The video above features an interview with Dr. Colleen Cutcliffe, a molecular biology scientist and the CEO and cofounder of Pendulum, a company creating microbiome products. This interview was done as part of my early explorations into the obligate anaerobe microbiome field. I was particularly drawn to Dr. Cutcliffe's work with Akkermansia.

How Your Gut Microbiome May Influence Health

Yogurt and probiotics have been popular for decades, but what really catalyzed interest in the human microbiome was the advent of DNA sequencing. This allowed scientists to begin identifying and differentiating the various microorganisms found in the human body — along with the introduction of fecal transplants. As explained by Cutcliffe:

"One of the interesting things that people realized was that the gut microbiome has the ability to change symptoms and change diseases. This discovery largely came about as a result of research into fecal microbiome transplants (FMT), where you take feces from a healthy person and place it into a sick one.

That may sound really disgusting until you know that it actually has incredible medical value. Some of the first places where these fecal microbiome transplants were used were for treating Clostridium difficile infections.

[When] you take an antibiotic, it kills off most of the bacteria in your gut. This strain called Clostridium difficile now has no competitors, so it can start to divide and replicate. When it gets to high levels, it becomes extremely toxic and ultimately fatal.

What they found was that if you transplanted stool into these people who were suffering from this infection, and you basically inundated the microbiome with all these new competitors and were able to swamp out [C. difficile], you could save a person's life better than the therapies that were being used."

In conventional antibiotic treatment of C. difficile, recurrence has been reported in roughly 20% to 30% of patients, with materially higher rates in severe or refractory cases. FMT cure rates reported in published trials vary widely, but are generally in the range of 80% to 90%. Despite these positive outcomes, FMT has still not become standard of care for C. difficile infections.

Small, early-stage studies have explored FMT in other contexts as well, including metabolic, gastrointestinal, and neurological conditions, though the evidence base is preliminary and quality varies considerably. That said, a key, open question is: which of the many microorganisms transferred are responsible for the observed effects?

Potential Safety Concerns of FMT

Important safety questions remain, as there's much we do not yet know about the microbiome. For example, a pathogenic microorganism that has not yet been fully characterized could be inadvertently transferred via FMT.

Your microbiome is made up not just of bacteria, but also viruses, bacteriophages, fungi, and yeast, and we don't yet understand exactly how all these organisms affect human health, let alone their interactions.

What's more, your microbiome changes depending on location, so the microbiome of someone living in the U.S. will not be the same as that of someone living in India or Norway. The reason for this is because your microbiome is heavily influenced by diet, medical interventions, toxic exposures, and the natural environment, all of which vary from one person and location to the next.

To address some of these issues, companies are now working on developing manufacturing processes to survey and clean up the stool, and then deliver the final product in pill form.

"There are several companies out there that are doing this kind of an intervention, which I think is a little bit safer than the pure stool," Cutcliffe says.

Surveying the Human Gut Microbiome

Many scientists are now working on surveying the gut microbiome. It started with the American Gut Project, where academics from around the U.S. surveyed all the different parts of the human microbiome, not just the gut microbiome but also the microbiome in your nasal passages and ears, and on your skin.

"They're trying to understand, what does the population look like? One of the really interesting high-level themes that's come out is that the more so-called advanced or industrialized a country is, the less diverse their microbiome.

You can go into populations in the rainforest, where they've been relatively untouched by Western civilization, and they have incredibly diverse microbiomes, meaning they have lots and lots of different types of strains that are doing lots and lots of different activities.

As you get to more industrialized countries, like the United States, we have a less diverse population of strains. One of the other interesting things is that if you look at an individual as they age, younger people have a more diverse microbiome compared to people who are older.

So, one of the overriding theories is that this loss of diversity represents a loss in functionality that is tied to reduced health, and potentially even perpetuating disease. And so, can you give these [microorganisms] back and help people improve disease?

For example, as people age, many experience new food sensitivities that they didn't used to have, or they experience more GI distress more frequently than they used to. Unfortunately, many feel like there's nothing they can do about that; that it's just part of aging. But that's not true. It's [due to] this depletion in the microbiome, and there is something that you can do about it.

Ultimately, all of these guys are housed inside your body, so you are in complete control over who's living, who's dying, who you're feeding through the foods that you're eating. You can get to a point where you're sensitive to these foods because you've lost [certain] strains in your gut, but you can replenish them and get back to eating those foods."

The traditional strategy has been to improve your diet, eat more real food. This will work over time, but it's a slow process that can take many months. A more efficient strategy would be to repopulate your gut with essential strains in addition to the appropriate dietary changes. The question is which strains matter most.

What Is Akkermansia and What Does It Do?

Since it was first described 20 years ago, considerable research has been published on Akkermansia and its possible roles in health. Much of Cutcliffe's work has focused on this bacterium, given the breadth of research interest in it. "Akkermansia is quickly becoming known as a keystone strain in your microbiome," she states.

While the microbiome is an ecosystem of many strains, certain strains like Akkermansia appear to play disproportionate roles. Akkermansia was first described in 2004 by Derrien and colleagues in a study published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.¹ Subsequent research has examined associations between Akkermansia levels and metabolic markers, including body weight. Here are examples:

How Akkermansia May Influence GLP-1 Signaling

Drug companies are now promoting injectable glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists for weight loss, and these drugs can have troublesome side effects. Researchers have noted overlap between GLP-1 agonist activity and pathways involving Akkermansia, though the mechanisms and contexts differ substantially. Cutcliffe explains how Akkermansia is thought to influence GLP-1:

"When it was observed that people with Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes were low in Akkermansia, it was believed that it was because of this mucin deficiency. But as people started to study Akkermansia more, and the microbiome in general, what's become clear is that it's a lot more direct than just the mucin layer.

What happens in your body naturally, if you've got all the right microbes, is that you eat a meal, your microbiome metabolizes that food and generates postbiotics [excretions from beneficial bacteria] like butyrate [and] a protein called P9. Some of these postbiotics then signal your body to produce GLP-1.

All that signaling is happening from the microbiome directly to the L cells. And so you eat a meal, your microbiome digests them, these postbiotics get created and tell your L cells, 'Hey, go produce GLP-1,' and then you get a spike in GLP-1 in your body.

GLP-1 stimulates your body, too. It says, 'We've got to metabolize the sugar in the bloodstream, release insulin.' It also signals to your brain, 'We just ate, we're full, we don't need to eat again.' After a period of time, GLP-1 goes down — until the next time you eat a meal. Then it spikes again.

So, that's the natural way of things. There are only two strains that have been published, to date, that have been shown to be able to stimulate L cells to produce GLP-1, and one of them is Akkermansia. It actually secretes three different [postbiotics] that stimulate L cells to produce GLP-1.

So, what's been found is that if you are low or missing Akkermansia, your body is not naturally producing as much GLP-1 as it's supposed to be. By giving people back Akkermansia, you can now have these physiological benefits of reducing A1C and lowering blood glucose spikes.

To be clear, the natural GLP-1 you produce is different from the drug. The drug is a mimic. It's an analog. It looks like GLP-1. It gets injected into the bloodstream directly, which means that rather than the natural spike after you eat [followed by a decline], the [drug] is keeping those levels really high all the time.

So, this signaling of 'we got to metabolize sugar in the blood and we're full, we just ate' is going on constantly. That's why people experience these incredible, amazing overnight effects because that's how those drugs are working. But if you actually have the right microbes, you can generate your body's natural GLP-1 and get back into this natural cycle."

Akkermansia and Food Cravings — Emerging Research

Early research has examined whether Akkermansia supplementation may influence food cravings, with some studies reporting effects on sugar-related cravings.

"What that tells us is that your microbiome has the ability to change your cravings, and that can really guide you to better eating habits and then, in turn, replenish the good microbes," Cutcliffe says. "So, you end up being on a good cycle and getting off of that bad one.

To reiterate, the GLP-1 drugs are not what we're talking about with the microbiome. They're two different things. One is your body's natural way to increase GLP-1. The other is a synthetic drug, and we are in no way suggesting that [Akkermansia] is a drug.

When you do it naturally, you're not going to see that immediate overnight result because it's not going to be hammering your body with high levels of GLP-1 signaling all the time. It's going to do it the way your body naturally does it, which is that you eat a meal and then your body tells you we're full. Over a period of time you will start to see the benefits. So, it's not going to be an overnight change, but it will be a sustainable way."

Probiotic Potency Explained: CFU, AFU, and TFU

When evaluating the potency of probiotics, there are three units of measurement you need to be aware of: colony forming units (CFU), active fluorescent units (AFU), and total fluorescent units (TFU).

The primary difference between CFU, AFU, and TFU lies in what they measure: CFU quantifies the number of live microorganisms; AFU assesses the functional activity of those microorganisms; and TFU measures the total bacterial mass, regardless of their functional activity. While CFU is an indicator of the potential for colonization and survival of probiotics in the gut, AFU could offer additional insights into the functional capabilities of the probiotic strains.

Current Akkermansia Clinical Trials: Dosages and Applications

As research advances, numerous clinical trials are underway to evaluate the efficacy and safety of Akkermansia-based interventions.⁵ Published data in 2024 investigating Akkermansia have reported preliminary results,⁶ highlighting its potential across a range of health conditions, including infectious disease,⁷ immune-related disease,⁸ liver fibrosis,⁹ stress management,¹⁰ intestinal-related diseases,¹¹ metabolic health,¹² and brain function.¹³

These studies, which include both animal and human trials, have used therapeutic doses ranging from 100 million to 10 billion CFU per day.

In studies of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome populations, doses around 10 billion CFU per day have been used. Researchers have examined effects on markers such as insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism, with study sizes and durations varying.

Conversely, lower doses around 1 billion CFU per day have been examined for more gut-specific conditions and liver health,¹⁴ and even at these reduced levels, some studies report reductions in markers of intestinal inflammation.

*These findings are from research conducted in clinical settings, often in small or proof-of-concept trials. Results may not apply to all individuals.

Akkermansia Delivery and Form — What the Research Suggests

When choosing an Akkermansia probiotic, bacterial counts in the billions are typically used in published trials, though dose alone is not the whole story — the delivery method appears equally important.

For live formulations, delayed-release capsules and microencapsulation have been designed to help bacteria reach the colon intact. Without such protection, much of the live bacterial load may not survive the journey through the digestive tract.

Akkermansia is highly sensitive to oxygen, and these microbes thrive in oxygen-free environments, which makes the journey through the digestive tract challenging. Even a brief exposure to oxygen can be fatal for live cells, which is why formulations with delayed-release capsules or microencapsulation have been designed to protect the bacteria until they reach the colon.

Theoretically, a lower-dose probiotic that successfully reaches the colon may be more effective than a higher-dose product that does not, which is why the delivery method may be a far more important consideration than the labeled bacterial count.

If you are considering an Akkermansia supplement, formulations with timed-release capsules or microencapsulation have been designed to keep Akkermansia protected until it reaches the colon, typically within two to four hours.

Frequently Asked Questions About Akkermansia

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult a qualified health care provider before making changes to your health regimen.

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Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published May 21, 2023.

In this interview, Georgi Dinkov and I continue our discussion about diet, diving into some of the finer details that can make or break your health. Dinkov is a student of Ray Peat, who passed away around Thanksgiving 2022, leaving behind a legacy of iconoclastic wisdom on how to optimize biological health.

For example, a ketogenic diet can be very useful initially when transitioning people who are metabolically inflexible, which is about 95% of the population of the United States. So, in the short term, the vast majority of people can benefit from going keto. However, if you continue in ketosis long term, you're going to run into problems.

Elevated Cortisol Leads to Central Obesity

As just one example, while weight loss is a typical response when going on a ketogenic diet, months later, maintaining that weight loss often becomes a struggle again. Dinkov experienced this firsthand. Once he started following Ray Peat's recommendations, he lost the weight again and kept it off.

"My take is it's an endocrine problem," Dinkov says. "So if you're struggling with weight you cannot lose, I think it's a good idea to do a blood work [panel] for the steroids … Every single person that has been struggling with excessive weight that has emailed [me] their blood results, without exception, their cortisol is either high-normal or above the range, both the AM and the PM value.

Their thyroid is less than optimal, in fact, pretty bad for most people … They're at the upper limit of normal. A very large number of people are basically hypothyroid … I think we are eating foods that are lowering our metabolic rate. We're living an excessively stressful lifestyle.

That's probably not a surprise for anybody. Many people think, well, stress is good for you. It's good as a hormetic response in an acute situation, but not when you have chronically elevated cortisol. Every doctor will tell you if you have a chronic elevated cortisol, you will develop the so-called spectrum of Cushing syndrome …

One of the defining features of elevated cortisol is that you have central obesity. So that, to me, is really the problem. We have higher than desirable levels of stress, suboptimal diet, and we're surrounded by a number of different endocrine disrupters which are now proven to reliably cause obesity in animal models, even in very small amounts. Most of those are found in plastics."

Why I Changed My Mind About Low-Carb Diets

One of the foundational concepts of health that I’ve had to radically revise my thinking on, based on the work of the late Ray Peat and his student Georgi Dinkov, is the idea that eating a low-carb diet long-term is the best way to optimize your metabolic and mitochondrial health.

I now realize that this was misguided, and the reason for that has to do with the fact that your body requires glucose and if you aren’t eating it you will go into a hypoglycemic coma and die. Obviously, your body has safeguards to prevent that and the major one is the hormone cortisol.

In medical school, we learned that cortisol is a glucocorticoid. Gluco means glucose (sugar) and cortico means it comes from the adrenal cortex. It’s also another word for steroid. We were told that cortisol is responsible for maintaining glucose homeostasis but led to believe its primary purpose was for inflammation.

Well, that's just not true. While cortisol certainly contributes to glucose balance, its primary purpose is to raise your blood sugar when it is too low and you don’t have enough glycogen reserves in your liver.

How Does Cortisol Work?

But just how does cortisol increase your blood sugar? It does it by breaking down your muscles, bones, and brain. It sacrifices your lean muscle mass to release amino acids that your liver converts to glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis.

So, ultimately, cortisol also is going to cause inflammation and impair your immune function. And it increases food cravings. So, you do not want your cortisol to be elevated. For a long time, I was a proponent of a low-carb diet, but now I realize that chronic low-carb is not a good idea.

As a fuel, glucose is vastly superior to fat, and this was something I simply got wrong. The same thing goes for fasting. Both low-carb and fasting are great interventions in the short-term for those who are overweight and metabolically inflexible.

However, once you’ve regained your metabolic flexibility, it is important to revise your strategy and add healthy carbs back in, or else these strategies will backfire and lead to decreased metabolic health, compromised mitochondrial function, and impaired metabolism.

Cortisol happens to be the primary aging hormone. If it is chronically elevated, you simply will die prematurely as it is highly catabolic, meaning it will break down your body tissues. To stay healthy as you age, you need to be anabolic and build healthy tissues like muscle and mitochondria. Elevated cortisol will seriously impair those efforts.

Important Cautions Before You Increase Carbs

So, it is clear that you need to be doing everything you can to keep your cortisol levels and chronic inflammation low. But it would also be a major mistake to increase your carb intake if you are still on a high-fat diet. I did this experiment in the mid-80s after I read the book by the Diamonds called Fit for Life.

They suggested having fruit only for breakfast which I tried. Then I did my lab work and found my fasting triglycerides and lipoprotein profiles had exploded for the worse. I prematurely concluded that a high fruit diet was nonsense and remained relatively low carb for nearly four decades.

This was until I encountered Ray Peat’s work and reevaluated my initial impression. I now understand that I was missing important parts of the strategy. And now I eat 3 to 4 pounds of watermelon (without the rind) virtually every morning at 5:30 as my first meal, followed by three eggs and eight ounces of white rice and two ounces of maple syrup 1 to 2 hours later.

That sounds like a lot of carbs, and it is. I have additional fruits later in the day and now my carb intake is about 475 grams a day and comprises about 60% of my daily calories. You might wonder what has happened to my weight and blood sugar with all these extra carbs.

Well, I thought my weight was good at 192 as I increased my muscle mass, but it has decreased by ten pounds to 182 with no change in muscle mass. My fasting blood sugar has dropped ten points. So far it seems to be working for me.

The Vital Metabolic Switch You Need to Understand

This is one of the most important principles in food science that I never learned or understood until later. My strong guess is that this is also true for most natural medicine clinicians. Low-carb diets have helped at least tens of millions of people improve their health for a very good reason and that is there is a stealth switch that controls what fuel your mitochondria can burn as they can only burn one fuel at a time, either fat or glucose.

The switch has been given the name the Randle Cycle, but it is more helpful to visualize it as a railroad switch that changes the tracks of the train, and the train can only travel down one track not both. This is because only one type of fuel can be burned at a time.

The best-case scenario is you metabolize, or burn, glucose in your mitochondria without any reductive stress (a term I will explain in my upcoming interview with Georgi Dinkov). When you do this, you will only generate 0.1% reactive oxygen species (ROS).

Not only does this route generate less ROS but is also incredibly efficient at energy production by creating 36 to 38 ATP for every molecule of glucose that is metabolized. It will also generate metabolic water and carbon dioxide which are also important for your health.

For this to occur you will need to consume less than 30% of your calories as fat. When you consume significantly more than that amount the switch changes to burn fat in your mitochondria and you will not be able to burn glucose until your fat decreases to less than 30% of calories.

Since glucose is unable to be shuttled into the mitochondria to burn it winds up backing up into your blood stream raising your blood sugar. This is a major contributor to diabetes. What little glucose is burned for fuel is done by using glycolysis which is a primitive pathway that bacteria and cancer cells use.

It is great we have this pathway as you absolutely need it for quick fuel when you are activating your type II muscle fibers. But if this is the primary way you burn glucose you are in a catastrophic metabolic state as you are creating loads of lactic acid as a waste product instead of healthy CO₂, and you are only generating 2 ATP for every molecule of glucose, which is 95% less energy.

Lactic acid increases reductive stress, which causes reverse electron flow in the mitochondria and causes reductive stress which increase the ROS to 3% to 4% which is 30X to 40X more than when glucose is burned efficiently in the mitochondria. You likely don’t yet understand reductive stress, the opposite of oxidative stress, but will have done an interview with Georgi on this and will be posting it later this month.

How High-Fructose Corn Syrup Causes Disease

One factor that makes a big difference in your metabolic rate is the type of sugar you consume. Contrary to popular belief, there's a dramatic difference between high-fructose corn syrup and cane sugar. They're really two different foods. If the high-fructose corn syrup is properly processed to remove all starch, then it's very similar to cane sugar because it's about 55% fructose and 45% glucose.

However, studies have shown beverages sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup contain a tremendous amount of starch, which isn't accounted for in the calories listed on the label. Once the starch is factored in, the caloric content of many sodas can easily quadruple that on the label, so you're getting FAR more calories than you think.

Additionally, because the starch is made up of such tiny particles, they can enter your blood circulation unprocessed via your digestive system, causing an allergic reaction.

They can also trigger a low-grade inflammatory reaction, which will trigger the release of histamine, nitric oxide, and serotonin. As noted by Dinkov, if you're sneezing and have itchy eyes even though it's not allergy season, you may well be having a reaction to something you ate or drank, and high-fructose corn syrup may be the culprit.

Starch particles also serve as fuel for pathogenic bacteria in your gut, and the endotoxins from these bacteria contribute to inflammatory conditions. Small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) is one example of what can happen, especially if you're on a proton pump inhibitor, as these drugs decrease the amount of stomach acid you're producing. Stomach acid is there not only to help with digestion but also to keep bacteria in check.

"If you're not producing a sufficient amount of acid, you're going to get bacteria colonizing your small intestine, either from food or creeping up from the large intestine. And that's not a good thing. Basically … the portion of the intestine that is supposed to be clean and just focused on absorbing food is now harboring a microbiome.

And then, if you give it any kind of a food that the bacteria can process, you're increasing the turnover [which] result in the endotoxemia that is now accepted to cause a large number of diseases, especially cardiovascular disease, obesity, and neurological disease.

Alzheimer's has been conclusively tied to chronic low-grade endotoxemia. They're still claiming there's a genetic component to it, but they're now admitting that endotoxin is a causative factor in Alzheimer's disease," Dinkov says.

Can Cane Sugar Be Part of a Healthy Diet?

Most people who embrace natural health believe sugar is a pernicious evil, but Peat's and Dinkov's position is that the negative effects are primarily caused by high-fructose corn syrup, and that pure cane sugar can actually be a useful strategy to counteract some of the challenges that people can get into when on a strict low-carb diet. Dinkov explains:

"Cane sugar, if it's pure, has a very different overall systemic health effect than high-fructose corn syrup … I think most of the sugar sold in the crystal form, especially organic ones, is pretty safe. Heavy metal contamination used to be a problem in sugar distillation but it looks like most of the western countries have sorted this out …

Now, some people that have an issue with sugar are saying, 'Well, it's just empty calories and whatnot.' Multiple studies demonstrated that honey, which is very similar in composition to plain white sugar, does not trigger the normal hyperglycemic response that most of the other simple carbohydrates do. In fact, it improves the hyperglycemia in Type 2 diabetic patients despite being pure sugar.

I think that's the greatest confirmation that we have that sugar is not evil. It depends how you're getting it and in what form. One animal study demonstrated that rats, when given free access to [Mexican] Coke sweetened with cane sugar, they were eating the equivalent of 8,000 calories daily … without gaining an ounce of fat.

So sugar is not dangerous. It's perhaps the only nutrient that we evolved to metabolize for fuel. But the other two micronutrients, even though we can metabolize them as fuel, come with a lot of strings attached …

If you're oxidizing PUFA, then all hell breaks loose. If you're oxidizing saturated fats, it's far less dangerous. But in the long run it still puts you, due to the Randle cycle, into the semi-diabetic state because it decreases your insulin sensitivity.

So pure sugar is what we are meant to oxidize for fuel. If you get it from ripe fruit, great. If you can get it from [raw unadulterated] honey, probably just as good if not even better. But if not, then the pure white variety, preferably organic, that you get from the store, I think is a very good source of most of the carb calories that you intend to eat throughout the day."

The Glucose-Cortisol Link

In my book "Fat for Fuel," I argued that healthy saturated fats generate fewer free radical species in the electron transport chain than sugar. However, I'm starting to revise my views on this, based on Peat's work.

The problem is that if your glucose level is low because you're on a low-carb diet, your body is going to compensate by self-generating glucose, and that stimulus to make glucose is part of the obesity puzzle, because one of the ways in which your body produces glucose is by secreting cortisol.

And, as explained by Dinkov, if your cortisol is chronically elevated, you end up with central obesity and chronic inflammation, which clearly isn't good. So, you've got to have a certain amount of glucose, and it's best to get it from your diet rather than forcing your liver to make it, as cortisol is then also being churned out. Dinkov explains:

"If glucose is oxidized properly going through the Krebs Cycle and electron transport chain, it generates more carbon dioxide per molecule of glucose oxidized than do fats.

Now, carbon dioxide has this kind of controversial role in medicine. It used to be considered a metabolic byproduct that could be dangerous. People with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have higher than normal levels of carbon dioxide in the blood.

But then, medicine started to look into this more closely, I think, over the last 10 years, outside of Dr. Pete's research, and said, 'Hm. Carbon dioxide seems to have a lot of positive effects in the body.' One of them is vasodilation.

So basically, if your metabolism is not working properly, if you're not oxidizing glucose properly, you're not going to produce sufficient amounts of carbon dioxide. What happens then? Vasoconstriction. And since that is actually a problem, it raises blood pressure and all kinds of other things; all hell breaks loose. The body then releases an emergency vasodilator, known as nitric oxide. And that is now acquiring a bad reputation.

Even in mainstream medical circles, they've started seeing that people who are taking the drug nitroglycerin, which used to be the mainstream drug for angina — chest pain — for cardiovascular disease and blood pressure.

With nitroglycerin, you'll quickly lower blood pressure. But over time, the inflammatory nature of nitric oxide ensures that these people actually get worse. And, in fact, most people who take nitroglycerin on a long-term basis die from a heart attack or ischemic stroke.

So, if you're not eating enough glucose, your body will make it. And, in fact, the primary evolutionary role of cortisol, the acute role, is actually preventing blood glucose from dropping too low, because that will put you into a hypoglycemic coma.

In the longer run its secondary role is to dampen down inflammation. So really, the acute, the lifesaving role of cortisol on a daily basis, is to prevent you from dropping into a coma because your blood glucose went too low.

But we don't want that process because it's going to get the glucose from the tissues. So, we need glucose [in our diet]. I think even the ketogenic proponents are now getting to the point of saying, 'We cannot be always in ketosis.' In the long term, it's not good."

Will Sugar Feed Cancer?

Ketogenic diets have also been hailed for their ability to prevent and treat cancer, but even this may turn out to be a misunderstanding in the end.

"I think some of the ideas around glucose feeding cancer stem from two basic misunderstandings," Dinkov says. "One is that cancer is an evil cell, genetically mutated, and that your only chance is to kill all of those cells because they're not going away by themselves.

First of all, that's not true. Spontaneous remissions of cancer are known, and they vary depending on the cancer. Prostate cancer has a pretty high rate of spontaneous remission … A paper that came about five years ago … from the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas … said it's always been the position of medicine that cancerous mutations [happen] and after that, the cell becomes metabolically deranged.

But it looks like we've had it backwards. It's the metabolic derangement that happens first, and, over time, this triggers the genetic mutations, because the cell, being in an energetic deficiency, cannot properly maintain its structure. That was a huge admission …

So what we need to be doing here is not trying to kill the cancer cell, because it is not a cancer cell. It is actually a normal cell that is metabolically deranged.

If we could compare it to anything, it'd be a diabetic cell [and] diabetes is now known to be caused by hyperlipidemia — too much fat in the body, too much fat in the blood. Basically, the cells are getting stuck in oxidizing fats, due to the Randle cycle.

And then, the glucose that's floating around in diabetes, a good portion of it — because it cannot be metabolized — is being peed out … or you're converting it into lactic acid. This [MD Anderson] paper said the exact same thing is happening in cancer.

We are seeing an abnormal rate of fatty acid oxidation, because the cell is stuck in the cycle due to oversupply of fat.

The glucose, the 'cancer cell' cannot actually metabolize it, but because the cell needs its glucose for a variety of purposes — not just synthesizing energy, but also synthesizing DNA and RNA, and those two … can only be synthesized from glucose, not from fats — the cancer cell says, 'Oh, I'm in a state of extreme deficiency of glucose. Give me more.'

So, it increases the synthesis of these glucose transporters known as GLUT1 through GLUT4. Basically, that's why when you give a patient with cancer a little bit of radioactive sugar, it accumulates mostly into the tumor, because the tumor has a much higher capacity for uptake of sugar.

However, and this is the key difference, it has a much lower capacity for oxidizing that sugar. So, you're going to see a lot of radioactive sugar accumulation in the tumor, but most of it will get converted to lactic acid. So this paper that came out said, 'We need to do something that gets the cell out of its stressed state.'

And I think we already agreed that excessive oxidation of fat is a stress state. Right? We don't want to produce lactic acid, and as long as we are over-oxidizing fat, we will be producing lactic acid, and we will be uptaking more glucose …

Several studies have come out since then … and they said, 'OK, how can we restrict the supply of fat?' assuming the fat is the problem. There's only really two macronutrients that can go to the cell. Assuming cancer is a metabolic disease, and assuming a cell can only oxidize fat or sugar, then if it's not the sugar, it's got to be the fat. There's nothing else.

And if it's not the mutations, if the mutations are secondary to the metabolic derangement, it's got to be one of these two macronutrients that we can manipulate to actually try to cure the cancer. They already tried glucose restriction … That did not cure cancer. It did have a sensitizing effect to chemotherapy, but it did not result in actual cancer remission.

So now we're back to the other micronutrient, restricting the supply of fat. Multiple studies … I have at least 30 on my blog … have shown that restricting lipolysis by administering the beta blocker propranolol … lowers lipolysis.

The way [propranolol] lowers blood pressure is by blocking adrenaline. If you're blocking adrenaline, you're also lowering lipolysis, because adrenaline is the primary activator of the hormone-sensitive lipase enzyme. Basically, you're going to be restricting the supply of fat from your own tissues to the tumor.

What else can be done? Well, that's not the only source of fat. You're also getting it through the diet. Other studies have tried doing low-fat diets for cancer, and are getting actually good results. Not cure, but good results. The propranolol induced full remission in the cancer."

Summary

Dinkov also cites research in which the beta oxidation inhibitor etomoxir, prescribed for heart disease, induced full remission in neuroglioblastoma, which is thought to be incurable. So, in summary, either restricting dietary fat or blocking the oxidation of fat inside the cell appears to have strong therapeutic effects against cancer by forcing the cell out of its excessive fatty acid oxidation state.

"And, once you do that, there's no metabolic damage preventing the cell from oxidizing glucose," Dinkov says. "It's all functional. If you flood the cell with fat then, basically, that's what the cell will oxidize, because it's overabundant relative to the glucose that is getting to the cell. If you stop that process, or at least greatly restrict it, the cell starts oxidizing glucose again."

The Devil in the Details

Here, I'd like to share a personal story. In an effort to adopt this new knowledge, I increased my carbohydrate intake to about 250 grams to 300 grams, depending on the day and the fruit availability. When I got my blood work back, I was surprised to find my triglycerides were in the low triple digits, just over 100, which is abnormal.

Normally, I'm closer to 50. In my clinical experience, elevated triglycerides is almost always related to excessive carbohydrate intake, which seems to conflict with what Dinkov just explained. But here's the key: When you increase carbohydrates, you also have to lower fat. If you don't, you could end up with complications, as just happened to me. So, now I'm lowering my fat intake. Dinkov confirms my experience:

"Most of the animal studies say, 'High sugar diet causes this. High sugar diet causes that.' But if you look at their diets, these animals are already on a high-fat diet. All they did was add more sugar on top of it. Well, of course, in a situation like that, you're going to have an increase in the triglycerides, increase in LDL cholesterol, because the body can synthesize cholesterol from the sugars.

So, you're going to get these biomarkers associated with cardiovascular disease to increase, but it's actually not really a fair comparison. What you should be doing is keeping the diets isocaloric, the same. And also, not increase the total amount of calories, just replace some of that fat with sugar …

Another thing that is probably important is that since there's always some baseline lipolysis going on, when you're increasing the carbohydrate intake, the excess that cannot get metabolized will get converted to triglycerides and then stored.

When you are increasing the carbohydrate intake, you should be decreasing the amount of fat. If you're not, then at least you should be taking something that stimulates the oxidation of carbohydrate so that it doesn't result in the raising of triglycerides.

Aspirin, caffeine, especially vitamin B-3 niacinamide, all of these are known to lower triglycerides and, by now, the consensus mechanism of action is that all three of these components are increasing the oxidation of carbohydrates.

So, if you're increasing carbohydrates and you're getting an increase in triglycerides, two things, either you're eating too much fat or your baseline metabolic rate is not where it should be, so you can use some metabolic stimulation from these substances."

In addition to increasing the oxidation of glucose as fuel, aspirin, caffeine, and niacinamide may also inhibit the oxidation of fatty acids, specifically linoleic acid, and the most foundational strategy that anyone could implement to improve their health is to lower their linoleic acid, the omega-6 intake. These supplements will also lower inflammation, which in turn will lower your baseline cortisol.

The metabolite of aspirin, salicylic acid, also has an inhibitory effect on the enzyme 11-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase Type 1. This enzyme synthesizes active cortisol from the inactive precursor cortisone.

"So, aspirin will actually lower your synthesis of cortisol directly, not just by lowering inflammation, but also lowering the actual synthesis of cortisol," Dinkov explains. "A study demonstrated that baby aspirin, 81-100 milligrams daily, decreased fatty acid oxidation by about 30% …

Aspirin also has an anti-lipolytic effect, not as strong as niacinamide, but it's got these three different things that are basically helping to lower both the supply of fat to the cell and excessive oxidation of fats even at these tiny dosages."

Be mindful about the aspirin you use, though. Immediate-release aspirin made with cornstarch is the preferred version that is now hard to find. Extended-release aspirin is not recommended due to the additives they put in it. Your best option would be to use a salicylic acid or willow bark supplement.

Benefits of Vitamin E

Dinkov also reviews the benefits of other supplements, such as vitamin E, which inhibits lipolysis, improves glucose metabolism, acts as an estrogen antagonist and helps counteract much of the damage caused by linoleic acid and other polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs).

According to Dinkov, research suggests your need for vitamin E can be directly calculated by your PUFA intake. You need about 2 milligrams of vitamin E from all sources per gram of PUFA that you're eating. So, if you're eating 50 grams of PUFA daily — which is about 10 times what you should be getting — you need about 100 mg of total tocopherol.

Importantly, PUFAs aren't just the omega-6s. It's also omega-3. In the interview, Dinkov goes into detail as to why omega-3 supplements such as fish oil are mostly garbage and shouldn't be used. I also wrote an article about this very topic.

Whole food, in this case, small fatty fish and wild-caught Alaskan salmon are really your best bet. It's virtually impossible to find fish oil that's not rancid. So, to review, when you're calculating your PUFA intake you also need to include your omega-3s. Ideally, your daily PUFA intake would be below 10 grams.

Dinkov's Dietary Suggestions

In closing, Dinkov reviews some of his top dietary recommendations for optimal health. No. 1 is keeping PUFA intake below 10 grams; below 5 grams would be even better. No. 2 is to avoid high-fructose corn syrup when adding carbs. Stick with the simple sugars from ripe fruit, raw honey (make sure it's not adulterated with high-fructose corn syrup, as many are) and/or pure organic cane sugar.

As for the macro composition of your diet, equal amounts of fat, healthy carbs, and protein seem to be best for otherwise healthy individuals, so he recommends getting one-third or 33% of your daily calories from each. If you have metabolic problems or some kind of inflammatory disease, he recommends cutting down on fats.

Lower fat intake will also allow your body to digest protein better, as bile acids are released in response to fat, and bile interferes with the absorption of protein. Next, he recommends adding:

How to Apply This When Using Time-Restricted Eating (TRE)

If you're using time-restricted eating, or considering starting, then this final side note will be important. If you're metabolically inflexible, insulin resistant, and unable to easily switch between burning sugar and fat as your primary fuel, then a TRE program, such as that described by Dr. Mindy Pelz in my interview with her, may be quite beneficial, and this is true whether you're eating a ketogenic diet or not.

However, once you regain your metabolic flexibility, which can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, you will need to increase your eating window. The reason for this goes back to the glucose-cortisol connection, Dinkov explains in this interview. Your body needs glucose, and if you deprive it for too long, it will produce cortisol to stimulate your liver to make it.

This increased cortisol can contribute to chronic inflammation and cellular damage. Therefore, once you are no longer insulin resistant, it is best to vary your eating window between eight and 12 hours, and avoid going lower or higher than that window. It is also best to avoid eating before sunrise or after sunset and at least three hours before bedtime.

More Information

To learn more, be sure to listen to the entire interview, as we dive into far greater detail than what I've summarized here. Georgi is an absolute fire hydrant when it comes to biochemical details.

Also check out Georgi's blog at www.haidut.me or follow him on Twitter. You can also obtain a major sampling of Ray Peat's work for free by going to these two sites: wiki.chadnet.org/Ray-Peat and RayPeat.com.

Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published November 03, 2024.

Beneath the surface of your largest organ — your skin — lies a complex web of connections to your diet, your stress levels and even your deepest emotions. Dr. Keira Barr, a pioneering functional dermatologist and author of the book “The Skin Whisperer,” has made it her life's work to unravel these intricate relationships.

In our interview, we dive into Barr's remarkable journey from melanoma survivor to holistic skin health revolutionary. Our discussion highlighted the hidden factors influencing your skin's health, challenging conventional wisdom and offering a fresh perspective on achieving radiant health from the inside out.

Barr's journey into functional dermatology began with a shocking personal diagnosis. As she shared, "About 12 years ago, my own health started falling apart ... As a dermatologist, it was very humbling. The focus of my career at that time was skin cancer, melanoma. My own skin started changing, and I had to diagnose myself with early melanoma."¹

This experience was a turning point for Barr, leading her to explore the deeper connections between overall health and skin health. She realized that her approach to dermatology needed to evolve beyond just treating symptoms.

The Mind-Skin Connection

There’s a little-known dialogue between your thoughts and your skin, or a mind-skin connection. The field of psychodermatology explores this intricate interplay between your mental state and skin health, revealing how stress, anxiety, and childhood trauma can manifest as visible skin conditions.

This underscores the importance of addressing not just physical factors but also emotional and psychological aspects when dealing with skin health and disease prevention.

While the impact of psychoemotional stressors on health is well-established, it's crucial to recognize that physical stressors can have equally significant effects through similar neuroendocrine pathways, primarily involving cortisol and adrenaline. This aspect is often underappreciated in both public understanding and medical practice.

Sadly, even though she readily agreed with my suppositions, as you can see by watching the interview, I was unable to convince her of this likelihood. This highlights a common challenge in health care: the difficulty in shifting established perspectives, even when presented with evidence of alternative factors contributing to health issues.

It emphasizes the need for ongoing education and open dialogue in the medical community about the complex interactions between diet, stress, and hormonal health.

The Importance of Sun Exposure

Our discussion on sun exposure revealed some interesting differences in our approaches. While I've long been an advocate for responsible sun exposure, Barr took a more cautious stance. She emphasized the importance of being "sun savvy" and "sun smart," acknowledging the benefits of early morning sun exposure while also highlighting the risks of skin cancer.

Remember, individual skin responses vary, so listen to your body during this adjustment. The golden rule: never let your skin burn. Sunburn indicates damage, so seek shade immediately if you notice redness.

Beyond Skin Deep — Your Skin Is a Window to Your Overall Health

Your skin has an important role as an indicator of overall health. As Barr put it, "Your skin is this living, breathing organ. It's an endocrine organ. It really can give you so much information about what's happening beneath the surface."⁴

Barr noted, "She doesn't feel heard, she doesn't feel validated, she doesn't feel seen. So isn't it so interesting that her skin essentially is shouting, it is screaming, it is saying, 'Give me attention, look at me.'" By addressing these underlying emotional issues, the client's hives began to improve without relying solely on topical treatments.

Body-Oriented Techniques for Skin Health

While I appreciate Barr's focus on the emotional component, I emphasized the need for a comprehensive approach that also considers physical factors like cellular energy and nutrition.

My Personal Battle with Prurigo Nodularis

I shared with Barr the most challenging health issue I've ever faced — prurigo nodularis. Don't let the complex Latin name fool you; it simply means "itchy nodules." But it's far more than just an itch. The itching is so intense that it can drive people to the brink.

In my case, I believe this disruption in my gut bacteria led to an oxalate overload. My body, trying to get rid of these excess oxalates, pushed them out through my sweat glands and hair follicles. This triggered an inflammatory cascade in my skin, resulting in those maddening, itchy nodules of prurigo nodularis.

This experience reinforced my belief in the gut-skin axis, showing how imbalances in your gut microbiome can manifest in surprising ways on your skin. It also highlights the importance of maintaining a healthy gut environment.

A Paradigm for Skin Health

As we wrapped up our enlightening conversation, it became clear that we're on the cusp of an era in dermatology. The insights shared by Barr, coupled with my own experiences, paint a picture of skin health that goes far beyond the surface.

As we continue to unravel the complex connections between skin and overall health, we open up possibilities for healing and disease prevention that could revolutionize not just dermatology, but our approach to health as a whole.

Frequently Asked Questions on Skin Health and Functional Dermatology

Most people add a squeeze of lemon, a pinch of black pepper, or a touch of raw honey, then drink it first thing in the morning or between meals as a gentle daily ritual. The drink takes on turmeric's signature deep golden color, which is why it sometimes shows up online under names like golden water or golden milk's lighter cousin.

The appeal makes sense. Modern life loads your body with processed foods, poor sleep, artificial light, and constant low-grade stress, all of which keep your internal systems in a state of quiet wear and tear. A simple drink feels like a small act of pushback against that pattern. It costs almost nothing, takes about a minute to prepare and slots easily into routines you already have.

But the conversation around turmeric water often skips over the more interesting question. What does this drink actually do once it enters your body? The science behind curcumin, the active plant compound inside turmeric, is shaped by how it interacts with your tissues, your gut bacteria, and the chronic stress response humming beneath the surface of daily life.

There's also a gap worth understanding between what research shows and what a single mug of turmeric water delivers. Most studies use concentrated extracts, while this morning drink offers something gentler and more sustainable when paired with the rest of your lifestyle. That distinction shapes how you should think about turmeric water, not as a cure or a shortcut, but as one piece of a broader effort to lower the inflammatory burden your body carries every day.

Turmeric Water Supports More Than Hydration

In an April 2026 article published by Health, researchers and health experts reviewed the growing evidence surrounding turmeric water and the active compound curcumin, focusing on inflammation, joint discomfort, digestion, circulation, and immune health.¹

Unlike highly processed wellness drinks loaded with sugar and artificial ingredients, turmeric water offers a simple combination of hydration and plant compounds that directly influence stress and inflammation inside your body. The article emphasized that curcumin acts as both an antioxidant and an anti-inflammatory compound, meaning it helps calm damaging inflammatory reactions while also protecting cells from unstable molecules called free radicals.

Chronic inflammation is associated with conditions like heart disease, arthritis, and Type 2 diabetes. That matters because inflammation often builds quietly for years before obvious disease appears. Turmeric's appeal comes from the fact that it targets multiple issues at the same time instead of focusing on one isolated symptom.

How Curcumin Protects Your Blood Vessels and Cells

Health explained that curcumin supports endothelial function, meaning the ability of your blood vessels to relax and contract properly.⁵ Healthy blood vessels help regulate blood pressure and improve oxygen delivery throughout your body. Poor endothelial function contributes to fatigue, cold hands and feet, elevated blood pressure, and cardiovascular strain over time.

When Turmeric Water Isn't the Right Choice

Turmeric water is gentle enough for most people, but the same compounds that make curcumin biologically active also mean it interacts with certain medications and conditions. If any of the following apply to you, talk with a knowledgeable practitioner before making turmeric water a daily habit:

A final note on quality: Some commercial turmeric powders have been found contaminated with lead chromate, a toxic compound added to brighten the color. Buy organic turmeric from reputable sources that test for heavy metals, especially if you plan to use it daily.

Build an Anti-Inflammatory Routine That Actually Lasts

Inflammation rarely comes from one single problem. Years of convenience foods, indoor living, poor sleep, and nonstop stress gradually push your body into a constant low-grade inflammatory state that often shows up first as sore joints, sluggish digestion, low energy, and mental fatigue.

Turmeric water works best when you treat it as part of a bigger strategy that lowers the stress burden on your cells every day. Focus on building simple routines that feel easy enough to repeat because consistency changes your biology far more effectively than short bursts of "perfect" habits.

*These findings are from research conducted in clinical settings. Results may not apply to all individuals.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your health regimen.

FAQs About Turmeric Water

Test Your Knowledge with Today's Quiz!

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

The role of sun exposure for your well-being is a topic that’s close to my heart, and for more than two decades it’s one of the top recommendations that I stand firm on. One of the benefits, of course, is that it allows you to optimize your vitamin D levels — however, the benefits far surpass that, as it actually awakens the essence of your biology.

In this podcast, I go into the details on why getting optimal sun exposure is one of the cornerstones of health, particularly the role it plays in optimizing your cellular energy. I encourage you to listen to it in its entirety as it will help you understand this groundbreaking information that will help you reach optimal health.

Just Like Plants, You Cannot Thrive Without Sunlight

There’s no question that the sun powers every form of life on the planet. Plants, for example, cannot survive without sunlight, as they need it for photosynthesis. When the sun’s rays shine on a plant, the electrons in the chloroplasts, a sac-like organelle that contains chlorophyll molecules, convert the solar energy to structural energy in the form of glucose. This then fuels the biological processes in the plant.

You, on the other hand, mostly rely on the foods you eat as an energy source. Take note that I said “mostly,” because did you know that you also have the capacity to use sunlight to produce cellular energy?

In low light, a plant can survive for a time. However, it will not thrive — its leaves will not become green and lush, it will not produce beautiful flowers, and its growth will be stunted. The same can happen to humans. You cannot reach your full health potential unless you’re getting regular sun exposure.

There is one caveat to this, however. If you've been eating a diet high in vegetable oils or seed oils, you need to approach sun exposure with caution, as these oils increase your risk of sunburn. That's why I recommend avoiding high-intensity sun exposure unless you've been off these oils for at least four to six months. I’ll explain why further below.

Sunlight Is the Unrecognized Nutrient You Cannot Live Without

Just like plants, you need sunlight to thrive, as there’s a biological mechanism in your body that transforms sunlight into cellular energy. I'm actually in the process of doing some experiments and have set up a mitochondrial research lab to study this theory more closely.

But basically, here’s how it works — your body, when exposed to the sun, collects electrons from solar energy that are used for mitochondrial energy production. This is why failing to get enough sun exposure can have severe consequences for your health.

Your body primarily gets its energy from the foods you eat. When you digest food in your intestine, it is ultimately metabolized to tiny molecules called acetyl-Coenzyme A.

As acetyl-Coenzyme A enters the mitochondria and goes through the Krebs cycle, it is converted into electrons, which are then carried by NADH and FADH2 into the electron transport chain (ETC). This final stage of cellular respiration is where the electrons are transformed by your body into adenosine triphosphate (ATP) — the fuel on which your body runs. To help you understand, here’s an illustration of how cellular energy is created.

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

Your Cellular Health Also Relies on Sun Exposure

In the case of sun exposure, when the sun’s rays touch your skin, your body captures the red and near-infrared light and converts them into electrons. Your body then uses these electrons to feed the ETC and create ATP in your mitochondria.

A single electron transport chain can produce 100 ATPs per second. Considering that every single mitochondrion contains 100,000 electron chains, that means you’re producing 10 million ATP molecules per second.

And when you multiply that by 40 quadrillion — that’s the number of mitochondria you have in your body — that means you’re producing 400 million quadrillion ATPs per second.

If you’re optimally healthy, then typically you’re producing enough ATP per day to fuel all the cellular functions of your entire body. But if you’re not creating enough ATPs, then you won’t have enough cellular energy for all processes. The result? Some “nonessential” processes are then downregulated to conserve energy. The available fuel goes to essential life-preserving processes and little else.

Not only will you feel miserable and experience fatigue as a result of this, but it will also put you at high risk of basically every chronic degenerative disease known to man today, including cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. That’s why I call this my unified theory of cellular health.

This is why you need sunlight. Although it follows a different yet equally complex series of steps as when you use energy from food, it ultimately leads to the same result — the transfer of electrons into the ETC of your mitochondria, which boosts your cellular health.

To help you better understand the difference between how your body creates cellular energy from your food versus from the sun and the complex steps involved, I created the 2-D illustration below.

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

Most People Hide from the Sun

Getting enough sun exposure is one of the most beneficial yet underrated strategies to help achieve optimal health. Apart from exposing you to beneficial red and near-infrared light that contributes to cellular energy production and other health benefits, it also helps optimize your vitamin D levels and melatonin production, which helps anchor your circadian rhythm to help you better sleep at night.

Unfortunately, a significant portion of the population isn’t getting enough sun exposure. According to a survey published in Medium,¹ 58.8% of Americans say they spend one hour or less outdoors daily, while one-third are only getting 30 minutes of outdoor time, or less. Women and young adults in particular spend more time indoors.

The Keys to Safer Sun Exposure

There’s no doubt that spending time outdoors in bright sunlight is one of the fundamental strategies to regain and maintain your health, so whenever you have an opportunity to go outdoors, do it. It is really important for you to get your one hour of sun exposure around solar noon (12 noon, or 1 p.m. during Daylight Saving Time) to reap the maximum solar benefits.

Wear as little clothing as possible to expose large areas of your skin. Consider doing outdoor activities as well, such as walking or engaging in a regular exercise routine. However, as mentioned earlier, it’s important to avoid high-intensity sun exposure until you’ve been off seed oils for about six months, as these oils significantly raise your risk of sunburn.

These oils are rich in linoleic acid (LA), an omega-6 fat that is highly prone to oxidation when exposed to ultraviolet (UV) radiation. When sunlight interacts with skin containing these oils, it causes the oils to break down, leading to inflammation and DNA damage.

So, while you’re reducing vegetable oils in your diet, temporarily avoid peak sunlight hours, which are typically an hour before and after solar noon. In most of the U.S. during summer, this means staying out of direct sun from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. during Daylight Saving Time, or 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Standard Time.

Over time, as your body detoxes the accumulated seed oils, you can gradually increase your time in the sun. Eventually, you will be able to enjoy an hour or more of peak sunlight hours.

The Importance of Addressing Reductive Stress

I’ve been practicing medicine for four decades now, and back when I still used to see patients, I’ve encountered those who say that when they go out in the sun, they end up feeling worse, as if their body is warning them to stop doing what they’re doing and get out of the sun.

The fact is that your body will never lie to you. If it’s telling you to get out of the sun, then there could be something else you need to pay attention to. So, if you experience this paradox, then it boils down to resolving reductive stress — this biological mechanism could be hampering your ability to create sufficient cellular energy.

Reductive stress, to put it simply, means you have too many electrons backed up in your electron transport chain in your mitochondria. In my interview with molecular biologist Brad Marshall, he explains:

“The calories in food are just electrons between the carbon and the hydrocarbon bonds … Those electrons between the carbon and the hydrogen, that's where the energy is. And so, we have these systems where the electrons flow through the cell, and we use that electron flow to create ATP, and the ATP moves our body.

The electrons move on electron carriers, which are things like NAD. NAD, when it has electrons, is NADH, and when it loses the electrons, it’s NAD+. You want a balance of NAD+ and NADH. Then the electron flow works.

What happens is, we get too many electrons in the system. We get too many NADH and not enough NAD+. And that can happen because we're allowing too much fuel into the system. That's usually why it happens. To use an analogy, cars used to have carburetors. A carburetor takes in fuel and air and mixes the fuel and the air together.”

When there’s a surplus of electrons in your body, it can clog up the series of complexes that are occurring in your electron transport chain. Think of it like pouring a liquid from a big bottle into a small funnel — if there’s too much and you pour too quickly, it will overflow and spill, becoming unusable.

Reductive stress can cause damage, as the surplus of electrons prevent the ETC from transferring them down to Complex IV and they prematurely combine with oxygen to create reactive oxygen species.

Reductive stress also slows down your metabolism and energy production. It's like your body's systems are overwhelmed with energy they can't properly use, which leads to decreased efficiency and damage over time. Molecular biology can be complicated, so I encourage you to watch my interview with Marshall to get a better understanding of this topic.

Grounding Can Help Address Reductive Stress

Addressing reductive stress means getting rid of the excess electrons that have accumulated in your mitochondria as a result of your inability to create sufficient cellular energy. Fortunately, there are two methods you can use that I highly recommend. One is being connected to the earth.

Have you ever tried walking on a carpet in a low-humidity environment, such as during a cold winter morning, then touching a metal doorknob? You’ll get an electric shock. But contrary to common belief, it’s not the electrons coming from the doorknob into your hand; rather, it’s the other way around.

The reductive stress that you built out is grounded to that doorknob because the humidity is low and not acting as an insulation. So, when your finger connects to the metal, you discharge the electrons as a spark. This can be surprising, but it’s a good thing, as you’re releasing your surplus of electrons and not slowing down your mitochondrial energy production.

Another way for you to release your surplus of electrons is by grounding — this is basically being electrically reconnected to the earth’s surface. You can do this by walking barefoot, lying on the ground, or being submerged in water.

However, if you live in North America, as I do, then grounding may not do you much good, as you’re being exposed to “dirty electricity” brought about by distortions of high voltage transients in the electricity supplied to homes and buildings. Modern electronic devices are the main reason why these distortions occur. So, if you do grounding, you may discharge your surplus of electrons but you’re also gaining unhealthy frequencies from the earth.

There are a couple of exceptions, though — if you live in a really remote area and if you ground to the ocean. In mountain areas where there’s no power and the nearest substation is miles away, the ground is most likely healthy and you can connect to the earth there.

As for the ocean, it is such a massive sink that it will accept those electrons. Aside from having salt, which is a good conductor, it gives you a continuous and stable connection to the earth's natural electrical state, allowing an efficient transfer of surplus electrons in your ETC back to the earth.

Using Methylene Blue

I don’t particularly recommend resorting to drugs, but I believe methylene blue, said to be the oldest drug in existence today, can be a great alternative to grounding in helping you create enough cellular energy. Developed in 1876 by German chemist Heinrich Caro,² it is the first synthesized drug and has a rich history as both a dye and drug — in the textile industry, it is used as a dye for blue jeans.

When scientists discovered its medical properties, it became the first synthetic compound to be used as a drug, and was used to treat malaria, methemoglobinemia (a condition where hemoglobin cannot release oxygen effectively to body tissues), and as an antidote to cyanide poisoning.

This medicine has powerful metabolic effects, and in reductive stress, it can provide benefits by acting as a powerful electron acceptor that temporarily removes the bottleneck created by faulty metabolism so it can function again and continue producing cellular energy. If there’s a block anywhere in the electron transport chain, methylene blue simply transfers the electrons straight to oxygen, bypassing the obstruction.

The only concern about methylene blue is you need a prescription to purchase it. For human use, the safest option is pharmaceutical grade methylene blue, for which you need a prescription.

Never use industrial grade methylene blue (which is often used for cleaning fish tanks), as it is frequently contaminated with heavy metals. Instead, have your physician write you a prescription to a compounding pharmacy. One of the better ones I have found is Town & Country compounding pharmacy.

These compounded pills can easily be made into 50-milligram capsules, but since you only need 5 mg once a day, one 50 mg pill can be enough for 10 doses. Take a 50-milligram pill (be careful when opening it, as the dye can stain your hands and countertop) and put it into 50 cubic centimeters (cc) of water, or just under 2 ounces.

Measure out 5 cc, which would be about a tablespoon, and then save the rest. If you are using it to optimize the benefits of sun exposure, it is best to take it approximately 30 minutes before going out into the sun.

Get to the Root Cause of Reductive Stress

All of that said, when it comes to optimizing your cellular health, I advise going to the root cause instead of just relying on methylene blue and grounding. Although helpful, you cannot achieve your body’s full potential if you do not address your excessive LA intake, optimize your gut microbiome, lower your estrogen burden, and get rid of EMFs.

These four key culprits wreak havoc on your mitochondrial function, so addressing them is a crucial step to successfully bring back your cellular health. Once you’ve taken control of these four factors, your body will start to recover, repair, and regenerate, and you'll regain the ability to increase your mitochondrial function and the ability to increase cellular energy.

I urge you to listen to this podcast until the end. You may need to listen to it several times to fully grasp these complex processes, as they can be quite complicated — it took me almost 50 years to fully comprehend these concepts, but I guarantee that once you implement them, you will be far closer to taking control of your health.

Fatty liver disease is fast becoming an epidemic, with one-fourth of adults globally now struggling with it.¹ Many are unaware that they have this condition until severe symptoms manifest. If not addressed immediately, it could lead to liver failure, internal bleeding, or liver cancer.

The good news is that fatty liver disease is preventable and that you actually have more control over your liver health than you think. An easy way to protect your liver health is by consuming a nutritious, well-balanced diet. One of the nutrients that will significantly help is vitamin K — studies have provided supporting evidence on this.

Moderate Vitamin K Intake Lowers Risk of Death in People with Fatty Liver Disease

Fatty liver disease has undergone a major conceptual shift, both in how it’s diagnosed and in how its root causes are understood. Today, the term metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) has replaced older labels like nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

I prefer to describe this condition as simply “fatty liver disease.” The additional attribution to cause is just medical jargon that provides no additional information about the condition itself and all three are synonyms for fatty liver disease.

A study published in Scientific Reports investigated whether vitamin K intake affects the survival time of people with fatty liver disease. The researchers analyzed health and nutrition data from 7,857 adults diagnosed with fatty liver disease using U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) surveys between 2005 and 2018.²

Getting Enough Vitamin K from Your Diet Significantly Reduces Your Risk of Fatty Liver Disease

While the featured study shows how vitamin K is beneficial for people already with fatty liver disease, an earlier study published in the Frontiers in Nutrition shows that getting enough of this nutrient from your diet may help avoid the onset of this disease.³

The researchers analyzed data from 3,571 adults across the U.S. using NHANES surveys from 2017 to 2018 to identify whether people with higher vitamin K intake had lower odds of having fatty liver disease — and whether that was different in people who relied on food alone versus those who used dietary supplements.

Why Does Vitamin K Have Beneficial Effects for Fatty Liver Disease?

To understand why vitamin K is so effective, these two studies highlighted several biological mechanisms.^4,5

The 2 Types of Vitamin K

Vitamin K exists in two forms — vitamin K1 (phylloquinone) and vitamin K2 (menaquinones).⁶ These two forms are differentiated through their sources and their functions in your body:

What Are the Best Food Sources of Vitamin K2?

As the second featured study mentioned, ensuring adequate intake of vitamin K particularly through K2-rich foods is the best way to reap the benefits of this nutrient. These include:⁹

• High-quality animal products — Opt for grass fed and pasture-raised animal products such as tallow and organ meats like liver.

• Certain cheeses like Gouda and Brie — These have high K2 content. Choose cheese made with animal rennet instead of GMO alternatives.

• Fermented foods — Natto, a traditional fermented soybean product, boasts the highest concentration of highly absorbable MK-7 vitamin K2.

• Egg yolks — While egg yolks are classified as an animal product, I do believe they deserve a special mention, as they are among the highest dietary sources of MK-4, a vital form of vitamin K2 that plays a crucial role in bone health, cardiovascular function, and calcium regulation. Plus, egg yolks are a rich source of choline, another nutrient that plays a significant role in liver health (more on this below).

You just need to be careful about your egg sources as most commercial egg sources — even free-range organic — have high levels of polyunsaturated fats (PUF) levels as they are fed grains like soy and corn. Ideally, chickens should be fed rice, barley and split peas. I personally eat six egg yolks a day from chickens who are fed this and have 80% less linoleic acid (LA) than regular chickens.

Below is a comprehensive overview of egg yolks as a top source of MK-4, along with additional dietary sources and considerations.

However, I do understand that there are circumstances where it may be difficult to obtain this nutrient from dietary sources. In this case, I recommend adding a high-quality MK-7 vitamin K2 supplement to your daily regimen.

A Deadly Combination That Leads to Fatty Liver Disease — Excessive Linoleic Acid and Choline Deficiency

Going back to the topic of fatty liver disease, I believe that one of the most significant factors contributing to its increasing rates today is the excessive LA in our modern diet and how it disrupts cellular health. Pair it with choline deficiency, and you end up with a vicious cycle leading to fatty liver disease.

I’ve written a paper on this topic, which is still pending peer-review, however, you can download and read a simplified version here. I’ve also highlighted the most significant points below.

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

Protect Yourself from Fatty Liver Disease with These Strategies

As these findings show, it’s clear that addressing fatty liver disease starts with making changes to your diet. Certain key nutrients — combined with healthy lifestyle changes — will help protect you from the onset of this disease and minimize its damage. Here are my recommended strategies.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Vitamin K and Fatty Liver Disease

Demand for animal protein is projected to climb sharply in the coming decades, and a growing number of companies are betting this technology will help meet it. But how many products have actually cleared that process, and what does the process even involve? The answers are more surprising than the headlines suggest.

The science, it turns out, was the easier part. After cultivated chicken made its brief debut on a few tasting menus, the rollout stalled, not because the technology faltered, but because a second battle opened far from any laboratory. In state capitols across the U.S., some lawmakers moved to block these products outright, others demanded specific labeling, and still others stayed silent.

Lawsuits followed over a single question: who gets to decide what reaches your plate — federal regulators or individual states? For now, the fight has shifted from the kitchen to the courtroom. Before you can understand why lawmakers, regulators, and food companies continue to clash over this emerging technology, it helps to examine how the federal approval process works, and why regulators built an entirely new system for food made from animal cells.

The Cultured-Meat Battle Shifted from Food Safety to Consumer Access

For an analysis published in Trends in Food Science & Technology, researchers examined how federal and state governments regulate cell-cultivated meat and seafood in the U.S. and cataloged legislative actions through October 2025.¹

Rather than studying health outcomes or consumer behavior, the paper focused on the rules that determine whether these products reach consumers at all. The researchers found that regulatory decisions now play a major role in shaping the future of the industry, affecting everything from product development to labeling and interstate commerce.

The Fight Over Cultured Meat Reached State Capitols

According to a report from Penn State Dickinson Law's Center for Agricultural and Shale Law, the biggest story is no longer how cell-cultured meat is produced or how federal agencies review it.³ Instead, the focus has shifted to state-level restrictions, legal challenges, and questions about whether consumers will be allowed to buy these products in certain parts of the U.S. The report specifically examined federal oversight, recent state bans, and the lawsuits emerging in response to those bans.

Choose Real Food Over Engineered Alternatives

The biggest takeaway from the research is that the debate over cell-cultivated meat is no longer centered on whether the technology exists. It already does. What's far less certain is whether the business does. Federal clearance hasn't translated into a single product you can reliably buy — one of the five approved companies has already folded, and as of spring 2026, cultivated meat wasn't being sold anywhere in the U.S.

I believe your strongest position comes from understanding more than the marketing claims. Pay attention to how products are regulated, how they're labeled, what ingredients they contain, and who is shaping the rules behind the scenes. Knowledge gives you choices. Confusion takes them away.

That matters because many plant-based alternative meat products fall into the category of ultraprocessed foods, built from refined ingredients, industrial additives, and seed oils. Cultivated meat is a different category — grown from animal cells rather than assembled from plant ingredients — and its long-term nutritional profile simply isn't known yet. The farther a food moves from its natural form, the more difficult it becomes to evaluate what you're actually eating.

FAQs About Cell-Cultured Meat Regulations

Test Your Knowledge with Today's Quiz!

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

For centuries, the pomegranate has been prized as a symbol of vitality and longevity. Ancient cultures understood its connection to health long before science could explain why. Today, researchers are uncovering how the fruit’s rich store of natural compounds protects your body from the inside out — helping guard against chronic conditions that cut life short in the modern world.

Pomegranate is now recognized as one of the most nutrient-dense fruits on Earth, packed with antioxidants that defend your cells from oxidative stress — the process that drives aging, inflammation, and disease. It supports everything from heart health and metabolism to hormonal balance and immune resilience, offering a nutritional profile that few foods can match.

What makes pomegranate so remarkable is how it works on multiple levels. Its bioactive compounds don’t just fight damage after it occurs — they help regulate the very pathways that keep your blood vessels clear, your cells stable, and your tissues youthful. This is where modern biochemistry meets ancient wisdom: the idea that food itself holds the power to restore balance and extend vitality.

Pomegranate Peel Extract Delivers Broad Protective and Anticancer Effects

According to a review published in Food Science & Nutrition, pomegranate peel is richer in antioxidants, flavonoids, phenolic acids, and tannins than the edible portions of the fruit.¹ The study revealed that the flavonoid content in the peel is about 12 times higher than in the juice or seeds, making it the most potent part of the plant for neutralizing free radicals and protecting against oxidative stress.

Pomegranate Stops Cancer Cells from Growing and Spreading

A review published in Molecules looked at how different parts of the pomegranate — like its juice, peel, and seeds — affect cancer.² Researchers explained that compounds such as ellagic acid, punicalagins, and urolithins stop cancer cells from multiplying and trigger apoptosis, which is your body’s built-in process for removing damaged cells. This makes pomegranate a natural aid for cancer prevention.

Pomegranate Works Through Multiple Pathways to Stop Cancer at Its Source

Pomegranate targets dozens of cancer-related pathways simultaneously, according to a comprehensive scientific review published in Seminars in Cancer Biology.⁴ It examined studies on pomegranate’s bioactive compounds and their effects on cancer prevention and treatment. Pomegranate’s unique blend of phytochemicals — including ellagitannins, flavonoids, anthocyanins, and fatty acids — interferes with nearly every stage of cancer development.

These compounds block tumor initiation, suppress inflammation, slow cell division, and prevent metastasis, all without toxic effects on healthy tissue. This makes pomegranate a "multi-targeted natural therapy," meaning it works across many biological systems at once rather than focusing on a single mechanism.

How to Use Pomegranate to Protect Your Health

If you’ve made it this far, you already understand how powerful pomegranate is. What you might not realize is how easy it is to start using it strategically — to protect your arteries, calm inflammation, and strengthen your body’s defenses against disease.⁵ The goal isn’t just to add pomegranate for the sake of it.

It’s to help correct the root causes of damage: oxidative stress, chronic inflammation, and hormonal imbalance. Whether you’re looking to support your heart, improve your skin, or keep cancer at bay, here’s how to use this ancient fruit as a daily defense system.

FAQs About Pomegranate

This interview features two repeat guests, Georgi Dinkov, a pro-metabolic expert and a student of the late Ray Peat’s work, and Tyler LeBaron, Ph.D., an adjunct professor of chemistry, exercise physiology, nutrition, and sports bioenergetics. LeBaron is also the founder of the Molecular Hydrogen Institute and as an elite athlete is more than qualified for this discussion. Peat was a biologist with a specialization in physiology.

A large part of our discussion revolves around the pros and cons of eccentric vs. concentric exercise, but toward the end we also delve into important topics like the metabolism of cancer, if and when baking soda can be used to treat cancer, and how molecular hydrogen helps prevent stroke damage.

Admittedly this is a dense scientific discussion on the fine details of the specifics of resistance training as a form of health. I felt it was important to bring it to the public as it is somewhat controversial, but it clearly will only be useful for a small segment of the population.

So, if you aren’t interested in resistance training then let me reinforce right at the start, as we do mention it in the interview, but it is buried at the end, that the most important exercise you can do is regular movement throughout the day. If you are a wearing an Oura ring or step counter, you should be shooting for five to seven miles (10,000 to 15,000 steps) per day.

There was a compelling study published earlier this year that showed that moderate activity was far more important than vigorous activity at decreasing mortality. Ideally you can do this activity outside during the middle of the day with minimal clothing on so you can also get your daily sun exposure full of UVB, and near IR to optimize your health.

Since this interview has limited practical use for most of us, I am reposting my summary of why KAATSU is likely the most important resistance training you can do after 40 to 50 years old. I would also encourage you to read the free article on Substack as it has all the specific details you need to know about KAATSU. If you are interested in purchasing the KAATSU please use the 10% off link that is in the Substack article.

I believe using KAATSU for the last few years is why I was able to win an arm-wrestling contest in June at the Orlando Biohacking event with Dr. Marcos De Andrade, who is nearly half my age and in great shape. I am actually doing a full interview with him as to why I believe I was able to beat him and will post that in a future article.

What Are Concentric and Eccentric Exercises?

Concentric exercise refers to movements where your muscle is shortened, whereas eccentric movement is when the muscles lengthen. During a bicep curl, for example, pulling the weight toward your chest is concentric contraction, and extending your arm back out to lower the weight is eccentric contraction.

Another way to think about it is moving with or against gravity. During the eccentric part of an exercise, you’re resisting the pull of gravity, and during the concentric part you’re moving against gravity.

Concentric Exercise Improves Mitochondrial Biogenesis

Dinkov is of the opinion that concentric exercise is preferred if you’re trying to improve mitochondrial biogenesis, or an increase in the quantity of your mitochondria. He feels that eccentric exercise could impair mitochondrial reproduction and explains:

“So, I make [three] main claims here. One is that — at least the studies that I've seen — concentric exercise increases mitochondrial biogenesis, the density and the size of the mitochondria a lot more than eccentric does.

The second thing is that concentric exercise has been shown to improve glucose uptake into the cell and reduce lactic acid. Third is that concentric exercise, but not so much eccentric ... increases [and] allows muscle cells to synthesize a lot of these protective steroids.

In males, specifically testosterone, and in females, things like dehydroepiandrosterone, which is supposed to be predominantly of adrenal origin. Turns out that it's not, and muscles can produce it as well.

While eccentric seems to be mostly good for hypertrophy and maybe in corroboration to that, during eccentric exercise only ... muscles produce predominantly estrogen ...

So you can get bulkier on eccentric exercise, but probably not stronger and not as metabolically healthy, if you assume that a good oxidation of glucose and production of these anti-catabolic hormones — such as propranolol, progesterone, DHA, testosterone from males and mostly DHA for women — is what we're after. That's really it in a nutshell.”

LeBaron comments:

“You did clarify one point ... regarding the concentric versus eccentric in terms of the mitochondrial biogenesis that, yes, I would agree with. There's a lot of data that would show that eccentric exercises — eccentric running, eccentric cycling — simply don't have as much oxygen consumption. The O2 cost is a lot lower.

Also, during that eccentric exercise, you're damaging the contractile proteins, you're breaking down the architecture of the sarcomeres. So, yes, in those regards it doesn't seem that there would be any stimulus — at least not near as much compared to concentric exercise — for mitochondria biogenesis, for oxygen uptake, ATP demands and everything. Eccentric exercises don’t require that.

I also agree with your statement regarding the hypertrophy aspect. I was telling Dr. Mercola that eccentric exercise is really key for hypertrophy and strength. Now, I would say then, what are the superiorities ... of the eccentric exercise?”

Benefits of Eccentric Exercise

According to LeBaron, in many studies, including meta-analyses and systemic reviews, eccentric exercise ends up being superior to concentric exercise in terms of strength, performance, and hypertrophy (muscle enlargement). He explains:

“First off, if the eccentric exercise damages the muscular architecture, that damage to the muscle cells is one of the potent stimuli for anabolism (increasing muscle growth) and for muscle protein synthesis. It's not the only one, of course. Metabolic waste and many other stimuli are also important, but eccentric exercise damaging the actual muscle fibers and is a potent stimulus.

In some of these studies, when they did just a concentric exercise without the eccentric portion, there was hardly any benefit in terms of increased strength and or increased hypertrophy, versus a group that did only eccentric and not the concentric portion.

So essentially, they're doing half the amount of reps because they're doing [only] the concentric portion. That's halfway. The other group is only doing the lowering phase, right? So, essentially doing half the amount, they were able to improve just as much, if not often more in different parameters in terms of strength and hypertrophy.

The other part that was interesting is, doing that eccentric portion of the exercise seems to increase muscle hypertrophy longitudinally. Basically, you're putting sarcomere, the functional unit of the muscle in series, and that could have some benefits. You have maybe more muscle growth at the distal lens of the muscle.

That could explain even some differences between why, say, power lifters who are lifting extremely heavy weight often do eccentric loading, their muscles, and the way they look is different than a bodybuilder where they're trying to train their muscles to look a certain way versus for absolute strength.

So going back to what we agree with, yes, mitochondrial biogenesis, all the oxygen utilization, that makes much more sense for a concentric exercise. But I would still say in terms of muscle strength and hypertrophy, the eccentric exercise is very important.”

Concentric Movement May Be More Effective with BFR

Another interesting caveat highlighted by LeBaron is a study showing that when doing blood flow restriction (BFR) training, concentric exercise was the most effective.

This makes sense, LeBaron says, “because when you do an eccentric exercise with blood flow restriction, you're not lifting very much weight.” Since the weight is so light, you’re not breaking down your muscle much, so the primary stimulus in that case is metabolic waste.

With BFR, you get a lot more metabolic waste when doing concentric movements, because during eccentric movement you're not creating as much metabolic energy since it’s less demanding metabolically. “So, with BFR, concentric is probably more important than the eccentric phase, but not with standard resistance training,” LeBaron says.

Summary of Concentric vs. Eccentric Benefits

Dinkov comments:

“So ... we can say that eccentric exercise is like a hormetic response, because you are damaging the muscle periodically and then you have an over-response by the growth, while the concentric exercise is mostly stimulating oxygen consumption and oxidation of glucose.

I have a counter example, because you said that powerlifters do a lot of eccentric. I'm originally from Bulgaria and one of the few sports that we used to be known for ... was Olympic power lifting.

They never do eccentric exercise. They're doing snatches. They're doing a push and then drop. They never ever do, in the actual training portion, eccentric exercise. They don't run either. They lift the weight once and they drop it.

And studies on that have shown that is probably the highest muscle contraction force per square inch that has been measured so far. How do you explain that? Or would you agree that concentric is better for strength, while eccentric is better for hypertrophy?”

LeBaron replies:

“I would say that they're both true, but it's not totally a paradox. It's because now we're talking about elite levels. And this goes into terms of specificity. In general, all in all, eccentric exercise is going to make you stronger and it's going to grow your muscles more.

But when you start getting to that elite level, now you start talking about sports specificity. And if you're going to do really, really well at eccentric exercise, you're going to get really, really good at eccentric exercise — not necessarily maximal concentric, voluntary concentric action.

And so, when you take elite level athletes or people who are extremely well resistance-trained, and you have one group do 100% concentric, partial repetitions and isometric static holds, and another group that does just the eccentric portion, well then, at the end of the study ... you're going to find that the group that did the isometric is going to perform the best in isometric and not as well in the eccentric or concentric.

And the group that does the concentric performs the best in concentric, but not as well in isometric or eccentric. And the group that does eccentric is going to perform the best in eccentric, but not as well in the other two groups. And they're both going to see these improvements ...

I would still say that the eccentric group will probably see the least decrease in the other two, but still not as good as just the concentric. But again, this is the elite level.”

Eccentric Exercise Boosts Results for Nonathletes

LeBaron points out that the No. 1 recommendation he gives people who can't do a pullup is to simply hold yourself over the bar and lower yourself down slowly. Doing this will allow you to perform a complete pullup much faster than if you were to train by trying to pull yourself up or doing jumping pullups.

The reason this works is because the eccentric exercise reduces neural inhibition while increasing muscle activation of the agonist muscles, which helps to activate those muscle fibers. You’re also engaging more Type 2 muscle fibers. But again, this is primarily true for untrained individuals, not elite-level athletes. Dinkov comments:

“So maybe in summary, we can say that eccentric exercise will allow you to apply lower amount of force for longer [period of time] ... while concentric will create ability to apply much higher peak force ... but for much shorter times.”

Force Velocity

LeBaron also points out that there is a force velocity relationship with our muscle fibers. If you were to create a graph to illustrate this relationship, on the Y axis you’d have the strength of contraction, and on the X axis you’d have velocity.

During concentric exercise, the faster you’re able to lift something, the less amount of weight you’re able to lift. There’s a curved, linear, inverse relationship where the heavier the weight, the slower the velocity.

“For strength training, it's often good to work along this entire curve,” LeBaron says. “So sometimes you're lifting at a lower weight, but you're keeping that velocity along that curve so you can continue feeding your Type 2 muscle fibers and getting the recruitment of all fiber type distributions.”

This relationship is inversed for eccentric exercise.

“With the eccentric exercise, as the speed of contraction increases, the amount of weight that can be maneuvered also increases. So, you're able to lift an enormous amount of weight eccentrically at a faster velocity,” LeBaron says.

Remedies for Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness

On a side note, according to LeBaron, delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) can largely be prevented by focusing on eccentric exercises. “We get what's called the repeated bout effect, where doing a heavy day of eccentric exercise and then the very next day doing another set, it doesn't really break down the muscular architecture even more,” he says.

In other words, there's a protective effect. It could also help prevent injuries, and increase tendon strength, muscle motor neuron connection, and muscle fibers. Of course, pro-metabolic interventions can also be used to address DOMS, including:

Benefits of Lactate

That said, lactic acid isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It has certain benefits. LeBaron explains:

“It's important that we recognize that lactic acid is never actually formed in the body, and almost all textbooks even get that wrong. Generally, they say that the lactic acid molecule is produced and then as soon as it shuttled out of the cell, it converts to lactate and the hydrogen ion.

But that's actually not even true itself. That lactic acid is never formed, only lactate. That pyruvate is the end of glycolysis. You take pyruvate and you add onto that two hydrogens and two electrons. And so, the formation of lactate actually increases the pH of the body.

I just want to talk a little bit about the benefits of lactate ... First off, if you were to take pyruvate and lactate dehydrogenase and put it in water to pH of 7 and make the reaction go forward, you'd actually see the pH of the water rise because, again, you are acquiring a hydrogen ion from the solution, so the pH rises.

That's critical because it is the production of lactate that retards acidosis. Two reasons, one, because it's [an] increase in intracellular pH from the production of formation of lactate from pyruvate. And then two, when it does go into the cell — it goes through the cell into the blood — it has to go through a transporter, this model carboxylate transporter, which requires another cation or a hydrogen ion in order to transport out.

So basically, for every lactate molecule that gets excreted into the blood, you are losing two hydrogen ions. And so the pH of the cells is able to maintain that higher pH a lot more effectively. And of course, the blood is full of bicarbonates and hemoglobin, and in many, buffering molecules in protein. So, it can easily handle that for the most part.

But the other big thing is that production of lactate causes regeneration of NAD+, so that the glycolysis can continue. That's the No. 1 reason why we start producing lactate in the first place ... So, you're always able to regenerate that NAD+. That's key.

And, this lactate is a neuromodulatory hormone that has so many benefits. It stimulates muscle protein synthesis, for example. It correlates with acid production and metabolic waste ... which we know [stimulates] protein synthesis.

Lactate is a preferred energy source of the brain as well. It has very therapeutic effects in the brain ... increasing BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. So, I love lactate. I think it's great. The mitochondria can also uptake lactate. Mitochondrial lactate transporter can uptake and oxidize lactate as well.”

Myostatin in Eccentric vs. Concentric Exercise

According to Dinkov, several studies have shown that when you're doing eccentric exercise, the amount of myostatin in the muscles initially decreases. Myostatin is a myokine (a cytokine produced in muscle) that inhibits muscle growth, so if you inhibit myostatin, you gain more muscle growth.

Eventually, however, myostatin levels return to baseline and in some cases even increases, which, according to one study, helps explain why long distance runners are never hypertrophic, meaning they’re typically very lean and don’t have bulky muscles.

“You see that effect even in shorter durations, such as high level high competitive rowing,” Dinkov says. “The heavyweights of the sport, in the first and second year look like bodybuilders, but after that, when they adapt, they start to look lean. One of the studies said that this is basically a result of the adaptive increase in myostatin, if you do chronic eccentric exercise, predominantly.”

LeBaron comments:

“Endurance runners are doing a lot of eccentric running, basically they're hitting the ground. It's a lot of muscle damage to their legs, yet they're not huge. The muscles are very, very small ... I agree with you that I think that with the myostatin, that is certainly what is happening initially.

Myostatin levels decrease and then it goes back to baseline and increase even further, which makes sense, because the eccentric exercise is a potent stimulator of hypertrophy. And so, the higher the hypertrophy, the higher the myostatin levels are going to be.

But that's just one of the reasons. Some of those other reasons is, you're still not doing your typical Type 2 muscle fiber recruitment. You're running for hours at a time, and that's not going to be the same stimulus. In fact, you're activating AMPK, PGC-1alpha and the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors, your PPAR gamma areas.”

Basically, you're emulating fasting, and that’s not going to increase your muscle size. Interestingly, BFR inhibits myostatin, which is part of why it’s so effective for building muscle mass, despite the low weights.

Cancer Misconception Reviewed

Next, we transition to a discussion about cancer and the influence of pH. As noted by both LeBaron and Dinkov, many believe that cancer cells are acidic and can't survive in an alkaline environment, but that’s incorrect. It’s a misconception that goes back to a false attribution to Dr. Otto Warburg.

Warburg never said that cancer can't survive in an oxygen-rich or alkaline environment, and, in fact, his research shows the opposite is true. Acidic pH will kill cancer cells, whereas alkalization can induce cancer progression and metastasis.

The core thesis of pro-metabolic therapy for cancer is that mitochondria are dysfunctional because of excessive fatty acid oxidation. For most people consuming more than 30% dietary fat limits your ability to oxidize glucose in the mitochondria and your metabolism shifts to glycolysis which increases lactate.

The shift in the percentage of cells involved in glycolysis can contribute to the development of the cancer, and then eventual spread or metastasis. Dinkov points out that the cancer drug acetazolamide kills cancer by preventing the breakdown of carbon dioxide, which acidifies the cancer cell and induced apoptosis (cell death). This drug has been found to work on many types of cancer and is now in human trials.

Bicarbonate Can Be Helpful in Some Cases

A nondrug therapy that will also acidify your cells would be to take 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate a few times a day. Now, you’re probably thinking, wait a minute, bicarbonate is alkaline and increases pH, and to kill cancer we want to lower the pH. How do we reconcile this? LeBaron explains:

“We want to lower the pH of the cancer cell ... to induce apoptosis. But the cancer cells are putting out a lot of acid ... first interstitially, but very quickly [also] in the extracellular space. By taking bicarbonate, your body can regulate and buffer that extra acid load a lot more effectively.”

Basically, by retaining the acid within the cell, the pH of the cell is lowered. That said, not all cancers respond well to this.

“There are some studies where bicarbonate actually has the opposite effect because maybe you're inducing alkalosis,” LeBaron warns. “When you have alkalosis, it's making that gradient not as favorable because the pH of the cancer cell is already really high, and then the pH of the blood is high.

And so, it's going to be contraindicated. I'm just saying if somebody has cancer, it's not the best idea in every case to go get some extra bicarbonate. That may not be what you want to do.”

According to Dinkov, elevated lactate in the blood could be an indication that bicarbonate might be warranted. Many cancer patients have extremely low bicarbonate levels, so testing your bicarbonate level is also a good idea. You can also test your pH. Together, these tests can give you an indication of whether bicarbonate is a good idea for you specifically.

For more in-depth discussion about this and other cancer-related issues — including the risks of a chronic high-fat diet, which causes reductive stress, reverse electron transport, and more free radicals — please listen to the interview.

Molecular Hydrogen Helps Prevent Stroke Damage

We also delve into some of the benefits of molecular hydrogen, which is one of LeBaron’s specialty since he is the founder of the Molecular Hydrogen Institute.

“Because I do research on hydrogen gas, I wanted to mention why hydrogen gas is so interesting ... specifically in the realm of ischemia and reperfusion. Ischemia [is] ... anytime there's a stop in blood flow ... where you don't have oxygen present, so you have a hypoxic environment. That's going to cause some free radical damage, because you get a mismatch between oxygen availability and the electron flow ...

But most of the damage comes from the reperfusion side, where now the heart starts beating again [in the case of a heart attack] and you clear the blockage, and so the oxygen-rich blood is able to travel through those tissues. Well, now you're waking up the mitochondria and they’re trying to get active again, and you end up producing a lot of free radicals and oxidative damage.

The first study that really showed us therapeutic effect of hydrogen gas was in Nature Medicine, published in 2007. It was a stroke model, and they found 2% hydrogen gas completely prevented the brain damage ...

Hydrogen gas does a couple things, but it’s a pretreatment to improve the oxygen handling capacity of the mitochondria. And, in fact, some data indicates that molecular hydrogen somehow acts as an electron transport chain rectifier. This is extremely fascinating, because we talk about how the electron transport chain is so important.

We want forward electron transport so we can get ATP production, and we can get a little bit of free radicals that we can handle. Sometimes we can get a little bit of reverse electron transport chain, a little bit more free radicals, just for some hormetic effects. We don't want to go too far out of that homeostatic range, and hydrogen gas is able to modulate this entire process as a rectifier.

It does so because in some cases it’s going to act as an electron sync and sometimes as an electron donor, to get things to go where it needs to be. If you look at the redox potential of the different complexes — complex 1, 2, 3 and 4 — and then you look at the redox potential of hydrogen gas at physiological pH, it's right in line with where you would want it to be so that it can participate as a rectifier of the electron transport chain.”

More Information

For more details on the topics summarized here, be sure to listen to the entire interview. Also check out Dinkov’s blog at www.haidut.me or follow him on Twitter. He also has hundreds of videos on YouTube on a plethora of topics. A major sampling of Ray Peat’s work is also available for free on these two sites: wiki.chadnet.org/Ray-Peat and RayPeat.com.

If you want to take a deep dive into the science and application of molecular hydrogen, check out LeBaron’s courses, available at molecularhydrogeninstitute.org. The institute offers four levels of certification, plus an apprentice course, but you don’t have to be a health professional to take them.

Your body is an intricate and remarkably efficient system constantly working to maintain a state of balance and health. A crucial component of this complex network is the immune system, your body's primary defense against a constant barrage of external threats, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites.

Intriguingly, a seemingly simple molecule produced within your gut, known as butyrate, plays a surprisingly significant and multifaceted role in regulating this complex defense system.

Butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) produced when beneficial gut bacteria ferment dietary fiber in your colon. It is a primary energy source for colonocytes, the cells lining the colon, and plays a pivotal role in maintaining intestinal integrity.¹ Butyrate is more than just fuel for the gut — it is a powerful signaling molecule that impacts immune regulation, inflammation, and systemic health.

Butyrate and Inflammation — Quelling the Internal Fire

Inflammation is a natural and essential bodily response to injury, infection, or irritation. It is your body's way of signaling that something is amiss and initiating the healing process. However, when inflammation becomes chronic, persisting for extended periods, it contributes to a wide array of health problems, including cardiovascular disease, arthritis, Type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, and autoimmune disorders.²

Butyrate acts as a potent natural immunomodulatory agent, helping to regulate this vital response and prevent it from spiraling out of control.³ One primary pathway involves the inhibition of histone deacetylases (HDACs), enzymes that influence gene expression by modifying histones.⁴

Histones are proteins that package DNA, and their modifications either activate or silence specific genes. By inhibiting HDACs, butyrate promotes the expression of anti-inflammatory genes while suppressing proinflammatory signals, maintaining a balanced immune response.⁵

Another crucial mechanism through which butyrate dampens inflammation is by suppressing the NF-κB (nuclear factor kappa B) pathway.⁶ NF-κB is a protein complex that serves as a master regulator of the inflammatory response, controlling the production of numerous proinflammatory cytokines, including tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and interleukin-1β (IL-1β).⁷

These cytokines act as messengers, recruiting immune cells to the site of inflammation. Butyrate inhibits NF-κB activation, thereby dampening the inflammatory cascade and promoting immune homeostasis.⁸ Butyrate also influences the activity of immune cells within the gut, particularly macrophages, which play a dual role in inflammation.⁹

These cells either promote inflammation or support tissue repair and healing, depending on their activation state. Butyrate encourages macrophages to adopt an anti-inflammatory phenotype, thereby reducing tissue damage and fostering recovery.¹⁰ In addition to its direct effects on inflammatory pathways, butyrate strengthens your gut barrier, preventing the translocation of harmful bacteria and toxins into your bloodstream.¹¹

Butyrate Orchestrates Your Immune Response

Your immune system relies on a vast array of specialized cells working in coordination to defend your body against harmful invaders while maintaining tolerance to self-antigens. Among these cells, T cells play a particularly important role in orchestrating adaptive immunity. Butyrate profoundly influences T cell function, shaping immune responses and maintaining balance between proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory pathways.¹²

One of butyrate’s most important roles is its ability to promote the differentiation and proliferation of regulatory T cells (Tregs), particularly peripherally derived Tregs (pTregs) in your gut. Tregs are essential for maintaining immune tolerance and preventing your immune system from attacking your body’s own tissues. By increasing the expression of the transcription factor Foxp3, which is required for Treg development, butyrate enhances the population of these cells.

Butyrate-induced pTreg cells are primarily localized in the colon, where they help maintain gut homeostasis and suppress inflammatory responses. This localized action depends on direct butyrate exposure, as dietary supplementation with butyrate-rich foods or butyrate enemas has been shown to significantly increase colonic pTreg populations.¹³

Butyrate also modulates the activity of effector T cells, particularly Th1 and Th17 cells.¹⁴ Th1 cells are essential for defending against intracellular pathogens,¹⁵ while Th17 cells play a role in combating extracellular bacteria and fungi.¹⁶ However, overactivation of either subset contributes to chronic inflammation and autoimmunity.¹⁷ Butyrate’s ability to suppress the differentiation and function of Th1 and Th17 cells further underscores its immunoregulatory properties.

In addition to its effects on T cells, butyrate influences dendritic cells (DCs), which are key players for bridging innate and adaptive immunity. DCs capture antigens and present them to T cells, initiating adaptive immune responses.

Butyrate modulates the maturation and activation of DCs, reducing their ability to trigger proinflammatory T cell responses. This ensures that immune activation occurs only when necessary and prevents excessive or inappropriate immune reactions.¹⁸

Butyrate Is a Key Player in Managing Chronic Inflammatory Conditions

Chronic inflammatory conditions arise when your body’s immune or inflammatory responses become dysregulated, leading to prolonged inflammation, tissue damage, and debilitating symptoms. Given its ability to modulate immune responses and reduce inflammation, butyrate has been established as a therapeutic agent for preventing and managing chronic diseases.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, is among the most extensively studied autoimmune conditions in the context of butyrate therapy. These diseases involve chronic inflammation of the digestive tract, driven by an overactive immune response to gut microbiota.

Butyrate’s anti-inflammatory properties and its ability to enhance gut barrier function provide effective management for IBD. Research demonstrates that butyrate supplementation reduces inflammation in the intestinal lining, promotes tissue repair, and improves overall gut health.¹⁹

In multiple sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune disease targeting the central nervous system, butyrate plays a role in modulating immune responses and has been shown to reduce inflammation. It’s also been shown to prevent damage to myelin, the protective sheath surrounding nerve fibers, a hallmark of MS pathology.²⁰

In Type 2 diabetes, which involves progressive dysfunction of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas, butyrate has been shown to preserve beta-cell function by protecting against proinflammatory cytokine-induced damage. Butyrate regulates glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS), reduces inflammatory gene expression, and mitigates the functional impairments caused by cytokines such as IL-1β.²¹

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a complex autoimmune disease affecting multiple organs, is another condition linked to dysregulated gut microbiota and reduced butyrate production. Restoring butyrate levels through dietary or supplemental interventions ameliorates gut dysbiosis and decreases the severity of lupus-related symptoms.²²

The Role of Butyrate in Gut-Associated Lymphoid Tissue (GALT)

Your gut is not only responsible for nutrient absorption but also serves as your body’s largest site of immune activity, with approximately 70% of immune cells residing within the gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT).²³ This specialized network samples antigens from the intestinal lumen and orchestrates immune responses that balance defense against pathogens with tolerance to dietary antigens and beneficial microbes.²⁴

Butyrate plays a pivotal role in maintaining this balance by modulating immune activity within GALT. Its localized effects ensure that immune responses remain controlled, preventing chronic inflammation and autoimmunity that result from overreactive defenses. A key mechanism involves butyrate’s ability to enhance the development and function of regulatory T cells.²⁵

The integrity of the gut barrier, a single layer of epithelial cells that prevents harmful microbes and toxins from entering the bloodstream, is another important aspect of GALT’s function. Butyrate strengthens this barrier by increasing the expression of tight junction proteins that seal gaps between cells.²⁶

Dendritic cells (DCs) within GALT, which are responsible for sampling and presenting antigens, are also influenced by butyrate. By modulating DC maturation and activity, butyrate ensures immune responses remain appropriate, reducing the likelihood of unnecessary inflammation or autoimmunity.^27,28

Your gut microbiota further shapes GALT activity, with butyrate-producing bacteria like Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and Roseburia fostering a balanced microbial ecosystem that supports immune regulation.²⁹ Dysbiosis, or a disruption in microbial balance, is often associated with reduced butyrate levels and impaired GALT function.³⁰

Butyrate — A Small Molecule with Far-Reaching Implications

Butyrate, produced by gut bacteria during fiber fermentation, plays a vital role in immune regulation, inflammation control, and overall health. Its ability to support gut integrity and influence immune cell function highlights its therapeutic potential for addressing autoimmune diseases and other chronic conditions.

By supporting a healthy gut microbiome, you’ll be able to naturally promote butyrate production and strengthen your immune defenses. To increase butyrate production, it's essential to nourish the beneficial bacteria in your colon that produce it, a process that occurs only in the colon.

As I explain in my book "Your Guide to Cellular Health," eliminating environmental mitochondrial poisons creates a terrain where these bacteria thrive, producing butyrate to nourish colonocytes and optimize your gut health.

Elevated uric acid is strongly tied to kidney disease, obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. Exhaustion, stubborn inflammation, and metabolic struggles often trace back to uric acid overload, even though the connection rarely gets made. Oxidative stress and chronic inflammation, the same drivers behind many modern diseases, fuel much of the damage.^2,3

Oxidative stress occurs when unstable molecules called reactive oxygen species (ROS) damage cells faster than your body can repair them. The medications commonly used for high uric acid aren't always well-tolerated. Side effects can include gastrointestinal discomfort, kidney strain, and in some cases serious skin reactions — which makes long-term management a real challenge for some people.

Instead of targeting symptoms alone, researchers have begun investigating whether molecular hydrogen addresses the underlying metabolic dysfunction associated with high uric acid. Hydrogen acts as both an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant agent, meaning it helps calm the cellular stress that has been associated with metabolic damage in the first place.*

A clinical trial put this theory to the test, examining whether daily hydrogen-rich water could meaningfully lower uric acid in affected adults, and whether dose and duration changed the outcome.⁴

Those findings shift the conversation away from simple symptom suppression and toward restoring cellular energy production itself. The next section breaks down how researchers tested hydrogen-rich water (HRW), what happened to participants over the course of the study and why the most notable improvements appeared in the high-dose group.

Higher Hydrogen Doses Produced Stronger Results

To find out whether HRW could move the needle, researchers ran a controlled trial on 100 adults with elevated uric acid. Participants were divided into three groups. One consumed ordinary drinking water, another consumed a lower dose of HRW and the third consumed a higher dose daily for eight weeks.⁵

Researchers specifically examined both dose and duration to determine whether stronger or longer exposure changed the outcome. Participants averaged roughly 34 to 35 years old across all three groups. Whether the same effect holds in older adults with established metabolic disease remains an open question, though the mechanisms researchers identified would apply.

Support Cellular Energy Before Uric Acid Damage Escalates

If your energy crashes after meals, your joints ache for no clear reason, or your recovery feels slower every year, your body is already signaling that something is wrong underneath the surface. Focus on lowering the inflammatory burden that drives uric acid upward in the first place.

That means improving mitochondrial function, protecting your gut microbiome, and reducing the daily exposures that overload your kidneys and metabolism. If you're already dealing with frequent gout attacks, known kidney issues, or persistently high uric acid on lab work, pair these strategies with regular monitoring from a practitioner you trust; tracking your numbers over time tells you whether your approach is working.

Clinical research disclaimer: The studies referenced in this article are preliminary findings. Hydrogen-rich water has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Individual results vary. Consult your healthcare provider before making changes to your health regimen.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

FAQs About Molecular Hydrogen for High Uric Acid Levels

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You use your toothbrush every day, but here’s the question most people don’t think to ask — How long has it really been since you swapped it for a new one? Most adults hold onto their toothbrush far longer than they should, unaware that the soft nylon bristles quietly break down, collect bacteria, and lose their ability to clean effectively.

Your toothbrush isn’t just a tool; it’s a small ecosystem composed of millions of microorganisms like viruses, bacteria, and other microscopic pathogens.¹ In fact, research found that contamination happens almost immediately after the first use and increases over time with continued exposure to oral bacteria and ambient moisture.² In other words, the longer you hang onto your toothbrush, the more microbial buildup you invite.

How Often Should You Change Your Toothbrush?

At any given moment, your toothbrush carries as much as 1 to 12 million microorganisms.³ These microbes, which thrive on saliva, skin cells, water, and the food stuck in your mouth, cause dense microbial communities, called biofilms, to form along the bristles and head,⁴ fueled by the moisture and warmth of your bathroom environment. Once these biofilms establish, rinsing alone does not fully remove them — especially when the toothbrush remains damp between use.

It’s for this reason that even if your toothbrush doesn’t show noticeable signs of wear and tear, it is still wise to swap them out with new ones within the recommended time.

Exceptions That Require Changing Your Toothbrush Sooner

Even though the standard rule is every three to four months, there are several clear reasons to replace a toothbrush earlier — and each comes down to contamination, wear, or hygiene risk.⁷

Finally, if you’ve shared your brush, intentionally or not, with someone else, replace it immediately. Cross-contamination between users can spread oral bacteria, fungi, or viruses, especially if you or the other person has gum disease or a recent infection.

How Often to Change an Electric Toothbrush Head

Electric toothbrushes tend to be slightly more expensive than manual toothbrushes, which is why some people decide to stretch their use for several months to save a few bucks. However, the Cleveland Clinic notes that this isn’t a good idea at all.¹¹

If you experience gum irritation, inconsistent vibration, or a subtle change in brushing sensation, it’s time to replace the head even if the indicators haven’t fully faded. The small cost of a new brush head far outweighs the risk of brushing with one that’s past its prime.

Can a Dirty Toothbrush Make You Sick?

The idea of a toothbrush carrying germs may sound unsettling, but the science is clear — used toothbrushes can harbor millions of microorganisms. That doesn’t mean every contaminated brush will make you ill, but the longer a toothbrush is used, the higher the microbial load becomes. The key is understanding how contamination happens and what simple steps you can take to reduce your risk.

How to Sanitize a Toothbrush Safely

You can’t sterilize a toothbrush completely at home — but there are ways to keep it clean enough to reduce bacterial buildup between replacements. The goal is to remove debris, limit moisture, and discourage microbial growth without damaging the bristles. Here’s how to do it safely.

In addition, be wary of trending but unsafe sanitizing methods spreading today. According to the BBC:

"There is a bewildering array of techniques for sterilising toothbrushes, from using ultraviolet light to popping it in the dishwasher or microwave. Some of the least effective have been found to involve blasting your brush with a hairdryer or submerging it in a glass of whisky."

So, if you want a routine that balances hygiene and safety, it’s best to stick with the tips I provided above, as they maintain cleanliness, preserve bristle integrity, and prevent your toothbrush from becoming a bacterial hangout between replacements.

How to Store Your Toothbrush Properly

How you store your toothbrush matters as much as how often you change it. Poor storage can undo even the most careful brushing routine. Proper placement and airflow keep your toothbrush clean, dry, and ready for its next use.

For longer journeys, consider bringing a second toothbrush so you can alternate between them; use one while allowing the other to air dry. This simple rotation minimizes damp storage time and helps maintain hygiene even while traveling.

Signs You Need a New Toothbrush

Even the best toothbrush doesn’t last forever. Over time, bristles fatigue, bacteria accumulate, and performance drops. Knowing when to replace your toothbrush keeps your oral hygiene routine effective and safe. If you notice any of the following, it’s time for a replacement — no matter how recently you bought it.

A quick check each week is all it takes. Inspect the bristles, look for discoloration, and pay attention to how your brush feels on your gums. Replacing it regularly ensures every brushing session is truly cleaning, not just going through the motions. Below is a comparison table detailing how often you should change your toothbrush:

Other Strategies to Protect Your Oral Health

Regularly replacing your toothbrush is just the beginning, as there are other important considerations to make sure your oral health stays in optimal condition. Below are simple but powerful ways to strengthen your daily routine and protect your gums, teeth, and long-term health:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Replacing Your Toothbrush

Imagine a traffic jam in your brain's blood vessels. That's what an ischemic stroke feels like — a sudden block that stops oxygen and nutrients from reaching your brain cells. It's the most common type of stroke, striking millions worldwide every year. If it's not cleared fast, it leaves you with disabilities or even takes your life.

You might think it's just a personal problem, but strokes ripple out, affecting your family, your job, and your daily routine. When a stroke hits, your brain cells don't just die by chance.

There's a hidden process called "programmed cell death" — think of it as a self-destruct button some cells push. Research shines a light on a big player in this process: a type of cell death tied to iron piling up in your brain.¹ These discoveries could open doors to treatments that save more of your brain from damage. And, as you'll see, managing your iron levels is a key part of protecting yourself.

What Happens to Your Brain During a Stroke?

Your brain cells don't just give up randomly during a stroke — they follow a plan to shut down. A study from 2024 peeked into this and found three culprits: a flood-like cell death caused by iron, a wildfire-like cell death that spreads fast, and a calm, planned cell death like tearing down old buildings.²

How Iron Turns Your Brain Against Itself

Iron is important for your body — it helps carry oxygen in your blood. But like many things, too much is harmful. The iron-related cell death is a sneaky way your brain cells die, and it's all about iron.

What This Means for Your Health

Let's pull it all together. The first study showed how the iron-related, wildfire-like, and planned cell deaths gang up early in a stroke, with iron lighting the fuse. The second study zoomed in on the iron-related cell death, revealing how it works and how to stop it. Together, they're like a map showing where your brain's battles happen — and how to win them. Understanding this could protect you or someone you love.

What's the Future of Stroke Treatment?

These discoveries point to a brighter tomorrow. Imagine treatments that hit all these cell deaths at once, like a team of heroes stopping the chaos before it spreads. If doctors block the flood and fire early, a stroke might not leave you with lasting damage. Research is moving fast — clinical trials are already testing these ideas. It's not a promise yet, but it's a solid hope for better care.

How Can You Lower Your Stroke Risk?

While scientists figure out the big stuff, you can take charge now. Here's how:

Managing Iron Overload — A Simple Strategy

A powerful way to protect yourself is by managing your iron levels. Too much iron in your body is a hidden danger, raising your risk of stroke. When iron levels get too high, it fuels the cell damage we talked about earlier. But there's a simple way to keep your iron in check: donating blood.

Giving blood two to four times a year is a great way to lower your iron levels. If you prefer, smaller monthly donations also help. Just remember, if you have heart problems like congestive heart failure or lung issues like severe COPD, talk to your doctor first. If you can't donate blood at a center, don't worry.

Your doctor can prescribe something called therapeutic phlebotomy, which is basically the same thing — removing some blood to lower iron. By managing your iron levels, you're taking a proactive step to protect your brain from stroke damage.

FAQs — Understanding Iron Overload and Stroke Risk

That includes the jar, but it does not stop there. It includes the lid, the liner under the lid, and the induction seal. It includes the adhesive, the gasket, the foam layer, the inks, the coatings, the desiccant, and every material that could interact with the contents over months of storage.

It also determines how much oxygen and moisture ever reach the product — which, for our most sensitive ingredients, is what decides whether the formula is still at full strength when you open it. This is the part of packaging almost no one talks about, and it may be one of the most important parts of all.

Why We Are Moving Many Powders Into Foil Pouches

Why Glass Is Not Always the Premium Answer

I used to think glass was the obvious premium choice. It is inert. It feels clean. It is recyclable in theory. But the real-world truth is that glass is heavy. It breaks. It drives up shipping costs, and can shatter in a warehouse, a home, or a travel bag.

And there is a subtler problem that matters even more for sensitive ingredients: glass is an excellent barrier, but it still lets a fresh charge of air into the container every time you open it, and that repeated oxygen exposure is exactly what quietly oxidizes the active ingredient over a product's shelf life.

And while glass is recyclable in principle, the real-world system is far less reliable than most consumers are led to believe. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, glass containers had a recycling rate of just 31.3% in 2018, while 55.4% were sent to landfills.¹ In many communities mixed glass has low value, breaks and contaminates other recyclables, and can damage sorting equipment.

So, we had to ask a better question: what packaging keeps oxygen out, protects the product and the customer, reduces breakage, supports daily use, and avoids unnecessary chemical exposures? For most sensitive dry powders, the answer is real aluminum-foil packaging — a foil pouch or a foil-lined canister — not another rigid bottle or jar, because no rigid container solves the oxygen problem on its own.

Why Not Just Switch to a Cleaner Plastic Jar?

PET is polyethylene terephthalate, recycling code #1, widely used in food and beverage packaging. It is not polycarbonate. It is not PVC. It is not made with bisphenol A (BPA), and it does not use phthalates as plasticizers. That does not mean every PET package gets a free pass, but it deserves to be judged on its own evidence, not lumped in with every other plastic.

There is one well-documented caveat worth naming. PET is manufactured using antimony as a catalyst, and peer-reviewed work shows that small amounts of antimony can migrate from PET into its contents — a process that accelerates sharply with heat and storage time.

Studies using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry have found that storing PET drinks at elevated temperatures, such as a hot car or a summer warehouse, can push antimony migration toward or past regulatory limits.^2,3 But the exposure profile is very different for dry powders compared to hot liquids. Still, the lesson is the same one that governs our whole approach: a material is only as safe as the conditions it actually finds itself in.

A clean PET jar would be a reasonable upgrade over glass on weight and breakage. But it does not answer the question that matters most for our sensitive powders, which is oxygen. A rigid jar, PET or glass, still admits air around the cap and re-admits a fresh headspace of air every time it is opened. That is why our new standard is a real aluminum-foil pack flushed with nitrogen and packed with an oxygen absorber and desiccant. And, as before, the pack is still only one part of the system.

The Liner Is a Hidden Issue

The lid is where packaging gets complicated. A cap looks simple from the outside, but underneath it is often a liner or seal built from multiple layers — paper, foam, foil, polymer film, wax, adhesive, ink, coating, or a heat-seal layer. Each layer has a job: tamper evidence, moisture control, leak prevention, freshness, and proper reseal. That is exactly why the liner deserves scrutiny. On a foil powder pack the closure carries two jobs most people never consider.

First, it is the weakest point for oxygen: a heat-sealed foil edge keeps air out, but a screw cap is a leak path by design, which is why an oxygen absorber sits inside the pack. Second, it has to keep re-sealing without clogging. A plain press-to-close "Ziploc" zipper fails on fine powder — particles lodge in the groove until it no longer seals — so a powder pack needs a powder-proof closure, such as an evacuation-port zipper, a particle-plow slider, or a threaded spout.

A nontoxic jar with a poor liner is not good enough. If the liner relies on questionable plasticizers, PFAS-treated materials, PVC-based systems, bisphenol chemistry, or unnecessary adhesives, the packaging system has not met the standard I want — and the science explains why this is not a theoretical worry.

What the Science Actually Says About Chemical Migration

According to research indexed in PubMed, the closure and the food-contact layer are precisely where the meaningful exposure questions live. A 2024 umbrella review of 52 systematic reviews concluded that every major class of plastic-associated chemical examined was associated with at least one adverse human health outcome, spanning reproductive, endocrine, metabolic, neurodevelopmental, and cardiovascular endpoints.⁴

The 2023 Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health reached a similar conclusion, identifying the additives built into plastics — phthalates, bisphenols, and PFAS among them — as carriers of much of plastic's harm to human health.⁵

Packaging is a genuine route of exposure, not a hypothetical one. A 2023 narrative review in the Jornal de Pediatria identified food packaging — especially plastic and recycled material — as an important source of food contamination by endocrine disruptors, with bisphenols and phthalates the chemicals most frequently implicated.⁶

Similarly, a comprehensive 2023 review of food-contact materials documented that phthalates and bisphenols migrate from packaging into food, and that the rate of migration is driven by time, temperature, surface area, and the food's own chemistry.⁷

A 2025 systematic review of 67 studies and more than 5,000 samples found that phthalates and bisphenols migrated consistently, with the highest transfer into high-fat and acidic foods — a direct reason to treat oil-containing powders such as MCT oil powder and coconut milk powder differently from dry, inert minerals.⁸

The regulatory ground is shifting underneath these chemicals, too. In 2023 the European Food Safety Authority reevaluated BPA and reduced its tolerable daily intake roughly 20,000-fold, concluding that dietary exposure to BPA is now a health concern — and identifying food as the main source of human exposure.⁹ Just as important, simply swapping BPA for a chemical cousin is no solution.

A 2024 review in Critical Reviews in Toxicology warned of "regrettable substitution," in which BPA is replaced by alternative bisphenols whose hazards are similar or simply unknown.¹⁰

Why does any of this matter for a daily supplement? Because the health signals attached to these compounds are not trivial. Reviews indexed in PubMed have linked phthalate and bisphenol exposure to precocious puberty and early-onset obesity in children,¹¹ to pregnancy complications and altered fetal neurodevelopment after prenatal phthalate exposure,¹² and — in epidemiological syntheses of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, with food a major exposure route — to breast cancer risk.¹³

PFAS are another group of troublesome chemicals. A 2024 analysis in Environmental Science & Technology mapped 68 distinct PFAS detected in food-contact materials, including paper, plastic, and coated metal, and found hazard data missing for nearly half of them.¹⁴ A separate study reported detectable PFAS in 84% of globally sourced food-packaging samples.¹⁵

And these "forever chemicals" do not simply disappear at end of life. Research shows PFAS leach out of food-contact materials during disposal, which complicates the tidy story we tell ourselves about recycling.¹⁶

Finally, there's the plastic particles themselves. A 2021 study that analyzed human stool found microplastics in every sample, with PET being the single most abundant polymer, and reported higher concentrations in people with inflammatory bowel disease than in healthy controls.¹⁷ For a company whose work centers on gut and mitochondrial health, that finding is a mandate to take the food-contact surface seriously.

What We Mean by a Cleaner Closure System

Our goal is a simple, defensible packaging system. For many dry powders that means a real aluminum-foil pack — a pouch or a foil-lined canister — a powder-proof closure, and a clean liner or induction seal chosen to avoid the categories of chemistry we do not want, including but not limited to BPA, BPS, BPF, PVC, phthalates, PFAS, and unnecessary coatings or adhesives, along with a nitrogen flush, an oxygen absorber, and a desiccant to minimize the headspace inside.

The induction seal matters because it protects the product before opening, providing tamper evidence and an oxygen and moisture barrier to preserve potency, but it is a multilayer system, and it must be matched to both the pack and the powdered ingredient.

The liner and closure matter after opening: they have to reseal properly without clogging on powder, must not flake, shed, or absorb odors, and must protect the powder from oxygen, humidity, clumping, and contamination through daily use. In short, the closure helps ensure product integrity over time.

The Bigger Point

Packaging is part of the product. If you take a supplement every day, the formula matters, but so does the container that holds it, the closure that seals it, the liner that touches it, and the way that package behaves in a hot delivery truck, a humid kitchen, a suitcase, or a pantry shelf.

That is why we are rethinking the entire system. We are moving appropriate products out of glass and plastic bottles and into real aluminum-foil packaging — foil pouches and foil-lined, reusable canisters with foil refills — to keep oxygen out, cut breakage, support travel, and make powders easier to scoop. But we are not stopping at the pack.

The real innovation is the full packaging audit — from the foil barrier and anaerobic fill, to the closure and the liner — because that is where potency is protected and where much of the hidden chemical exposure occurs.

In the future, I believe supplement companies will have to prove not only what is in the formula, but what touches the formula. That is the standard we are moving toward, and it begins with a question almost no one in this industry is prepared to answer: what's under the lid?

FAQ

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Fatty liver disease silently affects many Americans today, and alcohol consumption has been shown to be a common cause.¹ It’s become so prevalent, I’ve written a paper about it to help readers understand the importance of liver for overall health, as well as strategies to help you boost liver function. The paper is currently under peer review, but you can download the preprint version below.

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

Left untreated, liver function becomes impaired, increasing your risk of scar tissue formation. According to the Cleveland Clinic, 90% of those who develop liver cancer have cirrhosis.²

Acting early is critical. Research shows clearly that catching liver damage early leads to nearly complete recovery, while more advanced damage like fibrosis or cirrhosis can show limited improvement. The speed and completeness of your recovery depend heavily on when you decide to quit alcohol and how you support your body afterward.

A Timeline of Your Liver’s Health After Stopping Drinking

Your liver begins healing remarkably fast once you stop drinking alcohol. According to The Hearty Soul, here’s what your liver will look like within the following timeline:³

Of course, the timeline provided above isn’t set in stone, but it gives you a rough idea of what to expect. Recovery is different for everyone due to various factors, such as the amount of alcohol you drink, as well as the frequency of drinking. Moreover, your age, weight, and current health status affect liver recovery. The key takeaway here is that alcohol, no matter the amount, is not good for your health. When the drinking stops, the healing begins.⁴

A Scientific Look at Liver Recovery

Your liver is a sturdy organism and one of its most amazing aspects is the ability to heal even after being exposed to toxins. In a study published in Alcohol Research: Current Reviews, researchers examined — under an academic setting — how your body begins to heal after chronic alcohol use.⁵

The study focused on individuals who had engaged in chronic, heavy drinking for prolonged periods and assessed how abstinence affected liver health and overall metabolism. Findings show that significant improvements in liver structure, function, and general health markers happen far quicker than most realize. Within weeks to months, the body demonstrated remarkable self-repair, underscoring just how resilient your liver truly is.

Linoleic Acid Contributes to Fatty Liver Disease

A big contributor to fatty liver disease, aside from alcohol, is excess intake of linoleic acid (LA) from ultraprocessed foods, salad dressings, and snacks. The reason for this is because LA works similar to alcohol once it’s metabolized.

• LA causes mitochondrial dysfunction like alcohol — Like ethanol, LA produces toxic aldehyde byproducts once metabolized by your liver. Ethanol turns into acetaldehyde, and in the case of LA, it turns into 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE), both of which are highly reactive and damaging to mitochondria.

The byproducts bind to proteins, phospholipids, and mitochondrial DNA, causing oxidative phosphorylation, hampering your liver’s ability to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP). If your body can’t properly generate ATP, your liver’s ability to oxidize fats becomes impaired, causing fat accumulation.

• Ethanol and LA follow the same toxic pathway — The image below explains how the shared toxicity of pathway of ethanol and LA lead to mitochondrial damage, thus causing fat in your liver to build up.

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

Now that you know how LA impacts liver health, the most obvious route of healing is minimizing your intake of it. For optimal health, I recommend you keep your intake below 5 grams per day, but if you can keep it below 2 grams, that’s even better.

To monitor your intake, I recommend you sign up for the Pax health platform. It contains a useful feature called the Seed-Oil Sleuth, which will calculate your LA intake to the tenth of a gram from the food you eat.

Choline — A Nutrient That Fights Against Liver Fat Accumulation

In addition to minimizing your LA intake, one practical strategy that supports liver health is increasing your choline intake. This nutrient helps maintain cell integrity, and research shows that a deficiency causes fat accumulation in the liver due to impaired very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) secretion.⁶

For context, your liver produces VLDL to transport fat and cholesterol to all cells throughout your body by way of your bloodstream.⁷ However, if you don’t get enough choline, fat stays in the liver instead. So, again, boosting choline helps minimize your risk of liver dysfunction, and you can do it in two ways:

• Eat foods containing choline — Once you’ve eliminated the damaging inputs, namely alcohol and LA, your liver will need all the help it can get to rebuild. In the table below, I outline the best food sources of choline, such as pastured eggs and beef liver.

Certain plant foods, such as broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts, have modest amounts of choline, but they aren’t enough to meet the recommended range. For those following a plant-based diet, you’ll need to consider boosting your choline intake with other foods or taking a supplement to support your liver.

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

• Take a choline supplement — If tests show that you’re not getting enough choline through your food, then a choline supplement needs to be added into rotation. There are many choline supplements available on the market, and they come in different forms. As expected, each one has different properties, which is explained in the table below.

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

Out of all the choline supplements sold, I recommend citicoline because of its high bioavailability. Based on my research, it is the immediate precursor for the synthesis of phosphatidylcholine, and boosting intake helps more fat to be transported out of your liver. That said, doses will differ per manufacturer (500 to 2,500 mg per day).

• Optimal choline levels — The table below is the current recommended intake levels of choline, which were set by the Institute of Medicine back in 1998. Notably, they were set to prevent liver injury and not for long-term metabolic health. In addition, note that these values will differ by age, gender, and physiological needs.

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

Steps to Help Eliminate Alcohol Consumption

Are you having trouble quitting alcohol? Dr. Brooke Scheller, founder of Functional Sobriety (a nutrition-based program for alcohol reduction) and author of "How to Eat to Change How You Drink," offers several helpful tips:

One of the most powerful shifts Scheller advocates for is changing how you think about alcohol in your life in order to reframe your relationship with drinking:

"Previously, the only people who did quit drinking were people that identified themselves as having a problem or maybe had to quit. And so the first thing I'll say if you're listening and you're interested is you don't have to have a problem to decide that you want to explore this.

You don't need to even be that regular of a drinker for you to say, 'You know what? This is something I may want to explore.'"

In other words, choosing not to drink alcohol is a positive, empowering decision for your health and longevity — not a punishment or deprivation.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Liver Health