing moderately intense physical activity, like biking or brisk walking, would burn off approximately 350 calories an hour, but most drinks, snacks, and other processed junk are consumed at a rate of

Sham surgery trials have shown that some of our most popular surgeries are themselves shams. Intragastric balloons “arrived with much fanfare in the 1980s,” since they could be implanted into the stomach and inflated with air or water to fill much of the space. Unfortunately, surgical devices are often brought to the market before there

Walnuts, almonds, and hazelnuts are put to the test for erectile and sexual function, sperm count, and semen quality. In 2013, I posted a video based on a study that found that men with erectile dysfunction who ate 100 grams of pistachios (a little more than three handsful) a day for three weeks had “a

What is the recommended diet for treating leaky gut? Which foods and food components can boost the integrity of our intestinal barrier? Our intestinal tract is the largest barrier between us and the environment. More than what we touch or breathe, what we eat is our largest exposure to the outside world. Normally, our entire

Common drugs, foods, and beverages can disrupt the integrity of our intestinal barrier, causing a leaky gut. Intestinal permeability, the leakiness of our gut, may be a new target for both disease prevention and therapy. With all its tiny folds, our intestinal barrier covers a surface of more than 4,000 square feet—that’s bigger than a

How can you get a perfect diet score? How do you rate the quality of people’s diets? Well, “what could be more nutrient-dense than a vegetarian diet?” Indeed, if you compare the quality of vegetarian diets with non-vegetarian diets, the more plant-based diets do tend to win out, and the higher diet quality in vegetarian

People with genetic mutations that leave them with an LDL cholesterol of 30 mg/dL live exceptionally long lives. Can we duplicate that effect with drugs? Data extrapolated from large cholesterol-lowering trials using statin drugs suggest that the incidence of cardiovascular events like heart attacks would approach zero if LDL cholesterol could be forced down below