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Antibiotic abuse is a pervasive public health concern around the world. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2.8 million cases of antibiotic-resistant infections are diagnosed yearly, and 35,000 people die from it.1 But how do bacteria evade antibiotics, exactly? As it turns out, bacteria are hardy microorganisms that adapt to antibiotics in different ways:2

• Intrinsic resistance — A change in structure or components through evolution eventually creates resistance.

• Acquired resistance — Bacteria begin to resist antibiotics through genetic mutations by “borrowing” DNA from bacteria already resistant.

• Genetic change — Bacteria are able to change protein production, which creates components that antibiotics cannot recognize and eventually eliminate.

• DNA transfer — Crosstalk occurs between different bacteria, allowing them to share resistant DNA through gene transference.

That said, taking antibiotics is one of the worst things you can do for your health. According to research, even using it for a short while already creates lasting changes in your gut microbiome, making recovery hard.

Brief Antibiotic Use Triggers Lasting Resistance in Your Gut

In a study published in Nature, researchers set out to pinpoint if short-term antibiotic use changes gut bacteria, specifically by creating antibiotic-resistant strains, and whether these have lasting effects afterward.3

• Antibiotics create resistant strains right away — The study involved 60 healthy adult participants who were given 500 milligrams of ciprofloxacin, a widely prescribed antibiotic, twice a day for five days. After analyzing stool samples over a 20-week period, the researchers had an alarming revelation — within just a few days, previously susceptible bacteria evolved into resistant strains capable of surviving the antibiotic treatment.

About 10% of gut bacteria populations rapidly developed resistance through a mutation in a gene known as gyrA. This mutation specifically altered an enzyme (DNA gyrase), rendering ciprofloxacin ineffective against these bacteria.

• The impact of gyrA — According to the study, out of 2.3 million genetic variants identified by reconstructing 5,665 genomes, 513 of those underwent sweeping changes in the gyrA gene. Moreover, a Medical Xpress report covering the featured study noted:

“Once established, gyrA sweeps persisted beyond 10 weeks and were predicted to remain detectable for up to a year. Additional resistance-associated mutations occurred in other genes, though these events were less common and appeared in fewer species.”4

• Resistant bacteria have distinguished abnormalities — Usually, bacteria that develop resistance suffer some loss of fitness — the ability of bacteria to adapt and survive.5

However, the gyrA mutation observed in the featured study virtually had no negative impact on bacterial function. In other words, these resistant bacteria didn’t pay a biological “price” for resistance, making their long-term persistence extremely likely.

• Drug-resistant bacteria multiply with speed and ease — The team observed that during the experiment, multiple unrelated bacterial species independently developed the same gyrA mutation. This indicates that bacteria quickly adapt and protect themselves from antibiotics.

The long-lasting nature of this resistance was equally concerning. Even 10 weeks after antibiotic treatment ended, resistant bacteria remained dominant in the participants’ guts. Using predictive models, the researchers projected that these strains would persist for approximately a year without any further antibiotic exposure.

• Beneficial strains are forced out — The researchers noted an important factor influencing resistance development — the population of the bacteria in your gut. Strains that started off with larger populations experienced more dramatic reductions in numbers during antibiotic treatment, followed by a rapid rise in resistant strains afterward.

• Bacterial traits that create resistance remain in your gut — You’re not in the clear yet even after stopping antibiotics and the microbiome has stabilized. According to the researchers, the bacteria living in your gut have been permanently altered by antibiotics, causing new bacteria that enter your body to gain resistance as well:

“Commensal populations may therefore act as reservoirs for resistance traits that could transfer to pathogenic bacteria through horizontal gene transfer beyond the interaction with antibiotics.”6

The key takeaway here is that even short-term antibiotic use sets the stage for resistant bacteria to persist and cause long-term gut dysbiosis. Knowing this, it becomes clear that avoiding antibiotics unless necessary is essential to preserving your gut microbiome and lowering your risk for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

Your Country’s Antibiotic Use Impacts Your Personal Gut Health

In a similar study published in Nature Communications, researchers revealed how antibiotic use, this time on a nationwide perspective, shapes the human gut microbiome. They analyzed samples from 3,096 participants currently not taking antibiotics across 10 countries, specifically looking at antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), which are markers indicating bacteria is able to withstand antibiotics.7

The researchers grouped these gut microbiomes into two distinct patterns, also known as “resistotypes,” based on how many and what type of ARGs they contained. The first resistotype included gut microbiomes with fewer resistance genes, while the second was marked by significantly higher levels of these resistance genes.

• Higher rates of antibiotic sales had countries carrying more resistant gut microbiomes — The researchers reported that people from countries where antibiotic sales were high, like Spain, Italy, and Greece, showed notably higher levels of ARGs in their gut microbiomes compared to people in countries with lower antibiotic sales, like the Netherlands and Denmark.

• Resistance genes are persistent — Even if antibiotic use dropped suddenly, the ARGs could linger for years or even decades in a population. That’s because these genes embed themselves deeply in the resident commensal bacteria — the beneficial microbes normally found in your gut.

The result? Countries that historically had high antibiotic use retain elevated resistance levels long after usage patterns shift, exposing generations of people to a higher risk for antibiotic-resistant infections.

• International travel influences antibiotic resistance — When travelers from low-resistance countries visited high-resistance countries, their gut microbiomes quickly adapted, acquiring new ARGs from local bacteria populations. Once back home, these bacteria continued to thrive and spread, creating localized pockets of resistance even in regions previously unaffected.

• Antibiotic use creates conditions ideal for spreading resistance — While antibiotics are intended to kill off harmful bacteria, they also create an environment favoring resistant strains. With fewer competitors, resistant bacteria begin to take over, embedding themselves firmly into your gut microbiome. “Antibiotic usage will impose a selective pressure, not just on the target pathogens, but the whole microbiome,” the researchers said.8

• Non-users have more diverse gut microbiomes — Unsurprisingly, the researchers noted that antibiotics significantly impact gut microbiome diversity:

“Focussing [sic] on the gut microbiome, we observed two distinct phenomena. The first, observed in healthy individuals not currently taking antibiotics, was a substantial difference in both median total ARG abundance (five-fold) and richness (four-fold) across countries.”9

Ultimately, this study shows how national policies affect public health. By advocating for responsible antibiotic guidelines while avoiding unnecessary prescriptions on your part, the risk for developing resistant strains will be lower, both for you and the public.

Antibiotics Intake During Childhood Alter Your Gut Health

A study published in Microbiome investigated how early-life antibiotic use affects gut bacteria in the long run. Specifically, researchers from China aimed to understand exactly how antibiotics given during childhood could permanently disrupt gut microbial networks, influencing overall health and metabolism into adulthood.10
The study used an animal model, providing a clear framework for observing long-term effects. Test subjects were given ceftriaxone — a commonly prescribed antibiotic for children — for eight consecutive days when they were four weeks old. Then, researchers closely monitored their gut bacteria and metabolism for 14 months, which is a timespan that equates to early adulthood in humans.

• Even a short course of antibiotics early in life significantly reduced the bacteria diversity — Moreover, that diversity never fully recovered. In simpler terms, their gut microbiome lost many important bacterial species permanently, becoming less robust and less effective at supporting healthy digestion and immune function.

• Substantial alterations in the microbial community’s structure occurred — The microbial network, which is the complex interactions among different bacterial species, was heavily simplified after antibiotic exposure.

Typically, a healthy gut has many diverse bacteria interacting like a dense, stable web. After antibiotics, however, researchers found fewer connections between bacterial species, meaning the microbial community became fragmented and fragile. This made the microbiome more vulnerable to future disruptions.

• Early administration significantly affects gut health during adulthood — Although antibiotics were only given briefly in early life, the damage persisted for at least 14 months, which is essentially a lifetime for the test subjects. In other words, the research implies that taking childhood antibiotics will affect gut health as time goes on.

• Keystone strains are affected — The study highlighted how early antibiotic treatment specifically removes “keystone” bacteria. This refers to “taxa with a high impact on the structure and functioning ecosystems.” In this case, keystones mean bacteria that help maintain balance and stability within the microbial community. When antibiotics wiped out these crucial players, the whole bacterial ecosystem fell apart and never fully repaired itself:

“[T]he numbers of keystones of the antibiotic group in the 1st–7th months were obviously less than those of control, indicating that antibiotic use obviously reduced the number of key species in gut MENs. The numbers of keystones in the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 12th months were similar between the two groups. But obvious fluctuations appeared in the 11th, 13th, and 14th months,” the researchers said.11

How to Protect Your Gut from Antibiotic Resistance

If you’ve taken antibiotics before — or if you live in an area where antibiotics use is widespread — protecting your gut bacteria is your top priority. As I’ve written before, your gut health shapes everything from your immune function, to your energy, and even mental health. The key approach here is preventing antibiotic resistance from taking a hold of your life. To do that, here are my recommendations:

1. Avoid unnecessary antibiotics — Antibiotics should be your last resort, not your first choice. If you’re experiencing minor infections, your body usually handles these naturally. Don’t fall for the advice that you always need them for colds or mild infections, because as the studies have noted, even short-term antibiotic use dramatically increases resistance and disrupts your gut ecosystem.

2. Eat probiotic-rich foods regularly — Incorporate homemade fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, and kefir into your diet every day using traditional methods and clean, organic ingredients. The probiotics found in these foods help rebuild and maintain a diverse and healthy microbiome, which strengthens your overall health.

3. Minimize your intake of linoleic acid (LA) — Found primarily in vegetable oils, nuts, and ultraprocessed foods, LA damages your gut lining and promotes inflammation, weakening your gut health further. Swap out all products containing this toxic fat for healthier alternatives like tallow, grass fed butter, coconut oil, or ghee. This one shift alone will already dramatically improve your gut’s resilience.

4. Support keystone gut bacteria — Keystone species are the backbone of your gut microbiome. Protect and nourish these essential bacteria, namely Akkermansia, by regularly consuming fiber-rich foods, like apples with their skins, onions, and asparagus. These foods act as prebiotics that directly feed beneficial gut bacteria, ensuring your microbiome stays balanced and resilient. Don’t forget to consume fermented foods as well to cover all your bases.

5. Consider natural antibiotics — Instead of fighting harmful bacteria with antibiotic drugs, I recommend trying natural options. Many foods you eat contain antimicrobial properties that even eliminate drug-resistant bacteria. Some examples include medicinal honey, garlic, ginger, and thyme essential oil. For a detailed explanation on these alternatives, read “Natural Options to Try Before Taking Antibiotics.”

Frequently Asked Questions About Antibiotics Usage and Resistance

Q: How do bacteria become resistant to antibiotics?

A: Bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics through several sophisticated biological strategies — intrinsic resistance, acquired resistance, genetic changes and gene transference. Each of these methods differ but the end result is the same, which is a compromised gut microbiome.

Q: Can short-term antibiotic use cause long-lasting effects on the gut?

A: Yes. Research has shown that short-term antibiotic use will have significant and lasting effects on the gut microbiome. Taking ciprofloxacin for just five days was enough for bacteria in the gut to develop resistance. Within days, bacteria that were once vulnerable evolved into strains capable of surviving the antibiotic. These resistant strains remained prevalent in the gut for at least ten weeks after treatment and were projected to persist for up to a year.

Q: How does national antibiotic use affect individual gut health?

A: The level of antibiotic use in each country directly impacts the gut health of its population. People in countries with high antibiotic consumption, such as Spain, Italy, and Greece, tend to carry more antibiotic resistance genes in their gut microbiomes, even if they have not personally taken antibiotics recently.

This widespread presence of resistance genes stems from environmental exposure, which affects everyone living in these areas. Furthermore, individuals who travel from countries with low antibiotic usage to high-use countries often acquire resistant bacteria during their stay.

Q: What are the long-term consequences of antibiotic use in childhood?

A: Using antibiotics during childhood can cause permanent damage to gut health. Research found that a short course of antibiotics significantly reduced the diversity of gut bacteria, and that this diversity never fully recovered, even after a prolonged period. The structure of the microbial network became fragmented, making the gut microbiome more vulnerable to future disturbances.

Q: What can I do to protect my gut health from antibiotic resistance?

A: Protecting your gut from the harmful effects of antibiotic resistance begins with avoiding antibiotics unless they are necessary. Incorporating probiotic-rich foods like yogurt, kimchi, and kefir into your daily diet helps maintain a healthy balance of beneficial bacteria.

Also, reducing your intake of linoleic acid, which is found in vegetable oils and many ultraprocessed foods, as it damages the gut lining and promotes inflammation. Additionally, using natural antimicrobials like garlic, medicinal honey, and ginger can offer effective alternatives to synthetic antibiotics in many cases, reducing your reliance on pharmaceutical drugs and helping preserve your gut’s natural defenses.

Dementia is characterized by progressive loss of memory, thinking, judgment, and the ability to carry out everyday tasks. This means the brain gradually loses the ability to process information normally, making familiar conversations, appointments, and even simple daily routines increasingly difficult. In advanced stages, it can lead to dependence on others for daily care, which is exactly why the modifiable factors discussed in the featured research below are worth your attention.

Yet research points to a surprisingly simple factor tied to your future brain health — the amount of bright light you receive during the day.

A large prospective cohort study of 87,577 U.K. Biobank adults (with an average age of 62.36 years) followed participants for a 8.1 years after measuring their daily bright-light exposure with wrist-worn devices for seven days, and found a consistent pattern linking brighter days to lower dementia risk.1

The associations held across the study’s adjusted models, and the specific brightness targets the researchers identified give you something more concrete to aim for than vague advice to simply “get outside more.” However, keep in mind that the effect sizes were modest and the design was observational, so the study shows association rather than cause.

Meanwhile, decades of research show that sunlight does much more than support vitamin D production. Natural daylight also appears to influence your internal body clock, blood vessel function, circulation, mood, and sleep — systems that research links to brain health as you age. This matters because modern life keeps so many of us indoors beneath artificial lighting that rarely approaches the brightness found outdoors.

Researchers Identified Specific Daylight Targets Linked to Lower Dementia Risk

For the General Psychiatry study, investigators wanted to determine whether the amount of bright light received during an ordinary day influences long-term dementia risk. They equipped dementia-free adults with wrist-worn devices that continuously measured light exposure for seven days.

The participants, whose average age was just over 62, were then followed for a median of 8.1 years. During that time, 741 people developed dementia. Because the study used objective measurements rather than personal estimates, the findings provide a more reliable picture than self-report studies — though the authors note that wrist-worn sensors are only a coarse representation for the light actually reaching your eyes.

• Brighter daytime light was consistently linked to lower dementia risk — People whose average daytime light exposure exceeded 1,000 lux, roughly the brightness near a sunny window or outdoors on an overcast day (a practical comparison rather than a figure reported in the study), had a 16% lower risk of developing dementia than those who remained below that level, even after researchers adjusted for age, education, physical activity, smoking, diet, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, hearing loss, and other important risk factors.

Researchers also identified practical brightness targets. Spending more than 1.4 hours each day above 3,000 lux, more than 0.7 hours above 5,000 lux, or more than 0.45 hours above 7,000 lux was each associated with roughly 17% to 18% lower dementia risk than shorter exposure times. One caveat worth knowing: The wrist sensors used in this study had an approximately linear response only up to about 5,500 lux, so the 7,000-lux threshold should be read with more caution than the lower two.

• The greatest reductions appeared in people who already faced higher risk — The strongest protective associations were found among individuals exposed to higher nighttime light levels, people with an evening chronotype — meaning they naturally prefer later bedtimes and wake times — and those who carry the APOE4 gene variant, one of the strongest inherited risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease.

Depending on the group and the amount of daytime light received, brighter daytime light was associated with a 19% to 41% lower dementia risk. Researchers also found that the relationship between brighter daytime light and lower dementia risk remained consistent across different ages and between men and women, though they caution that the U.K.

Biobank cohort is healthier and less socioeconomically deprived than the general population, which limits how broadly the risk estimates translate to real life application.

• Daytime light outperformed several familiar dementia predictors — Using a single machine-learning model (XGBoost), researchers compared four daytime light measurements with 15 established dementia risk factors using the SHapley Additive exPlanations method.

Spending less than 0.70 hours each day above 5,000 lux ranked 10th of the 19 factors examined — a stronger predictor than alcohol consumption, obesity, air pollution, vitamin D supplement use, hearing loss, and traumatic brain injury. That doesn’t mean those factors are unimportant.

Instead, it highlights that daytime light has received far less attention than its predictive value deserves. Unlike many health markers that require laboratory testing, light exposure is also easy to measure with wearable devices, making it a practical way to identify people whose future dementia risk warrants closer attention.

• Healthier daily body rhythms explained part of the association — Researchers investigated whether brighter daytime light supported the body’s internal 24-hour timing system, known as circadian rest-activity rhythms. This system controls your sleep-wake cycle, hormone release, alertness, and many other biological functions.
Their analyses suggested these rhythms explained roughly 6% to 33% of the relationship between brighter daytime light and lower dementia risk, although these rest-activity mediation effects were no longer statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons, so the authors classify them as exploratory. These results suggest that a stronger daily rhythm may be one pathway through which brighter daylight relates to long-term brain health.

• The benefits extended beyond vitamin D alone — Brain imaging showed that brighter daytime light was associated with healthier characteristics in several brain regions. The clearest of these findings involved the fusiform cortex — an area that helps recognize faces and process complex visual information — which mediated about 9% of the association. It was also the only brain-structure mediator to survive correction for multiple comparisons.

Researchers also examined whether vitamin D explained the relationship between daylight and dementia but found no significant mediation effect. That finding suggests bright daytime light may influence brain health through pathways beyond raising vitamin D levels, though the study did not identify which ones.

If vitamin D alone doesn’t account for what the researchers observed, the question becomes which biological pathways do, and decades of research point to a set of responses that begin the moment sunlight reaches your body.

Sunlight Starts Powerful Biological Processes Beyond Vitamin D

Daylight is more than a vitamin D delivery system. It acts as an environmental signal that research links to circulation, hormone release, immune activity, sleep quality, and cellular energy production. An analysis by A Midwestern Doctor argues that modern indoor living has separated many people from the level of natural light the human body evolved to receive, making sunlight an often-overlooked part of overall health.2

• Your body creates compounds that supplements don’t provide — Ultraviolet light does much more than start vitamin D production. As sunlight reaches your skin, it also produces photoproducts such as lumisterol and tachysterol, which researchers continue to investigate for their biological roles.3

Research by Dr. Michael Holick suggests that sunlight stimulates the production of compounds that may support immune function, cardiovascular health, and mental well-being. He has also reported that vitamin D produced in your skin remains in your bloodstream two to three times longer than vitamin D taken by mouth because nearly all of it binds to transport proteins, whereas only about 60% of supplemental vitamin D does.4

• Sunlight includes its own built-in safety system — According to Holick, your body naturally limits vitamin D production during sun exposure. Once enough vitamin D precursor forms in your skin, continued ultraviolet exposure converts additional precursor into other photoproducts instead of endlessly producing vitamin D.

As he explains, “Mother Nature designed us” with a self-regulating system that prevents excessive vitamin D production through ordinary sun exposure. This differs from supplements, where excessively high doses can raise vitamin D levels beyond the body’s normal regulatory process.5

• Natural daylight is linked to better circulation throughout your body — One of the fastest responses described in the article involves nitric oxide, a signaling molecule released from your skin almost immediately after sun exposure. Nitric oxide relaxes blood vessels, allowing blood to move more freely throughout your body. Holick explains that sunlight “immediately release[s] nitric oxide” while also stimulating additional nitric oxide production, extending that effect.

Research also suggests sunlight supports cholesterol sulfate production and healthy fluid movement through tissues.6 For example, In a 20-year study of 29,518 Swedish women, those who avoided the sun had roughly 1.6 times the all-cause mortality of women with the highest sun exposure, and nonsmoking sun-avoiders had a life expectancy similar to smokers who got the most sun. The study was observational, so it cannot establish cause.7*

• Morning daylight helps set your body clock, mood, and sleep — Sunlight influences “clock genes” and “period genes,” which synchronize your body’s internal timing system.8 A well-aligned daily rhythm supports daytime alertness and deeper sleep at night.

Ultraviolet light also appears to stimulate beta-endorphins, your body’s natural mood-supporting chemicals, which researchers have proposed as one reason many people feel calmer and happier after spending time outdoors.9 Artificial indoor lighting doesn’t provide the full range of wavelengths found in natural sunlight, leaving your body without many of the biological signals that evolved alongside daylight exposure.

• Scientists continue to investigate how light communicates with your cells — Historical work by Alexander Gurwitsch proposed that living cells emit extremely faint ultraviolet light, sometimes called mitogenic radiation or biophotons, as part of cellular communication during growth and repair.10

Observations by A Midwestern Doctor also suggest blood and other tissues conduct light energy throughout the body, offering one explanation for why light exposure sometimes produces widespread effects instead of remaining limited to the skin. These concepts extend beyond established mainstream scientific consensus and remain areas of ongoing investigation, but together they reinforce the notion that sunlight influences far more than vitamin D production alone.

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

Increase Your Daily Bright Light Exposure for Optimal Health

One of the practical takeaways from the featured research is that your daily light environment may matter more than it seems. Bright daytime light isn’t a luxury. It’s a biological signal involved in many of the systems that research associates with long-term brain health. The good news is that this is one area where small, consistent habits add up. Instead of waiting until memory problems appear, you have the opportunity to build a daily routine that supports your brain now.

1. Make bright natural light part of your morning routine — If you spend most of your day indoors, start by stepping outside shortly after you wake up. Eat breakfast on a patio, walk the dog, take a short walk, or simply sit outside while you drink your coffee. If your schedule allows, build additional outdoor time into the middle of your day. The goal is to spend meaningful time in bright natural daylight instead of relying on dim indoor lighting from morning until evening.

2. Spend less of your day under dim indoor lighting — Many homes and offices provide only a fraction of the brightness found outdoors. If you work inside, move closer to windows whenever possible and take brief outdoor breaks throughout the day. Even a few scheduled daylight breaks are easier to maintain than trying to spend several uninterrupted hours outside. Each break adds to your daily bright-light total.

3. Protect your body’s natural daily rhythm — Your body clock appears to work best when it receives a strong contrast between bright days and dark nights. Flood your mornings with bright light, then dial down artificial light after sunset, especially overhead light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and screens, which are heavy in the blue wavelengths that delay sleep.

If you’re an evening person or work indoors most of the day, staying consistent with daytime light becomes even more important because the research found some of the strongest associations in higher-risk groups.

4. Support sunlight instead of trying to replace it — Whole-body sun exposure appears to offer benefits that extend beyond vitamin D alone. According to the research discussed earlier, sunlight also stimulates nitric oxide and other biologically active compounds that may influence circulation, mood, and your internal body clock.

Aim for regular, sensible sun exposure whenever conditions allow. If you still consume significant amounts of seed oils, such as corn, soybean, safflower, or canola oils, and other sources of linoleic acid (LA), avoid intense midday sun exposure (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) until you have reduced those foods for four to six months, then begin building up your exposure around solar noon.

This is because LA is a polyunsaturated fat that oxidizes easily, accumulates in your skin, and may increase your susceptibility to sunburn and skin damage. During that transition, build your sun exposure gradually. If your vitamin D level is low, I recommend working toward a blood level between 60 and 80 nanograms per milliliter (150 to 200 nanomoles per liter), with sunlight as your primary source whenever practical.

Talk to your health care provider about whether this testing is appropriate for you.

5. Support cellular energy every day — Bright light is most useful as part of a lifestyle that supports mitochondrial function. Eat enough carbohydrates to maintain healthy energy production instead of relying on very-low-carbohydrate eating patterns. For most adults, that means roughly 250 grams of targeted carbohydrates daily, adjusted upward if you’re very active.

Choose whole fruit and white rice first, followed by root vegetables and other minimally processed carbohydrate sources that fit your digestive tolerance.

Keep protein at about 0.6 to 0.8 grams per pound (1.32 to 1.76 grams per kilogram) of your ideal body weight, with roughly one-third coming from collagen-rich foods. Eliminate seed oils whenever possible and prepare food with tallow, ghee, or grass fed butter instead.

Pair those nutrition habits with regular movement to support the circadian and cellular-energy systems discussed above. To be clear, the dementia study measured light exposure only — it did not test diet or exercise as interventions.

FAQs About Daytime Light Exposure and Dementia

Q: What did the study find about daytime light and dementia risk?
A: The study found that people who received more bright light during the day had a lower risk of developing dementia over the next eight years. Those whose average daytime light exposure exceeded 1,000 lux had a 16% lower dementia risk than those exposed to dimmer light.

Q: Why does bright daylight benefit my brain beyond vitamin D?
A: Bright daylight does much more than help your body produce vitamin D. The featured research indicates that sunlight also stimulates nitric oxide and other biologically active compounds involved in circulation, mood, sleep, immune function, and your body’s internal clock. In the dementia study, vitamin D did not explain the association between daytime light and dementia risk, which suggests other pathways are involved. However, the study did not identify which ones.

Q: How much bright light should I aim for each day?
A: The research suggests aiming for regular exposure to bright natural daylight throughout the day rather than remaining indoors under dim artificial lighting. Practical targets included more than 1.4 hours above 3,000 lux, more than 0.7 hours above 5,000 lux, or more than 0.45 hours above 7,000 lux. Those light levels are often reached outdoors, though the researchers caution that the specific thresholds may not transfer directly to other populations.

Q: Who appeared to benefit the most from brighter daytime light?
A: The strongest associations were seen in people already considered at higher risk for dementia, including those with an evening chronotype, individuals exposed to higher nighttime light levels, and people who carry the APOE4 gene variant. Depending on the group, brighter daytime light was associated with a 19% to 41% lower dementia risk.

Q: What are the simplest ways to increase my daytime light exposure?
A: Build bright daylight into your daily routine. Step outside shortly after waking, eat breakfast outdoors when possible, take walks during the day, work near windows, and schedule short outdoor breaks instead of spending the entire day under indoor lighting. Pair regular sunlight with healthy eating, movement, and good sleep habits to support long-term brain health.

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.

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Intermittent fasting (IF) has become one of the most popular health trends in recent years, with benefits stating it helps boost immunity, reduces the risk of autoimmune diseases and diabetes, and even promotes longevity.1 However, this eating pattern is not a one-size-fits-all strategy, and a 2025 study demonstrates why.

While prolonged fasting has been praised for its potential metabolic benefits in adults, doing it during developmental years carries serious risks. This raises important questions about the effects of fasting trends, particularly among teenagers and young adults, and whether they could be setting the stage for future metabolic dysfunction rather than preventing it.

How Does Long-Term Intermittent Fasting Affect Insulin Production in Adolescents?

An animal study published in Cell Reports,2 conducted by researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), LMU Hospital Munich and Helmholtz Munich, investigated how intermittent fasting impacts metabolism at different stages of life.

• Researchers sought to identify how fasting cycles affect metabolic responses — The study examined how short-term and long-term fasting cycles affect mice subjects, taking note of the differences in their metabolic responses.3

• The mice subjects were divided into three age groups — They were grouped into adolescents (2 months old), middle-aged (eight months old) and older (18 months old). The researchers subjected these groups to intermittent fasting cycles, wherein they were not given food for one day, and then fed normally for two days.

• Researchers analyzed pancreatic beta cell function — Beta cells are responsible for regulating blood sugar by releasing insulin. By understanding how intermittent fasting affects beta cell function, they were able to determine who actually benefits from this eating strategy and who could be harmed by it. As reported by News-Medical.net:

“After ten weeks, insulin sensitivity improved in both the adult and older mice, meaning that their metabolism responded better to insulin produced by the pancreas. This is key to regulating blood sugar levels and preventing conditions like Type 2 diabetes.”4

• Longer fasts revealed notable differences — Initially all groups showed improvements in terms of how they handled sugar; however, significant differences between the age groups emerged the longer they fasted.5 While positive results were seen on the older mice, the adolescent mice group had a completely different outcome.

Apparently, the younger mice developed beta cell impairment after doing intermittent fasting — this means that adopting this eating strategy disrupted how their beta cells functioned and their ability to produce insulin was significantly weakened.

Beta Cell Impairment in Adolescent Mice Mimic Type 1 Diabetes

For the researchers, the results were quite unexpected. As explained by co-lead author Leonardo Matta, “Intermittent fasting is usually thought to benefit beta cells, so we were surprised to find that young mice produced less insulin after the extended fasting.”6

• Seeking to understand what triggered beta cell impairment — The researchers used single-cell sequencing to examine the blueprint of the pancreas, where they discovered that the impairment occurred because the beta cells failed to mature properly.

• Fasting lead to effects similar to Type 1 diabetes — One of the most striking findings was that gene expression patterns in fasting-exposed adolescent mice resembled those found in individuals with Type 1 diabetes, which is an autoimmune disorder wherein the body attacks its own beta cells, leading to a severe deficiency in insulin.

• Beta cells did not mature fully because of fasting — The researchers discovered that fasting-induced impairment in adolescent mice mirrored this process, with beta cells failing to reach full maturity and producing less insulin. According to lead author Peter Weber from Helmholtz Munich, “At some point, the cells in the adolescent mice stopped developing and produced less insulin.”

• No effects on beta cell maturity were seen in older mice — Since the older mice’s beta cells were already mature before they were put on intermittent fasting, they were unaffected and were able to reap the benefits from the experiment. This suggests that extended fasting at a young age could trigger metabolic conditions resembling early-stage diabetes, even in individuals without genetic predisposition. The researchers noted:

“The finding that longer IF periods may also have deleterious consequences is a novel finding with relevant implications, especially for using IF in adolescents and people at high T1D risk.

In light of our study, this supports the notion that during the period of development and maturation, IF might impair proper nutrient flux and hormonal balance required for proper cell differentiation and organ development.”7

Long-Term Fasting Impairs Protein Production and Cell Proliferation in Adolescents

Beta cells require a steady supply of nutrients and hormones to mature properly, but since insulin and glucose levels drop during fasting, cellular stress occurs instead. In fully developed beta cells, this stress activates protective mechanisms that enhance their function. However, in immature beta cells, it leads to dysfunction and reduced insulin output.

• Fasting disrupted key metabolic pathways — The study found that adolescent mice subjected to fasting experienced a reduction in key metabolic pathways related to beta cell growth, including decreased activation of the mTORC1 pathway, which is crucial for cell proliferation and function.

• It also affected production of essential proteins — Another notable finding was that adolescent mice had lower levels of key proteins, including MAFA, GLUT2, and NKX6.1. These proteins are essential for glucose transport and insulin synthesis and secretion, and having reduced levels indicates a fundamental disruption in pancreatic function.

• There’s also a notable difference in beta cellular proliferation between age groups — In adolescent mice, fasting led to a decrease in the replication and survival of beta cells. The study used a marker called BrdU to track cell proliferation, revealing that beta cells in fasting-exposed young mice were dividing at a much lower rate. In contrast, older mice showed no such decline, and their beta-cell function actually improved.8

Stephan Herzig, a professor at TUM and director of the Institute for Diabetes and Cancer at Helmholtz Munich, comments:

“Our study confirms that intermittent fasting is beneficial for adults, but it might come with risks for children and teenagers. The next step is digging deeper into the molecular mechanisms underlying these observations. If we better understand how to promote healthy beta cell development, it will open new avenues for treating diabetes by restoring insulin production.”9

Intermittent Fasting Is Not a ‘One-Size-Fits-All’ Strategy

It’s no secret that obesity is a growing problem among the youth today. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 14.7 million U.S. children ages 2 to 19 are now considered obese — that’s 19.7% or nearly one-fifth of all children in the country.10

Hence, many concerned parents, as well as older teens, are often looking for strategies to manage weight and most of them resort to fasting. For more facts about childhood obesity, read “Toddler Obesity Is on the Rise.”

But as the featured research shows, even a healthy strategy like intermittent fasting could backfire, especially for younger audiences. Instead of long-term fasting, I believe that a more effective way to regain your health and address metabolic issues like obesity and diabetes is to evaluate your lifestyle and diet. For children whose bodies are still developing, the key to long-term metabolic health isn’t restriction — it’s supporting their body’s natural growth and energy needs.

For young adults who are looking to change their eating habits, here are tips to ensure your metabolism stays strong and resilient:

• Eat enough carbohydrates to fuel cellular energy — Your body needs carbohydrates to produce insulin and maintain stable blood sugar. If you restrict carbs too much, you put unnecessary stress on beta cells, which leads to insulin dysfunction. A child’s optimal carbohydrate intake depends on age, activity level, and overall energy needs. Based on general dietary guidelines:

◦ Toddlers (1 to 3 years) — ~30 to 150 grams/day

◦ Young children (4 to 8 years) — ~150 to 180 grams/day

◦ Preteens (9 to 13 years) — ~180 to 220 grams/day

◦ Teenagers (14 to 18 years) — ~220 to 250+ grams/day (approaching adult needs, especially for active teens)

These amounts ensure proper cellular function, brain development, and sustained energy levels. Healthy sources include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes.

• Remove processed seed oils that disrupt insulin function — One of the biggest hidden threats to metabolic health is excess linoleic acid from seed oils. These fats accumulate in your tissues and interfere with mitochondrial energy production, increasing stress on beta cells.

If you’re eating out frequently or consuming packaged foods, you’re likely getting too much. Replace seed oils with saturated fats from tallow, grass fed butter, or ghee. Avoid fried foods at restaurants, as even “healthy” options are often cooked in industrial oils.

• Prioritize balanced meal timing over fasting — Instead of skipping meals, aim for consistent eating patterns that support metabolic stability. Your body thrives on regular nutrient intake, especially during adolescence when growth and hormonal balance are at their peak.

Eating every three to five hours ensures beta cells receive a steady glucose supply, reducing stress on insulin production. If you’ve been practicing fasting and feel sluggish, cold, or have irregular energy levels, it’s a sign to adjust your approach and incorporate more frequent meals. To learn more about meal timing, read “How Meal Timing Impacts Your Blood Sugar Levels.”

• Get sunlight exposure for metabolic support — Your metabolism isn’t just influenced by food — sunlight also plays a crucial role in energy production. Morning sunlight exposure helps regulate circadian rhythms, which are tied to insulin sensitivity. Sunlight also promotes mitochondrial energy production, supporting overall cellular function.

If you’ve been avoiding the sun or spending most of your time indoors, gradually increase your daily sun exposure, but avoid high-intensity sunlight if you’re still clearing vegetable oils from your system. When exposed to peak sunlight, the linoleic acid (LA) in these oils oxidize in your body, triggering inflammation and DNA damage.

To mitigate this problem, you need to work to purge LA from your body. In the meantime, avoid midday sun exposure until you’ve been off seed oils for at least six months. Go outside in the early morning or late afternoon instead. For more tips on optimizing sun exposure, check out “2024 International Virtual Vitamin D Forum Unlocks the Power of Vitamin D.”

• Support gut health to improve blood sugar regulation — Your gut microbiome plays a major role in how your body processes carbohydrates and manages insulin function. If you have digestive issues, bloating, or irregular energy levels, your microbiome might not be supporting you properly.

Start by introducing Akkermansia muciniphila, a beneficial gut bacterium that strengthens the gut lining and improves insulin sensitivity. Avoid excessive fiber if your gut is compromised — stick to easily digestible carbs first, then gradually reintroduce more fiber as your digestion improves. Butyrate supplementation is another option.

The key to a strong metabolism isn’t restriction — it’s providing the right fuel, balancing meal timing, and removing metabolic stressors. Addressing these root causes now will set the foundation for long-term metabolic resilience.

FAQs — Commonly Asked Questions About Intermittent Fasting for Adolescents

Q: Why is intermittent fasting during adolescence different from fasting as an adult?

A: Intermittent fasting impacts metabolism differently depending on age. The research found that while adults and older individuals experienced improved insulin sensitivity and better glucose regulation, adolescent mice developed impaired beta-cell function.

Since beta cells are responsible for producing insulin, this means fasting disrupted their ability to regulate blood sugar properly, which leads to long-term metabolic issues.

Q: How does fasting affect insulin production in younger individuals?

A: The study revealed that fasting-exposed adolescent mice had fewer mature beta cells and lower levels of insulin production. Their pancreatic cells failed to develop properly, mimicking patterns seen in Type 1 diabetes.

Insulin production is crucial for maintaining stable blood sugar levels, and when beta cells don’t mature correctly, the risk of insulin resistance, blood sugar imbalances, and metabolic dysfunction increases. In contrast, older individuals whose beta cells were already fully developed were able to benefit from fasting without these negative effects.

Q: What are the risks of long-term intermittent fasting for teenagers?

A: Long-term fasting in adolescents leads to impaired insulin secretion, increased cellular stress, and disrupted metabolic regulation. The research found that beta-cell function declined in young mice that underwent prolonged fasting, leading to lower insulin production and reduced ability to handle glucose.

This could set the stage for insulin resistance, metabolic dysfunction, and a higher risk of developing Type 1 or 2 diabetes later in life. Since the adolescent body is still developing, fasting could interfere with crucial hormonal and cellular processes needed for lifelong metabolic stability.

Q: What can teenagers and young adults do instead of fasting for metabolic health?

A: Instead of restricting food intake through fasting, young individuals need to focus on balanced eating patterns that support cellular energy and beta-cell function. Eating enough carbohydrates — around 250 to 300 grams per day — ensures stable insulin production and metabolic regulation. Prioritize whole-food carbohydrates like fruit, root vegetables, and fiber-rich foods to support long-term glucose control.

Removing processed seed oils, optimizing gut health, and getting regular sunlight exposure are also key strategies to maintain healthy metabolic function without the effects associated with fasting.

Q: Can intermittent fasting permanently damage metabolism in younger individuals?

A: The long-term effects of adolescent fasting on metabolism are still being explored, but the study suggests that prolonged fasting at a young age could cause lasting disruptions in insulin function. Since fasting-exposed adolescent mice showed genetic patterns similar to those seen in Type 1 diabetes, there is concern that fasting causes metabolic stress that leads to long-term dysfunction.

However, adopting proper nutrition and lifestyle habits — such as regular meal timing, adequate carbohydrate intake, and avoiding metabolic disruptors like seed oils — helps restore and protect metabolic health.

Every heartbeat, breath, and thought depends on a steady flow of energy inside your cells. That energy comes from mitochondria — the microscopic engines that keep your body running. When those engines slow down, it reveals itself in subtle ways — small tasks feel overwhelming, your focus slips halfway through the day, and your endurance fades faster than it used to.

Over time, poor mitochondrial function contributes to everything from stubborn weight gain to premature aging. One of the most powerful ways to keep those energy systems working efficiently is through diet. Among the nutrients your cells rely on, the amino acid leucine stands out for its unique influence on cellular energy. Commonly associated with muscle repair, leucine also plays a deeper role in how your cells sense nutrients and regulate energy output.

Recent advances in mitochondrial research are revealing how much this single amino acid matters for your overall metabolism, endurance, and vitality. Findings from a 2025 Nature Cell Biology study highlight a hidden mechanism that explains why getting enough high-quality protein transforms how your body produces energy at the most fundamental level.1

Leucine Turns on the Mitochondrial ‘Power Switch’

The Nature Cell Biology study revealed how leucine directly influences how mitochondria respond to changes in nutrient availability.2 Researchers found that leucine stops key mitochondrial membrane proteins from breaking down.

This stabilizes the machinery that imports new proteins into mitochondria, allowing them to grow stronger and produce more energy. Leucine helps your cells “upgrade” their power plants, giving you more stamina, better metabolic control, and sharper brain function.

• The study focused on how leucine keeps mitochondria young and efficient — Researchers examined this process across species — from tiny roundworms to human lung cells — and found the same pattern. When leucine levels rise, mitochondrial proteins are preserved instead of discarded, improving overall respiration and energy output. This means your body uses leucine not just for building muscle, but also for maintaining metabolic efficiency and resisting fatigue.

• Leucine activates mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin), which then silences cellular stress sensors — Normally, these sensors detect low amino acid levels and trigger protein breakdown to conserve resources. When leucine activates mTOR, it inhibits these stress pathways, allowing your cells to shift from breakdown mode to building mode. This is why leucine uniquely preserves mitochondrial proteins while other amino acids don’t have the same effect.

When leucine disables the sensors’ brakes, it reduces a protein responsible for tagging mitochondrial components for destruction. As a result, mitochondria keep their essential outer membrane proteins, giving them more capacity to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP) — your body’s cellular energy currency.

Because mitochondria power every organ — from your heart to your brain — enhancing their efficiency improves nearly every aspect of health. People struggling with low energy, insulin resistance, or slow metabolism could benefit most from optimizing leucine intake. It’s not about more protein overall — it’s about hitting the leucine “sweet spot” that tells your cells to rebuild, not degrade.

• Leucine’s effects appear within hours, not weeks — In laboratory tests, cells treated with leucine for just three hours showed a measurable increase in mitochondrial respiration, meaning they burned fuel more efficiently.

This rapid response suggests that even a single high-leucine meal — such as a breakfast with eggs or whey protein — temporarily supercharges your cells’ ability to create energy. Over time, regular leucine intake helps sustain that performance by keeping mitochondria healthy and robust.

• Leucine’s action is highly selective and efficient — Out of many amino acids tested, leucine had the strongest effect on stabilizing outer mitochondrial membrane proteins. Other branched-chain amino acids, like valine and isoleucine, showed weaker or no response. This specificity makes leucine uniquely powerful for regulating energy metabolism — a finding that supports why high-leucine foods are often associated with athletic recovery and metabolic resilience.

The mTOR Connection — Why Leucine Is the Master Metabolic Switch

Here’s what the research doesn’t explicitly state but the mechanisms clearly reveal: leucine works primarily through mTOR — and that’s exactly why it’s so powerful. Among all amino acids, leucine is by far the strongest activator of mTOR, triggering this pathway 10 to 20 times more effectively than other amino acids.3 If you’ve been told that mTOR activation is “bad” because of its association with aging research, you’ve been given an incomplete picture. The truth is more nuanced:

• Pulsatile mTOR activation from meals is beneficial — When you eat a leucine-rich meal, mTOR surges briefly, then returns to baseline. This temporary activation tells your cells to build, repair, and strengthen mitochondria. It’s a natural metabolic rhythm that humans evolved with.

• Chronic mTOR overactivation is the problem — This happens with constant overfeeding, excessive calorie intake, and never giving your body periods of fasting or lower protein intake. It’s the difference between healthy growth signals and metabolic exhaustion.

• mTOR is how leucine drives mitochondrial improvements — When leucine activates mTOR, it triggers a cascade that increases PGC-1α (the master regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis), enhances mitochondrial protein synthesis, and improves mitochondrial dynamics. This is why the effects appear within hours and why leucine outperforms other amino acids so dramatically.

The rapid improvements in oxygen consumption and ATP production seen in the Nature Cell Biology study? That’s classic mTOR signaling at work. The stabilization of mitochondrial membrane proteins? Driven by mTOR’s influence on protein turnover. The enhanced cellular energy output? A direct result of mTOR activating the machinery that builds and maintains healthy mitochondria.

Understanding this connection helps explain why leucine-rich foods have such profound effects on energy, recovery, and metabolic health. You’re not just feeding your muscles — you’re sending a precise signal through one of your body’s most important metabolic pathways.

Leucine Effectively Teaches Your Cells to Conserve Their Best Components

The research team discovered that leucine treatment increased the total number of mitochondrial proteins, especially those tied to energy metabolism and respiration.4 This included key import machinery such as a gatekeeper protein that allows energy-building enzymes to enter mitochondria. By protecting this gatekeeper protein and related proteins, leucine enables a kind of mitochondrial “remodeling,” making your cells more capable of meeting energy demands.

• This remodeling translates into higher oxygen use and better performance — Both in worms and human cells, leucine treatment increased oxygen consumption — the measure scientists use to quantify mitochondrial respiration.

The improvement was so strong that when the researchers blocked protein import using a mitochondrial inhibitor, leucine’s energy-boosting effects disappeared. This confirmed that leucine works through the mitochondrial import system, not by stimulating new protein synthesis.

• The effects were so pronounced that blocking leucine’s pathway reduced fertility — When the scientists inhibited leucine breakdown in worms, their mitochondrial protein degradation stopped. This unbalanced state meant the worms’ fertility got worse when they were under stress.

This indicates that too much or too little leucine balance disrupts mitochondrial homeostasis. In human cell tests, tumor cells with high leucine levels were more resistant to mitochondrial stress, showing that the same pathway influences how cells survive and adapt under strain.

• Your mitochondria respond to leucine like a thermostat to temperature — They sense abundance and adjust output. When leucine signals that nutrients are plentiful, mitochondria “expand” their machinery to prepare for increased energy demand.

This adaptation happens through a rapid reduction in protein degradation and a buildup of metabolic enzymes. Think of it as switching your body from economy mode to performance mode, optimizing energy flow for movement, focus, and healing.

• Leucine gives your mitochondria the green light to work harder and smarter — It restores energy output without requiring more calories. That’s why diets rich in high-quality animal proteins — grass fed beef, eggs, dairy, and whey — tend to promote metabolic resilience. They deliver enough leucine to keep your cellular engines running efficiently.

• This discovery opens the door to personalized energy nutrition — Instead of chasing supplements that promise to “boost metabolism,” this research suggests that tuning your leucine intake could achieve measurable improvements in mitochondrial health.

How to Use Leucine to Boost Your Cellular Energy

Your mitochondria respond directly to what you eat, and leucine is one of the most powerful ways to signal your cells to make more energy. If you’ve been feeling drained, unfocused, or slow to recover after workouts or illness, this amino acid could be a turning point. The goal here isn’t to overload on protein but to supply the right kind, in the right amounts, to strengthen your mitochondria from the inside out.

1. Start with complete, high-quality protein — The easiest way to get enough leucine is through whole foods rich in complete protein. Grass fed beef, pastured eggs, and dairy are the most efficient sources. A meal or snack containing 25 to 35 grams of protein provides about 2 to 3 grams of leucine — the amount often recommended to maximize muscle health in older adults.5 If you’re not a big meat eater, a single scoop of whey protein offers a similar dose and is easy to digest.

Most adults need about 0.8 grams of protein per pound of ideal body weight (or about 1.76 grams per kilogram) daily. About one-third of your protein should come from collagen-rich foods such as bone broth, pure gelatin powder without sugar and other additives, oxtail, shanks, or grass fed ground beef containing connective tissue.

Leucine Cheat Sheet

Food (serving)
Protein (g)
Est. leucine (g)

Lean beef, cooked, 3 oz
22 to 26
2.3

Whey isolate, 25 to 30 g
23 to 27
2.5 to 3.0

Cottage cheese, 1 cup
25 to 28
2.0 to 2.5

Eggs, 2 large
12 to 14
1.0 to 1.2

Tempeh, 150 g
28 to 30
2.0 to 2.1

Milk, 16 oz
16
1.4 to 1.6

2. Time your leucine intake around activity or fatigue — Your body is most responsive to leucine after physical or mental exertion, when your cells need to repair and recharge. Have a high-leucine food or shake within 30 minutes of exercise or at times of low energy. This helps your mitochondria replenish faster, keeping your metabolism efficient and preventing that mid-afternoon crash.

3. Include leucine-rich plant options if you avoid animal foods — For those who eat a plant-based diet, fermented soy foods such as tempeh are among the most practical sources. A 150-gram serving delivers about 28 to 30 grams of protein and just over 2 grams of leucine. Pairing it with carbohydrate-rich foods such as rice or fruit improves absorption and helps deliver the amino acid directly into your cells’ energy pathways.

4. Support your mitochondria with balanced nutrition — Leucine works best when your overall diet supports mitochondrial health. Avoid seed oils, as they’re high in the polyunsaturated fat linoleic acid (LA), which damages the same membranes leucine helps stabilize.

Focus instead on saturated fats like tallow, grass fed butter, or ghee, and aim for 250 grams of carbohydrates per day from healthy sources like fruits and root vegetables to supply the glucose your mitochondria use to generate ATP. Think of it as feeding your energy engine clean, efficient fuel.

5. Track how your body responds and adjust gradually — Everyone’s metabolism and activity level are different. Notice how your energy, sleep, and focus change when you increase your leucine intake. If you feel stronger and more alert after meals, that’s your body signaling improved mitochondrial performance.

By focusing on these five steps, you give your cells the raw materials and signals they need to operate at full capacity. The difference isn’t subtle — it’s the feeling of your energy coming back online, the clarity returning to your thoughts, and the resilience that follows when your mitochondria finally have the support they’ve been waiting for.

FAQs About Leucine

Q: What exactly does leucine do for my body?

A: Leucine is an essential amino acid that acts as both a building block for muscle and a metabolic signal that tells your cells to make more energy. It stabilizes the outer membranes of your mitochondria so they work more efficiently. When you get enough leucine, your body burns fuel more cleanly, improving stamina, focus, and recovery.

Q: How much leucine do I need each day?

A: Most research suggests that 2 to 3 grams of leucine per meal is ideal for activating muscle health benefits. This amount is found in about 25 to 35 grams of high-quality protein, such as 3 ounces of cooked grass fed beef, a scoop of whey protein, or a cup of grass fed cottage cheese.

Q: What foods are the best natural sources of leucine?

A: Grass fed beef, pastured eggs, and dairy products like cottage cheese or whey protein are the richest sources. For those following a plant-based diet, fermented soy foods such as tempeh are the best option, providing roughly 2 grams of leucine per 150-gram serving.

Q: How quickly will I feel the effects of leucine?

A: According to research in Nature Cell Biology, leucine begins improving mitochondrial respiration within hours of intake.6 Even one leucine-rich meal — such as a breakfast with eggs or a whey protein shake — temporarily boosts cellular energy output. Regular intake helps sustain these effects, improving vitality, metabolism, and endurance over time.

Q: Is leucine supplementation necessary if I eat enough protein?

A: For most people who regularly eat high-quality protein from whole foods, supplementation isn’t needed. The key is consistency and balance — getting enough leucine with each meal rather than relying on large amounts from a single source. The goal isn’t more protein overall, but the right type of protein that signals your cells to rebuild and recharge efficiently.

Q: I’ve heard mTOR activation accelerates aging. Should I avoid leucine?

A: No. This is one of the most misunderstood concepts in nutrition science. mTOR activation from eating high-quality protein is fundamentally different from chronic mTOR overactivation. When you eat a leucine-rich meal, mTOR spikes briefly (two to three hours), drives beneficial processes like mitochondrial repair and muscle maintenance, then returns to baseline.

This is healthy metabolic signaling. The problem occurs when people constantly overeat and never allow mTOR to cycle down through fasting or calorie restriction. The solution isn’t avoiding leucine — it’s eating high-quality protein in the right amounts with appropriate fasting windows.

Ultraprocessed foods have moved from a niche nutrition concern to the center of a national debate, and researchers recently asked a question that gets skipped in most of that conversation: What do Americans actually want their government to do about it? Not whether people think these foods are healthy, but which specific policies they’d support — official definitions, dietary guidance, school restrictions, grocery store limits, or taxes.

Unlike minimally processed foods, ultraprocessed foods are industrial formulations made with ingredients and additives that are rarely found in a home kitchen. They often contain refined starches, added sugars, industrial oils, flavor enhancers, colors, emulsifiers, and preservatives designed to improve shelf life, taste, or texture.

Researchers from Purdue University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign reported that Americans viewed these foods as convenient and tasty, yet also unhealthy, unsafe, unnatural, and addictive.1 What’s more revealing, though, is how those perceptions translated into support, or lack of support, for actual government intervention.

Meanwhile, U.S. nutrition guidance is undergoing its biggest shift in decades: for the first time, how a food is made, not just what’s in it, is becoming part of the official health conversation. That debate has expanded beyond scientific journals into schools, grocery stores, and federal nutrition policy.

I believe understanding both the science and public opinion gives you a stronger foundation for making food choices that match your own priorities instead of relying on marketing claims alone. The next step is to look closely at what the first study discovered about which ultraprocessed food policies Americans support most and why those preferences differ across the population.

Americans Back Education More Than Food Taxes

A cross-sectional survey study published in PLOS One examined how 990 U.S. adults viewed six different government approaches to ultraprocessed foods, including education, restrictions, and taxes. Researchers recruited participants from across the U.S. during February 2025 using quota sampling stratified by gender, age, income, and region. The authors note the final sample skewed toward lower-income households, one of four limitations they identify.

The researchers wanted to learn which government actions Americans actually supported and what beliefs influenced those opinions. Public opinion often shapes future nutrition policies. Instead of assuming what consumers want, the study measured it directly and identified which ideas gained the broadest acceptance and which faced the strongest resistance.

• Support depended on what people believed about ultraprocessed foods — The survey found that opinions were driven less by politics alone than by how participants viewed ultraprocessed foods themselves. People who believed these foods were unsafe or addictive consistently expressed greater support for government action, while people who viewed them as especially tasty were less likely to favor restrictions on their availability.

In other words, personal beliefs about these foods strongly influenced whether respondents thought education, restrictions, or other policy changes were appropriate. The researchers also found that people who felt more confident identifying ultraprocessed foods generally expressed stronger support for several policy options, suggesting that knowledge and awareness influence public attitudes.

• Different groups supported different policies for different reasons — Younger adults were less likely to support information-based policies such as official definitions and dietary guidance, yet they were more supportive of restricting ultraprocessed foods in grocery stores. Parents with children younger than 18 years were also more likely to support grocery-store restrictions, while people receiving food assistance expressed greater support for limiting ultraprocessed foods in retail settings.

Lower-income participants were less likely to support taxes or certain restrictions affecting food assistance programs. Political affiliation also influenced some responses, although not every policy divided people along political lines. For example, support for school restrictions remained comparatively broad across groups, showing that protecting children generated wider agreement than other proposals.

• Taxes ranked far behind other ideas — Information-based strategies consistently received stronger support than policies that increased costs or reduced consumer choice. Restricting ultraprocessed foods in schools attracted considerably more support than restricting them in grocery stores or limiting purchases through federal food assistance programs.

By comparison, taxing ultraprocessed foods was the least popular of the six options at 43.6% support, well behind an official definition of ultraprocessed foods (84.7%) and clearer dietary guidance (82.4%), though only modestly behind grocery-store restrictions (50.8%). School restrictions drew 68.4% support.

If you want to understand where nutrition policy is most likely to move first, this finding offers an important clue. Policymakers often advance proposals that already have substantial public support because those measures face fewer obstacles than highly controversial taxes or outright bans.

• Knowledge gives you an advantage when food labels remain confusing — One interesting finding involved what researchers called “subjective knowledge,” meaning how confident people felt about recognizing ultraprocessed foods while shopping. This didn’t necessarily mean participants were always correct. Instead, it measured whether they believed they could identify these products.

Researchers found that greater confidence generally corresponded with stronger support for several government actions. That highlights an important practical lesson. The easier it becomes to recognize heavily processed products, the easier it becomes to compare foods, ask better questions, and make purchasing decisions that match your own priorities instead of relying solely on front-of-package marketing claims.

• The study explains attitudes rather than proving health effects — Unlike a clinical trial that measures changes in blood pressure, weight, or disease risk, this research focused on public opinion. It didn’t test whether any proposed policy improved health, nor did it examine biological changes inside the body because that was outside the study’s purpose. Instead, it identified the beliefs that predict support for different nutrition policies.

Researchers found that perceptions of safety, addictiveness, and personal knowledge consistently influenced public attitudes more strongly than many other characteristics.

That makes the findings valuable because they help explain why some food policies gain public acceptance while others struggle, offering insight into how future discussions about ultraprocessed foods are likely to develop. That preference for clarity over restriction isn’t just theoretical; it’s already showing up in federal policy.

Federal Dietary Guidelines Now Target Highly Processed Foods

In an editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health, nutrition scientist Marion Nestle wrote that the 2025 – 2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans marked the first time since the guidelines began in 1980 that they advised people to limit “highly processed foods.”2

While the document avoided the specific term “ultraprocessed foods,” Nestle explained that the recommendation clearly referred to them because the scientific review supporting the guidelines repeatedly discussed ultraprocessed foods and cited research on their health effects. She notes that the guidelines use “highly processed” as a euphemism, adopted because no consensus definition of “ultraprocessed” yet exists.

This matters because federal dietary guidelines influence everything from school meals and public health campaigns to nutrition education provided by doctors and dietitians. Even small wording changes often signal a broader shift in how nutrition experts think about healthy eating.

This is also worth reading alongside the survey findings above. Americans didn’t rank official definitions and clearer dietary guidance as their top choices by accident; those are exactly the tools this guideline update relies on. Rather than restricting where ultraprocessed foods can be sold or taxing them at checkout, the federal government chose the same lever the public said it trusted most: better information. Whether that information actually changes what people buy and eat is a separate question.

• More than 100 observational studies have examined diets high in ultraprocessed foods — Nearly all of them report higher risks of chronic disease and earlier death among people who consume more of these products.3,4 Observational studies compare people’s eating habits and health over time instead of assigning diets in a laboratory, so they identify relationships rather than proving direct cause and effect.

Even so, when dozens of studies continue pointing in the same direction, researchers often view the overall pattern as meaningful. If you regularly rely on packaged convenience foods, that growing consistency gives you another reason to look more closely at how much of your diet comes from heavily manufactured products.

• One tightly controlled experiment produced striking results — The article highlighted an unusually rigorous clinical trial of 20 adults in which volunteers lived inside a metabolic ward, meaning researchers provided every meal and carefully monitored exactly what participants ate.5

Each participant ate an ultraprocessed diet for two weeks and a minimally processed diet for two weeks, in randomized order. Because the volunteers remained under continuous supervision, they couldn’t underestimate or misreport their food intake. Researchers compared nutritionally similar diets that differed mainly in how processed the foods were.

Participants eating the ultraprocessed diet consumed about 500 extra calories every day without realizing it.6 That finding attracted attention because the foods contained similar amounts of nutrients, yet participants still ate substantially more. If your goal is to manage your appetite or maintain a healthy weight, this study suggests that the structure and formulation of food itself influence how much you naturally consume, not just the nutrition label.

Nestle notes the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee excluded this trial from its review because it was too short and too small to meet the committee’s inclusion criteria — a decision she argues it should have made an exception to, since metabolic-ward studies are expensive and few volunteers will stay in one for long.

• Scientists continue to study why these foods encourage overeating — One criticism of ultraprocessed food research has been that the biological mechanisms are still under investigation. The article acknowledged that point but explained that newer clinical studies have produced biologically plausible results that support earlier observations.

“Biologically plausible” means the findings fit with how the human body is known to function rather than appearing random or contradictory. Researchers continue investigating how industrial processing, food texture, flavor combinations, and other characteristics influence appetite and calorie intake. That ongoing work helps explain why two foods with similar nutrition facts don’t always produce the same response after you eat them.

• Politics and industry influence nutrition debates as much as science — The article devoted substantial attention to how scientific evidence becomes public policy. Nestle argued that disagreements often center less on whether ultraprocessed foods deserve attention and more on how governments respond. Some groups prefer education alone, while others support broader policy tools that make healthier foods easier to obtain.

The article also discussed financial relationships between some contributors to the scientific reviews and food industry organizations, raising questions about conflicts of interest.

Specifically, Nestle reports that seven of the nine writers of the research reviews disclosed financial ties to food industry groups — four to meat and dairy organizations — leading her to conclude the guidelines “appear to have been captured by the meat and dairy industries” and to criticize them for encouraging more meat, full-fat dairy, butter, and beef tallow.

However, I don’t share Nestle’s concern about healthy fats. I don’t consider a recommendation to eat butter, tallow, and full-fat dairy a warning sign — I regard those traditional, stable fats as far healthier than the industrial seed oils that dominate ultraprocessed foods.

Where I agree with her is the broader point: Even guidelines framed as pure science are shaped by who’s in the room when they’re written, which is exactly why learning to read an ingredient list yourself, rather than waiting for an official verdict, is worth doing regardless of what future guidelines say.

• Education alone rarely changes eating habits — Information, while valuable, doesn’t consistently change what people buy or eat. Nestle argued that long-term dietary improvement requires healthier foods to become easier to find, more affordable, and more accessible through a combination of education and broader policy approaches.

If you’re trying to reduce your intake of heavily processed foods, this idea offers a practical challenge. Instead of relying entirely on willpower, take inventory of your own food environment. Look at what fills your pantry, what appears most often in your grocery cart, and which foods are easiest to grab during a busy day. Small changes to those daily habits often make healthy choices much easier to repeat.

Build a Food Environment That Works for You

Your daily food choices become much easier when you understand what you’re buying and make healthier options the easiest ones to reach. Focus on changing the environment around your meals instead of relying on willpower alone. Small, consistent changes add up, especially when they become part of your routine.

1. Build most of your meals around minimally processed foods — I recommend making foods that look close to the way they came from nature, the foundation of your diet. Fill your plate with vegetables, fruits, intact whole grains if you tolerate them, pasture-raised eggs, and grass fed dairy and meats instead of foods built from long ingredient lists.

Cut out ultraprocessed foods, especially those made with vegetable oils such as soybean, corn, safflower, sunflower, and canola oil. These oils are high in linoleic acid (LA), a polyunsaturated fat that oxidizes easily under heat and storage.

Those oxidation byproducts accumulate in your tissues over time and are thought to compromise mitochondrial function — the tiny structures inside your cells that produce energy — which is part of why diets high in LA are linked to inflammation and metabolic disruption.

Replace vegetable oils with more stable fats such as grass fed butter, ghee, or tallow. I recommend keeping your daily LA intake below 5 grams, with a goal of about 2 grams whenever possible. If you’re unsure where to start, challenge yourself to make at least two meals each day from ingredients that require little or no industrial processing.

2. Read ingredient lists before you trust front-of-package claims — A package that says “natural,” “high protein,” “whole grain,” or “heart healthy” doesn’t automatically make it a better choice. Turn the package over and read the ingredient list first.

If you see vegetable oils, refined starches, added sugars, artificial flavors, colors, emulsifiers, or preservatives near the top, place it back on the shelf and compare it with a simpler alternative. That habit gives you far more control than relying on marketing language.

3. Replace convenience foods one category at a time — Trying to overhaul your entire pantry in one afternoon often leads to frustration. Instead, pick one category every week. Replace vegetable oils first, then frozen entrées and packaged snacks. Then sugary breakfast foods. Continue until most of your routine foods come from simpler ingredients. If you enjoy tracking progress, keep a checklist and cross off one category at a time. Small victories make lasting habits much easier to build.

4. Make healthier foods the easiest choice in your home — Your environment influences your decisions every day. Keep washed fruit where you immediately see it. Prepare vegetables before you become hungry. Cook extra portions so leftovers become tomorrow’s quick meal instead of reaching for packaged convenience foods. If you’re a busy parent or work long hours, this one habit often saves both time and money while reducing your reliance on highly processed products.

5. Stay informed instead of waiting for food policy to change — Government dietary guidelines will continue to evolve as new research becomes available, but your next meal is your decision. I recommend learning how to recognize heavily processed foods yourself rather than depending entirely on labels or advertising.

The more confident you become at identifying foods that require little industrial processing, the easier it becomes to shop with purpose and build eating habits that match your long-term health goals.

FAQs About Ultraprocessed Food Policies

Q: What are ultraprocessed foods, and why are they receiving more attention?
A: Ultraprocessed foods are industrially manufactured products made with refined ingredients and additives that are rarely found in a home kitchen. They often contain refined starches, added sugars, vegetable oils, artificial flavors, colors, emulsifiers, and preservatives.
Research linking diets high in these foods with chronic disease has prompted growing public interest and led the federal government to recommend limiting highly processed foods for the first time in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Q: What did Americans support most in the survey about ultraprocessed food policies?
A: Americans showed the strongest support for education rather than taxes. Survey participants favored official definitions of ultraprocessed foods (84.7% support) and clearer dietary guidance (82.4%), while restrictions in schools (68.4%) received more support than restrictions in grocery stores (50.8%). Taxes on ultraprocessed foods were the least popular proposal, at 43.6%.

Q: Why do ultraprocessed foods often lead people to eat more?
A: One tightly controlled clinical trial of 20 adults living in a metabolic ward, each of whom ate both diets for two weeks in randomized order, found that participants consumed about 500 additional calories each day on the ultraprocessed diet without realizing it, even though the meals contained similar amounts of nutrients.7
That is roughly the equivalent of an extra meal a day. Researchers are continuing to study why this happens, but current evidence suggests that the way these foods are formulated influences appetite and calorie intake beyond what appears on the nutrition label.

Q: What is the most effective first step for reducing ultraprocessed foods?
A: Focus on replacing them with minimally processed foods instead of trying to overhaul your entire diet overnight. Build meals around foods with simple ingredient lists, avoid products made with vegetable oils such as soybean, corn, sunflower, safflower, and canola oil, and replace those oils with more stable fats like grass fed butter, ghee, or tallow. Reading ingredient lists instead of relying on front-of-package marketing also makes healthier choices much easier.

Q: Why does understanding food policy matter if I simply want to eat healthier?
A: Nutrition guidelines influence school meals, public health programs, and the information consumers receive about food. Learning how those recommendations are developed and understanding the science behind them helps you evaluate nutrition advice and make food choices based on evidence instead of advertising or food marketing.

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.

Test Your Knowledge with Today’s Quiz!
Take today’s quiz to see how much you’ve learned from yesterday’s Mercola.com article.

Which form of magnesium is generally better absorbed by the body?

Organic forms
A 2021 paper published in Nutrition found that organic magnesium forms were generally more bioavailable than inorganic forms, and absorption also varied with dose. Learn more.
Inorganic forms
Oxide forms
Sulfate forms

When was the last time you danced or learned to play a musical instrument? How about painting or doing a mural? You may not realize it, but these seemingly mundane hobbies, activities that allow you to exercise your creativity, may be doing more for you than you realize — they’re helping your brain stay young and healthy.

Research shows that people who consistently engage in creative tasks tend to have brains that function several years younger than their chronological age. Creative engagement keeps your neural networks active, helping your brain become more adaptable and resilient.

What’s more, even short bursts of creativity can make a difference. Trying something new, learning an unfamiliar skill, or taking time to express yourself all give the brain a workout that strengthens its internal wiring. It’s a reminder that creativity isn’t only for artists — it’s a form of preventive care for the mind.

Creative Engagement Strengthens Brain Networks and Sharpens Mental Function

Research published in Nature Communications explored how creativity affects brain function and biological aging. The study set out to determine whether creative expertise — activities like music, painting, dance, or even playing certain video games — could measurably delay how quickly the brain ages.1

Using cutting-edge brain imaging and machine learning, researchers found that individuals deeply involved in creative practices, such as tango dancers, musicians, visual artists, and strategy gamers exhibited “younger” brains than their non-creative counterparts.

• The study design — Led by an international team headed by researchers from the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), the research brought together participants from 13 nations, namely Canada, Chile, Argentina, Cuba, Colombia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Poland, and Germany. It is one of the largest and most comprehensive studies ever conducted on the relationship between creativity and brain health.

• The research involved nearly 15,000 participants — 1,472 adults between 18 and 80 were included in the study. Some were professional artists while others were individuals with little creative experience. The researchers designed two key experiments, each exploring creativity’s effects from a different angle.

• The first experiment was an expertise comparison evaluating long-term creativity — The researchers compared experts vs. non-experts across four creative domains, including tango dancing (Argentina), music performance (Canada), visual arts (Germany) and real-time strategy gaming (Poland). The experts had years of dedicated practice, while the controls were matched for age, education, sex, and geography but lacked artistic training.

• The second study was a learning experiment, which looked at short-term creativity — A separate group of non-experts underwent 30 hours of video game training in StarCraft II, a complex strategy game requiring creativity, adaptability, and rapid decision-making.

This was done over three to four weeks, with each participant playing between five and 10 hours per week. Their brain activity was recorded before and after training, alongside a control group trained on Hearthstone, a simpler, turn-based game with fewer creative demands.

Together, these studies allowed the researchers to examine both the long-term impact of artistic expertise and the short-term plasticity of creative learning.

The Brain Clock Model — Machine Learning Meets Neuroscience

Researchers used advanced brain imaging and AI-driven “brain clocks” to calculate the difference between participants’ chronological and biological brain ages. However, to fully understand the significance of their findings, it’s important to understand what brain clocks are.2

• Just as our bodies carry biological markers of age, so do our brains — Using advanced algorithms trained on brain imaging data, neuroscientists can estimate how “old” a brain looks relative to a person’s actual age.

• A powerful machine-learning model was used to quantify brain age — The researchers built a model using M/EEG (magnetoencephalography/electroencephalography) data from 1,240 participants aged 17 to 91. Rather than just structure, it analyzed functional connectivity, which refers to how different brain regions communicate.

Functional connectivity reflects the brain’s dynamic ability to coordinate information across networks, a measure thought to capture both cognitive vitality and neural efficiency.

• The key metric is the Brain Age Gap (BAG) — This is the difference between your brain’s predicted age and your real chronological age. A positive BAG means your brain appears older than expected (accelerated aging), while a negative BAG means your brain appears younger (delayed aging).

Traditionally, higher BAGs have been associated with Alzheimer’s disease, depression, schizophrenia, and other neurological conditions. Conversely, lower BAGs are linked with resilience, emotional health, and cognitive sharpness.

Until now, factors like exercise, sleep, diet, and education were known to influence BAGs. This study adds a fascinating new variable to the mix — creativity.

The Results Were Clear — Creative Minds Had Younger Brains

What they discovered changes how you think about creativity — these activities are not just a hobby; they’re neurological workouts that directly affect how youthful and efficient your brain stays over time. Across every creative field, participants with higher creative expertise displayed significantly younger brain ages than their non-expert peers.

• Results among the creative groups — Tango dancers exhibited the greatest delay in brain aging, with their brains appearing approximately 7.1 years younger than their chronological age. Musicians followed closely, showing brains that were on average 5.4 years younger, while visual artists demonstrated a similar rejuvenating effect with a 6.2-year reduction. Strategy gamers also benefited, displaying brains about 4.1 years younger than expected.3

• Even short-term learners showed measurable results — Those who engaged in only 30 hours of creative video game training had their brain age reduced by roughly 3.1 years. The control group showed no such effect, confirming that creativity-driven learning was the catalyst.

• Brain aging doesn’t affect all regions equally — Some areas, especially frontoparietal networks involved in attention, motor control, and cognitive flexibility, are particularly susceptible to age-related decline. In this study, those same regions showed the strongest protective effects from creative engagement.

When the researchers mapped connectivity patterns, they found that experts exhibited stronger, more efficient connections precisely in the brain hubs most vulnerable to aging. This suggests creativity might counteract age-related deterioration by reinforcing neural pathways critical for complex coordination, imagination, and adaptability.

• The Neurosynth meta-analysis confirmed this — This analysis links brain activity to psychological functions. The researchers found that creative experts’ brain networks were enriched in domains like:

◦ Motor coordination and rhythm
◦ Imagery and visual salience
◦ Attention and perception
◦ Cognitive control and working memory

Simply put, creativity doesn’t just build skill-specific circuits — it enhances the very systems that maintain cognitive vitality across the lifespan. Augustin Ibanez, professor in Brain Health at the GBHI and School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin, and a senior and corresponding author of the study, said:

“Creativity emerges as a powerful determinant of brain health, comparable to exercise or diet. Our results open new avenues for creativity-based interventions to protect the brain against aging and disease. Our study also showed that brain clocks can be used to monitor interventions aimed to improve brain health.”4

Neural Plasticity at Work

So, how does creativity accomplish this rejuvenation? The researchers point to neural plasticity — the brain’s ability to adapt, rewire, and strengthen connections in response to new experiences.

• Engaging in creative practice involves various processes — These include constant learning, emotional engagement, sensorimotor integration and cognitive flexibility. These processes activate and reinforce communication among brain regions, particularly those involved in higher-order functions like planning, decision-making, and self-expression.

Over time, this sustained engagement builds resilience into neural circuits, maintaining efficiency and preventing the disconnection that often accompanies aging.

• This aligns with decades of research on enriched environments — It highlights that being in environments that encourage novelty, challenge, and emotional meaning stimulates neurogenesis (the birth of new neurons) and synaptic remodeling. Creativity, in this sense, is a natural exercise for the brain’s plastic potential.

• One of the most exciting insights came from analyzing network efficiency — This is a measure of how effectively the brain transfers information between regions. The experts found that creative experts had higher global efficiency (better overall communication) and higher local efficiency (more specialized, finely tuned processing).

• Statistically, lower brain age gaps were tightly linked with higher efficiency scores — This means a “younger” brain isn’t just structurally intact — it’s functionally smarter, processing information faster and with less waste.

Whole-brain computational modeling further revealed that these effects were accompanied by increased global coupling — stronger biophysical interactions among neural networks. This implies that creativity stimulates not just the architecture of the brain but the dynamic harmony of its rhythms.

• Interestingly, even short-term creative learning showed measurable effects — Participants who trained in StarCraft II for just one month not only improved their gameplay but also demonstrated enhanced attention and cognitive control in unrelated tasks, such as reaction time and visual accuracy tests. This suggests that creative learning produces generalized cognitive benefits, extending beyond the specific skill being trained.5

Creativity Is a Universal Brain Booster

For decades, medical science has focused on disease prevention through diet, exercise, and medication. But the growing field of neuroaesthetics, the study of how art affects the brain, suggests that human expression itself is medicine.

This study provides biological evidence to support what many creative practitioners have long believed: Engaging in creative expression isn’t just emotionally fulfilling — it’s neurologically protective.

• While creativity is often associated with traditional arts, this study broadens its definition — The inclusion of video gaming as a creative domain underscores a vital point: Creativity is not limited to art — it’s a mode of thinking.

• Strategic gaming can be an art form — Like improvisational music or dance, it requires flexible problem-solving, pattern recognition, anticipation, and innovation. These are all hallmarks of creative cognition. By engaging these systems, even non-artistic pursuits can confer similar neuroprotective benefits.

This opens a new avenue for how we might integrate creativity into public health strategies and clinical therapies. From community dance programs to art workshops, from digital game-based training to music therapy, the potential applications are vast.

• What makes this study stand out is how directly applicable it is to everyday life — You don’t need to take up a formal art class or master an instrument to experience these benefits. Even small daily creative choices like journaling, doodling, cooking without a recipe, or designing a garden engage the same neural systems that keep your brain young.

• It’s the act of creating, not the artistic skill, that drives these changes — By making creativity part of your lifestyle, you’re not just expressing yourself, you’re also strengthening your brain’s core operating system. The implication is profound — it may never be too late to start something creative.

How to Use Creativity to Rebuild and Protect Your Brain

Creativity is far more than self-expression; it’s one of the most powerful tools available for maintaining cognitive vitality. In a world where mental fatigue and distraction are common, this finding matters deeply. Creative engagement offers a science-backed way to rebuild focus, restore emotional balance, and keep your mind sharp well into later life.

When you view creativity through this lens, it becomes not just enjoyable, but necessary for sustaining your brain’s longevity and performance. Here are strategies you can follow to turn creativity into a daily practice that keeps your brain young, adaptable, and sharp.

1. Make daily creativity non-negotiable — Treat creativity like your brain’s workout. Whether you write, dance, sing, paint, play an instrument, or cook from intuition, commit to doing something expressive each day. You don’t have to be talented — what matters is effort and engagement.

If you’re someone who says, “I’m not creative,” start small. Try doodling while you talk on the phone or rearranging your space in a way that feels fresh. Consistency matters more than time. Even 15 minutes a day of focused creative activity helps maintain healthy communication between brain regions, which improves attention and emotional balance.

2. Challenge yourself with new skills — If you feel stuck in routine, that’s a sign your brain needs novelty. Learning something new pushes your neural circuits to adapt. If you’re a musician, try painting. If you’re analytical, experiment with improv or dance.

I recommend choosing an activity that feels slightly uncomfortable — that’s where growth happens. The research shows that even short-term creative learning, like spending a few hours each week mastering a complex game or instrument, can rejuvenate your brain’s biological age. You’ll notice clearer thinking, quicker problem-solving, and better emotional control.

3. Engage all your senses — Creative work activates more of your brain when it involves multiple senses — sight, touch, sound, and even movement. If you paint, pay attention to texture and color. If you cook, use aroma and plating as part of the creative process. If you’re learning dance, focus on rhythm and body awareness.

The goal is to wake up underused brain areas. When you do, you create stronger networks that resist age-related decline. This sensory layering builds resilience in your neural circuits, making your brain more adaptable under stress.

4. Turn routine into play — Instead of following autopilot routines, inject novelty into them. If you’re a parent, invent a new bedtime story with your child. If you’re retired, turn gardening or journaling into a creative project. If you work in an office, brainstorm solutions visually instead of with text.

Gamify your creativity — set a small goal like “five new ideas this week” or “one new dish this month.” When you track progress and reward yourself for creative wins, you activate dopamine circuits that boost motivation and focus.

5. Reconnect creativity with movement and light — If your brain feels sluggish, combine creative tasks with physical and environmental stimulation. Move your body, get sunlight, and let your senses be fully awake. The study showed that activities combining movement and rhythm like dancing or drumming produced the strongest protective effects on brain aging.

If you work indoors all day, take your creative time outside. Sketch under natural light, walk while brainstorming, or stretch while listening to music. Your mitochondria, the tiny power plants in your cells, depend on light and oxygen for energy. Pairing movement with creativity amplifies the brain’s rejuvenating response.

Each of these steps restores your brain’s natural rhythm of curiosity, challenge, and reward. Creativity doesn’t just help you think better; it allows you to feel alive again. When you make time for creative play, you’re not wasting time; you’re repairing your brain’s wiring, boosting your mood, and protecting your mental sharpness for years to come.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Creativity

Q: How does creativity help keep the brain young?
A: Creativity acts like a workout for your brain. When you learn, express, or experiment creatively through painting, dancing, writing, or even gaming, you activate multiple brain regions at once, forcing them to communicate more efficiently.

This strengthens neural connections and helps delay the aging process of the brain. The study published in Nature Communications found that people deeply engaged in creative activities had brains that appeared five to seven years younger than their actual age.

Q: Do I have to be an artist or musician to benefit from creativity?
A: Not at all. The research made it clear that it’s the act of creating, not artistic talent, that delivers the benefits. Everyday creative choices such as journaling, cooking without a recipe, designing a garden, or even playing a strategy game keep your brain active and adaptable. The key is engagement and novelty. Challenge yourself to think or act in a new way stimulates neuroplasticity, your brain’s ability to rewire itself.

Q: How quickly do the benefits of creative activity show up?
A: Even short bursts of creativity can lead to measurable improvements. In one part of the study, participants who trained for just 30 hours in a creative video game reduced their biological brain age by about three years. This demonstrates how fast the brain responds to new challenges. You don’t need years of training — just consistent effort and curiosity over time.

Q: Which creative activities are most effective for brain health?
A: Activities that combine movement, rhythm, and emotional expression like dance or music produced the strongest antiaging effects in the study. Tango dancers’ brains appeared more than seven years younger, while musicians, visual artists, and strategy gamers also showed significant benefits. You’ll get the best results from activities that engage multiple senses or require coordination, imagination, and focus.

Q: How can I make creativity part of my everyday life?
A: Start small and stay consistent. Schedule at least 15 minutes daily for something creative. Try sketching, learning a new song, experimenting with new recipes, or writing ideas in a journal. If you’re busy, transform routine moments into playful ones — like inventing a new route to work or turning chores into challenges.

Combine your creativity with movement and sunlight when possible. This blend boosts oxygen flow, activates dopamine (the neurotransmitter associated with motivation), and enhances your brain’s natural resilience.

Your brain relies on magnesium to regulate energy, nerve function and blood flow, but most people don’t realize how easily they fall short. Even when your diet looks clean on paper, soil depletion, stress and common gut issues quietly interfere with magnesium absorption, creating a mismatch between what you eat and what your body can use.

What’s troubling is that magnesium deficiency rarely announces itself. You might notice brain fog or memory lapses, but write it off as normal aging. Meanwhile, beneath the surface, your brain could be edging toward structural changes that raise your risk for cognitive decline. One major clue comes from research published in Advances in Nutrition, where scientists found a precise threshold for magnesium in the blood linked to dementia risk.1

While many people don’t get enough magnesium, overdoing it also creates problems, forming a U-shaped risk curve that challenges the “more is better” approach. Your brain doesn’t just need magnesium; it needs it in the right range, consistently. And once that balance slips, your nervous system pays the price. Let’s dig into what researchers found and how it ties magnesium levels to long-term brain health.

Too Much or Too Little Magnesium Raises Dementia Risk

The Advances in Nutrition analysis explored how magnesium — measured through supplements, diet and blood levels — is linked to cognitive decline, dementia and overall brain aging.2

The study included data from three randomized controlled trials and 12 cohort studies, pooling insights from diverse adult populations around the world. Researchers used multiple statistical models to investigate whether there’s a clear pattern between magnesium status and mental decline. What they found was striking.

• Both low and high blood magnesium levels were tied to increased dementia risk — Instead of a simple “more is better” outcome, the findings showed a U-shaped curve. This means both ends of the spectrum, too little magnesium or too much, are linked to higher dementia risk.

The safest range, according to the researchers, centers around a serum magnesium level of 0.85 mmol/L. Compared to this midpoint, those with lower magnesium levels had a 43% higher risk of cognitive impairment, while those above the high end had a 30% greater risk.

• The body’s magnesium “sweet spot” protects your brain — People whose magnesium levels stayed within the range of 0.75 to 0.95 mmol/L had the lowest risk of dementia. The researchers believe this is because optimal magnesium levels support key protective processes in the brain, such as reducing inflammation and guarding against damage to brain cells.

• Magnesium helps prevent neurological breakdown through multiple pathways — Researchers identified several ways magnesium keeps your brain stable and functional. It helps maintain your blood-brain barrier, which acts as your brain’s security system by keeping harmful substances out.

It also preserves the structure of myelin, the fatty sheath around nerves that enables fast, accurate communication, and prevents nerve overstimulation, which, if left unchecked, leads to neuron burnout.

• Magnesium affects your blood vessels, too — not just neurons — The review also highlighted magnesium’s role in regulating blood pressure and vascular tone, two factors closely tied to dementia risk. Low magnesium triggers hormonal shifts and increases clotting agents, which raise the risk of stroke and brain damage, especially in older adults.

• Brain scans confirm structural benefits of optimal magnesium levels — In one cohort of 1,466 adults, those with higher serum magnesium had larger brain volumes and fewer small vessel infarcts — tiny strokes that silently destroy brain tissue. These individuals were 56% less likely to have signs of damage in the deeper parts of the brain compared to those with the lowest magnesium levels.

Higher Magnesium Intake Means a Younger, Healthier Brain

A large-scale study published in the European Journal of Nutrition looked at how daily dietary magnesium intake influences brain volume and white matter health.3 Researchers used brain scans from 6,001 participants between the ages of 40 and 73. The goal was to see if magnesium levels, and how they change over time, correspond to differences in brain aging — decades before cognitive decline or dementia would be diagnosed.

• People with higher magnesium intake had larger brain volumes and fewer brain lesions — On average, participants who consumed more magnesium had greater gray matter volume and healthier hippocampal regions — the parts of your brain responsible for learning and memory. These individuals also had fewer white matter lesions, which are signs of microdamage in the brain often linked to memory problems, reduced processing speed and higher dementia risk.

• Increased magnesium intake predicted more brain volume over time — Compared to people with normal intake levels, those in the top quartile of magnesium consumption (around 550 milligrams (mg) per day) had brains that looked nearly a full year younger, based on tissue volume. That 41% increase in magnesium intake correlated with a 0.20% increase in gray matter and a 0.46% increase in right hippocampal volume, a key marker of brain resilience.

• Magnesium benefits were tied to brain tissue, not blood pressure — Although magnesium is known to lower blood pressure, the researchers were surprised to find that its impact on brain health was not due to cardiovascular effects. Instead, the protection came from anti-inflammatory and neuro-supportive actions in the brain itself. White matter damage was reduced even when blood pressure remained unchanged.

• Long-term magnesium intake patterns mattered more than short-term spikes — The study broke participants into groups based on their magnesium “trajectory” over time: stable, increasing or decreasing. Those with consistently high intake, especially if they started high and dropped slightly, still showed strong brain protection. This suggests that lifetime patterns of adequate magnesium lock in structural brain benefits even if intake fluctuates later in life.

• Magnesium preserves both neurons and their support systems — Magnesium protects brain volume by enhancing how well brain cells communicate, reducing oxidative stress and slowing down inflammatory processes that damage brain tissue. These are some of the same mechanisms that underlie Alzheimer’s and age-related memory loss, making magnesium a valuable tool for brain health in middle age and beyond.

Vitamin D Status Influences How Magnesium Affects Your Memory

Research published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia analyzed data from 2,508 adults aged 60 and older who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 2011 and 2014.4 The study set out to determine whether total magnesium intake, meaning from both food and supplements, was connected to cognitive performance in older adults.

• Higher magnesium intake was tied to better overall brain performance — After controlling for factors like age, income, education and calcium consumption, adults with the highest magnesium intake showed better overall cognitive performance than those with the lowest intake, with a 0.15-point advantage on standardized memory and attention tests.

That might sound like a small difference, but in large population data like this, it’s enough to signal a meaningful shift in mental clarity and memory strength.

• The benefit was strongest in people with “sufficient” vitamin D levels — Among those with vitamin D levels of 20 ng/mL (50 nmol/L) or higher, high magnesium intake led to even better results.

These participants scored higher on global cognitive function and showed greater accuracy on memory tests, particularly naming animals quickly, a marker of verbal memory and processing speed. Ideally, aim for vitamin D levels between 60 and 80 ng/mL (150 to 200 nmol/L).

• Magnesium also helps your brain by enhancing vitamin D’s performance — There’s a two-way relationship here: Vitamin D boosts magnesium absorption in your gut, while magnesium helps convert inactive vitamin D into its active form. That means if your magnesium is low, vitamin D won’t work properly, and vice versa. This interplay is likely why the strongest cognitive improvements were seen in people who had enough of both nutrients.

Magnesium and vitamin D work synergistically, along with vitamin K2. Combining all three supplements significantly reduces the amount of vitamin D needed to maintain optimal health. A study of 2,920 individuals indicated that many of those not taking magnesium and K2 required a remarkable 244% more oral vitamin D to achieve similar healthy levels compared to those who took magnesium and K2.5

Why I Recommend Magnesium Supplements Over Food Alone

If your brain feels foggy or your memory isn’t what it used to be, you’re not alone. Many people aren’t getting enough magnesium, even those eating a whole-food, plant-rich diet. And that’s not because you’re doing something wrong. It’s because our soil isn’t what it used to be. Thanks to industrial farming, magnesium levels in vegetables have dropped significantly.

Further, only about 30% to 40% of the magnesium you eat is actually absorbed.6 While I usually recommend food first when it comes to getting your nutrients, magnesium is one exception. Whole foods still matter, but when your goal is protecting your brain and slowing age-related decline, supplements are often needed to fill the gap. Here’s how I recommend you start.

1. Test your intake against your symptoms — If you struggle with low mood, mental fatigue, poor sleep or forgetfulness, there’s a good chance low magnesium is part of the problem. These are all signs your nervous system is underpowered. You won’t always catch this on a standard lab test, either. What matters most is how you feel and what you’re eating. Track your average daily intake and watch for signs of stress or cognitive slowdown.

2. Skip the nuts and seeds, even though they’re high in magnesium — Many nutritionists will tell you to eat pumpkin seeds or almonds to boost your magnesium levels. But the truth is, these are also loaded with linoleic acid (LA), a polyunsaturated fat that disrupts your mitochondria and increases inflammation. If your gut or metabolism is already struggling, these “healthy fats” will set you back. I don’t recommend relying on nuts or seeds as a magnesium source.

3. Stick with magnesium glycinate or magnesium malate for long-term — These forms are well tolerated and actually get into your tissues, where they matter. Glycinate is calming, making it ideal if you’re facing stress or poor sleep.

Malate helps with energy production, which is useful if you feel tired all the time. I don’t recommend magnesium oxide; it mostly passes through your system unused.

4. Use magnesium as a tool, not a crutch — Supplementing is wise, but don’t stop there. Magnesium works best when you’re also lowering stress, walking daily, sleeping deeply and eating a wide variety of whole foods. Think of it as a foundation, not a fix. Keep an eye on your body’s cues and adjust as needed. But remember, supporting optimal brain health requires a comprehensively healthy lifestyle.

FAQs About Magnesium and Your Brain

Q: What does magnesium do for your brain?

A: Magnesium helps regulate brain function by supporting your blood-brain barrier, reducing inflammation and protecting neurons from overstimulation. It also plays a key role in maintaining memory, focus and learning by helping to stabilize nerve signaling and prevent damage from excess calcium.

Q: How do I know if I’m low in magnesium?

A: Common signs include poor memory, brain fog, anxiety, trouble sleeping and fatigue. While there are blood tests to check serum magnesium levels, they’re not always reliable because most magnesium is stored in your tissues, not your blood. Many people are magnesium deficient, and if you experience high stress or have gut issues, you’re likely not getting enough.

Q: Can I get enough magnesium from food alone?

A: In theory, yes — but in reality, most people don’t. Modern soil depletion means even magnesium-rich foods contain far less than they used to. Plus, only about 30% to 40% of the magnesium you eat is actually absorbed. Many top sources like nuts and seeds are high in LA, which causes mitochondrial stress, so I don’t recommend them. For these reasons, many people benefit from magnesium supplementation.

Q: What’s the best type of magnesium to take?

A: Magnesium glycinate and magnesium malate are highly absorbable and easy on the digestive system. Glycinate is ideal if you need help calming your nervous system or improving sleep. Malate is better if your energy levels are low. Start by finding your ideal dose using magnesium citrate — until it causes slightly loose stools — then switch to one of these long-term.

Q: How much magnesium should I take each day?

A: Most adults need at least 400 mg daily, but the ideal dose varies by individual. The best way to find your personal dose is to gradually increase magnesium citrate until your stools begin to loosen, then reduce slightly. That level reflects your body’s saturation point, and it’s more reliable than guessing based on labels alone.

The public is at last awakening to the dirty secret of SSRI antidepressants — they trigger psychotic violence (e.g., suicides and sometimes mass shootings). This side effect was discovered in clinical trials but covered up by the FDA, even after the agency received a deluge of complaints (39,000 in the first nine years1) once the first SSRI, Prozac, hit the market. For example, consider how they acted at this 1991 Congressional hearing:

When SSRIs came out, the FDA was deluged with reports of suicide, homicide and mass shootings caused by those “antidepressants.” Lawsuits then revealed the industry knew that risk, but, just like now, the FDA hid it from the public. This 1991 FDA hearing will blow you mind as… pic.twitter.com/9OKEY5wNnE— A Midwestern Doctor (@MidwesternDoc) November 2, 2025
Video Link

Because of those deaths, lawsuits through discovery found the drug companies were well aware of these issues (and many more) but chose to conceal them. As such, we now have a much clearer picture of the harms of these medications.

Note: While many patients react badly to SSRIs, there is also a subset of patients who benefit from SSRI antidepressants (discussed here). Sadly, it is quite rare that patients will work with antidepressant prescriber practitioners who have the time and knowledge to accurately determine which patients to give these drugs to.

The Toxicology Bell Curve

In toxicology, you will typically see severe and extreme reactions occur much less frequently than moderate reactions:

For example, consider the distribution of injuries from the COVID-19 vaccines.

Note: These calculations were based on 2023 data,2 and since then, vastly more evidence of harm has emerged (e.g., a 2025 poll found 63 million American adults had minor reactions to the vaccine and 17 million had severe side effects3).

As such, violent psychosis is just the tip of the iceberg for the mind-altering effects SSRIs have. For example, in a survey of 1,829 patients on antidepressants in New Zealand:4

• 62% reported sexual difficulties
• 60% felt emotionally numb
• 52% felt not like themselves
• 47% had experienced agitation
• 39% cared less about others

Most importantly, the respondents to that survey reported that their prescribers did not warn them about many of these side effects.

Doctored Data

Originally developed as a weight loss drug, Eli Lilly pivoted to having Prozac “treat” depression as this metric was subjective to the point any trial could be doctored to show a “benefit.” Despite this, Prozac’s initial data was so atrocious, it could only be approved through bribes (which a former Eli Lilly executive testified occurred).

This fraud is proven by patients consistently choosing to stop taking SSRIs despite them being “proven” to make you feel better:

• A review of 29 published and 11 unpublished Paxil clinical trials containing 3,704 patients who received Paxil and 2,687 who received a placebo, an equal proportion of patients in both groups left their study early (suggesting Paxil’s benefits did not outweigh its side effects), and that compared to placebo, 77% more stopped the drug because of side effects and 155% more stopped because they experienced suicidal tendencies.5

• A study of 7,525 patients found that 56% of them chose to stop taking an SSRI within 4 months of being prescribed it.6

• An international survey of 3,516 people from 14 patient advocacy groups found that 44% had permanently stopped taking a psychiatric drug due to its side effects.7

• A survey of 500 patients found 81.5% were unsure if their antidepressants were necessary.8

Note: Fluorinated versions of pharmaceuticals tend to be more toxic and persist for longer periods in the body (making them much harder to detoxify from). Many believe a key reason SSRIs cause so many issues is due to the high dose of fluoride they bring into the brain.

Violent Behavior

In 1985 when the FDA’s safety reviewer scrutinized Eli Lilly’s Prozac application, they realized Lilly had “failed” to report psychotic episodes of people on the drug and that Prozac’s adverse effects resembled that of a stimulant drug.

In turn, the warnings on the labels for SSRIs, such as anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia, hypomania, and mania match the effects commonly observed with stimulant street drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine.9 Likewise:

• A Cochrane review found SSRIs were found to double the risk of suicide.10
• A 2000 study of 20 volunteers in good mental health found Zoloft made 10% become suicidal (with one almost killing themselves) — both of whom remained deeply disturbed for months.11
• Eli Lilly showed in 1978 that cats who had been friendly for years began to growl and hiss on Prozac and became distinctly unfriendly until Prozac was stopped.12

To illustrate what this can look like, I will share what four different patients experienced prior to killing themselves or others:13

“A month later, Toran experienced a severe cluster of adverse reactions including suicidal behavior, self-harm, aggression, hostility, hallucinations, lack of concentration and impaired functioning. The symptoms were so severe that he dropped out of school. His psychiatrist’s response was to increase his dose, which worsened the adverse reactions.

Six days later, Jake had his first reaction. He walked out of an exam half-way through it and cried for about 2-3 hours that night, saying, ‘You don’t know what it’s like in my head.’ His parents thought this was from the stress of the exams. They never imagined that a drug could do this to a person.

The last two days she was just a complete zombie I have to say. She was just agitated, jumping at every noise and not making sense. I was very concerned. We were very close to Cecily. I just loved her deeply.

Shortly before his death, Woody came home crying after driving around all day. He sat in a fetal position on the kitchen floor profusely sweating with his hands pressing around his head saying, ‘Help me. Help me. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I am losing my mind. It’s like my head is outside my body looking in.'”

Note: The process through which SSRIs do this (e.g., some individuals report an experience akin to “being possessed”) is discussed further here.

Fortunately, thanks to MAHA being elected to office, after decades, there at last appears to be real interest in addressing this issue. Consider, for example, this statement from H.H.S. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:

Note: Initially, the media disclosed school shooters were on SSRIs, but then stopped ever mentioning a shooter’s medications. I learned through a CDC employee the CDC has found shooters continue to be on SSRIs but has avoided disclosing it to avoid the political ramifications of acknowledging this.

Likewise, the agitating quality of SSRIs can frequently trigger Bipolar disorder. For example:

• Yale researchers reviewing the records of 87,290 patients with depression or anxiety found SSRIs made 7.7% become bipolar each year (tripling the rate patients become bipolar).14

• A survey found 60% of bipolar patients become bipolar after receiving SSRIs for depression.15

• Peter Breggin reported that of 184 hospitalized patients started on an SSRI, 11 developed mania and 8 became psychotic, and in Yale, 8% of 533 consecutive admissions were for mania or psychosis caused by antidepressants, with two patients heard voices commanding them to kill themselves.16

This helps to explain why bipolar has become hundreds of times more common since the pre-SSRI era and switched from being a temporary to lifelong condition that is far more disruptive and difficult to treat (e.g., 83% of bipolar patients reported being severely impaired in some facet of their lives).17,18

Note: A good case can be made that many of the severe complications from bipolar disorder are a result of the medications used to treat it rather than the disease itself.

Sexual Dysfunction

One of the most common ways antidepressants worsen depression is by causing permanent sexual dysfunction. For example, a Spanish study of five of the most commonly prescribed SSRIs found on average the drugs caused sexual disturbances in 59% of 1,022 (previously normal) patients, two-thirds of whom considered that dysfunction unacceptable and that:19,20

• 57% experienced decreased libido
• 57% experienced delayed orgasm or ejaculation
• 46% experienced no orgasm or ejaculation
• 31% experienced erectile dysfunction or decreased vaginal lubrication

Remarkably, to avoid scaring patients away from a “necessary” prescription, doctors rarely warn their patients of these side effects. Fortunately, two months ago, the New York Times finally brought mainstream attention to this and exposed that virtually no psychiatrist will disclose this issue to patients.21 To quote the article:

“Only over the past few years has Ruth learned, from her daughter, about the sexual side effects she still lives with and about her grief. ‘Her erogenous zones don’t work,’ ‘I have huge, terrible regret’ about allowing her child to be medicated. ‘I can’t believe I so easily said yes.’

He took a moderate dose, a 10 milligram pill, and an hour later, he said, ‘I had numb genitals.’ He abandoned the drug almost right away and has taken no psychiatric medication since. ‘Three years later,’ he explained, his penis ‘feels like my elbow — if you touch my elbow, it’s that same kind of sensation.’

And there is emotional numbness to go with the physical. ‘I can’t feel any connection to you guys — I feel like my soul was ripped out of my body.’ He has tried to get doctors to pay attention. ‘They were like: That’s impossible. It’s all in your head.’

But she noticed quickly that on the drug, climaxes became ‘superficial’ and ‘so short-lived,’ she recalled. ‘It infused a dominant emotion of frustration into sex.’ Her capacity for transporting sex is still mostly relegated to the past, and she worries that it will stay back there forever.

It has been six years since Guin stopped taking her S.S.R.I. She is 29. ‘I don’t have the capacity for romantic relationships,’ she said. ‘That’s just gone in a stark way. For me, the chemical mechanisms of the romantic are too deeply tied in with sexuality for the romantic to exist independently … She has just had her first child.

Because she has no partner, she used in vitro fertilization.’ ‘I wanted a partner,’ she said. ‘I wanted a child to grow up with their mom and dad. Your sexual life is so core when you consider that the sexual relationship is the basis for most long-term relationships.'”

Emotional Anesthesia

Much in the same way SSRIs make you “sexually numb” they can do the same to emotions. Common stories include:

• Losing the drive to exit a toxic situation (e.g., a relationship or job) and wasting years if not decades in it.
• Losing the joy one felt in life.
• Losing the depth and richness of life.

Note: In psychiatry, this effect is termed “emotional blunting,” and the studies I’ve reviewed found 40% to 60% of SSRI users experience this.

Worse still, SSRIs can also cause a variety of other disconcerting psychiatric changes (e.g., many report it feeling as though they are losing their mind).

Birth Defects

It is also unconscionable SSRIs are pushed on pregnant mothers. This skit exposes the absurdity of the practice. pic.twitter.com/zx5qqj6xgT— A Midwestern Doctor (@MidwesternDoc) January 16, 2026
Video Link

To increase sales, SSRIs are routinely pushed on pregnant mothers despite the fact:

• SSRIs increase the risk of premature births, with the greatest risk (a doubling) occurring if an SSRI is taken during the third trimester.22

• SSRIs significantly increase the risk of septal defects (which often require heart surgery to repair). One study of 500,000 Danish infants found taking a single SSRI while pregnant caused the likelihood of the child having one to go from 0.5% to 0.9% while taking two or more increased it to 2.1% (with the worst SSRIs tripling the risk).23

• SSRIs significantly increase the risk of persistent pulmonary hypertension in a newborn baby. One study of 1,173 infants found SSRIs increased the risk of persistent pulmonary hypertension by 6.1 times,24 while another found a 4.29X increase,25 and a third found a 2.5X increase.26

Note: Other newborn complications linked to SSRIs include irritability, tremor, hypertonia, and difficulty sleeping or breastfeeding, along with reduced growth early in life.

SSRI Withdrawals

One of the most insidious aspects of SSRIs is that they are dosed so that you can easily enter severe withdrawals if you change their dose.27,28

This is immensely unfortunate as:

• To “cure” an SSRI dependence (which is analogous to an addiction), you need to let the brain rewire itself back to normal, and until that happens, the brain will behave in an abnormal fashion (e.g., its ability to adapt to outside stressors in a healthy way is dramatically reduced). Since this is often a very slow back and forth process, the journey patients go through is frequently something like this as the brain tries to rewire itself:

• It’s very hard to quit the drugs without triggering withdrawals, as in many cases, minuscule drops need to be made over months (e.g., by lightly sanding off part of a pill slightly more each week), with the entire withdrawal process typically taking years — particularly since psychiatric patients tend to be on so many drugs (which are often given to manage the consequences of other medications) — and typically only one can be withdrawn from at a time.

• These withdrawals are often quite severe, and in many cases, a SSRI dose change (either an increase or decrease) has been linked to violent or suicidal behavior.

• Physicians typically interpret these withdrawals as proof “the medication was working and needs to be continued” because they chose to believe the SSRI was keeping an existing mental disease in check rather than causing severe psychiatric destabilization. As such, much like the bipolar example, when SSRIs create withdrawal issues, rather than recognize it, they will typically prescribe psychiatric medications to manage the new issues.

When people read other people’s stories, they realize that they’re not the only person that’s experiencing that problem. There are 6,000 relatively complete case histories [on SurvivingAntidepressants]. You realize it’s all the same story. It’s one story.

And each person who experiences it is so surprised that it happened to them — people go through a period of absolute disbelief. They realize that they’ve been trusting their doctors to have a certain amount of knowledge, and their doctors don’t actually have that knowledge.

And you know, this is heartbreaking. I went through this, and I felt that the world had fallen out from underneath me. There wasn’t any medical safety net. So the sociological phenomenon exists, and has not yet filtered into medicine [this is also exactly what has happened with the COVID-19 vaccines].

Medicine has its own ways of gathering information, and in psychiatry, for some reason, they keep asking each other what the truth is instead of asking their patients. The patient voice is not very well recognized in psychiatry at all.29

Additionally, less severe (and often fluctuating) withdrawal symptoms also occur such as:

• The feeling of an electric shock in your arms, legs, or head (these horrible things are commonly referred to as “brain zaps” and have happened to so many people I know)
• Dizziness (mild to severe)
• Visual problems
• A large number of sensitivities (e.g., to light, heat, a supplement or food)
• Anxiety which comes and goes, sometimes in intense ‘surges’
• Difficulty in getting to sleep and vivid or frightening dreams
• Low mood, feeling unable to be interested in or enjoy things
• A sense of being physically unwell
• Rapidly changing moods (e.g., spontaneous weeping spells, attacks of sheer terror, or sudden plunges into unprecedented contentless black holes of pure dread)
• Anger, sleeplessness, tiredness, loss of co-ordination, and headache
• A feeling that things are not real (‘derealisation’), or a feeling that you have ‘cotton wool in your head’
• Difficulty in concentrating
• Suicidal thoughts
• Queasiness or indigestion
• A feeling of inner restlessness and inability to stay still (this is known as akathisia and often precedes psychotic SSRI violence)
• Crippling muscle pain or spasms

Furthermore, these reactions are very common. A meta-analysis found that 56% of patients who stop using SSRIs experience withdrawals, that 46% who stop an SSRI experience severe withdrawals, and that these withdrawals last for weeks to months. Additionally, it is well known in the SSRI recovery community that the risk of a withdrawal varies greatly depending on the drug (Paxil is notorious for this, Cymbalta is also a common offender).30

Note: A 1996 door to door survey of 2003 randomly selected people in England found that 78% of them considered SSRIs to be addictive.31

Sadly, the industry is well aware of this, to the point they will often deliberately put “placebo” subjects in SSRI trials into withdrawals (by terminating their existing prescription) so they can dishonestly make the drug group look “better” than the “placebo” patients.

Pharmaceutical companies are frequently accused of operating as “organized drug dealers,” an argument especially common with SSRIs due to their (addictive) potential for dependence and how aggressively they are promoted to everyone.

Conclusion

Since the pharmaceutical industry is fundamentally driven by a need to maximize sales, drugs will routinely be brought to market that benefit a small subset of patients but then be marketed to an ever increasing number of people (e.g., the SSRI manufacturers invested heavily in convincing the public normal emotions actually “needed” lifelong SSRI treatment and that depression is a “chemical imbalance in the brain” despite no evidence supporting this).

Because of this, these mass marketed ‘blockbuster’ drugs frequently cause far more harm than any benefit they can provide. As such, members of the population are typically on multiple drugs like this (e.g., statins for “high” cholesterol), this results in healthcare costs continually going up while the general populace becomes sicker and sicker.

This downhill spiral needs to stop, and for the first time in my lifetime, the political will to acknowledge and address the harms overprescribed pharmaceutical drugs are inflicting upon society at last exists (e.g., consider RFK’s statements on antidepressants).

For things to shift, it is imperative for each of us to begin openly discussing these taboo subjects and make those we care about be aware of the real risks from pharmaceutical medications doctors rarely warn us about. I thank each of you for doing that and helping to end this; far too many people I know have had their lives ruined by SSRI antidepressants.

Author’s Note: This is an abridged version of a longer article which discusses the above points in much more detail (e.g., who benefits from SSRIs, how to safely withdraw from them) along with reviewing alternative treatment options such as psychedelic assisted psychotherapy.

That article and its additional references can be read here. Additionally, a companion article about the depression industry (e.g., how marketers managed to convince everyone they were depressed) and effective natural therapies for depression can be read here, while a companion article about the anxiety industry, natural therapies for anxiety, and the dangers of benzodiazepines can be read here.

A Note from Dr. Mercola About the Author

A Midwestern Doctor (AMD) is a board-certified physician from the Midwest and a longtime reader of Mercola.com. I appreciate AMD’s exceptional insight on a wide range of topics and am grateful to share it. I also respect AMD’s desire to remain anonymous since AMD is still on the front lines treating patients. To find more of AMD’s work, be sure to check out The Forgotten Side of Medicine on Substack.

For decades, the supplement industry has competed in one direction only: toward “more.” More ingredients, more milligrams, more capsules, more complexity, longer labels nobody reads. The unspoken assumption was that progress meant addition — that a better supplement was always a more complicated one. We think that era is ending, and that the real breakthrough runs the other way. The future of nutrition isn’t more. It’s less.

Where Complexity Actually Leads

Look at where all that addition actually leads. It leads to the fistful of pills no one wants to take. It leads to supplement routines so elaborate they collapse the first busy week. It leads to labels packed with names you can’t pronounce and forms your body can barely use. Complexity has been quietly working against the only outcome that matters — whether you take your supplements, consistently, for long enough to support your health. All that addition has mostly added friction that often results in dropped routines.

That’s the consistent finding whenever researchers look at why people stop their daily pill regimens. Even with prescription medicine — which people have strong reasons to keep up — a meta-analysis of real-world data found that roughly one in five people don’t take their daily oral medicines as directed, and about one in four abandon it within the first year.1
The reviewers’ list of fixes wasn’t “try harder”; it led with simplifying the dosing regimen. If a complicated routine sheds a quarter of its users in 12 months when health is on the line, a shelf full of optional supplements doesn’t stand a chance.

The medical world is, slowly, reaching the same conclusion about “more.” In reviews of polypharmacy — the steady accumulation of pills over time — specialists now warn that regimens tend to pile up by default, that a heavier pill count brings real “therapeutic burden” and lower adherence, and that more medicine is not automatically better.2

When the Form Defeats the Dose

There’s a second way complexity betrays you, and it hides inside those impressive numbers. A bigger dose in a form your body can’t readily absorb doesn’t necessarily deliver more benefit — it mostly leads to more being wasted. For example, in a systematic review of magnesium supplements, how much actually got absorbed depended on the form — with organic forms generally better absorbed than inorganic ones — and the proportion absorbed depended on the dose rather than holding steady.3
In other words, if your body absorbs, say 10% of a 100 mg dose (10 mg), taking 200 mg does not result in 20 mg of it being absorbed. In many cases, you just end up excreting a greater portion of it.

So, a supplement boasting an enormous milligram count can quietly underdeliver, while a smaller amount in a well-chosen form may provide “just enough” of what your body needs, resulting in less waste and lower cost. “More” on the label does not equate to “more” in your body. Chasing the bigger number is often chasing the wrong thing entirely.

Simplicity Is the Harder Achievement

Here’s what the “more” era misses: simplicity is the more difficult, more valuable accomplishment, precisely because it’s harder to reach. Real simplicity isn’t the absence of thought. Quite the contrary. It’s making sure the product is so well thought out and refined to the point where everything unnecessary has been stripped away and only what works remains.
This requires the supplement maker to identify the most effective form, the ideal dosage (just enough so that it doesn’t just end up as expensive urine), and the optimal delivery technology. In short, a simple product often requires more careful engineering.

That’s the standard we’re building toward, and it shapes every formulation decision we make going forward. Fewer things to take, not more, and supplement formats that fold into meals and beverages, to naturally support a food-centered foundation. For decades, I’ve promoted whole (ideally organic) food as the best source of nutrition, and that supplements are — as their name proclaims — additions to your diet when certain nutritional needs fall short.

A food-centered supplement regimen also works with how people actually live — busy, mobile, imperfect — instead of how a lab imagines we should live. Few of us can remember to take a handful of pills up to three times a day, and many have a hard time swallowing pills and capsules, which makes skipping doses all the more likely.

Simplicity solves most if not all of the problems that complexity created. A supplement routine you can keep is a supplement routine that can actually do something for you. The simpler it is, the more likely you are to stay consistent — and consistency is key. The most sophisticated formula in the world can improve nothing if you abandon it after a few weeks.

The Bottom Line

This is the direction we believe everything is heading, and it’s the direction we’ve chosen. Not bigger numbers or bigger bottles, but rather more bioavailable ingredients, in the ideal amounts, using the most effective delivery methods available. In some cases, that means powders instead of pills and capsules, and as I’ve explained previously, one of the biggest benefits of a well-designed powder supplement is that it becomes part of your meal.

You’re not choking down pills at a schedule that may or may not coincide with your food intake. You’re simply adding nutrition to the food you’re already eating anyway. It really doesn’t get much simpler than that. And that kind of simplicity is exactly what tends to translate into better long-term adherence.

It can also help switch people’s mental perception of their supplement regimen from one of disease (“I have to take these pills because I’m sick”) to one of health (“I’m optimizing my diet”).4 Considering how potent such perceptions can be, using food-centered supplement regimens is an easy way to ward against mindsets that undermine your health efforts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Doesn’t “fewer ingredients” just mean I’m getting less for my money?
A: Not if it’s designed well. On the contrary, a supplement that is well-absorbed and has effective delivery can be taken in smaller doses, resulting in both less waste and greater value.

Q: Aren’t higher dosages typically better?
A: Not necessarily. How much your body absorbs depends heavily on the form a nutrient comes in, and a large dose in a poorly absorbed form can underdeliver while much of it goes to waste. A sensible amount in a well-chosen form is a more sensible and cost-effective strategy.

Q: Why is “simple” framed as the advance here, rather than cutting-edge ingredients?
A: Because if you want to improve people’s nutritional status through a supplement, the biggest problem is not the ingredients themselves but getting people to take it consistently. Complexity is what undermines that. Making the regimen really easy to adhere to — such as just sprinkling a scoop of nutritional powder on meals you’re eating anyway — is what helps a routine survive a busy schedule the most.

Q: Does a simpler supplement routine mean a less effective one?
A: No. It means the routine is built around what you’ll actually keep doing. An elaborate regimen you abandon in a month does far less for you than a simple one you sustain for years. Simplicity isn’t doing less for your health — it’s removing what was causing you to quit.

These statements have not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

This article is for general education. The products described are dietary supplements intended to support normal health and wellbeing as part of a food-first lifestyle. They are not a substitute for a varied diet, a healthy lifestyle, or the advice of your physician. If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or managing a health condition, talk with your healthcare provider before beginning any supplement.

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.

Test Your Knowledge with Today’s Quiz!
Take today’s quiz to see how much you’ve learned from yesterday’s Mercola.com article.

Which progressive brain disorder affects movement, balance, and coordination?

Epilepsy
Multiple sclerosis
Huntington’s disease
Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson’s disease develops as dopamine-producing nerve cells are lost, making movements such as walking, speaking, and swallowing increasingly difficult. Learn more.

1 Which growth factor helped restore brain fluid drainage in older mice?

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)
Epidermal growth factor (EGF)
Vascular endothelial growth factor C (VEGF-C)
Vascular endothelial growth factor C (VEGF-C) stimulated the growth of drainage vessels, allowing fluid outflow in older mice to return to levels seen in younger mice. Learn more.
Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1)

2 How may self-compassion help after a health-related lapse?

Reduce the need for a routine
Build confidence to keep going
People who responded to setbacks with self-compassion reported greater confidence and a stronger intention to keep going. Learn more.
Create stricter daily habits
Prevent future lapses entirely

3 What does biological age reflect?

The condition of your cells, tissues, and organs
Biological age estimates how well your body is functioning, while chronological age simply counts the years you have lived. Learn more.
The number of years since you were born
Your family history of chronic disease
Your average amount of daily exercise and calorie intake

4 Which drying methods preserved more nutrients than conventional hot-air drying?

Sun-drying and air-drying
Smoking and oven-drying
Freeze-drying and radiant energy vacuum drying
Freeze-drying and radiant energy vacuum drying preserved more vitamin C and beta-carotene, while conventional hot-air drying caused much greater nutrient losses. Learn more.
Microwave-drying and pan-drying

5 Which non-stimulant ingredient has strong evidence for improving strength?

Creatine
Creatine helps regenerate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), giving muscles rapid energy for activities such as lifting and sprinting. Learn more.
Taurine
Citrulline
Glutamine

6 Which fruit is surprisingly rich in flavanols?

Bananas
Plums
Plums are especially rich in flavanols, with about four medium plums providing an estimated 450 milligrams. Learn more.
Watermelons
Cantaloupes

7 How many different sirtuins does the human body have?

Three
Five
Seven
There are seven sirtuins with specialized roles in different parts of the cell, including DNA maintenance, metabolism, and mitochondrial energy production. Learn more.
Nine

Test Your Knowledge with
The Master Level Quiz

1 Which statement about wasteosomes is not true?

They are thin and cylindrical in shape
Wasteosomes are spherical structures that act like sealed waste containers, collecting materials such as tau before they are cleared from the brain. Learn more.
They can measure 2 to 50 micrometers across
They are formed by support cells in the brain
They can be released into cerebrospinal fluid

2 How many times per week should beginners use a vibration plate?

Once a week
Four to five times a week
Every day, but for a few minutes only
Two to three times a week
Beginners are advised to start with two to three sessions weekly, using low intensity and allowing at least 24 hours between sessions. Learn more.

3 What is the minimum amount of carbohydrates the brain requires each day?

50 g
75 g
125 g
The brain relies heavily on glucose for energy and requires a minimum of about 125 grams of carbohydrates per day to meet its energy needs. Learn more.
200 g

4 After a break, what approach may make a supplement routine easier to restart?

Double the next scheduled dose
Resume gradually without punishment
A gentle restart avoids the burden of an all-or-nothing approach, making the routine easier to resume without added pressure. Learn more.
Follow a stricter daily schedule
Wait until motivation returns

5 Which of the following is a possible surgical complication of a C-section?

Urinary tract infection
Post-surgical infection
C-sections carry surgical risks such as infection, pain, reactions to anesthesia, and accidental injury to nearby organs. Learn more.
Hearing loss
Kidney stones

6 Which therapy uses specific wavelengths of light to influence cellular activity without producing heat?

Photodynamic therapy (PDT)
Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy (PEMF)
Photobiomodulation (PBM)
Photobiomodulation (PBM) uses red or near-infrared light to interact with tissues and has been studied for recovery, pain, wound healing, and supportive cancer care. Learn more.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

7 Faster immune system aging was linked to which early-onset cancer?

Lung cancer
In an exploratory analysis, faster immune system aging was associated with an 89% higher risk of early-onset lung cancer. Learn more.
Breast cancer
Kidney cancer
Thyroid cancer

8 Which cells are responsible for breaking down bone tissue?

Osteoblasts
Chondrocytes
Fibroblasts
Osteoclasts
Osteoclasts break down old bone as part of normal remodeling. Egg yolk peptides were found to reduce the number and activity of these bone-resorbing cells. Learn more.

9 What term refers to organ donation after a patient’s circulation has stopped?

Living donor transplantation
Donation after brain death (DBD)
Donation after circulatory death (DCD)
Donation after circulatory death (DCD) involves organ procurement after circulation has stopped and is different from donation after confirmed brain death. Learn more.
Directed organ donation

10 How should opened dehydrated foods be stored?

Uncovered at room temperature
Sealed in a cool, dry, dark place
Limiting moisture, heat, light, and air helps protect dehydrated foods from spoilage and quality loss. Learn more.
Beside a warm kitchen appliance
In an open container in sunlight

11 What do butyrate-producing gut bacteria feed on?

Insoluble minerals
Simple sugars
Animal proteins
Fermentable fibers
Fermentable fibers feed beneficial gut bacteria that produce butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that fuels colon cells and helps support the gut lining. Learn more.

12 What is the discomfort from conflicting beliefs called?

Confirmation bias
Cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort caused by conflicting beliefs or information, which can make people defend views they already hold. Learn more.
Dunning-Kruger effect
Observer bias

13 Which ingredient needs consistent daily use to build carnosine in the muscles?

Beta-alanine
Beta-alanine gradually raises muscle carnosine levels, which can help delay fatigue during demanding exercise. Learn more.
Creatine
L-citrulline
L-carnitine

14 Which vitamin helps activate proteins that direct calcium into bone tissue?

Vitamin A
Vitamin K2
Vitamin K2 activates proteins that help bind calcium to bone, reducing the chance that calcium builds up in soft tissues. Learn more.
Vitamin C
Vitamin B12

15 How could cross-linked psyllium help remove microplastics from the body?

By breaking plastics down into smaller particles
By dissolving plastics in the bloodstream
By increasing plastic absorption through the gut
By trapping plastic particles before they are absorbed
Cross-linked psyllium can swell into a sticky gel that may trap microplastics in the gut, though this use has not yet been tested in humans. Learn more.

16 Which tea can add a substantial amount of flavanols to your daily diet?

Green tea
An 8-ounce cup of green tea provides an estimated 200 milligrams of flavanols, making it one of the richer beverage sources. Learn more.
Chamomile tea
Peppermint tea
Ginger tea

17 What feature of ultraprocessed foods keep people hooked on it?

Strong flavors that make foods seem more appealing
Large portions that encourage people to eat more
Soft, melt-in-your-mouth textures that interrupt fullness signals
Soft ultraprocessed foods require less chewing, which may weaken satiety signals and make it easier to keep eating after the body has had enough. Learn more.
Added sweeteners that make foods taste more rewarding

18 What gives astaxanthin an antioxidant advantage over beta-carotene and vitamin E?

It remains concentrated mainly in watery parts of cells
It accumulates primarily inside the body’s fat stores
It becomes more active as oxidative stress increases
It spans the cell membrane and anchors on both surfaces
Astaxanthin’s membrane-spanning position lets it intercept oxidative damage where it begins, while high-dose vitamin E can become pro-oxidant under some conditions. Learn more.

19 Which molecule do sirtuins depend on to function?

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+)
Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) fuels sirtuin activity and links cellular energy status with repair, metabolism, and stress responses. Learn more.
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP)
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10)

20 Which omega-6 fat is identified as a major driver of poor mitochondrial function?

Alpha-linolenic acid (ALA)
Linoleic acid (LA)
Linoleic acid (LA) can interfere with mitochondrial energy production, which may help explain why lowering its intake can initially improve how some people feel. Learn more.
Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA)
Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)

21 What trace mineral, when poorly regulated, can raise norepinephrine and lower dopamine?

Zinc
Iron
Copper
Copper helps produce norepinephrine. When it builds up, the resulting high-norepinephrine, low-dopamine pattern may contribute to anxiety, depression, and attention problems. Learn more.
Selenium

Every night, countless people turn to sleeping pills in the hope of finally getting the rest they crave. On the surface, the solution seems simple: take a pill, drift off faster, and wake up refreshed. But the reality is more complicated. Drug-induced sleep isn’t the same as natural sleep, and the difference matters for your brain health.

Deep sleep is where your brain does its heaviest lifting — it clears out waste, repairs cells, and locks new memories into long-term storage. When those processes are disrupted, the effects ripple into your focus, mood, and long-term cognitive function.

Over time, missing out on this restorative stage of sleep increases your risk for serious conditions, including dementia. What researchers are now uncovering is that sleep medications don’t just quiet your mind enough to knock you out. They interfere with the very rhythms and cycles that keep your brain sharp and resilient.

That makes the promise of quick sleep a dangerous trade-off. This opens the door to a deeper question: if these drugs change the architecture of your sleep, what exactly happens inside your brain — and why does that matter so much for your memory and long-term health?

Sleep Drug Blocks Your Brain’s Self-Cleaning System

In a study published in Cell, researchers wanted to understand how the brain clears waste during deep sleep.1 They focused on a chemical messenger called norepinephrine, which pulses in slow waves at night. These waves push cerebrospinal fluid — your brain’s “rinse cycle” — through the tissue to flush away toxic proteins. These proteins, when they accumulate, are heavily linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

• Researchers tested the effects of zolpidem (Ambien) — Zolpidem is one of the most prescribed sleep drugs, taken by millions of adults worldwide. The team discovered that when animals were given zolpidem, the drug interfered with norepinephrine’s oscillations. That interference disrupted the natural flow of cerebrospinal fluid through the brain, essentially shutting off its ability to wash away harmful buildup during sleep.

• Drug-induced sleep is not the same as natural sleep — People often assume that if they fall asleep quickly with medication, their brain is getting the same benefits as unmedicated rest. This study showed the opposite — drug-assisted sleep is missing a vital function. Without those slow pulsations, your brain misses out on its overnight cleaning service, which over time raises your risk for cognitive decline.

• The details show how specific the disruption is — Normally, norepinephrine oscillates in a rhythmic way that acts like a pump, moving fluids in and out of brain tissue. Zolpidem altered both the strength and timing of these pulses. That meant the brain’s “plumbing system” wasn’t working properly. Think of it like water pipes losing their pressure — fluid can’t move through and waste builds up inside.

Sleep Quality Matters More Than Just Sleep Length

Someone taking zolpidem may get eight hours of shut-eye, but the quality of that sleep is fundamentally altered. Instead of deep, restorative brain activity, they’re in a sedated state that looks like sleep but doesn’t perform the same functions. That distinction is important for anyone relying on these medications long term.

• The mechanism of action ties directly to Alzheimer’s risk — Amyloid and tau proteins naturally form in your brain as byproducts of metabolism. Deep sleep is when your brain gets rid of them. If those proteins aren’t cleared, they clump into plaques and tangles that damage brain cells and trigger Alzheimer’s disease. By disrupting norepinephrine-driven fluid flow, zolpidem creates conditions where amyloid and tau pile up night after night.2

• The cleaning system is not optional — it’s an essential part of brain health — As lead researcher Maiken Nedergaard explained, the research “calls attention to the potentially detrimental effects of certain pharmacological sleep aids on brain health, highlighting the necessity of preserving natural sleep architecture for optimal brain function.”3

Shutting it down with drugs is like skipping garbage collection in your neighborhood. The trash doesn’t just disappear; it builds up, creating long-term damage.

• If you rely on sleep drugs, you’re getting sedation without repair — Your brain is resting, but it’s not repairing itself or clearing out waste. That’s why the effects show up in memory, thinking, and eventually risk of dementia. Understanding this distinction helps you make informed choices about whether to use these medications or to find alternatives that protect your brain’s natural rhythms.

Chronic Sleep Drug Use Keeps Your Brain in Light Sleep

Research published in Sleep looked at the sleep patterns of older adults with insomnia and compared them to both healthy sleepers and those who used sleep medications regularly.4 Instead of focusing only on whether the drugs helped people fall asleep, the study examined what was happening in their brain waves during different sleep stages.

• Sleep drug users spent less time in deep sleep — The study showed that people who relied on benzodiazepines or benzodiazepine receptor agonists (Z-drugs like zopiclone) were trapped in lighter sleep stages. Deep sleep was reduced, which is significant because this stage is where your brain restores energy, repairs tissues, and locks new memories into long-term storage.

• The timing and strength of brain rhythms linked to memory were disrupted — Healthy sleep normally includes spindles — sudden bursts of brain activity — that sync with slow waves to transfer short-term memories into long-term storage. In drug users, this slow-wave/spindle coupling was weaker, suggesting their ability to form and retain memories overnight was compromised.

• Insomnia sufferers who didn’t rely on drugs still showed better brain rhythms — Interestingly, participants with insomnia who did not take medications had stronger slow-wave and spindle activity than those who used sedatives. This means that even though insomnia reduces sleep quantity, the quality of brain rhythms remains more intact when medications are avoided.

This finding matters because using drugs night after night gives you hours of sleep on paper, but it robs you of the deep, rejuvenating cycles that keep your memory sharp and your brain healthy with age.

Frequent Sleep Drug Use Raises Dementia Risk in Older Adults

Research published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease followed 3,068 cognitively healthy adults aged 70 to 79 for up to 15 years to determine if frequent sleep medication use was linked to dementia.5 Participants were part of the Health, Aging, and Body Composition study, which made it possible to capture real-world medication patterns alongside long-term cognitive outcomes.

• Frequent users showed a higher risk of dementia — The findings revealed that White participants who frequently used sleep medications — defined as several times per week — were nearly twice as likely to develop dementia compared to those who rarely or never used them. Importantly, this increased risk was not observed in Black participants, highlighting racial differences that may stem from prescribing patterns, genetic factors, or differences in health care access.

• The findings highlight real-world consequences for you — If you’re in your 70s and rely on sleep drugs multiple nights a week, this research suggests your odds of developing dementia nearly double compared to someone who doesn’t use them. That knowledge gives you leverage: by avoiding sleep drugs, you reduce one of the risk factors within your control.

• Researchers stressed the importance of reevaluating long-term prescribing — Sleep medications are often given to older adults for years at a time without monitoring. Their data shows that approach is not without consequences, and it reinforces the need to consider alternatives that improve sleep quality without sacrificing brain health.

Simple Steps to Restore Natural, Restorative Sleep

If you’ve been leaning on sleep medications, it’s important to understand that the real issue isn’t just falling asleep — it’s protecting the deep, restorative stages where your brain clears out toxins and strengthens memory. Drugs like zolpidem or benzodiazepines interfere with those rhythms, leaving you with hours of sedation but little true recovery. Here are drug-free steps that target the root cause of poor sleep and protect your long-term brain health.

1. Strengthen your sleep rhythm with consistent habits — Your brain depends on a strong internal clock, and one way to reinforce it is by going to bed and waking up at the same time every day. If you’re a night owl who struggles to wind down, dimming lights at sunset and avoiding screens in the hours before bedtime trains your brain to release melatonin naturally. This simple step strengthens your body’s timing system and makes it easier to slip into deep, high-quality sleep.

2. Create a brain-friendly sleep environment — Your bedroom should signal to your body that it’s time to rest. That means cool temperatures (around 65 degrees Fahrenheit), blackout curtains, and eliminating noises that keep you in lighter sleep stages. If you rely on background noise, try steady sounds like pink noise instead of TV chatter, which keeps your brain active. The calmer your environment, the easier it is for your brain to dive into the slow-wave sleep it needs.

3. Support your brain’s cleaning system naturally — During deep sleep, cerebrospinal fluid washes waste out of your brain. To help this process, avoid alcohol and late meals, which disrupt these nightly cycles. Staying hydrated during the day and limiting caffeine to the morning hours also supports better fluid flow and brain detox overnight. Think of these habits as tuning your brain’s self-cleaning system rather than shutting it off with drugs.

4. Use relaxation techniques instead of pills — If you often lie awake with a racing mind, replace medication with calming rituals that slow your brain waves. Slow breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, cognitive shuffling, or even writing down your worries before bed quiets your nervous system and prepares your brain for the natural transitions into sleep. Unlike sedatives, these methods don’t hijack your brain rhythms — they restore them.

5. Prioritize memory-protecting lifestyle choices — Your daily actions influence how well your brain rests at night. Regular exercise and daily activity, especially earlier in the day, boosts the depth of your slow-wave sleep. Exposure to natural daylight strengthens your circadian rhythm.

And nourishing your body with whole foods instead of processed snacks gives your brain the raw materials it needs for recovery. Each of these steps directly supports memory, learning, and brain repair — exactly what sleep medications disrupt.

FAQs About Sleep Medications and Brain Health

Q: Why are common sleep medications harmful for long-term brain health?
A: Sleep drugs like Ambien and benzodiazepines put you into a sedated state that looks like sleep but blocks deep, restorative stages. These drugs interfere with your brain’s natural cleaning system, preventing the removal of toxic proteins that contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.

Q: How do sleep medications affect memory and learning?
A: During natural deep sleep, your brain uses slow waves and spindles — specific brain rhythms — to lock in memories. Studies show that people who use sleep medications regularly have weaker slow-wave activity and reduced memory consolidation, leaving them more forgetful and mentally less sharp over time.

Q: What did long-term studies reveal about dementia risk?
A: Research following thousands of older adults found that frequent users of sleep medications had nearly double the risk of developing dementia compared to those who rarely or never used them.6 The risk was strongest in White participants who used these drugs several times a week.

Q: If I struggle with insomnia, what can I do instead of taking medication?
A: Improving sleep hygiene — such as keeping a consistent bedtime, dimming lights in the evening, and creating a cool, quiet bedroom — helps restore your body’s natural rhythm. Relaxation techniques like slow breathing and journaling also calm your nervous system without disrupting brain waves.

Q: How can lifestyle choices protect my brain while I sleep?
A: Daily habits like exercising, getting morning sunlight, and eating whole foods all strengthen your sleep cycles. These actions not only make it easier to fall asleep naturally but also ensure your brain spends enough time in deep sleep, where it clears waste, repairs itself, and protects long-term memory.

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive brain disorder characterized by tremors, muscle stiffness, slowed movement, balance problems, and, in many people, changes in sleep, smell, and thinking that begin years before diagnosis. The nerve cells that produce dopamine, a brain chemical that helps control smooth movement, gradually die off. These cells are concentrated in a small region deep in the brain, which is why losing even a modest number of them has an outsized effect on movement and coordination.

Left unchecked, the disease makes everyday tasks such as walking, speaking, writing, and swallowing increasingly difficult. Whenever researchers identify a modifiable risk factor, it’s important to pay attention because reducing exposure before symptoms appear offers one of the few opportunities to lower your risk. A growing body of evidence now points to one widely used agricultural insecticide, chlorpyrifos, as a possible contributor to the risk of Parkinson’s disease.1

The latest research goes further than earlier observational studies by combining human health data with laboratory experiments that examine how the chemical may damage nerve cells at a biological level. At the same time, legal and investigative scrutiny is catching up with the science, raising urgent questions about why exposure continues in certain agricultural settings despite decades of concern.

The strength of this evidence warrants a close look at what researchers found, how they found it, and what you can do to reduce your own exposure starting today.

Long-Term Chlorpyrifos Exposure Linked to the Hallmarks of Parkinson’s Disease

A study published in Molecular Neurodegeneration in December 2025 set out to answer if the widely used insecticide chlorpyrifos directly contributes to Parkinson’s disease, or if the connection is simply a coincidence.2 The researchers analyzed health data from people living in agricultural communities and exposed mice to chlorpyrifos in a way that closely resembled how people breathe it during agricultural spraying.

To understand what happened inside nerve cells after exposure, researchers used genetically engineered zebrafish (small fish whose transparent bodies, and whose brain pathways resemble those in humans), which allowed them to watch cellular processes unfold in real time. This combination allowed the researchers to examine both real-world risk and the biological processes behind it.

• The study examined hundreds of people from farming communities — The human portion of the research was a population-based case-control analysis that included 829 people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and 824 people without the disease who lived in three agricultural counties in central California (Kern, Fresno, and Tulare).

Rather than relying on participants’ memories of pesticide encounters spanning decades, the researchers reconstructed each person’s exposure history by cross-referencing California’s detailed pesticide application records with residential and workplace addresses going back years.

They estimated how much chlorpyrifos had been applied within roughly 500 meters (0.31 miles) of each home and workplace, drawing on California’s Pesticide Use Report database, while also adjusting for exposure to other pesticides such as glyphosate, paraquat, and diazinon. This approach reduced the chance that faulty memory influenced the results and strengthened confidence in the findings.

• Long-term exposure mattered more than isolated contact — The investigators found that long-term residential exposure to chlorpyrifos was associated with more than a 2.5-fold increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. The strongest single association in the analysis was for the longest-duration workplace exposure. Because this portion of the study was observational, it can demonstrate association but cannot establish cause.

That said, if you live near agricultural fields or spend significant time where pesticides are routinely sprayed, the findings suggest that reducing repeated exposure may matter more than one isolated event.

• Researchers strengthened their findings by reproducing Parkinson’s-like changes in animals — Scientists often look for evidence that an environmental exposure produces the same biological changes seen in people. That’s exactly what happened here.

Male mice that inhaled aerosolized chlorpyrifos six hours a day, five days a week over 11 weeks — at airborne concentrations rising from roughly 77 to 300 micrograms per cubic meter — developed movement problems that resembled Parkinson’s disease.

At the same time, researchers found fewer dopamine-producing nerve cells in the brain — about a 26% loss in the substantia nigra, which influences movements and brain chemistry — and greater activation of immune cells that drive inflammation. These immune cells, called microglia, act as the brain’s first responders.

When they stay activated over long periods, they release inflammatory molecules that can damage surrounding nerve cells, turning a protective response into a source of ongoing harm. The exposed mice also showed increased accumulation of abnormal alpha-synuclein protein — a 1.66-fold rise.

Alpha-synuclein is normally present in healthy nerve cells, but when it misfolds and isn’t cleared away, it clumps together into toxic deposits that are a defining feature of Parkinson’s disease. Finding a consistent pattern in both humans and animals strengthens the case that chlorpyrifos may contribute to disease processes rather than simply appearing alongside it.*

• The pesticide interfered with the brain’s housekeeping system — One of the most important discoveries involved a process called autophagy. Think of autophagy as your cells’ recycling and garbage disposal system. Healthy cells constantly collect worn-out proteins and damaged cell parts, break them down, and recycle their components.

According to the researchers, chlorpyrifos disrupted this cleanup process in the mouse and zebrafish models. As the recycling system slowed, abnormal alpha-synuclein proteins accumulated instead of being removed.

The zebrafish experiments reinforced this finding. When researchers deliberately disrupted the same cleanup pathway, nerve cells died in much the same way. When they restored that recycling process or reduced the harmful protein buildup, nerve cells became less vulnerable to injury.

• The study points toward prevention as well as future treatments — The researchers identified biological pathways that deserve attention for future therapies. Because damage centered on impaired cellular cleanup rather than a single toxic event, they suggest that approaches aimed at restoring autophagy or reducing alpha-synuclein accumulation warrant investigation as potential disease-modifying strategies.

While those treatments still require additional study, you don’t have to wait for a new drug before taking action.

Every opportunity to reduce repeated exposure to chlorpyrifos and similar pesticides may reduce the amount of stress placed on the brain over time, especially if you live or work near agricultural spraying. Understanding where exposure occurs can help you make more informed choices about your long-term brain health.

*These findings are from laboratory or animal research and may not directly apply to human health.

A Lawsuit Puts Chlorpyrifos Under Increased Scrutiny

While the science builds a case against chlorpyrifos at the cellular level, the legal system is now pressing the question of who bears responsibility for decades of exposure. As reported by The New Lede, a lawsuit filed in June 2026 names Dow Chemical, the company that developed and originally marketed chlorpyrifos, along with Corteva and FMC Corporation. The complaint was filed in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas by a former pest control worker.3

The lawsuit alleges that years of exposure to the insecticide caused the plaintiff to develop Parkinson’s disease and argues that Dow knew or should have known about the pesticide’s neurological dangers but failed to adequately warn the people who handled it regularly. The complaint also cites research linking chlorpyrifos exposure to Parkinson’s disease to support its claims. These are allegations that have not yet been tested in court.

• The report reviews decades of controversy surrounding the pesticide — The article explains that chlorpyrifos became one of the most widely used insecticides in U.S. agriculture after Dow introduced it in the mid-1960s. Residential uses were phased out in the early 2000s under an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because of concerns about children’s health, but the chemical continued to be sprayed on many agricultural crops.

Since then, chlorpyrifos has been the focus of years of legal disputes, regulatory reversals, and court battles over whether it should remain available for agricultural use. Although some restrictions have been adopted, the report notes that chlorpyrifos continues to be used on certain crops; the EPA currently permits limited agricultural use after court action blocked a 2021 ban, leaving opportunities for ongoing exposure.

• Stronger safeguards are needed to reduce unnecessary exposure — The lawsuit is part of a broader effort to increase accountability for pesticide manufacturers while improving protections for workers. People shouldn’t have to choose between earning a living and protecting their long-term brain health. Stronger warnings, improved workplace safeguards, and continued efforts to reduce reliance on hazardous pesticides are important steps in lowering preventable exposure.

These points reflect the argument made in a North Texas Daily opinion column addressing pesticide policy in agriculture.4

• Farmworkers deserve stronger protections — Agricultural workers bear the greatest burden of exposure because they mix, apply, and work around pesticides throughout growing seasons. An opinion piece published by North Texas Daily argues that the people who plant, cultivate, and harvest the nation’s food supply deserve better protection from chemicals that growing scientific evidence links to serious neurological disease.

That column focuses specifically on paraquat, a different Parkinson’s-linked pesticide, but its workplace-protection argument applies more broadly.5 Rather than accepting repeated exposure as part of the job, the column calls attention to the need for safer working conditions and greater awareness of long-term health risks.

Reduce Your Pesticide Exposure Before It Accumulates

The featured study points toward a practical, modifiable step — reducing repeated exposure to pesticides before it accumulates over years. Every step that lowers your contact with chlorpyrifos and other agricultural pesticides may reduce one more source of stress on your brain and gives you something concrete to act on.

At the same time, everyday habits also influence the health of your brain, so the remaining steps focus on broader lifestyle factors studied in relation to Parkinson’s disease risk.

1. Identify where your pesticide exposure comes from — If you live, work, or spend time near farmland, learn what crops surround you and whether pesticides are applied during the growing season. Pay attention to local spraying notices if they’re available. Knowing when and where exposure occurs gives you the chance to avoid unnecessary contact instead of being caught off guard.

2. Reduce pesticide residue that reaches your home — If you’re around agricultural areas, remove your shoes before coming inside, wash your hands after outdoor activities, and rinse fresh produce thoroughly before eating it. When possible, choose organic produce to reduce pesticide residues. If you grow your own fruits and vegetables, avoid using chlorpyrifos or similar insecticides. Small daily habits reduce repeated exposure over time.

3. Support your gut so your brain gets calmer signals — Your gut and brain are in constant communication. When digestion is disrupted, inflammatory signals travel through that connection and may add strain to the same nerve pathways that pesticide exposure burdens. To improve gut health, start by removing ultraprocessed foods and seed oils, which are high in linoleic acid (LA). This includes soybean, corn, sunflower, and canola oil.

These foods deliver a heavy load of LA, contribute to inflammation, and undermine cellular energy production. Next, build your meals around easy-to-digest carbohydrates, such as whole fruit and white rice, to restore fuel without overwhelming your gut. As digestion improves, you can slowly expand to other well-tolerated starches, such as root vegetables.

Aim for about 250 grams of healthy carbohydrates a day so your cells have enough energy to repair, help regulate inflammation, and maintain normal brain function. When your gut heals, beneficial bacteria produce butyrate, a short-chain fat that helps support your gut lining and mood, and may calm neuroinflammation.

4. Move your body in ways that wake up your nervous system — Walking, cycling, resistance training, and gentle coordinated movement such as tai chi all engage the circuits involved in balance, rhythm, and coordination. If you feel stiff, slow, or unsteady, treat that as a cue to move more often, not less.

If those symptoms are new or worsening, talk with your health care provider, since they can also be early signs of a neurological condition. Regular movement helps maintain those nerve connections, and research links consistent physical activity with better long-term function.

Aim for about an hour of walking a day. Exercise is also a more effective way to activate autophagy — the same cellular cleanup system chlorpyrifos was found to disrupt — than fasting is.

5. Lower daily stress and support healthy vitamin D levels — Chronic stress keeps your nervous system locked in survival mode, which can raise stress hormones that may take a toll on brain cells over time. Build one calming routine into each day, such as slow breathing, quiet time, mindfulness, or a predictable evening rhythm. Add regular sunlight exposure to support healthy vitamin D levels, which act as an epigenetic regulator and may help support a balanced inflammatory response.

If your diet has been high in seed oils, reduce them for four to six months before spending time in strong midday sun, because excess LA stored in your tissues increases your tendency to burn.

When sunlight is limited, an observational analysis of nearly 3,000 participants in the GrassrootsHealth cohort found that people supplementing with both magnesium and vitamin K2 reached a given vitamin D level on substantially less vitamin D3 intake than those taking neither. A common pairing is 180 micrograms of vitamin K2 per 5,000 IUs of vitamin D.6

Test your vitamin D twice a year and aim for 60 to 80 ng/mL (150 to 200 nmol/L) so you know exactly where you stand. Talk to your health care provider about whether this testing is appropriate for you.

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

FAQs About Pesticides and Parkinson’s Disease

Q: What did the Molecular Neurodegeneration study discover about chlorpyrifos and Parkinson’s disease?
A: Researchers found that long-term residential exposure to the insecticide chlorpyrifos was associated with more than a 2.5-fold higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, in a case-control analysis of 829 people with Parkinson’s disease and 824 people without it.

The study strengthened that finding by showing the same pesticide caused movement problems, loss of dopamine-producing nerve cells, and other Parkinson’s-like changes in laboratory animals, which strengthens the case beyond earlier observational research alone.

Q: How does chlorpyrifos damage the brain?
A: The researchers found that chlorpyrifos interferes with autophagy, the brain’s natural recycling system that removes damaged proteins and worn-out cell parts. This was observed in mouse and zebrafish models. When that cleanup process breaks down, abnormal alpha-synuclein proteins build up inside nerve cells instead of being cleared away, which the researchers connect to the changes seen in Parkinson’s disease.

Q: Who faces the greatest risk of chlorpyrifos exposure?
A: People who live or work near agricultural fields where chlorpyrifos is sprayed face the greatest likelihood of repeated exposure. Farmworkers, pesticide applicators, and others who regularly handle agricultural chemicals are especially vulnerable because they encounter these pesticides throughout growing seasons rather than during isolated events.

Q: What can I do to reduce my exposure to pesticides?
A: Start by identifying where exposure is most likely to occur. If you live near farmland, pay attention to pesticide application notices when available. Remove your shoes before entering your home, wash your hands after spending time outdoors, rinse fresh produce thoroughly, choose organic when possible, and avoid using chlorpyrifos or similar insecticides around your own home or garden whenever possible.

Q: Besides avoiding pesticides, what else supports long-term brain health?
A: Reducing pesticide exposure addresses one important risk factor, but your daily habits also influence long-term brain health.

Supporting a healthy gut with whole, minimally processed foods, staying physically active, managing chronic stress, maintaining healthy vitamin D levels through sensible sun exposure, and eating a nutrient-rich diet all are reasonable steps for supporting the brain and nervous system, though evidence connecting them specifically to Parkinson’s disease risk is still developing.

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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Which family of proteins helps regulate cellular energy?

Sirtuins
Sirtuins help cells respond to stress, maintain DNA, and coordinate energy use, which is why they are closely tied to healthy aging. Learn more.
Cytokines
Collagens
Integrins

Sirtuins (SIRTs) are a family of proteins that sit at the intersection of energy, repair, and aging — and understanding how they work may change the way you think about growing older. These enzymes rely on nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), and they spend a little of it every time they act, which is what links your body’s moment-to-moment energy status to DNA repair, mitochondrial function, inflammation, and metabolism.1

How well your sirtuins function helps determine how efficiently your cells adapt, recover, and maintain themselves over a lifetime, which is why researchers have placed them at the center of the science of healthy aging. Sirtuins are enzymes your body produces, not something you obtain directly from food. Different members of the sirtuin family work inside different parts of your cells, and each one performs a specialized job.

That division of labor matters enormously, because these proteins do not all behave the same way or produce the same effects. Together, they help coordinate how your body uses nutrients, responds to physical stress, and maintains healthy tissues over time. That distinction becomes much clearer once you look at how each member of the sirtuin family works inside the body and why researchers continue to study them so closely.

Different Sirtuins Perform Different Jobs

A News Medical article by science writer Chinta Sidharthan summarizes current research on all seven known human sirtuins and explains how each one performs a different job inside your cells rather than acting in the same way.2

It summarizes findings from multiple scientific studies to explain how these enzymes regulate metabolism, DNA repair, inflammation, mitochondrial function, and healthy aging. One of the most important messages is that researchers no longer see “activating sirtuins” as a simple solution because each sirtuin behaves differently depending on the tissue, organ, and biological process involved.

• Each member of the sirtuin family specializes in a different location inside your cells — Rather than working everywhere at once, SIRT1, SIRT6, and SIRT7 spend most of their time inside the cell nucleus, where they help regulate genes and preserve DNA stability. SIRT2 works mainly in the cell fluid but moves into the nucleus during certain stages of cell division.
Meanwhile, SIRT3, SIRT4, and SIRT5 operate inside mitochondria, where they oversee many of the chemical reactions that keep your cells supplied with energy.
This means healthy aging depends on many separate repair and energy systems working together instead of relying on one “longevity gene.” The review states that these enzymes respond to nutrient availability, environmental stress, metabolic regulation, and circadian rhythms, showing that your daily habits influence the very pathways scientists continue to investigate.
• Your body’s energy factories receive some of the greatest support from mitochondrial sirtuins — According to the review, SIRT3 serves as the major mitochondrial deacetylase, meaning it removes small chemical tags from proteins so those proteins work more efficiently.
This helps regulate enzymes involved in the electron transport chain and the tricarboxylic acid cycle, often called the TCA or Krebs cycle, the series of reactions that converts nutrients into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the primary energy currency used by every cell.
The review also explains that SIRT5 regulates parts of the urea cycle, which helps remove excess nitrogen from your body, while also influencing glycolysis, the process that converts glucose into usable energy. SIRT4 works differently by slowing certain metabolic pathways, illustrating that healthy metabolism depends on balance rather than maximum activity.
• Healthy aging depends on constant maintenance instead of one-time repairs — The review highlights research showing that sirtuins preserve genomic integrity, meaning they help keep your DNA stable as cells divide throughout life. One example involves SIRT6, which helps repair dangerous double-strand DNA breaks and maintain telomeres, the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that naturally shorten with age.
Animal research found that deficiency of SIRT6 produced features of premature aging, emphasizing how important continuous DNA maintenance becomes over a lifetime.3 The review also explains that SIRT1 and SIRT3 activate antioxidant defense pathways instead of simply eliminating every reactive oxygen species, or ROS.
These molecules often receive negative attention because excessive amounts damage cells, but moderate ROS also serve as important signals that tell your cells to strengthen their defenses. Researchers describe this as a hormetic response, meaning a small amount of biological stress helps build greater resilience over time.
• Researchers continue to uncover why declining mitochondrial function accelerates aging — The review explains what happens when SIRT3 slows down. Because its job is to strip those chemical tags off mitochondrial proteins, falling SIRT3 activity lets the tags accumulate, a state called hyperacetylation, and the tagged proteins gum up and lose efficiency.
As energy production falls, ROS rise, increasing the risk of cardiac fibrosis, neurodegeneration, and skeletal muscle loss during aging. Cardiac fibrosis refers to excessive scar tissue that stiffens the heart and reduces its ability to pump efficiently.
Neurodegeneration describes the gradual loss of nerve cells that contributes to disorders affecting memory and movement. These findings reinforce an important takeaway for your own health: protecting mitochondrial function supports far more than energy levels. It also helps preserve muscle, cardiovascular health, and healthy brain function as you grow older.
• Scientists remain optimistic, but they also urge caution about future therapies — One of the strongest themes throughout the review is that researchers have moved beyond the idea that simply increasing sirtuin activity solves every problem.
The article notes that compounds such as resveratrol, the molecule once made famous by red wine, have shown effects resembling calorie restriction, the long-studied practice of eating fewer calories without malnutrition that reliably extends lifespan in laboratory animals and remains the original discovery that launched sirtuin research.
In experimental models, resveratrol appeared to mimic some of those benefits, but its specificity and usefulness in people remain limited. Researchers are also studying NAD+ precursors because they help restore declining NAD+ levels, yet the evidence in humans remains disease-specific rather than universally consistent.
The review further explains that some sirtuins produce opposite effects depending on the tissue or disease stage, including certain cancers where SIRT1 acts either as a tumor suppressor or as a tumor promoter depending on the biological setting. That growing understanding encourages a practical mindset: supporting your overall cellular health through healthy lifestyle habits makes far more sense than expecting a single supplement or molecule to control the complex biology of aging.

Note: The research summarized here includes laboratory and animal studies as well as human research of varying scope. Findings from cell and animal models may not directly apply to human health.

Support Your Cellular Energy Every Day

Healthy sirtuin activity starts with healthy cellular energy. Sirtuins are one part of a much larger system rather than a single target to activate. Instead of chasing one supplement that promises longevity, build the daily habits that give your cells the fuel and raw materials they need to produce energy, repair damage, and adapt to stress. Those consistent habits also help maintain healthy NAD+ levels, the molecule sirtuins rely on to function.

1. Feed your cells enough quality carbohydrates — Most adults need about 250 grams of carbohydrates daily, adjusting upward if you’re very active. Focus on whole fruit, white rice, root vegetables, properly prepared starches, and other minimally processed carbohydrate sources that provide the glucose your cells need for efficient energy production. Your body relies on steady energy availability to support the same metabolic pathways that influence sirtuin activity.
You may have read that fasting or calorie restriction “activates” sirtuins, and in lab models it can. But chronic energy shortage is itself a stressor, and your cells need steady glucose to run the very repair and energy pathways sirtuins depend on. Keeping NAD+ recycling healthy matters more than starving your system.
2. Support your body’s natural NAD+ recycling system — Sirtuins depend on NAD+, but NAD+ levels naturally decline with age and fall more rapidly when your body spends large amounts repairing DNA or responding to chronic inflammation. One important reason is that your body’s NAD+ recycling process, called the salvage pathway, becomes less efficient over time. I recommend supporting that system with small, consistent amounts of niacinamide instead of large doses.
Niacinamide is a form of vitamin B3, not the same as flush-causing niacin. I recommend about 50 milligrams (mg) three times daily, which provides steady support for NAD+ production while avoiding the drawbacks associated with high-dose vitamin B3. Eating foods naturally rich in B vitamins, including grass fed beef, mushrooms, potatoes, bananas, and leafy green vegetables — if you tolerate them — also helps supply the nutrients your mitochondria need to produce energy efficiently.
3. Protect your mitochondria every day — Your mitochondria produce the ATP that powers nearly every process inside your body. Help them work efficiently by avoiding seed oils, choosing traditional fats such as grass fed butter, ghee, or tallow instead, getting regular movement, and eating enough protein.

Aim for about 0.6 to 0.8 grams per pound (or 1.32 to 1.76 grams per kilogram) of ideal body weight, with one-third coming from collagen-rich sources like slow-cooked meats or bone broth. Those building blocks support the repair and maintenance processes that healthy cells perform continuously.

4. Support your natural daily rhythm — Your cells follow an internal clock, and sirtuins are wired directly into it. SIRT1 helps run the molecular machinery that keeps your circadian rhythm on time, and that rhythm in turn governs the daily rise and fall of NAD+. Spend time outdoors in morning sunlight to set that clock, then reduce bright artificial light after sunset.
If you still consume significant amounts of seed oils and other sources of linoleic acid (LA), avoid intense midday sun exposure (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) until you have reduced those foods for at least six months. This is because LA is a polyunsaturated fat that oxidizes easily, builds up in your skin, and increases your risk of skin damage. Healthy light exposure supports cellular energy production and helps reinforce many of the biological pathways that interact with metabolism and healthy aging.
Just as important, protect your sleep itself: aim for high-quality sleep on a consistent schedule. Deep sleep is when much of your cellular repair and mitochondrial housekeeping happens, and it’s when your NAD+ recycling system does its most important work.
5. Build resilience through consistent movement instead of longevity shortcuts — If you’re mostly sedentary, begin with daily walking and gradually add resistance training twice a week that matches your fitness level. Exercise encourages your cells to become stronger and more efficient over time. Rather than depending on one “anti-aging” product, make consistency your goal.
Every healthy meal, every walk, every workout, and every good night’s sleep helps create the environment your sirtuins, mitochondria, and NAD+ recycling system need to support healthy aging.

FAQs About Sirtuins, Aging, and Longevity

Q: What are sirtuins, and why are they important?
A: Sirtuins are a family of proteins your body naturally produces that help regulate how your cells create energy, repair DNA, respond to stress, and maintain healthy tissues. Because they rely on NAD+ to function, they connect your body’s energy status with many of the biological processes that influence healthy aging.

Q: Do all sirtuins perform the same job?
A: No. Humans have seven different sirtuins, and each one has specialized responsibilities. Some help maintain your DNA, while others work inside your mitochondria to support energy production or regulate metabolism. Scientists now recognize that healthy aging depends on all of these systems working together rather than on one “longevity protein.”

Q: Why does NAD+ matter for healthy aging?
A: NAD+ serves as the fuel that allows sirtuins to work. As you grow older, NAD+ levels naturally decline and are depleted more quickly when your body repairs DNA or responds to chronic inflammation. Supporting your body’s ability to recycle NAD+ helps maintain the cellular processes that promote healthy aging.

Q: What daily habits help support healthy sirtuin activity?
A: The most effective approach focuses on strengthening your cellular energy system. Eating enough minimally processed carbohydrates, protecting your mitochondria, maintaining regular physical activity, getting morning sunlight, and supporting healthy NAD+ production all create an environment where sirtuins function more efficiently.

Q: Are longevity supplements enough to activate sirtuins?
A: No. Current research shows that healthy aging is far more complex than taking a single supplement. While scientists continue to study NAD+ precursors and other compounds, the strongest foundation remains healthy lifestyle habits that support cellular energy production, mitochondrial function, and your body’s natural repair systems.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Sirtuins, NAD+ precursors, and related supplements are not a treatment for any disease. Consult a qualified health care provider before making changes to your health regimen.

Test Your Knowledge with Today’s Quiz!
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What are flavanols?

A type of dietary fiber
A diverse group of healthy fats
Plant-based natural compounds
Flavanols are plant compounds naturally found in foods such as fruit, tea, beans, and cocoa. Learn more.
Minerals stored in cruciferous vegetables

Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published December 31, 2023.

The interview above features Ashley Armstrong, who’s an expert in two areas. One is producing some of the healthiest food in the United States, and the second is understanding how your body uses it and how to select the right types of food to optimize your biology, based on the late biologist and thyroid expert, Ray Peat’s, principles of bioenergetic medicine. She also is a certified personal trainer with a Ph.D., MS and BS in engineering.

Like many others who are trying to improve their health, Armstrong tried low-carb diets, fasting, keto and even carnivore diets in the past. But while these all led to improvements initially, they didn’t eliminate them, which ultimately led her to investigate Peat’s principles.

“Ray Peat, he honestly saved my life and I owe so much to that man,” she says. “I’m forever grateful for him. The biggest wake-up for me was measuring my body temperature. I was on a carnivore diet and measured my body temperature — it was 96.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

I was like, wow, no wonder my hair is thinning. No wonder my complexion is so pale. No wonder I’m not sleeping through the night. There was just a number of red flags. That body temperature measurement just woke me up. It’s what I needed to [realize] I’m not thriving, I’m just surviving.

I’ve been implementing Dr. Peat’s principles for over three years now. I have more energy in life than I think I’ve ever had, even as a teenager. And it’s just amazing to see how being not restricted with your food, just being strategic with macros, types of food, how powerful that can be for your energy production.”

The Problem with Low-Carb and Keto

As I’ve detailed in previous articles over the past year, low-carb/high-fat diets ultimately backfire because they inhibit glucose metabolism, which is the most efficient form of energy production in your mitochondria; they also impair thyroid function. Your thyroid is crucial for energy production, and if your thyroid doesn’t work, you’re down the creek without a paddle.

One of the reasons for this is because ketogenic diets increase the stress hormones — cortisol, glucagon and adrenaline. On the other hand, one of the reasons why ketogenic and carnivore diets are usually helpful for a time is because, if implemented properly, you’re radically reducing your intake of omega-6 fats, linoleic acid (LA) in particular, which is one of the primary drivers of ill health.

Energy Production Is Key for Overall Health

As explained by Armstrong, the best way to understand the bioenergetic principle is to think of your body as a system. It has a certain amount of energy, and a number of biological processes that it can turn on or turn off with that energy source.

The greater your energy pool, the more functions your body can turn on. When your energy production is lower than required to maintain all functions, your body needs to downregulate certain functions, which ultimately results in problems. The human body is designed to promote survival, so it’s going to prioritize things like your heart rate.

Functions that aren’t necessarily vital for survival in the immediate moment, like sex hormone production, reproductive function, digestion, sleep and high cognitive thinking, get downregulated first. When you increase energy production, however, your body can then expend energy on those functions and bring them “back online.”

Using Body and Pulse Measurements as Guides

As explained by Armstrong, one of the easiest ways to assess how much energy your body is producing is to take your body temperature.

“High stress hormones can keep your waking body temperature elevated,” she says, “so you’ve got to do your waking temperature 30 to 40 minutes after breakfast, and then I like to do midday. You want to see that temperature rise.

For many who are on low-carb or who are living on stress hormones, they’re going to have potentially high waking body temperature, but after breakfast, that temperature may drop. That’s because the food you’re consuming is lowering your stress hormones and your actual body temperature is then better exposed.

So we want to see that body temperature rise. And I love how both of us are so passionate about linoleic acid. As human linoleic acid consumption has gone up, human body temperature has gone down. So, the types of fats that we are consuming in our diet is impacting energy production in a negative way.

It’s shown with obesity rates out the roof. It’s shown with the decline in our body temperature. It’s shown with the decline in our healthy life expectancy, which is bizarre as a First-World country. There are just so many profound effects.

But when we just think of it as energy production — the more energy we can give our body to be able to perform functions, the better it’s going to function. I asked this question to someone who is really adamant about fasting. I said, ‘If you’ve got two bodies, one body that’s fasted and the other body that is fed nourishing food, which body is going to thrive and function better?’

It’s obvious. If you add a third person fed more of a standard American diet, of course maybe fasting is going to make you feel better, but you can elevate yourself a step above. You don’t have to rely on fasting to increase energy production. Your body is not going to increase energy when you’re not [putting] energy in.”

Indeed, when it comes to fasting, one of the primary benefits is that it lowers the fuel for gram-negative bacteria that produce endotoxin in your gut. Low-carb does this as well. Endotoxin, estrogen, LA and stress hormones will all decrease your mitochondrial function, mediated in big part by your thyroid function. Those are the big things that need to be reduced to enhance your mitochondrial function and energy production within the mitochondria.

How LA Harms Your Energy Production

As mentioned, LA is a primary driver of disease, in large part due to its detrimental effect on mitochondrial function and, hence, energy production. Your body can use both fat and glucose for energy. Muscle, in particular, will use fat for fuel, as will your heart. So, fat is not bad, but it’s important to realize that different fats affect your body in different ways, so it’s crucial to get the right fats. Armstrong explains:

“The different types of fatty acid molecules have drastically different structures and those impact the internal environment inside of us. They impact how your body is producing energy. The more saturated we can become, the better our internal environment is going to be.

When someone goes low-carb, maybe they reduce the amount of packaged food that they’re eating that contains a ton of vegetable oil and linoleic acid, and so potentially they’re resaturating some of their tissues.

But when you learn about what livestock are being fed these days, then you realize that a high animal fat diet can still contain quite a bit of PUFAs [polyunsaturated fats] and linoleic acid, depending on what those animals ate. So, think it’s important to consider the amount of each macronutrient that you’re intaking because that can have profound impacts on your energy production.

Saturating your tissues is going to take you to the next level, but adding in appropriate levels of carbohydrates is going to allow you to take your consciousness and energy production level to the next level [beyond that].”

The types of carbs you eat matter, however. I’m convinced the ideal carbohydrate is fresh, ripe fruit. Ripe is the key here. Of course, some fruits are better than others. Watermelon, for example, is among the best. Watermelon with feta cheese and a little mint on top makes for a delicious snack.

Aside from containing a lot of water, watermelon also contains a substance called citrulline, which converts into arginine, a precursor for nitric oxide (NO). NO is important to your body, but the caveat is that it needs to come from real food. Drugs like Cialis or Viagra, which act by increasing NO, will accelerate your path toward premature death. Artificial citrulline and other synthetic amino acids that raise NO are also best avoided.

“In Michigan, I rely a lot on frozen fruit,” Armstrong says. “In the summertime I’ll go to strawberry fields and pick strawberries when fresh and then freeze a ton of them. Same thing with blueberries and peaches. And then I rely on a lot of apples in the winter because apples are abundant around here and can be stored.”

Juices also have their place. Cold-pressed, pulp-free orange juice, for example, is a good choice. The reason you want pulp-free is because if you’re like most people, you have gram-negative, endotoxin bacteria in your gut that will thrive on the pulp, hence increasing endotoxin production.

So, if you have an unhealthy microbiome, pulp-free orange juice is a great carb that will gently and safely allow you to enter the higher carb world. As your microbiome improves, then you can transition to whole fruits and berries, which is, I believe, far superior to juices.

How to Produce the Best Eggs

Segueing into the topic of food production, Armstrong’s farm produces some of the highest quality eggs I’ve ever come across, and the feed recipe I use for my own chickens came from her. But I discovered something that could make them even better, and that is to allow the chickens to scratch for their own food.

Their ideal food is insects fresh from the ground, and while I previously thought chickens couldn’t get enough food this way, meaning you had to give them something, that may actually not be true.

Unfortunately, in places where the ground freezes, chickens will not be able to sustain themselves on insects, and you definitely do NOT want to feed your chickens dehydrated bugs. Why? Because the bugs are raised on corn and soy, making them very high in LA.

But in places like South Florida, for example, you can easily produce top-notch eggs, quality-wise, by allowing your chickens to peck for insects, without giving them any supplemental feed. Armstrong is also making plans to let her chickens forage for bugs year-round:

“I think that would be the ideal condition, and I have an image in my head of what I want to bring our farm to in the future — a greenhouse where we’ve got fodder growing on the ground and a worm farm … so [the chickens] will get abundant bugs in the winter. That’s what I want to move towards, but that requires a lot of financial investment. So we’ll get there one day.”

The Feed Has Dramatic Impacts on Animal Foods

The feed Armstrong developed, which I’ve been using as well, results in eggs that have about 75% less LA than conventional eggs. When it comes to conventional eggs, the LA is really the only problem. When the chickens are fed an ideal diet, the yolk in the egg is one of the best, most nutritious foods imaginable. The only thing that comes close is organ meat.

Egg yolks are the ultimate food; the problem is 99.99% of the eggs produced in this country are not that good. I don’t care if they say free range, grass fed, organic, it doesn’t matter. They’re terrible because they have four times more LA than they should. As noted by Armstrong:

“It’s important to consider organic soybeans have the same amount of linoleic acid as nonorganic soybeans. Whether it’s grown conventionally, organically does not change the fatty acid composition of soybeans. You don’t want to be eating eggs from chickens fed a bunch of soy vegetable oil and other high omega-6 PUFA foods.”

According to Armstrong, the feed of the chickens may even determine the eggs’ allergenicity. In other words, if you’re allergic to eggs, you could be able to eat the eggs from correctly fed chickens.

“What is soy high in? Phytoestrogens that can be very problematic for some people. If a chicken is eating phytoestrogens that can be problematic for humans, those get passed through into the eggs. We have a number of customers that cannot eat any other eggs, but they’re totally fine with our eggs. And it’s because of the diet of the chicken.

So if you have allergic reactions or problems with eggs, try a different source where they’re not fed soy. Some people can be allergic to corn as well, and that allergenicity can pass through the egg as well. But it seems like soy is the biggest culprit.

But be careful of many corn and soy-free feeds, because those are high-PUFA ingredients like sunflower, flax, fish oil, vegetable oil and safflower oil. And so, just be really careful of your source, and ask what the chickens are eating. But yes, allergenicity of eggs I think really depends on what the chicken eats.”

LA-Rich Animal Feed Is Now Impacting Human Energy Production and Health

All of that said, it’s still crucial to ensure your chickens have enough food, be it fresh insects or a carefully planned feed that is low in LA and high in healthy saturated fats and other nutrients.

“Your chicken is not going to thrive if it’s underfed,” Armstrong says. “Your chicken is not going to thrive if it doesn’t have food. I am trying to boost the metabolic rate of our chickens as high as possible. Just like us, chickens are monogastric single stomach animals, the types of fat that they are fed, the types of fat that we are fed impacts the types of fat inside of us.

This is a little bit different for ruminant animals — cows, goats — but for monogastric chickens, pigs, their diet is very important. And this is why I am so passionate about it, because we have been lied to and convinced that saturated fat is bad for us.

So, you’ve seen a huge push for PUFAs in our diet. This is going beyond just human dietary choices. This is impacting our livestock food. And this is having profound impacts on not only livestock health, but also the food that we’re consuming …

Even in the dairy industry, they’re creating things called rumen-protected fats. They are PUFAs that in a typical rumen digestion system can go through the process called hydrogenation, which turns the PUFA into saturated fat.

They are designing rumen-protected fats so that the PUFA is passed through the rumen. The PUFA content of milk is increasing. That means any dairy fat — butter, cream, whole milk. The PUFA content of beef fat is increasing. And this is by design … Lard and chicken fat from conventional animals has the same amount of PUFA as canola oil.

This is profound. We have changed the types of fat inside of us. I think the linoleic acid content of humans has increased 136%. That is changing how our body is making energy inside of us. The types of fat we consume day-to-day have a long life inside of us — 600 days. So, the types of fat we’re consuming day to day impacts our energy production for years to come.

It’s unfortunate because this is just the reality for a lot of people, and that’s why I’m so passionate about it. Our food system is designed in a way that is not setting us up for success. That’s why I want to try to change it by going back to how our food was produced 100 years ago, where there was appropriate amounts of PUFAs in foods, small amounts, and saturated fat was the predominant fat source for both livestock and humans.”

High-PUFA Diets Shut Down Your Metabolism

As explained by Armstrong, in nature, animals increase their PUFA consumption up to a certain amount to initiate torpor, which means their metabolism is so downregulated that they can survive the winter without eating. Think about that. Can you function optimally if your diet is one meant for hibernation? In that state, you have to eat fewer and fewer calories to avoid weight gain, which results in undernourishment and poor energy production.

“I try to keep my PUFA consumption as low as possible,” Armstrong says. “You can easily track that in Cronometer and see what your total PUFA, total linoleic acid content is per day. If you have four conventional eggs, you’re already at about 5 grams of linoleic acid in a day. And I would want people to be lower than that. All foods contain some amount of linoleic acid, so even milk is going to have a little bit.”

There’s no question that LA is NOT an essential fat, even though it’s categorized as such. It’s not essential because nearly all foods contain it. It’s virtually impossible to become deficient in LA if you eat food, regardless of what that food is.

Another fat that likely IS essential, but isn’t widely recognized as such, is the odd-chain saturated fats (OCFAs) found primarily in dairy. You can learn more about this in “The Amazing Benefits of Dairy Fat.” There’s also evidence suggesting that if you don’t get enough OCFAs in your diet, then high saturated fat intake might become problematic.

So, you need these odd-chain saturated fats. That’s why you need butter. You need milk. These are essential. Your optimized biology and health is dependent on these foods, because, again, the OCFAs help increase your body’s energy pool. They boost energy production, which will improve how your entire body functions.

In the interview we also discuss how dairy improves the health benefits of eggs, as the calcium in the dairy reduces the conversion of tryptophan in the egg white into serotonin. Serotonin is another compound you simply do not want too much of.

You also want to make sure you’re having enough carbohydrates with that meal. Carbohydrate oxidation produces 50% more carbon dioxide (CO2), so simply having carbs with your eggs will raise your CO2 level, which is very important for health.

“So, for breakfast, have eggs, milk, some honey or maple syrup and fruit. Boom, there you go. You’re drastically reducing the conversion of tryptophan to serotonin and it’s a simple meal,” Armstrong says.

About Angel Acres Egg Co. and the Nourish Cooperative

What your food eats, matters — as pigs and chickens are vehicles for health-harming polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs). If their diet is high in PUFAs, the final product will contain more PUFAs. With the current agriculture system, knowing where your food comes from is vital. Angel Acres Egg Co. specializes in low-PUFA eggs. We discussed the importance of low-PUFA eggs in a previous interview, embedded above for your convenience.

Angel Acres Egg Co. ships low-PUFA eggs to all 50 states — you can buy an egg box here, available in three sizes. Armstrong also co-founded Nourish Cooperative (now known as the Nourish Food Club), which ships the best low-PUFA pork, beef, cheese and A2 dairy, and traditional sourdough to all 50 states. They are also accepting new members to the farm cooperative — be a member here: Join Nourish Food Club.

In the video segment above, Ashley reflects on the timeline of her decision to invest her free time into regenerative farming, considering how just a few years ago, her health was far from ideal. She struggled with mitochondrial energy production and her body was in a low thyroid state. Your body prioritizes energy for essential tasks, and decision-making requires significant energy.

Your brain consumes about 20% of your body’s energy despite being only 2% of its weight. Ashley simply would not have had enough cellular energy to supply her brain to make a decision like she did unless she improved her health. Factors like excess linoleic acid, estrogen and endotoxins were depleting her cellular energy, which is crucial for making energy-intensive decisions.

Her transformation underscores the power of nurturing your health to gain the energy necessary for making significant life changes. Avoiding dietary pitfalls like seed oils played a key role in this journey, enabling her to tap into a newfound capacity for brave decisions — a testament to the profound impact of regaining cellular energy on her ability to navigate life’s choices.

It is my sincere desire and hope that you consider her journey to inspire and empower you to make similar choices in your own life and reclaim the Joy that you deserve. Imagine experiencing the nearly limitless Joy that Ashley has with her 1,000 chickens and four livestock guard dogs below.

Have you ever noticed how, when you open a bag of chips and start eating it, you somewhat can’t help but finish it, down to the last crumb? Even if your mind is telling you to stop, your hands keep reaching down as you anticipate every crunch. It’s like an addiction — and you’re not to blame.

A BBC documentary investigates the strategic engineering of ultraprocessed food, and how they’re designed to trap you by cleverly stimulating your senses — putting you in an endless cycle of cravings and overeating that ultimately leads to chronic diseases.1

Obesity Is Not a ‘Failure of Willpower’ — It’s the Result of a Shift in Our Food System

Dr. Chris van Tulleken, a doctor and scientist with the National Health Service (NHS) in the U.K., explores just how the global food system is drastically affecting people’s health. Through interviews with different experts in the field of food manufacturing, he gives an eye-opening look at how food corporations manufacture and market products in ways that deliberately short-circuit your body’s natural appetite controls.

• Obesity rates in all age groups started rising at the same time — Van Tulleken starts by disputing the belief that obesity is caused by a failure of willpower, providing data showing how obesity rates in different age groups rose simultaneously in the mid-1970s.

“[B]etween 1960 and 1975, there’s a fairly steady percentage of obesity in the population. But in the mid-1970s, obesity starts going up in all of the groups simultaneously,” he explained.

“Now, if you’re saying willpower is responsible, what you’re proposing is that all of these groups of people simultaneously lost moral responsibility. And that’s not plausible. Something else happened to our food in the mid-1970s to make it irresistible to people.”

• So what changed during this time? A separate BBC article describes how a “fork in the road” occurred in 1971. The 1970s were a period of terrible inflation — the cost of living rose, along with a demand for cheap food. Food historian Polly Russell explains:

“On the one hand there’s an increase in processed food, in supermarkets, in centralised food systems, in industrialised food, and all that goes with it. And on the other hand, there’s also a growth in an interest in cooking as a leisure activity, in the origins of food, in food and seasonality, in a much more engaged relationship with food.”2

• Another significant change happened — the fast food industry grew — Restaurant chains like McDonald’s were expanding; in fact, the quarter pounder was released in 1971. American portion sizes started increasing as well. On the other side of the world, instant ramen in a cup was born in Japan. It eventually reached U.S. shores and became known as Cup O’ Noodles.3

But the biggest change that occurred after the 1970s — and continues to this day — is that ultraprocessed food manufacturing has gone beyond producing cost-efficient food — it has become a complex process that creates products designed to overload your senses so that you have no choice but to keep eating.

How Texture Tricks Your Brain Into Overeating

One particular trick that manufacturers use is playing around with textures — not just flavor or ingredients — to increase consumption and drive profits. This deeper manipulation works at the level of chewing, sensation, and brain signaling.

• Snacks are intentionally designed to be crunchy and squishy — John Ruff, a former executive from Kraft General Foods who spent four decades in the global food industry, explains that everything from a product’s crunch to its squish is tested by trained sensory panels before it hits store shelves. Every bite is fine-tuned for maximum appeal — not through nutrition, but through feel, mouth sensation, and how fast you eat it.

“Companies spend a lot of time optimizing all aspects of their product — the flavor, the taste, the texture. People want their product to be as good, if not better than the competitor, so it will sell more,” Ruff said.

• Eating snacks with soft textures disrupts a key biological safeguard — Some snacks are designed to be crunchy on the outside, while the inside is soft enough to melt in your mouth. This is intentional; since you’re not chewing soft food as much, it short-circuits the normal satiety mechanisms you’ll have if you were chewing food properly.

As a result, your body is bypassing a mechanism that signals fullness — it triggers you to keep eating. According to Professor Francis McGlone, a former lead neuroscientist at Unilever:

“Once we worked out that playing around with the texture of food — making it softer — tricks that normal satiety of fullness mechanism, clearly there’s an opportunity there for some kind of scurrilous behavior in making food softer so that people will eat more and therefore you sell more of your product.”

• What’s more, ultraprocessed foods are engineered to be consumed quickly — This means your body has even less time to register satiety before you’ve eaten hundreds of calories.

• The industry term for this is “vanishing caloric density” — This refers to how certain puffy, light foods dissolve so quickly in your mouth that your brain doesn’t even process them as calories. You don’t feel full, so you eat more. Van Tulleken demonstrates this by biting into a common puffy snack that he says his kids love.

“You don’t typically think of this as being a soft food because it’s a bit crunchy. But actually after that initial crunch, you can just crush it with your tongue, right? It’s got no resistance at all. But in terms of the calories per gram, it’s got way more calories than even a very fatty burger.”

And because these foods are usually packed with highly digestible carbohydrates and oils, they hit your bloodstream fast, spiking blood sugar and encouraging fat storage.

These textures aren’t about convenience — they’re a marketing weapon. The melt-in-your-mouth sensation is part of a deliberate effort to make foods that are hard to stop eating. That’s how a handful of snacks turns into a finished bag before you even realize what happened.

Eating Is a Multisensory Experience, and Food Manufacturers Are Taking Advantage of It

Van Tulleken emphasizes that the real manipulation extends beyond taste and texture — it’s about logos, colors, sounds, and even the tactile experience of handling the product.

• Every bite is a multisensory event — Prof. Barry Smith, a sensory consultant who’s worked with major food companies, says that eating is never just about flavor. What your food looks like, how it smells, and how it feels in your hand matters.

• Even the sound food makes when you bite into it is crucial — “When you open a fizzy soda, you’ve got two noises. You’ve got the click and the tear. Sound engineers and manufacturers work really hard to get that sound just right. And that’s sonic branding,” Smith says.

• Defining sonic branding — To put it simply, sonic branding is a marketing strategy where sound — jingles, chimes, or music — is used to build emotional connection and memory with consumers. It creates brand identity. To illustrate, Smith recalls a conversation he had while working for Kellogg:

“[T]hey said, ‘Ooh, what’s sonic branding?’ And I said, ‘You invented this.’ Most people will remember as children the experience of lifting a bowl to their ear. And what are they listening for? Snap, crackle, and pop. That’s sonic branding at its best, and that’s the original.”

These strategies are beyond clever — they’re deeply psychological. The more senses a product stimulates, the more likely you are to develop an emotional connection with it. That connection drives repeat purchases and builds brand loyalty, often without you consciously realizing it. These signals bypass your logical thinking and aim straight at the parts of your brain that drive habit and craving.

Snack Foods Are Designed to Hijack Your Day — and Keep You Addicted

Have you ever noticed how certain processed foods are marketed to be consumed at a specific part of your day? For example, granola or oatmeal bars are marketed for on-the-go folks who want a quick breakfast before they start their day.

High-protein bars are designed to be eaten as a pick-me-up after a rigorous workout session. And if you’re craving a snack in the middle of the day, “healthy” products like veggie straws are recommended — while they seem convenient, they’re not healthy at all.

• Ultraprocessed snacks compete for your “stomach share” — Dr. Yanaina Chavez Ugalde from the University of Cambridge explains how modern food companies have shifted their strategy from mealtime nutrition to all-day consumption. Rather than just competing for your breakfast, lunch, or dinner, they aim to dominate your stomach share — the cumulative space in your day where food can be inserted. And their most profitable weapon in this battle? Snacking.

• These snacks are filled with empty calories — This means that while you get the energy, you don’t get the fiber, protein, or micronutrients that keep your body functioning well. “Whereas before we would have had food, actual food, now we are marketed into believing that this is actually a healthy replacement.”

• Snacks are labeled “share-size,” but the marketing knows full well you’ll likely eat them alone — The packaging says “family size,” but the design cues, flavors, and textures are engineered to keep your hand in the bag until it’s empty.

This constant grazing doesn’t just affect your waistline — it changes your brain. The more you snack on these engineered products, the more your brain rewires itself to expect that stimulation. The result is a cycle of craving and consumption that’s extremely hard to break.

• Ultraprocessed foods are just as addictive as alcohol or cigarettes — University of Michigan psychology professor Dr. Ashley Gearhardt, who specializes in the science of addiction, compares ultraprocessed foods to addictive substances like alcohol, nicotine, and cocaine.

“When we look at the sorts of foods that trigger those key diagnostic indicators of addiction, it’s really clear what it’s not. It’s not minimally processed foods like fruit or vegetables or beans or lean meats like chicken breast. It’s really processed foods. It’s chocolate. It’s ice cream. It’s pizza. It’s foods that don’t exist in nature,” she said.

When you consume junk foods, your brain lights up with dopamine — a chemical that plays a central role in craving and reinforcement. In normal eating patterns, dopamine helps you feel satisfied. But with ultraprocessed foods, the hit is so intense and so immediate that it overrides normal controls. This is why you keep eating even when you’re full, even when you feel sick, and even when you’ve promised yourself to stop.

Read more about the addictive nature of ultraprocessed foods in “What Foods Trigger the Greatest Cravings, Leading to Overeating?”

How to Break Free from Ultraprocessed Food Addiction

The documentary closes with a statement from the Food and Drink Federation, the membership body for food and drink manufacturers in the U.K., saying that the government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition found “insufficient scientific evidence on the concept of ‘ultraprocessed foods’ for it to be used for dietary guidance or policy making, and that further research is needed.”

They said they will only change their ingredients or processes once there’s research showing that processing is a cause for concern. Clearly, they’re turning a blind eye to the growing research that shows ultraprocessed foods are not only addictive, but also put you at higher risk of chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.4

If you’re caught in a cycle of eating unhealthy ultraprocessed foods but still can’t seem to stop, you’re not alone. Ultraprocessed foods are engineered to hijack your brain and trick your body, overriding your natural cues so you’ll keep reaching for more. However, the solution isn’t to shame yourself — it’s to understand what’s really going on so you will be able to reclaim control of your body. Here are strategies I recommend to help you reclaim control and heal from ultraprocessed food addiction:

1. Start by removing the foods that bypass your fullness signals — I suggest you identify the worst offenders in your daily routine and replace them with real food that requires chewing. A crisp apple, carrots with grass fed cream cheese, or crunchy cucumber slices will give your brain time to register satisfaction.

2. Eat real meals instead of grazing all day — Structure your day around three healthy meals with enough protein, healthy carbs, and saturated fat to sustain you. This grounds your energy, helps stabilize your blood sugar, and makes snacking less necessary.

3. Interrupt the marketing cycle with awareness and environment control — You are being manipulated through sound, packaging, and brand familiarity. Keep processed foods out of your home. Even covering labels with plain paper or storing snack items in opaque containers can help break the visual feedback loop that makes you crave them. Many ultraprocessed foods are also highly marketed to children, so if you have kids, show them how food ads work so they grow up with awareness.

4. Track your progress — I’ve found that the more you notice patterns, the easier it is to break them. Keep a simple journal for 10 days. Write down when you eat ultraprocessed food, what was happening around you, and how you felt afterward.

You’ll start seeing patterns — maybe stress after work is your trigger, or late-night boredom. That kind of clarity builds self-efficacy — the belief that you can make changes because now you understand the why. This alone will lower the shame and increase your momentum toward real change.

Awareness is the first step toward regaining that control. When you understand the tools being used against you, you can take the first real step toward full autonomy over your food choices and overall health.

“If someone is watching this and they are struggling with their weight, with diet-related disease, I just want to reach out and grab them and go, ‘This is not your fault. It is not you. It is the food,'” van Tulleken concludes.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Ultraprocessed Foods

Q: Why do I feel like I can’t stop eating certain snack foods, even when I’m full?

A: Ultraprocessed foods are engineered to bypass your natural satiety mechanisms. Their soft, melt-in-your-mouth textures eliminate the need for chewing, which interrupts your body’s ability to signal fullness. This design keeps you eating long after your body has had enough.

Q: What is “vanishing caloric density” and why does it matter?

A: Vanishing caloric density refers to foods that dissolve quickly in your mouth, like puffed snacks or crisps. Because they vanish on contact, your brain doesn’t fully register the calories you’ve consumed. This makes you eat more without feeling satisfied, contributing to overeating and fat storage.

Q: How are my senses manipulated to make me crave these foods?

A: Food companies use multi-sensory marketing — including sounds, textures, smells, packaging, and even the “tear” of a wrapper — to stimulate your brain’s reward system. Techniques like sonic branding create emotional memories around products, encouraging cravings before you even take a bite.

Q: Are “healthy” snacks like protein bars or veggie straws actually good for me?

A: Not really. Many of these products are marketed as healthy but are actually nutrient-poor and energy-dense. They often lack fiber and protein and are filled with processed oils and additives, which disrupt your body’s hunger signals and promote chronic snacking.

Q: What’s the best way to break free from my cravings for ultraprocessed foods?

A: Start by removing foods that bypass fullness cues, eat real meals instead of grazing, become aware of marketing manipulation, replace reward triggers with new habits, and track your eating patterns to identify and interrupt craving cycles. These steps rebuild your body’s natural signals and help restore real control.

For centuries, people have relied on fruits, tea, and cocoa not only for nourishment but also for their health-promoting compounds. Today, researchers have identified one group of those natural compounds — flavanols — as especially important for cardiovascular health. Flavanols are plant compounds found in foods such as apples, berries, pears, beans, tea, and cocoa.

Yet new research published in Food & Function suggests that simply following current dietary guidelines leaves most people well short of the flavanol intake linked with measurable heart benefits.1 That finding deserves your attention because many people assume eating the recommended number of fruit and vegetable servings automatically delivers every beneficial plant compound.

According to this research, that assumption doesn’t hold up well. The gap isn’t mainly about eating more produce — which produce you choose matters more, though as the researchers found, food choice alone doesn’t fully close it either. This is an important distinction because it shifts the conversation away from quantity and toward quality. Once you understand why certain fruits contribute far more of these compounds than others, the results of the study become much easier to act on.

One caveat worth knowing upfront before going into the findings — much of the flavanol evidence base, including the COSMOS trial discussed below, is industry-funded. Two authors of this new paper are employed by Mars, Incorporated — a company engaged in flavanol research and flavanol-related commercial activities — and COSMOS was supported by an investigator-initiated grant from Mars Edge, with study pills donated by Pfizer Consumer Healthcare (now Haleon).2

Healthy Eating Alone Doesn’t Always Deliver Enough Flavanols

Previous research, including the largest clinical trial of flavanols, the COSMOS study, reported that a daily 500 milligram (mg) dose of flavanols — delivered as a cocoa extract supplement to 21,442 U.S. adults (women aged 65 and older, men aged 60 and older) over a median of 3.6 years — was associated with a 27% lower rate of cardiovascular death in intention-to-treat analyses.

Reductions in total cardiovascular events (15%) and major cardiovascular events (16%) came from per-protocol and post hoc analyses, respectively.3 That 500 mg benchmark became the foundation for a follow-up question researchers set out to answer in Food & Function: Do the diets most people actually eat get them anywhere close to that target?4

To answer that question, the researchers analyzed flavanol intake in two large population studies instead of relying on assumptions about what people eat. Both analyses were observational: the COSMOS portion was a cross-sectional analysis of data collected before participants received any supplement, and EPIC-Norfolk is an observational cohort. Neither measured health outcomes — they assessed flavanol intake only.

They used objective laboratory measurements from 6,509 participants in the U.S.-based COSMOS study and 24,154 participants in the U.K.-based EPIC-Norfolk study to determine whether real-world eating habits matched the flavanol intake associated with better heart health. The answer was largely no.

• Eating more produce was only part of the story — In COSMOS, eating more fruits and vegetables came with slightly higher flavanol levels, though the difference was too small to be meaningful. Overall diet quality was the better predictor.

In EPIC-Norfolk, the pattern reversed. Participants with the highest fruit and vegetable intake — and those adhering most closely to U.K. dietary guidance — were slightly less likely to reach 500 mg per day. The researchers described the differences between high and low fruit and vegetable consumers as very modest overall. Either way, most participants failed to reach the estimated 500 mg per day benchmark.

The researchers also note that they deliberately set their biomarker thresholds to overestimate how many people had high intakes, making their figures a best-case scenario, and that COSMOS participants ate considerably better than the general U.S. public — so, the true shortfall is likely larger.*

This matters because it changes how you think about food choices. If your goal is to increase flavanol intake, simply counting servings of fruits and vegetables isn’t enough. Different foods contain dramatically different amounts of flavanols. Choosing foods naturally richer in these compounds has a much larger impact than simply increasing the total number of servings. Think of it like filling a toolbox — adding more tools helps, but adding the right tools makes the biggest difference.

• The researchers tested whether common eating habits could realistically reach the target — To answer that question, they performed thousands of computer simulations using foods commonly eaten in the U.S. Those simulations reinforced the findings from the human studies. Average fruit and vegetable choices rarely produced flavanol intakes near 500 mg per day.

Selecting foods based on their naturally higher flavanol content raised estimated intake — but even then, the probability of reaching 500 mg per day remained below 50%, and the researchers concluded that even five portions of high-flavanol fruits and vegetables did not get simulated diets to the 500 mg mark. That means the quality of your ingredients matters as much as quantity when selecting plant foods — and that closing the gap through ordinary food choices alone is harder than it sounds.

• Objective testing strengthened the findings — Many nutrition studies depend heavily on people remembering exactly what they ate, but memory is imperfect. This investigation added another layer of confidence by measuring flavanol metabolites in urine. Metabolites are the byproducts left in your bloodstream and urine after your body processes what you’ve eaten, measurable chemical fingerprints of your recent diet.

The investigators combined two different biomarkers to reflect different time windows after eating flavanol-rich foods. Because flavanols clear the body quickly, researchers needed two markers with different detection windows to capture intake across an entire day, not just a single meal. The two markers have different estimated systemic half-lives — roughly two hours for one and six hours for the other.

Together, they provided a broader snapshot of daily flavanol intake. Using both measurements also reduced the chance that a single meal would distort the results. One limitation the researchers flagged: there are currently no validated biomarkers for tea-specific flavanols, so tea’s contribution is only partly captured.

• The same shortfall appeared across two different countries — Although people in the U.S. and United Kingdom eat differently, a similarly small share of each population reached the flavanol benchmark. The direction of the diet-quality association, however, differed between the two cohorts, as noted above.

Participants in the United Kingdom consumed much more tea than those in the U.S., yet only 17.9% of EPIC-Norfolk participants reached the estimated flavanol target compared with 19.2% of COSMOS participants.

The researchers also observed several interesting differences between participant groups. Men were more likely than women to reach the estimated flavanol intake in both studies. In COSMOS, normal-weight participants were more likely than participants with obesity to meet the target, while the opposite pattern appeared in EPIC-Norfolk.

Those differences suggest that overall eating patterns, cultural food choices, and lifestyle habits all influence flavanol intake rather than any single factor alone.

• Not every fruit or vegetable contributes equally — One of the most practical lessons from the study is that flavanols are unevenly distributed across foods. The researchers identified apples, berries, stone fruits, beans, tea, and cocoa products as important dietary sources, while many other commonly eaten fruits and vegetables contribute much less.5

That creates an opportunity rather than a challenge. Instead of simply aiming for more produce every day, focus on building meals around foods naturally richer in flavanols. Small upgrades repeated consistently move you closer to the intake levels associated with better cardiovascular health in this research. That approach keeps the goal simple, measurable, and easier to maintain over the long term.

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

Choose Foods That Naturally Deliver More Flavanols

The research points to a practical conclusion: The foods you rotate through your week matter more than hitting a produce quota. Think beyond counting fruit and vegetable servings and instead focus on foods that naturally supply higher amounts of flavanols. That approach addresses the real issue identified in the research — many healthy diets still fall short because the food choices themselves are too low in these beneficial plant compounds.

1. Choose fruits and vegetables naturally rich in flavanols — If you want to support your heart, make foods like apples (with the peel), blueberries, blackberries, cherries, and plums regular parts of your meals rather than defaulting to lower-flavanol options like bananas or melons. Bananas and melons still provide valuable nutrients and deserve a place in a healthy diet, but when flavanol intake is the goal, every serving works harder when it comes from the right source.

Pairing these foods with green tea is an easy addition, though keep the ceiling in mind. In the U.K. cohort, even the heaviest tea drinkers reached the 500 mg benchmark only about 19% of the time. When possible, choose organic produce to reduce your exposure to agricultural chemicals, and if you have the space, consider growing some of your own fruit. Homegrown berries, cherries, and plums give you fresh, flavorful options while letting you control how they’re grown.

To put the 500 mg daily target in perspective, here are approximate figures reported for select flavanol-rich foods. These come from the News Medical summary of the research rather than from the featured study itself, and the serving sizes are estimates:

• Plums (about 4 medium plums): ~450 mg
• Cranberries (1½ cups): ~300 mg
• Blackberries (1½ cups): ~250 mg
• Green tea (one 8 oz. cup): ~200 mg
• Cherries (about 25 to 30 pieces): ~130 mg
• Apple with skin (one medium apple): ~110 mg
• Strawberries (1½ cups): ~90 mg
• Blueberries (1 cup): ~80 mg

Again, treat these as estimates, not fixed values. The researchers caution that flavanol content varies considerably with cultivar, climate, and growing and harvest conditions. For example, the epicatechin content of a single apple variety can fluctuate more than tenfold, meaning the number of apples needed to reach a given intake could range from 2 to 29.

Green tea’s figure also deserves a mention — the study’s biomarkers do not capture tea-specific flavanols, so how much tea contributes to the intake linked with cardiovascular benefit is not yet established.6

One practical caveat if your gut isn’t in good shape — Large servings of berries and beans add a substantial fiber load, and when the gut microbiome is compromised, fiber can increase endotoxin production. If you notice gas, bloating, stomach pain, diarrhea, or constipation, start with whole fruits and white rice to restore gut function, then work up to larger portions of higher-fiber foods as tolerance improves.

2. Make flavanol-rich foods part of your daily routine — Your body responds to consistent habits, not occasional healthy meals. If you enjoy blueberries with breakfast, an apple as a snack, or a cup of green tea in the afternoon, keep those habits going day after day. Small routines are much easier to maintain than dramatic diet changes.

3. Challenge yourself to add more variety each week — If your shopping cart looks the same every trip, add one flavanol-rich food you don’t normally buy. Try pears, cranberries, red raspberries, black currants, or minimally processed cocoa. Note that black tea’s characteristic flavanols (theaflavins and thearubigins) were not captured by the featured study’s biomarkers, and their contribution to cardiovascular benefit remains to be established.

With cocoa, choose varieties with lower percentages, look for Prop 65 certification and transparent heavy-metal testing, and avoid products containing vegetable oils. A scrutinizing eye keeps meals interesting while expanding the variety of beneficial plant compounds in your diet.

4. Stock your kitchen with intention — Healthy choices become much easier when the right foods are already within reach. Before your next shopping trip, write down three or four flavanol-rich foods you’ll commit to buying that week and treat them as non-negotiables alongside your usual staples.

Small, consistent food choices — an apple instead of a banana, a cup of green tea, a handful of blueberries on the side — are an easy way to raise your flavanol intake. Whether food-based flavanols translate into lower cardiovascular risk has not been tested directly; the risk data available comes from a supplement trial. However, the research does give you a clearer map of where flavanols are concentrated. The next step is simply stocking your kitchen accordingly.

5. Beyond flavanols, build your meals around whole foods — Flavanols are only one part of a heart-healthy diet. Fill your plate with a variety of whole fruits, vegetables, and other minimally processed foods that provide vitamins, minerals, and thousands of other beneficial plant compounds that work together to support a healthy heart.

At the same time, avoid ultraprocessed foods, which are often made with inflammatory seed oils such as soybean, corn, sunflower, safflower, and canola oil. Prepare meals with more stable fats like grass fed butter, ghee, or beef tallow instead. Cutting back on ultraprocessed foods while adding more whole, flavanol-rich foods doesn’t just boost your flavanol intake, it upgrades the entire foundation your heart health is built on.

FAQs About Fruit Choices That Boost Flavanol Intake

Q: What are flavanols, and why are they important for your heart?
A: Flavanols are natural plant compounds found in foods such as apples, blueberries, blackberries, cherries, pears, plums, beans, tea, and cocoa. Previous research, including the COSMOS trial, linked a daily intake of about 500 mg of flavanols with a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and fewer major cardiovascular events.7 COSMOS delivered those flavanols as a cocoa extract supplement to adults aged 60 and older; the major cardiovascular events finding came from a post hoc analysis.

Q: Does eating the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables provide enough flavanols?
A: Not for most people. The Food & Function study found that fewer than 1 in 4 people who followed current dietary recommendations reached the flavanol intake associated with heart-health benefits. The researchers concluded that adherence to current dietary guidelines does not ensure flavanol intake at the level linked with cardiovascular benefit, and that specific dietary reference values for flavanols may still be necessary.

Q: Which foods are among the best natural sources of flavanols?
A: Foods naturally rich in flavanols include apples, blueberries, blackberries, cherries, pears, plums, green tea, black tea, and minimally processed cocoa. Eating a variety of these foods throughout the week is an easy way to increase your flavanol intake while also providing other beneficial nutrients.

Q: Should you stop eating fruits that contain fewer flavanols?
A: No. Fruits such as bananas, melons, and many others still provide vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other beneficial plant compounds. If your goal is to increase flavanol intake, simply include higher-flavanol fruits more often instead of replacing all other fruits.

Q: What is the easiest way to increase your flavanol intake?
A: Focus on food choices instead of simply eating more produce. Stock your kitchen with flavanol-rich fruits, enjoy green tea regularly (black tea also contains flavanols, though not the types this study could measure), rotate different berries and other high-flavanol fruits throughout the week, choose organic produce when practical, and consider growing some of your own fruit if you have the space.

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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Cardiovascular disease accounts for roughly 30% of all deaths worldwide.1 But before the dramatic event at the end of the timeline, there’s often a quiet biological drift that occurs. You rarely feel this shift as it unfolds. It typically shows up subtly in routine patterns, then compounds year after year until the damage becomes visible and difficult to reverse.

Much of that long arc traces back to how blood vessels respond to ongoing metabolic and environmental pressure. When the inner lining of your arteries loses resilience, circulation suffers, tissues receive less oxygen, and stress accumulates in places designed for constant flow.

Researchers have spent decades trying to interrupt this process, often focusing on single markers while missing the underlying drivers that keep the cycle active. That gap explains the renewed interest in compounds that work at the cellular level. Some nutrients influence how cells handle stress, repair themselves, and maintain structure under pressure.

When that foundation improves, downstream markers tend to follow. Astaxanthin, a naturally occurring red pigment found in certain marine foods and microalgae, stands out in this context because it supports the basic structures that protect cells under stress while reinforcing the systems that keep blood vessels and your heart functioning over time.

Astaxanthin Targets the Core Drivers of Heart Disease

A review published in the Journal of King Saud University examined astaxanthin as a nutraceutical for cardiovascular health, with a primary focus on atherosclerosis, blood pressure, lipid levels, and metabolic stress.2 The researchers evaluated how astaxanthin affects the biological processes that actually damage arteries over time, including oxidative stress and chronic inflammation, which directly affect your long-term heart risk.

The paper draws from animal research and human clinical trials involving adults with imbalanced blood fats, diabetes, high blood pressure, or elevated cardiovascular risk factors. These are the same categories many people fall into long before a diagnosis like heart attack or stroke appears on their chart.

• Astaxanthin consistently improved lipid patterns tied to plaque buildup — Across human trials summarized in the paper, astaxanthin supplementation lowered triglycerides and raised HDL cholesterol, often referred to as “good cholesterol,” because it helps remove excess cholesterol from artery walls.

• Improvements occurred without the tradeoffs seen with other antioxidants — Astaxanthin differs from beta-carotene and vitamin E, which failed to improve cardiovascular outcomes in large trials and, in some cases, worsened oxidative stress at higher doses. This comparison helps explain why astaxanthin shows benefits where other antioxidants fell short.

Why did vitamin E and beta-carotene fail where astaxanthin succeeds? Location matters. Most antioxidants float in the watery parts of cells or accumulate in fat stores, leaving membranes vulnerable. Astaxanthin is uniquely shaped to span the entire cell membrane, anchoring at both the inner and outer surfaces.

This positioning lets it intercept damage right where it starts — at the membrane itself. Additionally, high-dose vitamin E actually becomes a pro-oxidant under certain conditions, generating the very damage it’s supposed to prevent. Astaxanthin doesn’t share this liability.

• Blood vessel function improved alongside lipid changes — Animal studies reviewed in the paper showed reductions in systolic blood pressure and improved endothelial function. The endothelium is the thin inner lining of all your blood vessels — think of it as the “skin” inside your arteries. When it’s healthy, vessels relax easily, blood flows smoothly, and plaque has trouble gaining a foothold.

When it’s damaged, arteries stiffen, blood pressure rises, and the conditions for heart disease take hold. With astaxanthin, arteries stayed more flexible instead of stiffening under pressure. Most lipid and oxidative stress improvements appeared after four to 12 weeks of consistent supplementation.

• Astaxanthin works by neutralizing damaging molecules before they injure arteries — Oxidative stress involves unstable molecules that attack fats, proteins, and DNA inside your blood vessels. Think of oxidative stress like a fire spreading through dry brush. Unstable molecules called free radicals steal electrons from healthy cells, damaging them and triggering a chain reaction.

Astaxanthin acts like a fire break — it donates electrons freely, satisfying these unstable molecules before they damage your artery walls.

Unlike many antioxidants that float outside cells, astaxanthin spans the entire cell membrane, anchoring itself across the fatty layer that lines blood vessels. This positioning lets it shield vulnerable fats from oxidation, which slows plaque formation. Astaxanthin also activates a cellular switch that turns on your own antioxidant enzymes, including glutathione-related systems.

• Inflammation reduction plays a central role — Astaxanthin lowers inflammatory activity inside artery walls, slowing one of the earliest structural changes that leads to plaque formation. When immune cells absorb too much damaged cholesterol, they swell up and become trapped in artery walls — researchers call these bloated cells “foam cells” because of their bubbly appearance under a microscope.

These foam cells are the foundation of arterial plaque, the buildup that narrows arteries over time. Taken together, the paper shows that astaxanthin supports healthier cholesterol handling, steadier blood pressure, and stronger vessel walls through mechanisms that match how cardiovascular disease actually develops.

Why Form and Timing Matter for Real Cardiovascular Protection

A review published in the journal Marine Drugs set out to evaluate astaxanthin specifically through the lens of cardiovascular disease, with an emphasis on oxidative stress, inflammation, blood flow, and clot risk.3

Researchers studied what happens when blood flow to the heart stops and then suddenly returns — a situation doctors call ischemia-reperfusion injury. This mimics what occurs during a heart attack or heart surgery. Surprisingly, much of the damage happens not during the blockage itself, but when blood flow returns and floods oxygen-starved tissue. Astaxanthin showed remarkable protective effects during this key window.

• Astaxanthin protected the heart muscle during oxygen deprivation — In multiple animal studies summarized in the review, astaxanthin administration before an induced cardiac event limited the amount of heart tissue damaged during the period of extreme stress, helping preserve more healthy heart muscle.

• Protection increased with dose in controlled experimental settings — The review reports a clear dose-response relationship in several studies, where higher astaxanthin exposure led to greater reductions in tissue damage and oxidative markers.

Astaxanthin provided the strongest protection when present in tissues before vascular injury occurred. Human safety data summarized in the paper report no significant adverse effects across a wide dosing range, including effects on blood pressure, clotting, or liver markers.

• Blood flow dynamics improved independently of cholesterol changes — One unique finding emphasized in this paper is improved arterial blood flow and delayed clot formation in animal models, even when lipid levels were not the primary variable.

This finding separates astaxanthin from the cholesterol-focused approach that dominates conventional cardiology. Astaxanthin improves circulation directly, not just by changing lipid numbers on a lab report. In blood clot models, astaxanthin delayed vessel blockage without interfering with normal clotting needed for wound repair.

Why Astaxanthin Works Upstream of Cardiovascular Damage

Astaxanthin is a compound that strengthens heart cells, stabilizes blood vessels, and improves flow before damage escalates into clinical disease.4 Astaxanthin stands out because it targets oxidative stress and inflammation at their source, not downstream damage.

• Cell membranes remained intact under extreme oxidative pressure — Astaxanthin embeds across the lipid membrane, anchoring both ends and preventing breakdown when reactive molecules attack. This means your cells hold their shape instead of leaking and failing under stress.

Astaxanthin increased nitric oxide, the molecule that signals blood vessels to relax and widen. At the same time, it reduced peroxynitrite — a harmful compound formed when nitric oxide reacts with free radicals. Peroxynitrite stiffens arteries and damages tissue, so this dual action keeps vessels flexible while preventing collateral damage.

• Astaxanthin interrupts the inflammatory chain reaction in arteries — As explained in a review published in The American Journal of Cardiology, cardiovascular disease worsens when reactive oxygen and nitrogen species overwhelm blood vessels, activating inflammatory switches that drive endothelial dysfunction, plaque growth, and rhythm disturbances such as atrial fibrillation.5

Unlike vitamin E and beta-carotene, which failed in human trials, astaxanthin belongs to a class of oxygenated carotenoids that directly neutralize these reactive molecules and break destructive chain reactions before they damage vessel walls, making it a strong candidate for addressing a long-standing gap in cardiovascular treatment.

• Astaxanthin shows broad cardiovascular actions — A 2017 review published in Food & Function explains that astaxanthin influences multiple cardiovascular pathways at once, including oxidative stress control, inflammation reduction, blood pressure regulation, lipid handling, glucose balance, kidney protection, and plaque development.6

How to Address the Root Causes of Cardiovascular Damage

Many heart problems build over time through oxidative stress, chronic inflammation, damaged blood vessel lining, and poor cellular energy handling. Fixing those drivers first changes the trajectory, because lipid patterns, blood pressure, and circulation often improve as downstream effects. If you’re already seeing warning signs on labs, or you simply want stronger long-term protection, these steps keep the focus on causes, not symptoms.

1. Lower oxidative stress at the cellular level first — Oxidative damage injures artery walls and sets plaque processes in motion, and one of the biggest drivers is excess linoleic acid (LA) from seed oils. Many Americans consume far more LA than their tissues can safely handle, which fuels inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction that pushes heart disease forward.

You lower that burden by cutting ultraprocessed foods and seed oils — keeping your LA intake below 5 grams per day. If you can get it under 2 grams, the benefit is even stronger.

To help measure your intake, I recommend you sign up for the Pax health platform, which contains the Seed Oil Sleuth. This feature helps calculate the LA in your food to a tenth of a gram. As oxidative stress drops, blood vessels regain flexibility instead of staying irritated and stiff.

Here’s where astaxanthin and seed oil reduction work together: Excess LA from seed oils makes your cell membranes more vulnerable to oxidation. Astaxanthin embeds in those same membranes and protects them. But if you’re constantly flooding your body with unstable fats, you’re fighting an uphill battle. Reducing seed oil intake lowers the oxidative burden, while astaxanthin reinforces the membranes you’re trying to protect.

2. Build blood vessel resilience — Reducing LA from seed oils and using more stable fats like grass fed butter, ghee, and tallow lowers oxidative stress in vessel walls, which helps preserve normal structure and function over time. Also support vessel flexibility with habits that reinforce circulation and relaxation.

Daily walking keeps blood moving across vessel walls, which signals them to stay elastic instead of stiff. Adequate magnesium intake also helps vessels relax appropriately rather than over-tightening under stress. When membranes are stable and vessels stay responsive, circulation improves naturally and the strain on artery walls drops.

3. If you use astaxanthin, choose the source that matches human nutrition — Astaxanthin occurs naturally in certain marine foods, including wild salmon, sardines, trout, shrimp, and krill, where it plays a protective role in those organisms. Including these foods regularly helps you obtain astaxanthin in a form your body already recognizes.

Krill oil offers a convenient way to obtain astaxanthin alongside omega-3 fats, since the astaxanthin in krill helps protect those delicate omega-3s from oxidation. This combination delivers cardiovascular benefits from multiple angles simultaneously.

If you decide to use an astaxanthin supplement, I strongly recommend products made from the Haematococcus pluvialis microalgae, not versions produced from petrochemicals or genetically engineered yeast. This keeps your intake aligned with the forms studied in cardiovascular research and avoids unnecessary exposures tied to synthetic production, while preserving the benefit profile linked to natural astaxanthin.

Most human studies showing cardiovascular benefits used doses between 4 and 12 milligrams (mg) daily of natural astaxanthin from Haematococcus pluvialis. Higher doses (up to 24 mg) have been studied safely, but the sweet spot for most people appears to be 8 to 12 mg daily, taken with a fat-containing meal to enhance absorption.

4. Use astaxanthin strategically during periods of higher cardiovascular stress — Astaxanthin provides the most value when oxidative and inflammatory stress rise. Intense exercise, emotional stress, frequent travel, and disrupted sleep all place extra strain on blood vessels and heart tissue. These are the moments when oxidative damage accumulates fastest — and when astaxanthin’s protective effects matter most.

Using astaxanthin consistently during these higher-demand phases helps reinforce cellular defenses when damage is most likely to occur. This shifts astaxanthin from a passive supplement to an active support tool matched to real-world stress patterns.

5. Restore circadian alignment with sunlight, vitamin D, and proper sleep — Your blood vessels follow a circadian rhythm. For instance, untreated sleep apnea and disrupted sleep cause a sharp nighttime drop in blood vessel function, increasing vulnerability to heart attacks and other cardiac events.7 Supporting healthy sleep timing and morning light exposure helps stabilize that rhythm.

As you begin to eliminate seed oils, avoiding harsh midday sun for at least six months gives your skin time to clear stored LA, which improves sun tolerance and lowers burn risk during peak midday exposure. As that process completes, gradual midday sun exposure supports natural vitamin D production, reinforcing vascular function, energy balance, and overnight repair.

FAQs About Astaxanthin and Heart Disease

Q: Why does cardiovascular disease develop so gradually?
A: Cardiovascular disease usually develops over many years through ongoing stress on blood vessels. Factors such as oxidative stress, chronic inflammation, and impaired cellular energy slowly weaken the artery lining, reducing circulation efficiency long before noticeable symptoms appear.

Q: What makes astaxanthin different from other antioxidants studied for heart health?
A: Astaxanthin acts at the cellular level, protecting cell membranes and interrupting damaging oxidative and inflammatory processes before they escalate. Unlike antioxidants that failed in large trials, astaxanthin works upstream by stabilizing cells and supporting normal vessel function under stress.

Q: How does astaxanthin support blood vessel and heart function?
A: Research shows astaxanthin helps preserve flexible blood vessels, supports healthy blood flow, and protects heart tissue during periods of reduced oxygen or increased stress. These effects align with how cardiovascular damage actually develops, rather than focusing on isolated markers alone.

Q: Why does the form and timing of astaxanthin matter?
A: The benefits of astaxanthin depend on using biologically appropriate forms and having it present during periods of higher oxidative or inflammatory stress. Natural sources and consistent use during demanding phases, such as intense exercise or disrupted sleep, align best with the research findings.

Q: How do lifestyle factors like diet, sleep, and sunlight fit into cardiovascular protection?
A: Lowering oxidative stress through diet, supporting daily circulation with movement, and maintaining healthy circadian rhythms all reinforce blood vessel repair. Proper sleep timing and regular sunlight exposure support vascular function and vitamin D production, helping protect your heart.

Q: How much astaxanthin should I take, and when?
A: Most research showing cardiovascular benefits used 4 to 12 mg daily of natural astaxanthin. Because astaxanthin is fat-soluble, taking it with a meal containing healthy fats (like grass fed butter or pastured eggs) improves absorption. Consistency matters more than timing — daily use builds tissue levels over weeks, providing ongoing protection rather than acute effects.

Microplastics are no longer just a problem in the ocean — they’re showing up deep in your lungs, changing how your cells function, and raising red flags about cancer risk.

A study published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials revealed that when healthy lung cells absorb polystyrene micro- and nanoplastics — the same kind found in food containers and packaging — they adapt in dangerous ways.1

Instead of dying off, these cells become more mobile and activate pro-survival signals linked to tumor formation. In other words, plastic doesn’t kill your lung cells; it rewires them to behave more like cancer. You inhale thousands of these particles every day from indoor dust, car tires, synthetic fabrics, and degraded packaging.

They’re small enough to bypass your airways’ built-in defenses and embed themselves in the tissue, right where gas exchange happens. Once there, they generate oxidative stress — an internal firestorm of reactive molecules that attack your DNA, disrupt repair systems, and throw off normal cell function. The transformation into a more aggressive, unstable state starts earlier than anyone thought — not in tumors, but in the tissues you rely on to breathe.

These changes don’t cause symptoms right away. But left unchecked, they lay the groundwork for chronic inflammation, lung disease, or cancer later in life. The evidence is clear: plastic is interfering with the core biology of your lungs. Now let’s look at how these findings came to light — and what exactly plastic does once it enters your body.

Healthy Lung Cells Absorb More Plastic Than Cancer Cells — and Change in Dangerous Ways

For the Journal of Hazardous Materials study, researchers examined the effects of microplastics and nanoplastics on both healthy lung cells and three types of lung cancer cells.2 They wanted to see if these plastic particles — widely found in food packaging, household dust, and industrial waste — interfere with normal cell function or trigger biological changes tied to disease.

• Healthy cells were more affected than cancerous ones — The researchers exposed the cells to various sizes of microplastics and nanoplastics at low doses meant to reflect real-world conditions. Surprisingly, it was the healthy lung epithelial cells that absorbed more plastic than the cancer cell lines. These normal cells also showed a greater shift in behavior, including changes in shape, structure, and migration — all red flags for malignant transformation.

• Plastic exposure didn’t kill cells — it pushed them into survival mode — Unlike many toxins that kill off cells through apoptosis, or programmed cell death, microplastics didn’t trigger widespread cell death. Instead, they activated internal damage response systems, including DNA repair signals and antioxidant defense. This is concerning because it means the cells adapted to survive in a toxic environment — the first step in the chain reaction that leads to cancer.

• DNA damage and oxidative stress were key findings — The lung cells showed elevated markers of oxidative stress and significant DNA strand breaks after exposure to microplastics and nanoplastics. This kind of internal damage, if not properly repaired, leads to genetic instability — a known precursor to cancer development. The study also confirmed that oxidative stress was size-dependent, with smaller nanoparticles causing more harm than larger ones.

Plastic Exposure Made Healthy Cells More Mobile — a Cancer-Like Behavior

One of the most troubling findings was that lung cells increased their rate of migration after plastic exposure. In cancer biology, increased mobility is a marker for aggressive tumor cells, which invade surrounding tissues and spread throughout the body. The fact that noncancerous cells began behaving this way highlights the hidden risk of daily microplastic exposure.3

• Plastic particles disrupted the cell membrane and cytoskeleton — Researchers used imaging tools to show that both nano- and microplastics entered the cells and altered the internal structure. The actin cytoskeleton — a network that helps cells maintain their shape and movement — was significantly reorganized in exposed cells. This internal restructuring made the cells more fragile and unstable.

• Several survival pathways were activated in the lung cells — Exposure to microplastics and nanoplastics triggered signaling pathways that promote cell survival and resistance to stress. These same pathways are commonly overactive in tumor cells, and their activation in healthy lung cells suggests that plastic is not just a passive contaminant but an active disruptor of cell biology.

• Plastic-induced changes occurred without visible inflammation — One of the more insidious findings was that all of these harmful changes occurred without classic signs of inflammation or immune response. That means you wouldn’t feel anything or see any symptoms — but the long-term cellular effects could be serious. This stealth effect underscores why daily exposure to microplastics should not be dismissed.

• Cells exposed to plastic lost their ability to function normally — Overall, the study showed that plastic particles interfere with nearly every aspect of healthy lung cell behavior: from DNA integrity to cell shape, mobility, and stress response. While the research didn’t follow these changes to full tumor formation, the authors emphasized that these are precisely the kinds of shifts that lead to long-term disease.

Microplastics Damage Your Lungs, Gut, and Reproductive System — Even at Everyday Exposure Levels

A 2024 review in Environmental Science & Technology looked at 28 animal studies and three human studies to understand what happens when microplastics get inside you — whether you breathe them in or swallow them.4 The damage wasn’t limited to one area. It showed up in the lungs, digestive tract, and even reproductive organs.

• Plastic triggered inflammation, DNA damage, and hormonal disruption — Inhaling plastic particles caused inflammation in the lungs, scarring of airways, and changes in how immune cells responded.

Ingested plastics damaged the gut lining, disrupted the gut microbiome, and kicked off chronic inflammation. Some studies showed sperm damage, lower testosterone, changes in ovary structure, and reduced fertility in animals. These effects weren’t limited to high doses — they happened at levels that mimic everyday life.

• Oxidative stress was the main mechanism behind the harm — The common thread was oxidative stress — a kind of internal “rusting” process where your body struggles to keep up with damaging free radicals. That stress interferes with DNA repair, weakens cell membranes, and confuses your immune system. Once it starts, it becomes harder for your body to recover from the damage.

• Smaller particles go deeper — and stay longer — Nanoplastics, the tiniest particles, were the most dangerous. They could pass through the lungs or gut lining, enter the bloodstream, and end up in places like your liver, kidneys, or even your brain. These particles didn’t just pass through — they stuck around and changed how those organs functioned.

• Plastic isn’t just an environmental problem — it’s a full-body health threat — What you breathe, eat, and drink every day could be slowly reshaping your internal biology. Even though more human studies are needed, the fact that dozens of animal studies found damage across key organ systems — at realistic exposure levels — makes one thing clear: your daily contact with microplastics isn’t harmless.

Natural Strategies to Eliminate Microplastics Are Being Explored

Studies are now looking at strategies to help the human body filter, trap, and eliminate microplastics before they can spread throughout your other systems. These methods offer a multi-angle approach to help reduce your internal plastic load and support overall health. I’ve written a paper discussing these methods in detail, and while it is still under peer-review, I’ve provided the key findings below.

• Cross-linked psyllium could help eliminate microplastics — One key system that plays a role in removing microplastics from your body is your gut. A 2024 study showed that acrylamide cross-linked psyllium (PLP-AM) removed over 92% of common plastic types like polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) from water.

Because of its high swelling ability and sticky, gel-like texture, cross-linked psyllium could be adapted to work inside the gut, where it may trap plastic particles before they’re absorbed into the body. While the study was conducted in a water treatment setting, the results are also promising for human health.5

• Chitosan, a natural fiber derived from shellfish, also shows promise for clearing microplastics from your body — An animal study published in Scientific Reports found that rats given a chitosan-enriched diet were able to eliminate about 115% of the polyethylene microplastics they were fed, compared to just 84% in the control group.

This suggests that chitosan not only helps bind and eliminate new plastic particles but might even help pull out some that were already absorbed. However, while it’s generally considered safe and already used in supplements, people with shellfish allergies are advised to steer clear of it.6

Psyllium and chitosan work through physical adsorption, where hydrophobic (water-repelling) and electrostatic forces stick microplastic particles to the fiber, keeping them from being absorbed. However, one drawback with these binders is that they can also soak up nutrients if not timed carefully. Hence, they need to be used strategically to provide the most benefit, such as ingesting them with processed or packaged foods, which are more likely to contain plastics.

• Certain beneficial bacteria strains can help clear microplastics from the gut — A 2025 animal study found that two specific strains, Lacticaseibacillus paracasei DT66 and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum DT88, were able to bind to and eliminate tiny polystyrene particles in lab tests.

These probiotics work by forming protective biofilms that trap plastic particles, making them easier to flush out.7 When combined with dietary fibers like psyllium and chitosan, the result could be a more effective and natural way to sweep microplastics out of the gut before they’re absorbed.

• The liver also plays an essential role in clearing microplastics from the bloodstream — Specialized immune cells in the liver, known as Kupffer cells, help trap these foreign particles and route them into bile for elimination via the intestines. However, while this method may work on smaller plastics, larger ones can linger and build up, especially if your liver function is compromised.

To support this natural detox pathway, researchers are studying the use of compounds like ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) and its variant tauroursodeoxycholic acid (TUDCA), which stimulate bile production and improve particle flow out of the liver.

• Researchers are also looking at strategies to enhance autophagy to eliminate microplastics — Autophagy is your body’s natural cellular recycling system. Researchers are looking at compounds that can help promote this system, mainly rapamycin and spermidine.

Rapamycin works by inhibiting the mTOR pathway, a nutrient-sensing mechanism that normally suppresses autophagy. When mTOR is turned off, cells ramp up their cleanup efforts, forming membranes that can collect and isolate plastic particles for breakdown or removal. Meanwhile, spermidine is a naturally occurring polyamine found in foods that enhances cellular resilience and supports the clearance of toxic substances.

In lab and animal studies, the combination of spermidine and rapamycin helped reverse mitochondrial dysfunction and reduce oxidative stress caused by microplastics.

The table below summarizes these novel strategies to eliminate microplastics, including their mechanisms of action, how much testing has been done, and important safety considerations. It shows that although several different approaches may be needed, clearing plastics from your body naturally is possible. Of course, reducing your exposure is still the ideal preliminary course of action.

How to Reduce Your Exposure to Lung-Damaging Microplastics

If you’re breathing, you’re exposed. Microplastics are in the air around you — from synthetic carpets and clothing to packaging dust and car exhaust. You don’t need to panic, but you do need to act. These particles aren’t just passing through your lungs.

They’re embedding, altering how your cells behave, and triggering damage at a cellular level. That means you need to treat this like any other environmental toxin: identify the source and cut it off. Here’s how I recommend you take control of your environment and protect your lungs:

1. Ditch synthetic textiles and go natural wherever possible — If you’re wearing polyester or drying synthetic fabrics indoors, you’re likely inhaling fibers you can’t see. Switch to natural clothing like cotton, wool, linen, or hemp. Use a vented dryer and keep your laundry space well-ventilated to reduce airborne fibers.

If you’re a parent, prioritize organic natural fibers for children — they’re more vulnerable to inhalation damage. For the synthetic pieces you already own, wash them less frequently, line dry when possible, and use a microfiber-catching laundry bag to trap loose fibers.

2. Upgrade your indoor air filtration and filter your water — Your lungs are working overtime in enclosed spaces. Use a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter in the rooms where you spend the most time — especially bedrooms and workspaces. If you live in an apartment or near a busy road, a good air purifier is nonnegotiable.

Make sure it’s rated for micro-sized particles (PM2.5 or smaller) to catch airborne plastic dust. In addition, use a high-quality water filtration system that removes particles down to the micron level.

3. Avoid heating plastic containers or food packaging — Microwaving plastic, drinking hot liquids from plastic-lined cups, or using plastic containers for leftovers can release polystyrene particles and nanoplastics. Store food in glass or stainless steel instead. If you’re reheating, make it a habit to transfer your food out of plastic first — this one small change significantly lowers your microplastic load.

4. Vacuum with a sealed system and damp dust frequently — Dust is one of the biggest sources of indoor microplastics — and your vacuum matters. Use a sealed vacuum with a HEPA filter, and clean floors regularly, especially if you have carpets or pets. Dry dusting just pushes particles into the air, so use a damp cloth to trap and remove dust instead.

5. Avoid personal care products that contain microbeads or plastic thickeners — If you’re using exfoliating scrubs, toothpaste, or face washes that list polyethylene or polypropylene on the label, you’re applying plastic directly to your skin and possibly rinsing it into the air. Choose clean, microplastic-free products.

You won’t just help your body — you’ll help reduce contamination in the environment, too. Small actions, when done consistently, have a compounding effect. The less plastic you breathe in, the lower your risk of cellular stress, immune dysfunction, and long-term lung damage.

FAQs About Microplastics

Q: How do microplastics affect my lungs?
A: Microplastics don’t just sit in your airways — they get absorbed into lung cells and trigger changes linked to cancer. They cause oxidative stress, DNA damage, and make healthy cells behave more like tumor cells by activating survival pathways and increasing mobility, even without obvious inflammation.

Q: Where do microplastics come from, and how do I inhale them?
A: You breathe them in from indoor dust, synthetic clothing, carpets, car tires, and even packaging materials. These particles are tiny enough to bypass your lungs’ natural defenses and embed in your tissue — right where gas exchange happens.

Q: What other parts of my body do microplastics harm?
A: Beyond your lungs, microplastics damage your digestive system and reproductive organs. Studies show they disrupt your gut lining, alter your microbiome, and interfere with hormones, fertility, and immune signaling. Smaller nanoplastics even reach your brain and liver through your bloodstream.

Q: Can I remove microplastics from my body naturally?
A: Emerging research suggests that natural binders like cross-linked psyllium, chitosan, and specific probiotics help trap and eliminate microplastics in your gut. Other strategies like supporting liver detox and boosting autophagy with compounds like spermidine and rapamycin are also being studied.

Q: What are the best ways to reduce my exposure to microplastics?
A: Switch to natural fabrics, use HEPA air filters, avoid heating food in plastic, vacuum with sealed systems, and choose clean personal care products without microbeads. Small daily changes significantly lower your plastic exposure and protect your long-term health.

Seventy percent of young adults now take at least one nutritional supplement, and 30% report regular use of pre-workout energy products.1 Those numbers reflect just how many people want more energy, better endurance, and stronger workouts. Yet the ingredient that dominates most pre-workout formulas — caffeine — creates a growing problem.

As tolerance develops, many people need larger doses to achieve the same effect, while others deal with jitters, restless sleep, and unwanted side effects instead of better performance.

These limitations have fueled interest in non-stimulant pre-workout supplements. Instead of relying on stimulants to increase alertness, these formulas are designed to support energy production, blood flow, and fatigue resistance during exercise.

But not every ingredient on a label earns its place there. Some take weeks of consistent use to show any benefit at all; others do their best work in the hour before you train. And a persistent labeling practice in this industry makes it surprisingly difficult to know whether you’re paying for an effective dose or just paying for the marketing.

That raises an important question: Which ingredients actually deliver measurable results, and which claims deserve a closer look? The research offers useful signals that can make it easier to separate evidence-backed ingredients from marketing claims.

The Best Pre-Workout Ingredients Do More Than Boost Energy

Not every ingredient on a pre-workout label does the same job, and many don’t do much at all. A detailed evidence review published by News Medical sorted the evidence-backed performers from the marketing filler, comparing the research behind creatine, beta-alanine, citrulline, taurine, and L-tyrosine.2 Here’s what held up — and what didn’t.

• Creatine stood out as one of the strongest performers — If your goal is to lift heavier weights, complete more repetitions, or maintain power during short bursts of intense exercise, creatine has one of the strongest scientific records among sports supplements.

Creatine helps regenerate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the primary energy molecule your muscles use for explosive movements such as sprinting, jumping, and resistance training.3 Think of ATP as a rechargeable battery inside your muscle cells; creatine speeds up the recharge between each explosive contraction, so you can repeat that effort instead of stalling out.

Even a short loading protocol of 0.3 grams per kilogram of body weight for three consecutive days increased the number of repetitions resistance-trained athletes completed at 60% to 80% of their one-repetition maximum while also lowering cardiovascular strain during exercise.4 Participants accomplished more work before becoming fatigued.*

After loading, a daily maintenance dose of roughly 3 to 5 grams is enough to keep muscle creatine stores elevated. Many people skip the loading phase entirely and simply take 3 to 5 grams per day, which reaches the same muscle saturation levels within about three to four weeks.

• Some ingredients require patience before you notice results — One of the biggest misconceptions about pre-workout supplements is that every ingredient works immediately. Beta-alanine works differently than most pre-workout ingredients because it first has to build up inside your muscles. Your body uses beta-alanine to produce carnosine, a naturally occurring compound that gradually accumulates with consistent daily use.

That buildup matters because hard exercise floods your muscles with hydrogen ions, the molecules behind the burning sensation that eventually forces you to stop. Higher carnosine levels act like a chemical buffer, neutralizing those ions so your muscles keep firing longer before fatigue shuts them down.

The National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements reports that consistent beta-alanine intake for at least two to four weeks is typically needed to raise muscle carnosine levels,5 while research discussed in the review found daily doses of 4 to 6.4 grams, divided into smaller servings,* was associated with improved strength and power for up to eight weeks while reducing the temporary tingling sensation called paresthesia that some people experience after larger doses.6

• Better blood flow supports both performance and recovery — The review also examined ingredients that increase nitric oxide (NO). Your body already produces NO to widen blood vessels when muscles demand more oxygen during exercise. Ingredients like L-citrulline boost that natural signal, so more blood — carrying oxygen, fuel, and waste-removal capacity — reaches working muscles when they need it most.

Citrulline malate, specifically, was highlighted because research showed it reduced muscle soreness by as much as 41.8% between 24 and 48 hours after exercise.7 That faster recovery may help you feel ready to train again sooner, and consistency over weeks appears to matter more than intensity on any single day.*

The review also points out that these ingredients showed their greatest value during high-intensity exercise rather than lower-intensity endurance activities, helping you match your supplement choice to the type of training you actually perform.

• Not every popular ingredient deserves the same attention — Ingredients vary widely in effectiveness. A 2025 systematic review and network meta-analysis of athletes exercising in the heat found that taurine was associated with a potential benefit for endurance under hot environmental conditions, an effect researchers linked to taurine’s role in regulating cellular hydration and calcium movement inside muscle cells.8

That may make taurine worth considering if you train outdoors in summer or in poorly ventilated indoor spaces where heat compounds muscular fatigue, though the reported effect size is modest and further research is warranted.*

By comparison, L-tyrosine showed only moderate-quality evidence* for improving mental focus during periods of psychological stress or fatigue and generally failed to improve whole-body endurance performance.9 That distinction helps you prioritize your spending instead of assuming every ingredient listed on a supplement label contributes equally to better workouts.

• Choosing the right product matters as much as choosing the right ingredient — Product quality directly affects results. Proprietary blends are a persistent problem because manufacturers often combine multiple ingredients without revealing the amount of each one. Without that information, you can’t determine whether a product contains enough of an ingredient to match the doses used in research.

Select supplements with transparent labels that clearly disclose ingredient amounts and match those ingredients to your training goals instead of chasing exaggerated marketing promises. Creatine and beta-alanine work best with consistent daily use, while NO boosters provide the greatest support when taken roughly 60 to 120 minutes before exercise.

Build Your Performance from the Ground Up

Those findings give you a clear shortlist of ingredients worth your money. But even the best supplement only works inside a system that supports it, which starts with how you eat, sleep, and structure your training. One big mistake I see is chasing a bigger energy boost instead of building a body that produces energy efficiently.

If your goal is better workouts, more strength, or faster recovery, focus on the habits and ingredients that consistently improve performance instead of relying on products that simply make you feel more alert for a short time. When you support your body’s natural energy systems, you may find you can train harder, recover more effectively, and make steadier progress without depending on stimulants.

1. Match your supplement to your training goal instead of taking everything — Your body doesn’t need every ingredient every day. If your priority is strength, power, and repeated high-intensity efforts, creatine deserves a high place on your list because research consistently links it to support for the rapid energy system your muscles rely on during demanding exercise. The most efficient way to get more creatine is by eating animal-based foods like grass fed beef.

However, if you’re not able to get enough creatine from food, or you’re aiming to reach the recommended daily dose of 3 to 5 grams (g) per day, I recommend creatine monohydrate. It’s one of the most studied and generally well-tolerated forms. Choose a clean product from a trusted company — no additives, fillers, or mystery flavors.

Despite lingering myths, research has generally not linked creatine monohydrate to impaired kidney function in healthy adults,10 and any initial water retention typically eases within the first week or two of use.11

If your workouts involve repeated bursts of hard effort, research suggests beta-alanine, taken consistently over several weeks, may help your muscles gradually build the carnosine needed to delay fatigue. Picking supplements based on your actual training goals can save money and may produce better results.

2. Build your energy with food instead of stimulants — High-dose stimulant pre-workout supplements can keep your nervous system in a stressed, alert state, which may make it harder for your brain and body to shift into the deep, restorative sleep where recovery actually happens. Treat these stimulants as another source of stress instead of a performance tool.

Before training, eat a simple meal or snack that includes carbohydrates, protein, and fluids so your muscles have the fuel they need without overstimulating your nervous system. Removing unnecessary stimulants from your routine, including pre-workout products and energy drinks, may create steadier energy throughout the day and help your body establish a more predictable rhythm instead of forcing you to chase the next caffeine boost.

3. Choose ingredients with transparent research instead of flashy labels — If you’re shopping for a pre-workout supplement, turn the container around before you buy it. Look for products that clearly list the amount of every active ingredient instead of hiding them inside a proprietary blend.

When you know the dose, you can compare it with the amounts used in research instead of paying for ingredients that are present only in tiny amounts. Prioritize ingredients with consistent evidence behind them, such as creatine for strength and power, instead of products that rely on long ingredient lists and marketing claims.

4. Treat your post-workout meal as part of your workout — Recovery starts the moment your training session ends. Your muscles rebuild most effectively when your body enters a rest-and-digest state instead of remaining in fight-or-flight mode. Eat carbohydrates after training to help replace the energy you used during exercise; some research suggests this pattern may also support healthier post-exercise cortisol levels, the stress hormone that rises during intense workouts.12

Pair those carbohydrates with about 20 to 40 g of protein within two hours after training, which equals roughly 0.3 to 0.4 g of protein per kilogram of body weight for most adults. Include about 2 to 3 g of leucine, an amino acid that helps activate muscle protein synthesis, the process your body uses to repair and build muscle tissue.13 When you recover well, fatigue tends to ease as your body continues rebuilding for your next workout.

5. Measure progress instead of chasing a feeling — Give evidence-backed ingredients enough time to work and judge success by measurable improvements, not by how energized you feel after taking a supplement. Track the number of quality repetitions you complete, the amount of weight you lift, how quickly you recover between workouts, and how rested you feel the next day.

Those markers tell you far more about your progress than the temporary rush produced by stimulant-based products. Consistency with training, nutrition, hydration, and recovery tends to outperform short-term stimulation.

*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 Non-Stimulant Pre-Workout Supplements

Q: What are the benefits of a non-stimulant pre-workout supplement?
A: Non-stimulant pre-workout supplements support exercise performance without relying on caffeine. Research suggests certain ingredients may support strength, power, endurance, blood flow, or recovery — depending on the ingredient — by supporting your muscles’ natural energy systems rather than stimulating your nervous system. The best results come from choosing ingredients that match your training goals and using them consistently.

Q: Is creatine the best non-stimulant ingredient for strength?
A: Creatine has one of the strongest bodies of scientific evidence for improving strength and high-intensity exercise performance. It helps your muscles rapidly regenerate ATP, the primary energy source used during activities such as weightlifting and sprinting. Research has also shown it can increase the number of repetitions you can perform during resistance training while reducing cardiovascular strain.

Q: How long does beta-alanine take to work?
A: Beta-alanine is not an instant-performance supplement. Your body uses it to produce carnosine, a compound that gradually builds up inside your muscles over several weeks. Higher carnosine levels help delay the muscle fatigue that develops during hard exercise, making consistent daily use much more important than taking a single dose before a workout.

Q: Should I avoid stimulant pre-workout supplements?
A: If your goal is long-term performance and recovery, limiting stimulant-based pre-workout supplements is a smart strategy. High doses of caffeine can keep your nervous system in a stressed, alert state, which may interfere with deep, restorative sleep and recovery. Building your energy with quality nutrition, hydration, consistent training, and adequate sleep tends to create more reliable performance than depending on stimulants.

Q: How do I choose an effective pre-workout supplement?
A: Start by looking for products that fully disclose the amount of every active ingredient instead of hiding them in proprietary blends. Then match those ingredients to your training goals. Support your supplement routine with a balanced pre-workout meal containing carbohydrates, protein, and fluids, and follow every workout with carbohydrates and 20 to 40 grams of protein to promote recovery and muscle repair.

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What affects how healthy a dehydrated food is?

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