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More than half of women in some populations report premenstrual syndrome (PMS), a condition that disrupts both body and mind on a monthly cycle. The prevalence is as high as 52.2% in certain groups, showing how widespread this issue has become.1 That number reflects more than inconvenience — it points to a recurring biological stress that shapes daily life.

PMS is characterized by a mix of physical and emotional symptoms that appear in the second half of your cycle. These range from fatigue, pain and sleep disruption to irritability, anxiety, and intense mood shifts. For many, the pattern repeats every month, interfering with work, relationships and overall stability. Left unaddressed, this cycle steadily erodes quality of life, especially when symptoms intensify over time.

Standard approaches to PMS often aim to blunt symptoms without addressing what keeps driving them back each month. That gap has pushed researchers to look deeper at what’s actually happening inside your cells during the hormonal shifts that trigger the problem. A controlled trial tested whether drinking hydrogen-rich water daily during the second half of the menstrual cycle could address that deeper mechanism — and the results suggest it can.2

Targeted Daily Hydrogen Intake Reshaped Premenstrual Symptoms

A study published in BMC Women’s Health investigated whether hydrogen-rich water could improve PMS and overall quality of life.3 Researchers designed a randomized, double-blind controlled trial, meaning participants didn’t know whether they were drinking hydrogen water or regular water, and neither did the researchers collecting the data. This type of design strengthens the reliability of the findings because it reduces bias.

The study included women who already struggled with PMS. These participants consumed between 1,500 and 2,000 milliliters (mL) of hydrogen-rich water daily, spaced throughout the day at specific intervals like before meals and before sleep. Compared to the control group drinking plain water, the hydrogen group showed a clear reduction in PMS symptom scores during follow-up assessments.

• Measurable drops in PMS symptoms reflected real relief — The researchers used a detailed scoring system that measures multiple PMS symptoms, including mood changes, fatigue, pain and sleep disruption. Higher scores reflect worse symptoms, so when scores dropped in the hydrogen group, it signaled real relief across several categories.

• Physical and mental well-being improved together — In addition to symptom reduction, participants drinking hydrogen water reported better quality of life, especially in physical health and psychological well-being.

Physical health includes energy levels, pain and daily function, while psychological health reflects mood, stress, and emotional stability. These improvements appeared early, during the first follow-up after consistent use. That tells you the effect isn’t limited to one area — it influences both how your body feels and how your mind responds during the cycle.

• Consistency across multiple cycles drove stronger results — Timing played a key role in the study. Participants started drinking hydrogen water around day 16 of their cycle and continued until the second day of menstruation, repeating this pattern for three cycles. This repeated exposure allowed the effects to build over time. The data showed that benefits persisted across follow-ups, reinforcing that consistency matters more than one-time use.

• Immediate consumption ensured the active compound remained effective — Researchers emphasized that hydrogen-rich water needs to be consumed right after preparation because hydrogen gas dissipates quickly. Participants were instructed to drink it immediately after it reached full saturation. If the hydrogen escapes, the therapeutic effect drops. That gives you a clear rule: timing and freshness determine whether you get the full benefit.

• Hydrogen targets the root stress signals inside your body — PMS is strongly linked to oxidative stress and inflammation, which are internal stress signals that disrupt normal function. Oxidative stress means harmful molecules build up and damage cells, while inflammation amplifies pain and mood instability.

Hydrogen acts as a selective antioxidant, meaning it neutralizes the most damaging molecules without interfering with useful ones your body needs. Most antioxidants work like a firehose — they suppress free radicals broadly, including the ones your immune system uses on purpose. Hydrogen works more like a sniper, going after only the hydroxyl radicals that damage DNA and cell membranes while leaving the signaling molecules your body relies on untouched.

• Cellular energy systems receive direct support — Hydrogen is the smallest molecule, which allows it to pass easily into cells, including the mitochondria — the part of your cells responsible for producing energy. During the luteal phase, rising progesterone increases your metabolic rate, which means your mitochondria are working harder and producing more oxidative waste. That’s why fatigue and brain fog tend to hit hardest in the days before your period.

Once inside, hydrogen helps upregulate your body’s own antioxidant enzymes — particularly glutathione peroxidase and superoxide dismutase — which act like a cleanup crew inside each cell, breaking down the toxic byproducts of energy production before they accumulate and cause damage.

When these systems function better, your cells produce energy more efficiently and generate fewer harmful byproducts. This directly affects fatigue, one of the most common and disruptive PMS symptoms.

How to Use Hydrogen-Rich Water to Restore Cellular Energy and Reduce PMS

PMS symptoms trace back to inflammation and oxidative stress that disrupt how your cells produce energy. When your cells struggle, your brain and body feel it as fatigue, mood swings, and discomfort. Fix that internal imbalance, and everything downstream begins to stabilize. This is where hydrogen becomes useful. It works at the level where your symptoms start — inside your cells. Rather than chasing symptoms, you’re correcting the environment that creates them.

1. Start with hydrogen-rich water to target the root cause — If your fatigue, irritability or brain fog hits hard before your cycle, you’re dealing with cellular stress. Drop one hydrogen tablet into a glass of room-temperature water — about 500 mL works well — and drink it as soon as the tablet fully dissolves and the water turns cloudy white.

That cloudiness is the dissolved hydrogen, and it starts escaping within minutes. Choose tablets that produce 8 to 10 ppm and are tested for purity. This step directly lowers oxidative stress and inflammation, which are the drivers behind your symptoms.

2. Time it correctly so you actually get the benefit — If you let the water sit, the hydrogen escapes and the effect drops. Drink it right away. Don’t sip it slowly over long periods once it’s prepared. Don’t swallow the tablet dry or drink partially dissolved pieces because the reaction produces heat, and taking it dry allows the reaction to occur against your tissue rather than dispersed in water, which can cause irritation or burns.

Fortunately, even if your schedule is busy, it’s easy to build a simple habit — prepare it, drink it, move on. Keep it simple so you stay consistent.

3. Use it daily during the phase when symptoms build — If you track your cycle, begin using hydrogen-rich water in the second half — around day 16 — when symptoms usually start. Continue through the first days of menstruation. This mirrors how it was used in the study and aligns with when inflammation and oxidative stress rise. If your symptoms are unpredictable, use it daily and pay attention to how your body responds.

4. Stay consistent, then cycle it to stay responsive — If you’re dealing with ongoing fatigue or mood swings, daily use builds momentum. Once your energy improves and your symptoms ease, take a short break for a few days or a week. Then restart. This keeps your body responsive instead of adapting and flattening the effect. Think of it like training — the change comes from the pattern, not a single dose.

5. Build a lifestyle that supports the same cellular pathways — If you want stronger and more lasting relief, layer hydrogen with simple habits that reduce inflammation and support energy production. Focus on steady daily movement like walking, regular sleep timing and getting morning sunlight to support your circadian rhythm.

Eat enough carbohydrates from whole foods to fuel your cells — about 250 grams daily — and avoid ultraprocessed foods, including seed oils, that increase oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction. If you feel worse under stress, prioritize downtime and simple routines that keep your nervous system calm. When these pieces work together, you’re not just managing PMS, you’re building a cellular environment that handles hormonal shifts without the monthly crash.

FAQs About Hydrogen-Rich Water for PMS

Q: What is hydrogen-rich water and how does it help with PMS?

A: Hydrogen-rich water is water infused with dissolved hydrogen gas. It acts as a selective antioxidant, neutralizing the most harmful molecules in your cells without disrupting beneficial ones. Since PMS is strongly linked to oxidative stress and inflammation, hydrogen-rich water targets these root causes at the cellular level rather than simply masking symptoms.

Q: What did the study find about hydrogen-rich water and PMS symptoms?

A: A randomized, double-blind controlled trial published in BMC Women’s Health found that women who drank 1,500 to 2,000 mL of hydrogen-rich water daily during the second half of their cycle experienced measurable reductions in PMS symptom scores compared to those drinking plain water.4

Participants also reported improvements in both physical health (energy, pain, daily function) and psychological well-being (mood, stress, emotional stability). Benefits appeared early and persisted across multiple menstrual cycles.

Q: When and how should hydrogen-rich water be consumed for PMS relief?

A: Based on the study, consumption should start around day 16 of your menstrual cycle and continue through the first two days of menstruation, repeating each cycle. It’s important to drink it immediately after preparation because hydrogen gas escapes quickly — don’t sip it slowly or let it sit. Participants spaced their intake throughout the day, such as before meals and before sleep.

Q: Why does consistency matter, and should I cycle on and off?

A: The study showed that repeating the protocol over three consecutive cycles allowed benefits to build over time. For ongoing use, it’s recommended to maintain daily intake until symptoms improve, then take a short break of a few days to a week before restarting. This cycling approach helps keep your body responsive and prevents adaptation that could diminish the effect.

Q: What lifestyle habits enhance the benefits of hydrogen-rich water for PMS?

A: For stronger, more lasting relief, combine hydrogen-rich water with habits that reduce inflammation and support cellular energy production — regular daily movement like walking, consistent sleep timing, morning sunlight exposure, and eating enough whole-food carbohydrates (around 250 grams daily).

Avoiding ultraprocessed foods and seed oils, which increase oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction, and prioritizing stress management also help your body handle hormonal shifts with less disruption.

Test Your Knowledge with Today’s Quiz!

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

What approach helps restore butyrate production in the gut?

Avoid all carbohydrates and increase fat intake
Add large amounts of fiber immediately to move food faster
Focus only on supplements, which includes high-quality probiotics

Start with simple carbs, then slowly add fermentable fiber
Healing starts by calming the gut with simple carbs like white rice and fruit, then slowly adding fermentable fibers to rebuild butyrate and support balanced metabolism. Learn more.

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You don’t need to collapse after every workout to burn fat or improve your heart health. In fact, pushing yourself too hard often backfires. That’s the power behind Zone 2 training, a method that’s catching attention because it does the exact opposite of what high-intensity trends promise. Instead of gasping for air, you keep a steady pace, and the payoff is real.

The key to sustainable fitness and long-term fat loss isn’t doing more; it’s doing it smarter. The Zone 2 approach targets your aerobic system without overloading your nervous system, allowing you to train longer, recover faster, and build endurance without triggering hormonal backlash. Zone 2 isn’t a trend — it’s a metabolic shift. And once you understand how it works, you’ll stop chasing exhaustion and start making real progress.

Zone 2 Training Burns Fat Without Burning You Out

Fox News explored why Zone 2 training is gaining popularity as a fat-burning method that doesn’t require extreme effort.1 The piece features insights from Carmine Ciliento, fitness manager at Crunch Fitness in New York, who explains that Zone 2 refers to working out at 60% to 70% of your maximum heart rate.

This is the range where your body switches to burning mostly fat for fuel. Specifically, about 65% of your calories come from fat while you’re in this zone. Unlike high-intensity workouts, which rely more on carbohydrates and protein, Zone 2 is about steady, aerobic movement your body sustains for longer without overwhelming your system.

• This approach is especially useful for people just getting started or those who’ve burned out on high-intensity programs — “Zone 2 is especially valuable because it allows you to add cardio volume to your training without overstressing your body,” Ciliento told Fox News.

For beginners, anything more intense is often too much at first. Zone 2 lets you build consistency and endurance gradually. Even better, this level of effort still delivers metabolic rewards without pushing your nervous system or hormones into overdrive.

• You don’t need fancy equipment or lab testing to find your Zone 2 range — Just subtract your age from 220 to get your estimated max heart rate. Then aim for 60% to 70% of that number during exercise. For example, a 50-year-old’s Zone 2 range would be roughly 102 to 119 beats per minute.

Heart rate monitors or wearable fitness devices help track it, but even if you don’t use tech, there’s a simple trick: the “talk test.” If you can speak in short phrases but need to pause to breathe every few words, you’re likely in the right range.

• Zone 2 training is ideal for long-duration activity without the crash afterward — The reason this works so well is because your body is relying on fat instead of sugar to generate energy. This process is more efficient for sustained movement. It’s also gentler on your muscles and joints. Ciliento, who trains for endurance events, uses Zone 2 regularly for recovery, underscoring how effective it is even for high-level athletes.

• What makes Zone 2 so sustainable is that it builds up your aerobic engine quietly but powerfully — You’re not redlining your body or tearing down tissue every time you work out. That means you recover faster and avoid the destructive wear and tear linked with chronic high-intensity exercise. Instead of chasing exhaustion, you’re chasing adaptation — training smarter, not harder.

Zone 2 Helps Strengthen Your Heart and Stabilize Blood Sugar

USA Today explored how Zone 2 cardio supports your body’s ability to deliver oxygen and manage energy more efficiently.2 The feature includes commentary from Dr. Carrie Jaworski, a sports and exercise medicine physician at Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City, who described Zone 2 cardio as light to moderate aerobic exercise that keeps your heart rate steady while still allowing you to talk. This makes it easier to stick with over time and makes it powerful for improving cardiovascular endurance and resilience.

• Zone 2 linked to specific improvements in blood sugar control, fat metabolism, and cardiovascular markers — According to Jaworski, “Zone 2 cardio has been shown to improve lipid levels and insulin sensitivity, as well as decrease the risk of cardiovascular events in those who already have cardiovascular disease.”

This means it doesn’t just help you lose weight; it makes your heart stronger and your cells better at handling sugar. It supports the very processes that protect you from heart attacks, strokes, and diabetes complications.

• Unlike other training zones, this one is designed to keep you in balance while still progressing — Dr. Michael Fredericson from Stanford University explained that the benefits include lower resting heart rate, improved vascular tone, and better blood clotting function. These changes directly support your body’s ability to heal, circulate nutrients, and avoid damage under stress.

• Zone 2 also helps build endurance and power for future workouts — The article makes it clear that staying in this zone helps your body become more efficient at using fat for energy, not just during the workout, but also long after. It builds your “aerobic base,” which makes everything else — like climbing stairs or lifting weights — feel easier over time. According to Fredericson, this low-stress intensity supports long-term training without the burnout that comes from pushing too hard too often.

• You don’t have to be an athlete to use Zone 2 cardio, and it’s one of the easiest ways to begin — Brisk walking, gentle cycling, and swimming all count. Jaworski adds that “Zone 2 training is easier on the body so you can do it more regularly, recover more quickly and are less likely to get burnt out or overtrain.”3 For anyone dealing with stress, fatigue, or previous injury, this method offers a stable entry point into consistent movement and better metabolic health.

• Tracking your heart rate helps, but it’s not required to get the benefits — Jaworski says the talk test is still one of the most practical tools: you should be able to speak a few words at a time without needing to stop completely to catch your breath. This makes it easy for beginners to jump in and stay in the right range without overthinking it.

Zone 2 Builds Mitochondria and Makes You Stronger Over Time

An article in Women’s Health reported how Zone 2 training improves your body’s power output by building the foundation of energy production.4 According to fitness coach Melissa Kendter, this lower-intensity method enhances your performance at higher intensities by improving your aerobic base. As your body becomes more efficient at using oxygen for energy, every movement feels easier and more powerful. This makes Zone 2 training ideal for people who want better strength and stamina without burnout.

• Zone 2 boosts your ability to train harder later by increasing oxygen delivery and energy efficiency — The article highlights that aerobic training increases the number and size of mitochondria, the energy factories inside your cells. It also helps your muscles grow more capillaries, which deliver oxygen-rich blood exactly where it’s needed. These structural changes allow your body to produce more energy with less effort, so even your high-intensity workouts start to feel easier over time.

• It’s less likely to wear you out or cause overtraining, even if you do it daily — Kendter noted that Zone 2 is “just tough enough” — challenging enough to cause change but not so intense that it leaves you depleted. That makes it easier to stick with. You don’t need to recover for days after a session. Instead, show up again the next day and keep building progress steadily. This is what allows people to train consistently, especially those recovering from stress, illness, or years of sedentary habits.

• You don’t need fancy equipment to make this method work for you — Kendter recommended monitoring your breathing as a simple gauge. “You should be able to inhale for three to four counts and exhale for three to four counts,” she said, describing the sweet spot for Zone 2 effort. If you’re talking or breathing too hard, slow it down. This method helps you tune into your body and learn to pace yourself better, boosting confidence and self-awareness in your training.

• Women benefit from a different way of calculating their ideal heart rate range for Zone 2 — Cardiologist Dr. Martha Gulati pointed out that the traditional “220 minus age” formula was based on male data. For women, she suggested a more accurate formula: 206 – (0.88 x age). This personalization makes a real difference, especially for women trying to train smart and get the most out of every session without overdoing it.

Zone 2 Keeps You Below the Burnout Line and Builds Real Stamina

Dr. Eliza Pierko, an orthopedic sports medicine expert at Loyola Medicine, told Verywell Health that Zone 2 training feels deceptively easy — but that’s the point.5 “You feel like you’re not working out,” she said, yet the benefits are significant and lasting. This method has been used successfully by endurance athletes for decades, and now it’s becoming popular among everyday people because it builds stamina without exhaustion.

• This approach allows you to train longer without triggering the pain, inflammation, or fatigue that intense workouts often cause — Benjamin T. Gordon, assistant professor at the University of Florida, told Verywell Health that Zone 2 training keeps you below your lactate threshold.

That’s the point where your body switches to anaerobic (oxygen-deprived) energy and starts accumulating lactic acid, which makes your muscles burn and recovery take longer. By staying below that line, you stay in a state that’s energizing, not depleting.

• You’re tapping into a smarter system that trains your body to become more efficient, not more exhausted — Pierko emphasized that Zone 2 targets slow-twitch muscle fibers. These are the endurance muscles that use fat for fuel and are built for long-term use. Even after hours of steady effort, your body keeps burning fat instead of sugar, supporting sustained energy output without breakdown.

For people looking to maintain consistent energy throughout the day, this matters far more than sprinting into soreness.

• Zone 2 training lowers the risk of injury and overuse because it doesn’t spike inflammation or tear you down — Gordon warned against constantly pushing your body to its limit. “If you go to max effort every day, you’re most likely not gonna adhere to your program and you’re more likely to see injuries,” he said.6 Zone 2 offers a gentler alternative that keeps you consistent. That consistency pays off in cardiovascular health, mental clarity, and metabolic function.

• This method improves blood pressure, heart function, and your body’s ability to regulate energy — Pierko added that Zone 2 helps manage metabolic health and reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease. Your vascular system becomes more responsive, your blood flows better and your muscles adapt to work more efficiently. These benefits are especially helpful for people with blood sugar issues or heart concerns who can’t afford the stress of high-intensity workouts.

Stop Burning Out Your Body to Get Fit

If you’ve been feeling wiped out after your workouts, stuck in a plateau or frustrated with your recovery, the intensity could be backfiring. High-intensity training spikes cortisol, your body’s primary stress hormone, and over time that tears down your muscle, your brain, your bones, and your motivation.

The goal isn’t to do less. It’s to do it smarter. If you’ve been trying to force results with extreme routines, shifting into Zone 2 training is one of the fastest ways to rebuild your energy and restore your progress. Here’s how to get started:

1. Find your Zone 2 heart rate range and stay there for at least 30 minutes — Use the simple formula: 220 minus your age. Then multiply that number by 0.6 and 0.7 to get your target range. For example, if you’re 40, your Zone 2 range is around 108 to 126 beats per minute. If you’re a woman, use the more accurate formula from Gulati: 206 – (0.88 x your age). This zone is where your body uses mostly fat for fuel and doesn’t raise stress hormones, so you get long-term benefits without breakdown.

2. Choose activities that feel natural and don’t leave you gasping — You don’t need fancy equipment. Go for a brisk walk, hike, dance, ride a bike, swim, or even rollerblade. The key is staying at a pace where you can talk in short phrases without gasping. If you’re inhaling for three to four counts and exhaling the same, you’re likely right where you need to be.

3. Engage in moderate exercise often and don’t overthink it — Because Zone 2 is gentle, you can do it multiple days a week without draining your recovery. This makes it one of the easiest ways to train consistently without burning out. Aim for daily movement, split into manageable sessions.

4. Do high-intensity workouts sparingly, if at all — Excessive high-intensity workouts are a fast way to dig yourself into a deeper hole. As Dr. James O’Keefe warns, too much vigorous exercise backfires, accelerating aging and wearing down your body. However, you can’t overdo moderate exercise.

5. Track your progress with how you feel, not just how fast or far you go — As your aerobic base improves, you’ll notice you’re able to go longer without fatigue, your resting heart rate drops and everyday activities get easier. These are the signs that your mitochondria are working better and your metabolism is recovering. Trust the process — slow and steady wins this race.

FAQs About Zone 2 Training

Q: What is Zone 2 training and why does it matter?
A: Zone 2 training is a form of low-to-moderate intensity exercise that keeps your heart rate at 60% to 70% of its maximum. This zone trains your body to burn fat more efficiently, strengthens your cardiovascular system, and builds endurance without spiking stress hormones or causing burnout.

Q: How do I know if I’m exercising in Zone 2?
A: To estimate your target Zone 2 range, subtract your age from 220, then multiply that number by 0.6 and 0.7. For women, use 206 – (0.88 x your age) for a more accurate maximum. If you can speak in short phrases but need to pause for breath, you’re likely in the right zone.

Q: What are the main health benefits of Zone 2 cardio?
A: Zone 2 improves fat metabolism, lowers blood pressure, enhances insulin sensitivity, and increases mitochondrial density, which boosts your body’s ability to create energy. It also reduces your risk of overtraining, joint damage, and hormonal imbalances associated with high-intensity workouts.

Q: How often should I do Zone 2 workouts?
A: Because it’s gentle on your body, Zone 2 training can be done four to six days a week or more. The consistency of these workouts, not the intensity, is what drives long-term benefits.

Q: What types of exercise qualify as Zone 2 training?
A: Activities like brisk walking, hiking, swimming, biking, dancing, or rowing all qualify, as long as you keep your heart rate in the correct range. The key is staying active at a sustainable pace that supports fat burning without exhausting your nervous system.

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A New Series of Health Insights Is on the Way
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Colon cancer develops quietly, often without clear warning until it’s advanced. By the time symptoms such as changes in bowel habits, abdominal pain, or unexplained weight loss appear, the disease has already gained ground. This is why prevention matters so much — your daily choices influence whether your colon stays resilient or becomes vulnerable.

Diet is one of the strongest levers you have. Unlike fixed factors such as age or family history, what you eat shapes your gut environment and determines how well your body neutralizes harmful compounds. Certain foods work like medicine, fortifying your defenses against mutations that lead to tumors.

Among the most powerful options are cruciferous vegetables — broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts. They provide compounds that interact with your cells at a deep level, supporting detoxification, protecting DNA, and strengthening your colon lining.

Including them regularly isn’t complicated or expensive, but it gives you a measurable edge against one of the deadliest cancers worldwide. This foundation sets the stage for the latest research, which offers new insight into how these vegetables deliver their protection and what amount is most effective.

Research Shows Cruciferous Vegetables Cut Colon Cancer Risk

In a paper published in BMC Gastroenterology, researchers combined data from 17 studies involving 639,539 people.1 Out of these, 97,595 had colon cancer. The analysis showed that those who ate more cruciferous vegetables had significantly lower odds of developing colon cancer. The overall reduction in risk was 17%, which is meaningful when you think about preventing a disease that kills over 900,000 people each year.

• The “sweet spot” was surprisingly modest — The strongest protection occurred when people ate about 40 to 60 grams of cruciferous vegetables daily, roughly half a cup of cooked broccoli.

Eating more than 60 grams didn’t appear to provide much additional benefit, which suggests that your body reaches a point of saturation — where the cancer-fighting compounds do their job and more isn’t necessarily better. Importantly, this threshold makes prevention achievable because it doesn’t require extreme dietary changes.

• Specific chemicals in the vegetables drive the effect — Cruciferous vegetables contain glucosinolates, which break down into compounds such as sulforaphane and indole-3-carbinol when the vegetables are chopped or chewed. These compounds support your body in several ways:

◦ Detoxification — They activate enzymes that help your liver process and eliminate carcinogens.
◦ Apoptosis — They trigger programmed death in damaged or pre-cancerous cells.
◦ Cell cycle regulation — They slow down cell division, reducing the chance of runaway growth that leads to tumors.

• The findings held up even under strict testing — Researchers checked for errors or overestimates by running multiple sensitivity analyses, which are tests that remove one study at a time or look for outliers.

The reduction in colon cancer risk held steady regardless of which studies were included or excluded. Even when accounting for possible publication bias — where smaller studies with positive results are more likely to be published — the protective link between cruciferous vegetables and colon cancer risk stayed strong.

• How cruciferous vegetables protect your colon at the cellular level — Sulforaphane tells your body to make more detox enzymes. These enzymes act like janitors, sweeping out harmful substances before they damage your cells. At the same time, sulforaphane also shuts down signals that cancer cells use to stay alive and keep multiplying.

Another compound, indole-3-carbinol, helps control which genes are active, slowing down the growth of abnormal cells. When these natural defenses work together, your colon cells are better protected from harmful changes and shielded against ongoing inflammation.

• Gut health ties into the protective effect — Cruciferous vegetables also help tighten the junctions between cells lining your colon. This is important because when those junctions loosen, toxins and bacteria seep through, fueling inflammation and cancer risk. By strengthening these barriers, the compounds from cruciferous vegetables reduce harmful bacterial activity and give your beneficial gut microbes the upper hand.

That shift in your microbiome supports overall colon health and lowers cancer risk even further. You don’t need massive amounts of these vegetables to experience benefits. Just a moderate serving of cruciferous vegetables most days of the week is enough to activate detoxification pathways, improve gut barrier strength, and reduce your colon cancer risk by double digits. By making this a consistent habit, you build a daily shield inside your body.

Simple Strategies to Strengthen Your Gut and Cut Colon Cancer Risk

If your goal is to lower your risk of colon cancer, you need to start with the root cause: the health of your gut and how your body produces energy. When your gut microbes are balanced and your colon lining is strong, you’re in a far better position to stop abnormal cells before they take hold. On the other hand, when your diet and environment disrupt that balance, your risk climbs fast. These steps give you clear, practical actions that help you rebuild resilience and protection — starting with your plate.

1. Cut out vegetable oils and packaged junk — When you eat restaurant food, fried snacks, or packaged meals, you load your body with linoleic acid (LA) from vegetable oils. This fat poisons your mitochondria — the engines inside your cells — and creates a gut environment that favors harmful bacteria. Swap these foods for fresh, unprocessed choices you cook yourself.

Use stable fats like ghee, tallow, or grass fed butter, and keep LA below 5 grams per day — closer to 2 grams is even better.

2. Fuel your cells with the right carbs — Your gut and mitochondria work best when they get a steady flow of glucose. For most adults, that means 250 grams of healthy carbohydrates daily, with higher amounts if you’re very active. Start simple with white rice and fruit, especially if your gut is unhealthy. This approach gives your cells the energy they need while allowing your gut bacteria to stabilize before you add more complex foods.

3. Introduce more fiber step by step — Fiber feeds the good microbes in your gut, helping them produce butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that acts like fuel for your colon lining. But too much fiber too soon backfires if your gut is inflamed. Once you’ve done well with fruits and white rice, add in root vegetables, then branch out to cruciferous and other vegetables, beans, legumes, and whole grains.

Cooked and cooled potatoes or rice are especially useful because the resistant starch they form is perfect food for butyrate-producing bacteria. By pacing your fiber intake, you allow your gut to heal and build strength without triggering irritation.

4. Bring in cruciferous vegetables for extra defense — Once your gut tolerates carbs well, make cruciferous vegetables part of your regular diet. Whether you prefer roasted Brussels sprouts, lightly steamed broccoli, or sauerkraut, your choices matter and directly influence whether cancer takes hold in your colon. These foods contain compounds that help your liver clear carcinogens, repair damaged DNA, and strengthen your colon lining.

Aim for 40 to 60 grams a day — roughly half a cup of cooked broccoli — to get the best protection. Rotate different crucifers through your meals to diversify the compounds your gut microbes have to work with. This variety keeps your microbiome healthier and gives your colon more layers of defense.

5. Limit toxins, prioritize daily movement, and restore your microbiome — Environmental toxins — from plastics, pesticides, and synthetic estrogens to constant exposure to electromagnetic fields — undermine your gut health, allowing the wrong microbes to take over. Switch to glass containers, avoid heating food in plastic, and cut down on wireless signals at home where possible.

Movement is another tool that lowers your risk of colon cancer. Research shows that exercising in the morning around 8 a.m. and again in the evening around 6 p.m. reduces colorectal cancer risk by 11%, with this two-peak pattern outperforming other exercise schedules.2

Antibiotics are another disruptor, wiping out beneficial species. Use them only when truly necessary, and then rebuild your microbiome with fermented foods. Once your gut is healthy, supporting beneficial microbes like Akkermansia, which help maintain your gut lining, keeps your colon protected from cancer-triggering toxins.

FAQs About Cruciferous Vegetables and Colon Cancer

Q: How much cruciferous vegetables do I need to eat to lower my colon cancer risk?
A: Research shows the strongest protection comes from eating about 40 to 60 grams a day — roughly half a cup of cooked broccoli. Eating more than this doesn’t seem to add much benefit, but keeping this amount in your daily diet reduces your colon cancer risk by about 17%.

Q: What makes cruciferous vegetables protective against colon cancer?
A: These vegetables contain compounds such as sulforaphane and indole-3-carbinol. Once you chew or chop the vegetables, these compounds activate processes in your body that detoxify carcinogens, trigger cancer cell death, slow down abnormal growth, and strengthen the lining of your colon.

Q: Do cruciferous vegetables also help with gut health?
A: Yes. They help tighten the junctions between cells in your colon lining, reducing the chance of toxins and bacteria leaking through. This shift gives your beneficial microbes the advantage, lowers inflammation, and supports a healthier gut microbiome overall.

Q: Besides eating cruciferous vegetables, what other steps protect against colon cancer?
A: Practical steps include cutting out vegetable oils and packaged junk foods, eating enough healthy carbs, introducing fiber gradually, and reducing exposure to toxins like plastics and pesticides. Daily movement also helps — research shows exercising around 8 a.m. and again at 6 p.m. lowers colorectal cancer risk by 11%.3

Q: Why is prevention so important with colon cancer?
A: Colon cancer often develops silently until it’s advanced, when treatment is harder and survival rates are lower. Prevention gives you control: the foods you eat, your activity level, and your environment directly influence whether harmful changes take hold in your colon.

A New Series of Health Insights Is on the Way

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A New Series of Health Insights Is on the Way
Our team has been working behind the scenes to prepare new research and practical health strategies for our readers. While we finish preparing what’s coming next, we invite you to explore one of the most-read articles from our library below. See exactly what’s changing →

Picture this: you step out of the shower, glance down and see a tangle of hair circling the drain — more than usual. You wonder, “What’s happening to my hair?” While stress or family genes could be culprits, there’s another common reason you might not have thought of: vitamin deficiencies. Your hair acts like a window to your overall health, dropping hints about what’s going on inside your body.

When it thins or falls out more than normal, it’s often a signal that you’re low on some key nutrients. Nutrients like vitamins D, B12 and A, and iron, keep your hair looking full and healthy. If you don’t get enough, your locks could suffer as a result.

Understanding Your Hair’s Growth Cycle

Hair growth follows a structured cycle with three phases: the growth phase (anagen), the transition phase (catagen), and the resting phase (telogen). This process ensures continuous renewal, much like a plant that sprouts, matures, and eventually sheds to allow new growth. Vitamins are indispensable to this cycle, acting as nutrients that sustain hair health.

For example, vitamin D supports healthy hair follicles, while B vitamins contribute to keratin production — the protein that forms your hair’s structure. Insufficient levels of these nutrients disrupt the cycle, causing hair to enter the resting phase prematurely and resulting in increased shedding or thinning. In short, vitamins are the foundation for robust hair growth; without them, the cycle falters.

What Are the Benefits of Vitamin D for Your Hair?

Widely recognized for supporting bone health, vitamin D also plays a key role in hair vitality. It promotes the development of cells that develop into hair follicles, the microscopic structures responsible for hair growth. Vitamin D levels are often low in people with hair loss.1 A deficiency impairs follicle production, leading to thinning hair. Consider vitamin D as the catalyst that initiates healthy hair renewal.

• Identifying a vitamin D deficiency — Signs like excessive hair loss, along with fatigue or muscle pain, may point to low vitamin D levels. The best way to know if you’re in an optimal or deficient state is to get your vitamin D level tested. I recommend doing this twice a year. Regular monitoring is key to keeping your vitamin D level in a healthy range, ideally between 60 to 80 ng/mL (150 to 200 nmol/L).
• Strategies to boost vitamin D — The best way to boost your vitamin D level is with regular sun exposure. However, I need to caution you about sun exposure during peak hours if you consume dietary seed oils. These oils, which are rampant in processed and fast food, are packed with linoleic acid (LA). When LA accumulated in your skin interacts with the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays, it triggers inflammation and DNA damage.

It’s best to avoid direct sunlight during peak hours (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) until you’ve cut back on seed oils for six months. This gives your body time to clear some of the accumulated LA. If sun exposure isn’t possible, vitamin D3 supplementation is often necessary. Remember to have your vitamin D levels tested and, based on your test results, adjust your sun exposure or your supplement dose accordingly to maintain a vitamin D level between 60 to 80 ng/mL.

How Do B Vitamins Help Your Hair Stay Strong?

Biotin (B7) helps make keratin, the protein your hair’s built from. Not enough, and your hair might get brittle or thin.2 Think of biotin as the builder stacking strong bricks for your hair. Vitamin B12 keeps your blood cells healthy, carrying oxygen to your hair roots. When these vitamins are low, hair becomes weak, grows slowly or break easily.

• Signs of deficiency — Thinning hair with symptoms like fatigue or pale skin often signal a B vitamin shortage. Hair loss and red, scaly rashes (especially on your face) are common signs you may need more biotin.
• Increasing B Vitamin Intake — To increase vitamin B12, incorporating B12-rich foods, such as grass fed meat and dairy, into your diet. Vegetarians and vegans, who are particularly at risk for vitamin B12 deficiency due to dietary restrictions, should consider supplements. Oral or intramuscular vitamin B12 supplements help restore adequate levels, depending on the severity of the deficiency.
Oral supplementation is generally effective for mild to moderate deficiency, with dosages ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 micrograms daily. Intramuscular injections, typically administered monthly, may be more suitable for patients with severe deficiency or those with malabsorption issues. Pastured egg yolk is one of the best sources of biotin. Since biotin is water-soluble, your body will not store it. Hence, your intake needs to remain consistent.

Why Does Iron Matter for Your Hair Growth?

Iron is essential for hair health, helping red blood cells carry oxygen to hair follicles.3 Without enough iron, follicles can’t get the oxygen they need, slowing growth and causing shedding. While too little iron contributes to thinning hair, having either too much or too little iron has serious repercussions. The fact is, iron deficiency is commonly checked for, but iron overload is a far more common problem, yet is often overlooked or ignored.

• Detecting low iron — Hair loss along with fatigue, memory problems, or pale skin could mean an iron deficiency.4 A straightforward blood test, known as a serum ferritin test, provides valuable insights into your iron status. You want your ferritin level below 100 ng/mL; the ideal range is 20 to 40 ng/mL. Below 20 ng/mL is an indicator that you are iron deficient, while a level above 100 ng/mL indicates inflammation, high iron or both.

• Boosting iron levels — Eat iron-rich foods like grass fed red meat and pair them with vitamin C from citrus fruits to improve absorption.5 Before considering supplements, be sure to get a serum ferritin blood test, as too much iron is harmful.

How Does Vitamin A Help or Hurt Your Hair?

Vitamin A keeps your scalp healthy by controlling sebum production, the natural oil that moisturizes hair.6 Too little dries out hair, while too much contributes to thinning and scalp issues. Vitamin A is like a dial that needs to be set just right for optimal hair growth.

• Recognizing vitamin A imbalance — Dry, brittle hair is often a sign you need more vitamin A, but thinning or scalp irritation could signal excess.7

• How to boost vitamin A levels — To optimize your vitamin A status, focus on consuming a variety of vitamin A-rich foods. Good sources include liver, egg yolks, butter from grass fed cows, and orange and yellow vegetables like sweet potatoes and carrots. These foods provide either preformed vitamin A or provitamin A carotenoids that your body can convert to active vitamin A.

While supplementation can be beneficial if you’re deficient, it’s important not to exceed recommended intake levels, due to negative effects from excessive supplementation. If you’re concerned about your vitamin A status, consider having your levels tested before starting any supplementation regimen.

Supporting Hair Health Through Nutrition

Your hair often reflects your inner health, with thinning or shedding hinting at deficiencies in vitamins D, B12, or A, and possibly iron. Each plays a unique role in hair growth, strength, and scalp health. The good news? Fixing these gaps is simple. A diet rich in nutrients, based on a variety of whole foods, gives your hair what it needs.

If hair loss continues, however, see a holistic doctor, as a blood test is useful for spotting nutrient deficiencies, leading to targeted treatments like diet changes or supplements to get your hair growth and overall health back on track.

Frequently Asked Questions About Vitamins and Hair Loss

Q: Which vitamins are most important for hair growth?
A: Vitamin D, vitamin B12, biotin, iron, and vitamin A are key nutrients for hair health, supporting follicles, hair strength, and scalp health.

Q: How should I get these vitamins?
A: Sunlight is the best source of vitamin D. Vitamin B12-rich foods include grass fed meat and dairy. Pastured egg yolk is one of the best sources of biotin, while iron-rich foods include grass fed red meat. Good sources of vitamin A include liver, egg yolks, butter from grass fed cows, and orange and yellow vegetables like sweet potatoes and carrots.

Q: How can I identify a vitamin deficiency?
A: Watch for thinning hair, fatigue, or pale skin. Ask for a blood test from your doctor to confirm any nutrient deficiencies.

Q: Can supplements quickly fix hair loss?
A: While certain supplements support hair health, diet comes first. Be sure to prioritize dietary changes, with a focus on fresh, whole foods, and use supplements only when needed.

Q: What causes excessive hair shedding?
A: Some shedding is normal, but nutrient deficiencies often worsen it. Hair shedding is also triggered by hormonal changes (pregnancy, menopause, thyroid disorders), stress, certain medications, sudden weight loss, seasonal changes, and underlying health conditions like autoimmune disorders.

If you feel hungry again soon after eating, crave snacks between meals, or experience an energy crash an hour or two after food, your appetite system has lost its timing. You may eat enough calories yet still feel unsatisfied. Blood sugar rises and falls too quickly. Hunger signals arrive early and stay loud. This pattern does not reflect weak discipline or poor food choices. It signals a breakdown in how your gut communicates fullness and fuel status to the rest of your body.

When it comes to weight loss, there’s a hidden system in your body that works quietly behind the scenes — not in your muscles or fat cells, but deep in your gut lining. It’s a hormone system powered by butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) that your gut bacteria make when you eat fiber. Butyrate fuels L-cells — specialized sensors in your gut lining that release a hormone known as GLP-1, short for glucagon-like peptide-1 — in response to fermentation, signaling that you’ve eaten enough.

GLP-1 plays a central role in appetite control, blood sugar balance, and fat storage.1,2 It’s released within minutes after you eat and acts like a broadcast signal, telling multiple organs that fuel has arrived and intake can slow.

You may have heard of GLP-1 in the context of medications like Ozempic and Wegovy, which mimic this natural hormone. But when your body makes its own GLP-1 the way it’s supposed to, you already have a built-in weight regulation system — no injections, no prescriptions needed.

To turn that system back on, you need to restore butyrate. Everything else — stable energy, fewer cravings, easier fat loss — flows from there. This is the central premise of my new book, “Weight Loss Cure; Melt Fat Naturally With Your Own GLP-1.”

Butyrate Fuels the Cells That Control Hunger

Butyrate is made in your colon when beneficial bacteria ferment certain types of fiber. It’s best known as the main energy source for colonocytes — the cells lining your large intestine — but its role doesn’t stop there. Butyrate also fuels L-cells, which sit along your intestinal wall and act as your body’s metabolic messengers.

When butyrate reaches them, it triggers the release of GLP-1. GLP-1 is the hormone that tells your brain you’ve eaten enough, slows the movement of food through your stomach, stabilizes blood sugar, and reduces the desire to snack between meals. In short, butyrate powers the hormone that helps regulate your appetite.3,4

When this system works as designed, appetite regulates itself — and fat loss follows without conscious restriction. You eat less, not because you’re forcing yourself to, but because you’re full. You stop craving sugar. Your energy feels steady. Your metabolism stops pushing calories into fat cells and starts using them for energy again. But when your gut doesn’t make enough butyrate, that entire system is blunted.

Beyond serving as fuel, butyrate helps maintain a low-oxygen environment in the colon. When colon cells receive adequate energy from butyrate, they consume oxygen efficiently, keeping the gut environment anaerobic. This low-oxygen state is essential because most butyrate-producing bacteria cannot survive when oxygen levels rise.

Seed Oils Undermine Butyrate

A primary driver of insufficient butyrate production is the modern diet. Seed oils high in linoleic acid (LA), processed grains, and a lack of fermentable fiber — all of these starve your gut bacteria of the raw materials they need to make butyrate. On top of that, environmental toxins, antibiotics, and chronic stress damage the gut lining and wipe out the very microbes that produce it.

LA disrupts butyrate production through several converging effects. It increases oxidative stress and low-grade inflammation in the gut lining, which raises local oxygen levels in the colon. That shift favors oxygen-tolerant microbes while suppressing the strictly anaerobic bacteria responsible for producing butyrate. Over time, this altered environment reduces fermentation efficiency, weakens the gut barrier, and further amplifies inflammation — creating a cycle that steadily drives butyrate levels down.

When that happens, your L-cells lose their fuel, and GLP-1 release drops. As a result, your stomach empties too quickly, your blood sugar swings out of control, and your brain doesn’t get the signal to stop eating. Hunger kicks in faster. Cravings increase. Fat storage ramps up. Your metabolism hasn’t failed — it’s just running without the fuel it needs.

How GLP-1 Regulates Hunger and Metabolism

GLP-1 is one of the most important hormones in your digestive and metabolic system. It’s secreted after meals and acts on multiple organs to keep energy balance in check:

• In your brain, it reduces appetite and increases feelings of fullness
• In your stomach, it slows emptying so you stay full longer
• In your pancreas, it increases insulin release and reduces glucagon, helping manage blood sugar
• In your fat tissue, it improves insulin sensitivity and supports fat burning. By improving insulin sensitivity and slowing nutrient delivery, GLP-1 shifts energy away from fat storage and toward immediate use, increasing the likelihood that calories get burned rather than stored

GLP-1 is your body’s natural appetite regulator, and it’s designed to activate every time you eat. GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs like semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) copy these effects, but they come with a long list of potential side effects, as they override your body’s natural rhythm.

GLP-1 medications replace a missing signal by forcing the receptor to stay active. Restoring butyrate does something fundamentally different. It amplifies your body’s own signaling by supplying the fuel L-cells need to release GLP-1 in the right amounts, at the right time, in response to food. One approach overrides physiology. The other rebuilds it.

You don’t need to hijack the system. You just need to restore the environment that lets it work — by feeding the cells that make GLP-1 what they need: butyrate. Once you restore GLP-1 signaling through adequate butyrate, the effects do not stop with appetite control. The same fuel that helps L-cells regulate hunger also supports gut integrity, immune balance, and brain signaling. These downstream benefits reflect the wider role butyrate plays in maintaining metabolic stability throughout your body.

Butyrate also stimulates the release of peptide YY (PYY), another satiety hormone produced by L-cells. PYY works alongside GLP-1 to slow digestion and reinforce fullness after meals, helping hunger stay suppressed between eating periods.

Butyrate’s Broader Benefits

Rebuilding your GLP-1 signaling through butyrate doesn’t just affect appetite. It also strengthens the systems that support stable metabolism long term. Importantly, it:

• Reinforces gut barrier integrity — Butyrate provides up to 70% of the energy colon cells need. With enough fuel, these cells form a tight barrier that keeps irritants and pathogens out of your bloodstream. When that barrier breaks down — often due to low butyrate — inflammation ramps up, immune reactivity increases, and blood sugar control suffers.5

• Reduces systemic inflammation — Butyrate suppresses nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB), a master inflammatory switch that, when overactive, worsens insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction.
Butyrate also inhibits the NLRP3 inflammasome, another key driver of inflammation that responds to cellular stress and injury,6 while boosting the production of interleukin-10 (IL-10), a powerful anti-inflammatory cytokine that tells immune cells to stand down.7 Moreover, studies show that butyrate reduces circulating C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of systemic inflammation that’s elevated in a wide range of chronic diseases.8

• Supports brain health — Butyrate supports the gut-brain axis by reducing neuroinflammation and preserving the physical integrity of the blood-brain barrier. This barrier is a specialized structure that keeps harmful substances in the bloodstream from reaching the brain.
It also acts on microglia, the brain’s resident immune cells, helping to suppress their overactivation. Chronic microglial activation has been implicated in anxiety, depression, and neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Additionally, butyrate influences the production of neurotransmitters such as serotonin and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which help regulate mood, stress, and sleep. Animal studies suggest that increasing butyrate levels may improve symptoms of anxiety and support recovery from chronic stress and inflammation that affect the central nervous system.9

• Regulates immune activity — Your immune system needs to strike a delicate balance — stay alert to real threats without overreacting to harmless stimuli. Butyrate plays an important role in maintaining this balance. When produced in sufficient amounts, it influences the behavior of immune cells, encouraging the growth of regulatory T cells (Tregs) that promote tolerance and suppress overactive responses.10,11

• Lowers colorectal cancer risk — In the colon, butyrate promotes apoptosis (cell self-destruction) in precancerous and cancerous cells, helping reduce the risk of colorectal cancer. It also supports healthy cell turnover and differentiation, both of which are necessary to prevent abnormal growths in the intestinal lining.12

These benefits do not appear through supplementation alone or isolated food choices. They emerge when your gut environment supports steady butyrate production day after day. That requires a deliberate sequence: calm the gut first, rebuild tolerance next, and only then expand fermentation. The steps below follow that biological order.

How to Support Your Gut’s GLP-1 System

Think of this process as restoring terrain before planting seeds rather than forcing growth in damaged soil. Your gut microbiome plays a key role in how your body processes carbohydrates and regulates blood sugar levels. By taking targeted steps to enhance your gut health, you can restore and support the bacteria in your gut that produce butyrate and other SCFAs. Just keep in mind that your microbiome is as unique as your fingerprint.

What works for one person may differ for another, so patience and personalization are key. That said, here are a few foundational basics that will benefit most people:

1. Start with gut terrain repair — If you’re bloated, constipated, or sensitive to high-fiber foods, you need to calm inflammation before you feed the microbiome. That means:

• Avoiding fermentable fibers at first. When your gut is out of balance, high-fiber foods — even the “healthy” ones — can work against you. Foods like beans, lentils, oats and raw greens ferment quickly when the wrong bacteria are in control. This creates gas, pressure and inflammation, and worsens gut lining damage.
• Eliminating seed oils (such as soybean, corn, canola, sunflower). The linoleic acid in seed oils damages the exact gut microbes you’re trying to support. If your diet includes fried foods, processed snacks, or sauces made with soybean, corn, sunflower, or canola oil, you’re suffocating your good gut bacteria.
Replace those fats with ghee, grass fed butter or tallow — fats your body actually knows how to use. The goal is to shift your internal terrain so your gut bacteria thrive again.
• Using simple carbs like white rice and ripe fruit to stabilize energy without feeding bad bacteria.

2. Reintroduce fiber in phases — Move on to fiber reintroduction only after you meet this criterion: You tolerate three consecutive days of white rice or ripe fruit with no bloating, abdominal pain, excess gas, or bowel urgency. At that point, introduce one resistant starch source at a time, starting with 1/2 cup cooked-and-cooled white potato once daily.

Once you can consume 1/2 cup cooked-and-cooled potato daily for seven consecutive days with no increase in gas, bloating, stool looseness, or abdominal discomfort, advance to inulin-rich foods such as garlic, onions and leeks. These fibers bypass digestion in your small intestine and head straight to your colon, where they fuel beneficial bacteria that make butyrate.
Keep in mind that progress is oftentimes slow and non-linear. That is completely normal, and not a cause for concern. Just keep going; eventually your gut will normalize.

3. Support with optional tools — Once your gut begins to stabilize, these targeted tools can help accelerate butyrate production and improve results:

• Akkermansia postbiotics (Phase 1) — Postbiotics are non-living bacterial components that still deliver biological signals. Pasteurized forms of Akkermansia muciniphila contain Amuc_1100, a protein shown to tighten the gut barrier and reduce inflammation. Look for postbiotic formulas with enteric coating or microencapsulation to ensure they survive stomach acid and reach the colon intact.
Without that protection, less than 5% of Amuc_1100 reaches your colon. You could try megadosing to compensate, but that’s expensive and inefficient. Prioritize coated formats to support your gut barrier more effectively.
• Live Akkermansia (Phase 2) — Begin Phase 2 probiotics only after all of the following occur:

◦Bloating remains minimal or absent
◦Stool form stays consistent for at least 7 days
◦Fiber tolerance expands without symptom return

In this stage, introduce live probiotic Akkermansia alongside gentle prebiotics — like small amounts of resistant starch — to support the growth of butyrate-producing strains and reestablish a healthy, oxygen-sensitive microbial environment.

• Fermented foods — Traditionally fermented foods can boost microbial diversity and support butyrate-producing strains. Go slowly. Start with small amounts to test tolerance, especially if your gut is sensitive. Examples are given in the next section.

• Gut testing — A stool analysis can reveal which bacteria are present, whether your gut is inflamed, and how well you’re producing short-chain fatty acids like butyrate. This can guide food choices and supplementation more precisely.

• Resistant starch — Found naturally in cooked-and-cooled potatoes, green bananas, and legumes — or as supplemental powders — resistant starch bypasses digestion in the small intestine and becomes prime fuel for butyrate-producing bacteria in the colon.

4. Adjust your environment — Your gut doesn’t just respond to what you eat. It’s tuned into your entire lifestyle. These daily habits help create the internal rhythm your microbiome needs to thrive:

• Sleep — Align your sleep-wake cycle with natural light exposure. Aim for 7 to 9 hours of high-quality sleep and get morning sun to anchor your circadian rhythm. This helps regulate gut motility and microbial repair.
Why it matters: Consistent, circadian-aligned sleep regulates gut motility, microbial repair, and GLP-1 timing, allowing butyrate-producing bacteria to recover and function efficiently.
• Stress — Chronic stress alters your microbiome and shuts down butyrate production. Use daily tools like breathwork, walking outdoors, and nervous system regulation practices to calm your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and support microbial balance.

Why it matters: Chronic stress suppresses vagal tone and alters gut signaling, which reduces fermentation efficiency and directly lowers butyrate production.

• Fasting window — Stop eating at least three hours before bed. This gives your migrating motor complex (MMC) — your gut’s internal clean-up crew — time to sweep out bacteria and food debris overnight, reducing fermentation and inflammation.

Why it matters: Overnight fasting activates the migrating motor complex, clearing excess bacteria and debris so fermentation stays balanced rather than inflammatory.

Foods That Enhance Butyrate Production

The most effective way to increase butyrate is to provide the raw materials your gut bacteria need to make it. Key producers like Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Roseburia, and Eubacterium rely on specific dietary inputs to thrive. However, not all fibers ferment the same way, and not every gut can handle them equally. Once you’re ready to reintroduce fiber, as explained in the previous section, you can start adding in:

• Prebiotic-rich foods — Prebiotics are nondigestible food components that selectively feed beneficial gut bacteria, such as:13

Garlic
Onions
Asparagus
Chicory root
Jerusalem artichokes
Green bananas
Turnip greens

Broccoli
Carrots
Cooked oats
Seaweed and microalgae
Legumes (soaked or pressure-cooked peas, lentils, and beans)

• Fermented foods — Fermented foods don’t produce butyrate themselves, but they help shape the terrain that makes it possible. By delivering live organisms and metabolic byproducts, they strengthen your gut lining and help crowd out problematic strains. These include:

◦Sauerkraut
◦Kimchi
◦Kefir
◦Plain, full-fat yogurt
◦Fermented pickles

Introduce these into your diet slowly and in small amounts. Their microbial density makes them highly active, so monitor how you respond to each one individually.

• Direct food sources of butyrate — Full-fat dairy products naturally contain small amounts of butyric acid, which supports colon cell energy and barrier strength. Good sources include:

◦Grass fed butter
◦Ghee
◦Aged cheeses like Parmesan
◦Whole milk, cream, or yogurt

Signs Your Gut Is Making More Butyrate

The following improvements reflect rising butyrate levels and gut healing in real time:

• Bowel movements become regular and well-formed — A sign of improved colonic motility and mucosal integrity.
• Fiber tolerance improves — Less bloating, gas, or discomfort after meals rich in fermentable fiber.
• Hunger fades between meals — As GLP-1 and PYY production increases, satiety naturally extends.
• Mood feels more stable and stress less overwhelming — Butyrate supports BDNF and modulates the HPA axis.
• You lose fat without trying to eat less — Improved metabolic signaling leads to spontaneous caloric reduction.
• Reduced post-meal blood sugar spikes — A measurable effect tied to improved insulin sensitivity and GLP-1 response.
• Lower fasting insulin and triglycerides (if tested) — Both improve with SCFA restoration and microbiome balance.
• Fewer cravings for processed carbs and snacks — Satiety hormones rise while inflammation-driven hunger decreases.
• Less urgency or discomfort with bowel movements — Improved stool consistency reflects stronger gut barrier and reduced inflammation.
• Improved breath or reduction in sulfur/gas odors — Indicates better fermentation profile in the colon (fewer sulfur-releasing or proteolytic bacteria).

Track Your Progress: How to Know It’s Working

To track your recovery, keep a simple symptom journal for the first four to six weeks. Each day, jot down quick notes on these four markers:

• Bloating — None, mild, moderate, or severe
• Energy — Steady, sluggish, or crashing
• Mood — Calm, tense, irritable, anxious
• Bowel quality — Bristol stool scale (types 3 to 4 are ideal), frequency, urgency, discomfort

Even just a few words per day can help you see patterns clearly, especially when deciding when to add new foods or supplements. Once you begin reintroducing fermentable fiber, use a 1 to 10 scale each week to rate how well you’re tolerating it. If you’re not at a 7 or above, pause before advancing to the next phase.

• 1 = severe gas, bloating, or pain
• 5 = some symptoms, improving
• 10 = no symptoms, excellent digestion

If you want objective data, run these labs at baseline and again around week 8. These markers, while optional, offer biochemical confirmation that your butyrate–GLP-1 axis is restoring normal metabolic function.

• Fasting insulin — Falling levels suggest better GLP-1 signaling
• Triglycerides — Often improve as inflammation and insulin resistance drop
• Post-meal glucose — Ideally stays under 120 mg/dL at the 1-hour mark

Timeline: What to Expect as Your Gut Rebuilds

Your gut already knows how to help you lose weight — by producing butyrate, which fuels the cells that make GLP-1. This is how human metabolism was designed to function. Restore that system, and your cravings shrink, your blood sugar stabilizes, your inflammation calms down, and your body starts releasing excess weight naturally.

These shifts are clear signs that your body’s metabolic software is running the way it was meant to. Your gut doesn’t need to be perfect to start producing butyrate. But there’s a rhythm to recovery, and markers to know it’s working.

Not everyone experiences fat loss on the same timeline. In some people, metabolic improvements — such as steadier energy, improved blood sugar control, and reduced inflammation — appear weeks before any change on the scale. These early shifts signal that GLP-1 signaling and microbial balance are restoring, even if weight changes lag behind.

Phase
What Happens
Timeframe
Measurable Indicators

Terrain repair
Gas, bloating, and sensitivity begin to calm
1 to 3 weeks
Less urgency, firmer stools, more predictable digestion

Fiber reintroduction
Butyrate-producing strains begin to increase
2 to 4 weeks
Better tolerance of resistant starch, mood uplift

GLP-1 response
Appetite regulates, energy improves, cravings decrease
4 to 8 weeks
Fewer between-meal snacks, better AM energy

Metabolic reset
Satiety increases, fat loss begins, blood sugar stabilizes
6 to 12 weeks
Tighter waistline, reduced post-meal glucose swings

When Do You Need to Supplement?

Even with the best diet and lifestyle, there are situations where your gut may not produce enough butyrate on its own. Short-term supplementation can help when:

• Your gut has been dysbiotic for years
• You’re recovering from antibiotics or illness
• You’re managing chronic inflammation or stress
• You’re unable to tolerate fermentable foods yet

However, it’s important to note that most butyrate supplements release too early in the digestive tract, dissolving in the small intestine before reaching the colon. To get its benefits, you need to choose a formula designed for targeted delivery throughout the entire colon. To optimize benefits, look for butyrate supplements that offer:

• Colon-targeted release
• Delayed dissolution
• Multi-region delivery

Final Thoughts

Weight loss is not about fighting your body — it’s about fueling the system it already built. Your gut holds the switch for hunger, fullness, blood sugar, and energy balance. Butyrate flips that switch by nourishing the cells that make GLP-1. This isn’t a shortcut. It’s not a hack. It’s the return of a system that worked for thousands of years before processed food, seed oils, and gut-disrupting toxins broke it.
Feed the system, fuel the cells, and let your metabolism do what it was designed to do. Weight change follows metabolic repair, not the other way around.

You can start putting these strategies into practice right now with my new book, “Weight Loss Cure; Melt Fat Naturally With Your Own GLP-1,” which provides a step-by-step plan to rebuild butyrate production, restore natural GLP-1 signaling, and correct the root drivers of weight gain.

We’re also preparing a butyrate-support product designed to complement these foundational strategies. You can join the waitlist now, and when it becomes available, you’ll receive a $5 off coupon by email.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: What is butyrate, and why does it matter for weight?
A: Butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid produced when your gut bacteria ferment fiber. It powers the cells in your colon — including the L-cells that produce GLP-1, the hormone that helps regulate hunger, fullness, and fat storage. Without butyrate, GLP-1 can’t do its job.

Q: How does GLP-1 help you lose weight?
A: GLP-1 slows down digestion, reduces appetite, and improves how your body uses insulin. It tells your brain you’re full and curbs cravings. Restoring your natural GLP-1 signaling helps you eat less without trying — and that leads to fat loss over time.

Q: What are the best foods to support butyrate production?
A: Start with gentle carbs like cooked and cooled rice, peeled sweet potatoes, and ripe fruit. As your gut improves, add prebiotic-rich foods like garlic, asparagus, green bananas, and soaked legumes. Fermented foods and full-fat dairy also help.

Q: Why do seed oils interfere with butyrate production?
A: Seed oils are high in linoleic acid (LA), which disrupts gut microbes and promotes inflammation. This damages your colon lining and encourages the growth of microbes that don’t produce butyrate — or worse, microbes that cause bloating, gas, and metabolic dysfunction.

Q: Can I take a supplement instead of changing my diet?
A: Supplements can help temporarily, especially if your gut is very compromised. But to restore long-term butyrate production, you need to rebuild your microbial terrain. Diet and lifestyle are what make the changes stick.

Test Your Knowledge with Today’s Quiz!

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

How does magnesium help the body during severe illness?

It increases fluid loss to remove toxins
It keeps cells stable under extreme stress
During severe illness, magnesium stabilizes cells and supports heart rhythm, immune function, nerve signaling, and energy production when the body is under high stress. Learn more.

It supports oxygen delivery in tissues
It blocks all oxidative stress in your system

A New Series of Health Insights Is on the Way

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A New Series of Health Insights Is on the Way
Our team has been working behind the scenes to prepare new research and practical health strategies for our readers. While we finish preparing what’s coming next, we invite you to explore one of the most-read articles from our library below. See exactly what’s changing →

You need magnesium to survive — literally. This mineral is involved in more than 600 chemical reactions in your body, including those that power your heart, regulate your nerves and help you convert food into usable energy.1 Yet most people aren’t getting anywhere near enough. Even with a clean, whole-food diet, you’re likely still falling short because modern farming has drained the soil of minerals, leaving produce nutritionally weaker than it was just a few decades ago.

In theory, you could get enough magnesium from food. In reality, only about 30% to 40% of what you eat is actually absorbed.2 If you’re relying on spinach, seeds or nuts to top off your intake, you’re facing a double bind: those foods either contain antinutrients that block absorption or come loaded with inflammatory linoleic acid (LA) — a polyunsaturated fat that hijacks your metabolism and builds up in your cells like sludge.

So, even the best food sources of magnesium no longer deliver what your body truly needs. When your magnesium levels drop too low, the signs often start small — tight muscles, leg cramps, restless sleep, low energy.

But left unresolved, this mineral deficiency fuels much bigger issues like blood sugar dysregulation, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, and mitochondrial dysfunction. It’s a silent saboteur with widespread effects on your mood, energy, cardiovascular system and even your brain’s ability to focus and process information.

Different Types of Magnesium Work in Different Ways

Magnesium supplementation is no longer optional for most people — it’s strategic. But not all forms work the same. Some go straight to your muscles or brain. Others just flush out of your system. Knowing which type to use for your symptoms is the first step in reclaiming metabolic health. There are plenty of magnesium supplements on the market, but the following options are — hands down — the top choices, listed in order of overall benefit.

• Magnesium glycinate — calming and gut-friendly — This form is bound to glycine, an amino acid that promotes relaxation. It’s easy on your stomach and ideal if you’re dealing with anxiety, poor sleep, muscle tightness or stress. I favor this version for anyone who tends to be sensitive to supplements or who needs help unwinding and recovering at night.

• Magnesium malate — energizing and supportive for muscles — Malate is found naturally in fruits and plays a role in energy production. If you’re exhausted or experiencing muscle soreness or fibromyalgia-like pain, this is the form I recommend.3 It supports mitochondrial energy output, so it helps turn the lights back on at the cellular level.

• Magnesium taurate — anxiety relief and heart-brain support — This combines magnesium with taurine, an amino acid that calms your nervous system and supports heart rhythm stability. It’s especially useful if you struggle with heart palpitations, stress-related high blood pressure or anxiety that feels tied to your heartbeat. Some evidence also points to brain-protective benefits.

Magnesium Deficiency Is More Common Than Most People Realize

An article published by The Hearty Soul laid out the growing concerns around magnesium deficiency and why so many people are unaware they’re affected.4 Magnesium powers hundreds of enzymatic processes in your body, including how you metabolize glucose, synthesize vitamin D and regulate blood pressure. But due to soil depletion, food processing and poor absorption, even people eating well fall short.

• Processed foods and depleted soils block your ability to get enough — Even the healthiest vegetables today don’t offer the magnesium levels they once did. Modern farming practices strip minerals from the soil, meaning even magnesium-rich foods like leafy greens have significantly lower levels than they did 50 years ago.

On top of that, heavily processed foods dominate most people’s diets. These foods are not only low in magnesium but also high in additives that impair absorption.

• Common foods high in magnesium often come with metabolic downsides — Many people turn to nuts and seeds to boost their magnesium intake. But these foods are extremely high in LA, which accumulates in your tissues and drives inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction.

If you’re already dealing with fatigue, blood sugar swings or brain fog, adding more LA through nuts and nut-based foods will make those issues worse, even as you try to correct a magnesium deficiency.

• Magnesium deficiency is linked to major health problems — Low magnesium intake contributes to serious metabolic problems. It affects insulin release and blood sugar regulation. When you’re low in magnesium, your pancreas can’t release insulin properly, which leads to higher blood sugar, poor glucose control and ultimately insulin resistance. Over time, this progression leads to metabolic syndrome or Type 2 diabetes.

• It’s also a major issue for heart and vascular health — One of magnesium’s most important roles is keeping your blood vessels flexible and relaxed. Magnesium helps your blood vessels release nitric oxide, a compound that naturally relaxes vessel walls and lowers blood pressure.5 Without enough magnesium, your blood vessels constrict more easily, your blood pressure creeps up and your risk of cardiovascular problems increases.

The Right Magnesium Restores Your Energy, Sleep and Focus Faster Than You Think

If you’re dealing with fatigue, poor sleep, brain fog or blood sugar issues, there’s a good chance magnesium deficiency is at the root. But just adding random supplements won’t solve the problem.

You need a strategy that corrects the imbalance at its core, starting with how you absorb, metabolize and select the right type of magnesium for your body. Most people are operating with a cellular energy deficit, and magnesium is one of the fastest ways to reverse it — if you do it right. Here’s how I recommend you get started:

1. Stop relying on food alone to meet your magnesium needs — When it comes to magnesium, most people are deficient. Even if you eat whole, organic foods, you’re still not getting enough magnesium.

Soil depletion has drained vegetables of their mineral content, and nuts and seeds — while high in magnesium — are loaded with LA, which blocks energy production and worsens inflammation. I generally recommend getting nutrients from food, but magnesium is a rare exception. It’s nearly impossible to hit the recommended 400 milligrams (mg) per day through food alone.

2. Identify your ideal dose using magnesium citrate — This form is inexpensive and highly bioavailable, but it has a laxative effect. That’s actually useful: it helps you find your dose. Start small, then slowly increase the dose until you get loose stools.

Once that happens, dial back slightly. That’s your ideal dose. After that, switch to a more tolerable form — like glycinate or malate — at the same dose. This one trick helps you absorb what you need without overdoing it or guessing blindly.

3. Use the right type of magnesium for your situation — I favor magnesium glycinate and magnesium malate because they’re well-absorbed and easy on your digestive system. If your biggest issue is tension, irritability, trouble sleeping, or anxiety, glycinate is calming and gentle.

If you’re dragging through the day with low energy, sore muscles, or brain fog, magnesium malate supports energy production by feeding your mitochondria. I’ve seen great results using these two forms depending on what your body needs most.

4. Don’t waste time on topical-only magnesium if you’re depleted — I favor magnesium glycinate and malate for a reason: they work systemically. Magnesium oils, lotions and bath flakes made from magnesium chloride feel relaxing but do very little to raise your internal levels.

If you’re dealing with sleep problems, low focus or metabolic issues, you need an internal fix — not just a temporary surface effect. Use topical forms only as a complement, not a replacement.

5. Keep your supplement routine clean and targeted — Look for magnesium supplements with no artificial colors, fillers or unnecessary binders. You don’t need fancy blends with 10 ingredients. You need the exact form your body needs, at the dose that works for you.

Magnesium isn’t just another supplement. It’s a metabolic switch that turns your system back on. Once you correct the deficiency, everything else starts to work better: your energy stabilizes, your mind clears, and you sleep deeper without effort.

FAQs About Magnesium

Q: What are the most effective forms of magnesium for daily use?

A: The forms I most often recommend are magnesium glycinate and magnesium malate. Glycinate is ideal if you’re struggling with anxiety, stress, or sleep issues because it promotes calm and is easy on your stomach. Malate supports energy production and is especially helpful if you deal with fatigue, brain fog, or muscle soreness. Both forms are highly absorbable and generally well tolerated.

Q: How do I know how much magnesium I need to take?

A: Start with magnesium citrate to find your personal threshold. It’s well absorbed but has a laxative effect, which works well as a dosing tool. Slowly increase your dose until your stools become loose, then back off slightly. That’s your ideal dose. Once you know your number, switch to a gentler form like glycinate or malate to maintain that intake without side effects.

Q: What symptoms could mean I’m low in magnesium?

A: Common signs include tight muscles, leg cramps, poor sleep, low energy, anxiety and blood sugar swings. If left unaddressed, magnesium deficiency contributes to more serious problems like insulin resistance, high blood pressure, metabolic dysfunction, and cognitive decline. This is one deficiency that affects nearly every system in your body.

Q: Why isn’t food alone enough to meet my magnesium needs?

A: Modern farming has depleted the soil of minerals, including magnesium. Even organic produce contains far less than it did 50 years ago. Add to that the low absorption rate of magnesium (only about 30% of dietary intake is usable) and the inflammatory fats in common food sources like seeds and nuts, and it’s clear why supplementation is often necessary.

Q: What’s the difference between the seven forms of magnesium?

A: Each form targets a different need. Glycinate and malate are the two forms I recommend most often because they’re well absorbed, easy on your digestive system and effective for restoring balance without unwanted side effects.

• Glycinate — Best for sleep, stress, and muscle relaxation

• Malate — Supports energy, focus, and muscle recovery

• Citrate — Boosts absorption and relieves constipation

• Oxide — Poor absorption but helps with indigestion

• Chloride — Good for topical use, less effective internally

• Taurate — Calms nerves and supports heart rhythm

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

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

Just Like Plants, You Cannot Thrive Without Sunlight

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

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

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

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

Sunlight Is the Unrecognized Nutrient You Cannot Live Without

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

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

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

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

> > > > > Click Here Click Here

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DMSO is a remarkable naturally occurring substance that (provided it’s used correctly1) safely and rapidly improves a variety of conditions medicine struggles with — particularly chronic pain. For example, thousands of studies show DMSO treats a wide range of:

• Injuries such as sprains, concussions, burns, surgical incisions, and spinal cord injuries (discussed here).

• Strokes, paralysis, many neurological disorders (e.g., Down syndrome and dementia), and numerous circulatory disorders (e.g., Raynaud’s, varicose veins or hemorrhoids), which were discussed here.

• Chronic pain (e.g., from a bad disc, bursitis, arthritis, or complex regional pain syndrome), which was discussed here.

• Many autoimmune, protein, and contractile disorders such as scleroderma, amyloidosis, and interstitial cystitis (discussed here).

• Head conditions, such as tinnitus, vision loss, dental problems, and sinusitis (discussed here).

• Internal organ diseases such as pancreatitis, infertility, liver cirrhosis, and endometriosis (discussed here).

• A wide range of skin conditions such as burns, varicose veins, acne, hair loss, ulcers, skin cancer, and many autoimmune dermatologic diseases (discussed here).

Many challenging infections such as shingles, herpes, chronic ear or dental infections, and osteomyelitis (discussed here). In turn, since I started this series, it struck a chord, and I have received over 2000 reports of remarkable responses to DMSO, and many readers have had for a variety of “incurable conditions.”

This begs an obvious question — if a substance capable of doing all of that exists, why does almost no one know about it? Simply put, like many other promising therapies, it fell victim to a pernicious campaign by the FDA, which kept it away from America despite decades of scientific research, congressional protest, and thousands of people pleading for the FDA to reconsider its actions. Consider for example, this 60 Minutes program about DMSO that aired on March 23, 1980:

In the 1960s a miraculous treatment for chronic pain, traumatic injury, strokes and spinal cord paralysis was discovered that spread across America like wildfire—until the FDA buried it.Here, 60 Minutes exposed the FDA using the same playbook they used throughout COVID-19. A🧵 pic.twitter.com/Bh0dcjNk5w— A Midwestern Doctor (@MidwesternDoc) October 14, 2024
Video Link

DMSO and Cancer

Since there is a longstanding tendency for any “unproven cancer therapy” to be targeted by the medical industry, once the pioneers of DMSO realized early research showed DMSO was also remarkable for cancer, a decision was made not to focus on that research as a justifiable fear existed that doing so would bury DMSO (particularly since DMSO was already in a precarious position with the FDA). As a result, there is very little knowledge of how DMSO changes the cancer paradigm. For example:

• There are hundreds of studies showing DMSO routinely transforms cancerous cells into noncancerous ones.

• DMSO directly inhibits the growth of a wide range of cancers.

• DMSO allows the immune system to regain the ability to target cancerous cells that have evaded the immune system,2 which not only eliminates cancer but also can create permanent immunity to cancers.

• DMSO makes many conventional cancer therapies much more potent, both making a cure more likely and a far lower (and thus less toxic dose) dose needed to achieve it.

• Many natural therapies become dramatically more potent when combined with DMSO (e.g., one DMSO combination ranks amongst the most effective cancer treatments I’ve ever encountered).

Furthermore, in addition to directly eliminating cancers, DMSO’s remarkable ability to heal and protect the body can also make challenging cancers far more manageable. In my eyes, the suppression of DMSO’s uses as an adjunctive cancer therapy represents the most egregious aspect of this story as in those instances, it’s not even competing with cancer treatments — it’s just reducing the suffering they cause (which if anything should be good for the cancer business).

DMSO and Radiation Therapy

Many of DMSO’s remarkable properties result from it effectively protecting cells from a variety of otherwise lethal stressors (e.g., burns,3 freezing,4 blood loss,5 asphyxiation,6 UV light,7 and soundwaves8) and it significantly accelerates healing from injuries (e.g., sprains9 or burns10).

In addition to protecting cells from other sources of injury, as early as 1961,11 DMSO was also recognized to protect cells and tissues from radiation exposure, and by 1967,12 to protect the skin. This is because DMSO prevents radiation from:

• Breaking apart chromosomes,13 DNA, RNA, proteins,14 and the mitochondria.15

• Creating damaging oxygen species16 and free radicals.17

• Triggering an immune response (e.g., by reducing IL-1, IL-6, TNF-α, and TGF-β18), chronic inflammation, fibrosis, and adhesions.

• Putting cells into senescence19 (a state of permanent growth arrest).

• Causing normal cells in the vicinity of the affected ones to die as well (e.g., when only 1% of cells are exposed to radiation, approximately 30% of non-irradiated cells will exhibit similar toxic effects too20), a fascinating phenomenon I believe is mediated through mitogenic radiation emissions.

Since cancer radiation therapy frequently creates a variety of acute and chronic injuries such as burns, fibrosis, and internal tissue adhesions (all of which DMSO treats), DMSO is incredibly valuable for cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy — particularly since DMSO not only prevents radiation damage but also rapidly heals the injuries radiation creates.21,22

Most importantly, DMSO’s protective effects are specific to normal cells. In contrast, many studies show it increases cancer cells’ susceptibility to radiation.23

Note: I believe our focus on radiation therapy ultimately resulted from mining magnate James Douglas devising a way to produce cheap radium and then giving a large donation (along with subsequent donations) to America’s premier cancer institute to create a program for developing cancer radiation therapy that then spread across the world.24,25

Radiation Exposure Studies

Studies have repeatedly shown that DMSO protects cells26 (particularly when given prophylactically27) from being damaged by (often otherwise fatal28) radiation. For example, DMSO was shown to protect skin cells from dying after exposure to gamma radiation29 and make hamster cells four times as resistant to radiation.30

These same protective properties have also been found in plants31,32,33 and many animals (e.g., mice,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43 rats,44,45,46,47,48,49 rabbits,50 newts,51 and fruit flies52).

In animals, DMSO was repeatedly found to protect them from otherwise lethal radiation exposures53,54,55 and protect their skin,56 tails,57 oral mucosa,58 eyes,59 kidneys,60 intestines61 (which are particularly vulnerable to radiation damage), and testicles62 from radiation damage, along with protecting sperm from mutations63 and to accelerate tissue cellular regeneration following an injury.64

Finally, DMSO was shown to prevent the psychological trauma and behavioral changes rats typically experienced from radiation injuries (presumably by preventing radiation from causing injury65).

DMSO also has a remarkable ability to protect and heal the skin from injury,66 and since 1966,67 numerous Russian, German, and Japanese studies have demonstrated DMSO’s impressive ability to protect human skin (along with its collagen and mucopolysaccharides) from radiation.68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80

For example, DMSO has been shown to treat radiation fibrosis,81,82 radiation dermatitis,83 radiation injuries84 and other local radiation complications.85

Note: While DMSO can treat radiation injuries, it is the most effective if given immediately beforehand to prevent radiation injuries.86

DMSO has also been shown to protect tissues besides the skin. For example:

• In 80 patients who’d developed late local radiation complications (induration, ulcers) from the treatment of breast or genital cancer (or a noncancerous disease) DMSO resulted in both a high efficacy of treatment with no side effects.87

• In 22 patients with cervical cancer topical found DMSO prior to internal gamma-ray radiation therapy prevented the normally expected radiation burns and other toxic reactions to the treatment (e.g., in the bladder and rectum) seen in 59 controls and that DMSO did not protect cancerous tissue.88

• In 807 patients with cervical uterine cancer, putting 10% DMSO into the bladders an hour before receiving weekly internal irradiation therapy, dropped the radiation damage to the rectum from 19.0% to 9.5% and to the bladder from 8.8% to 7.1% (both of which dropped to 1.7% if metronidazole was also used).89

• In another study, DMSO had a 50% success rate in treating patients which chronic radiation cystitis (e.g., from prostate cancer therapy).90 Likewise, a 1979 study also used DMSO to treat radiation cystitis.91

• In 22 breast and cervical cancer patients, DMSO protected them against radiation dermatitis (e.g., erosion, blistering, itching, and pain) while also enhancing cancer sensitivity to radiation (as the DMSO treated areas showed skin reddening and exfoliation earlier) and accelerating the regrowth of normal tissues.

Additionally, when DMSO was only applied to one side, the non-applied side did worse, the hyperpigmentation that follows radiation therapy was greater in DMSO treated patients, and that only one of the 22 patients had to stop DMSO (due to having a skin eruption which may have been linked to DMSO).92

• This author detailed a case of a patient with lung cancer that was treated with three months of radiation therapy but severely damaged her lungs (making her require oxygen and leaving her unsure if she’d survive) — but after topical and oral DMSO, she had a rapid recovery.

Likewise, he also shared a case of another woman with lung cancer who was expected to have significant lung complications from the treatment (as she required a borderline lethal dose), but took topical DMSO prior to each treatment and instead had no complications and was fully healthy three years later.93

It is thus quite remarkable that all of this remains unknown. To quote the author of a 2022 study94 which found DMSO prevented testicular damage (and loss of hormonal function or fertility) following radiation therapy:

“Currently, there is no approved agent for the prevention or treatment of radiation-induced testicular injury … In summary, our findings demonstrate the radioprotective efficacy of DMSO on the male reproductive system, which warrants further studies for future application in the preservation of male fertility during conventional radiotherapy and nuclear accidents.”

Similarly, in addition to the higher doses experienced from radiation therapy, diagnostic radiation, specifically CT scans (which expose the body to much higher radiation doses than X-rays) also pose a cancer risk — particularly since the dose of radiation with CT scans can have over a 10-fold variation.95

In turn, a CT scan was found to make you 17% to 24% more likely to develop cancer,96 with the risk increasing97 the younger you were at the time of the scan and is much higher for certain types of cancers.98,99,100,101,102 A 2009 study estimated 29,000 cancers were caused by the CT scans performed in America in 2007.103

As such, I avoid CT scans, which I do not feel are essential (particularly since a detailed physical exam frequently provides more actionable information). It is my sincere hope at some point in the future, DMSO will be given in conjunction with CT scans (but unfortunately their use keeps going up, and they are viewed as a highly lucrative growth market104).

Tumor Surgery

Since DMSO rapidly accelerates the healing of tissue and addresses the neurological components of pain, many studies have found that DMSO greatly facilitates surgical recovery (e.g., by accelerating healing, improving the strength of the final scar, reducing surgical site pain and eliminating fibrosis, enlarged scars, or tissue adhesions).

As cancers are frequently treated with surgical removal, DMSO can also greatly aid the recovery from these surgeries (e.g., in dogs that required a unilateral mastectomy, giving IV DMSO 15 minutes before the surgery’s conclusion significantly reduced post-surgical inflammation105).

Likewise, studies such as a 1992 trial106 of 198 patients with Stage III colon cancer, and a 1992 trial107 of 228 patients with stomach cancer found DMSO significantly reduced the chance that those cancers would relapse.

Extravasation Injuries

Since the medical field has been extremely reluctant to consider any alternative cancer treatment that could threaten its bottom line (regardless of how much data is behind it), DMSO has essentially not been utilized in the treatment of cancer. However, there is one exception to this rule, as DMSO is able to address a challenging issue encountered with chemotherapy without threatening the existing market.

Since many chemotherapy drugs are quite toxic, they have to be administered in a tightly controlled manner. Unfortunately, in many cases however, the drug gets through the injected vein (extravasates) and leaks into the surrounding tissue.

Note: Since extravasations are often not reported, estimates widely vary on how common they are (e.g., according to one study, in 0.1% to 6% of adults who receive chemotherapy108 while another made a compelling case extravasations occur in 39% of patients109).

Due to how toxic some of the chemotherapy drugs are (particularly the anthracyclines), when that leakage occurs and the drugs concentrate in one area, it can often cause significant damage to the surrounding tissues and lead to ulceration or necrosis (tissue death).

Since the existing treatments don’t always give satisfactory results and DMSO is extremely effective at healing a wide range of tissue injuries, it eventually got used as a treatment for these injuries and quickly caught on. For example:

• A 1981 rat study of doxorubicin extravasations showed that daily topical applications of 1 ml 90% DMSO with 10% α-tocopherol significantly reduced ulcer diameter.110

• A 1982111 and 1986112 study tested numerous agents on ulcers created by applying intradermal doxorubicin to pigs and rats and found DMSO was the only agent that prevented or healed those ulcers.

• A 1984,113 1987,114 and 1994115 pig study along with a 2007 rat study116 also found DMSO treated or prevented extravasation injuries.

Likewise, in humans:

• A 1983117 case report, another 1983 case report,118 a 1989 series119 of 4 patients, a 1991 series120 of two patients, a 1994 series of two patients121 and a 2001 case report122 reported that DMSO prevented extravasations from causing ulcerations of tissue death or healed existing injuries (e.g., with “striking” improvement).

• A 1988 study gave topical DMSO for anthracycline extravasations every 6 hours for 14 days to 20 patients, which prevented all of them from developing ulcerations. In the 14 who were evaluated at 3 months, there was no sign of residual damage in six patients, while a pigmented indurated area remained in ten.123

• A 1995 study gave topical DMSO (for 8 hours a day over 7 days) alongside 3 days of intermittent cooling to every patient who experienced an extravasation over a 3.5 year period (which was either from doxorubicin, epirubicin, mitomycin, mitoxantrone, cisplatin, carboplatin, ifosfamide, or fluorouracil).

Of those 144 patients, 127 could be evaluated, of whom only 1 ultimately developed an ulceration from the extravasation, and none experienced side effects from DMSO (beyond temporary skin irritation and a breath odor).124

• A 1996 study of ten successive patients who experienced extravasation from chemotherapy were given DMSO and alpha-tocopherol, all of whom avoided ulceration or tissue death.125

• A 2004 study of 147 patients with extravasations of anthracyclines (which typically leads to 28% developing ulcerations), found 99% DMSO caused only 1% to 2% of them to develop ulcers.126

• A 2007 study explored applying DMSO and α-tocopherol as a gel rather than a liquid solution to treat extravasation injuries (which appeared to hold promise).127

Chemotherapy Injuries

In addition to addressing extravasation injuries, DMSO has also:

• Been found to prevent doxorubicin cardiac toxicity.128

• Successfully treated palmar-plantar erythrodysesthesia resulting from doxorubicin treatment.129

• Prevent the skin death that is often associated with injecting doxorubicin into the eyelid (which is done to treat eye spasms).130

• Protect against birth defects caused by hydroxyurea.131

• Reduce the carcinogenicity of chlorambucil (which often causes a secondary tumor to form after the initial treatment).132

• Decrease the lung injuries (e.g., pulmonary fibrosis) and weight loss caused by bleomycin.133,134,135

DMSO has also been found to improve many other symptoms associated with chemotherapy (e.g., DMSO is frequently used to treat hair loss from a variety of causes, including chemotherapy) since it saves normal cells on the verge of dying following chemotherapy.

Note: We find Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation following chemotherapy to be the most effective option for protecting a patient’s healthy cells from dying.

Cancer Pain

Cancer (and its treatments) are often accompanied by many other debilitating symptoms, including pain — which is so severe that opioids, rather than being restricted, are routinely used to treat it (e.g., fentanyl is often used to treat advanced cancer pain — but in 10% to 20% of patients the pain is severe enough that even the strongest opioids can’t address it136).

Since DMSO has a rather unique mechanism of treating pain, it is often able to treat a wide range of challenging pain conditions nothing else works on (e.g., I’ve now had hundreds of readers share life-changing pain improvements from topical DMSO nothing else they’d tried had ever worked on). As such, many over the years have found it provided incredible relief for metastatic cancer pain.

One of the most well-known examples was Otis Bowen MD (a popular second-term Indiana governor), who “illegally” used topical DMSO to treat his wife’s pain from terminal multiple myeloma and then publicly denounced the FDA’s absurd embargo on it at the AMA’s 1981 national meeting.137

Remarkably, a few years later, Bowen became Reagan’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. Still, even then, with this highly ethical doctor at the helm of the HSS, DMSO was unable to overcome the FDA’s prohibition of it — which helps to highlight the incredible challenge RFK Jr. is now facing (but gradually surmounting). Likewise, a few studies have shown that DMSO can treat cancer pain:

• A 1967 study included two older patients with cancer pain, one of whom had an excellent response to DMSO and one who had a good response.138

• A 1967 study found that of 7 patients with metastatic cancer pain, DMSO gave 2 full and 2 partial remission.139

• A 2011 trial gave DMSO and sodium bicarbonate to 26 patients with advanced cancers who were experiencing significant pain (even with all the available treatment options).140 This greatly improved their pain, their quality of life (e.g., chemotherapy symptoms), their blood counts, and their organ function:

Note: A 2010 paper further discusses DMSO’s ability to treat intractable cancer pain.141 It highlights that this may be due to DMSO’s ability to address membrane hyper-excitability (e.g., through suppressing NMDA and AMPA induced ion fluxes — which are linked to central pain sensitization142,143 and may explain why DMSO also effectively treats complex regional pain syndrome144).

Висновок

DMSO’s ability to heal the body and restore its normal function transformed the practice of medicine, and had the FDA not buried DMSO sixty years ago; our medical science would be leaps beyond where it is now. In this article, I’ve tried to show how DMSO helps to address one of the most challenging decisions many will face in their lifetimes — is it worth tolerating the immense damage conventional cancer therapies will cause in return for them saving one’s life?

As such, it’s unconscionable that DMSO was never incorporated as an adjunctive therapy for conventional cancer care, particularly in the case of radiation therapy, since a vast body of literature shows simply applying it shortly beforehand can prevent most of the complications from radiation therapy and significantly increase its ability to treat cancer.

However, while it has been immensely painful to watch the unnecessary suffering created by our outdated and pathological medical practices, for the first time in my life, I am simultaneously immensely hopeful. That is because Make America Healthy Again has created the window to spark the momentum to begin revisiting many of our long accepted medical practices and have our society ask if there is actually a better (or more affordable) way to do things.

Author’s Note: This is an abridged version of a longer article that reviews how DMSO also directly treats cancer (e.g., by turning cancer cells back into normal cells or mobilizing the immune system to eliminate them) and how it greatly enhances the effectiveness of both conventional and natural cancer therapies (along with guidance for using DMSO to treat cancer and many other related conditions). That article 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.

Magnesium sits at the center of cellular survival. It’s the second most abundant mineral inside your cells, required for energy production, nerve signaling, muscle contraction, immune defense, and stable heart rhythm. Without adequate magnesium, your cells struggle to make adenosine triphosphate (ATP) — your body’s energy currency — your nervous system misfires, and calcium floods places it doesn’t belong.

You obtain magnesium from whole foods like fruits, vegetables, dairy, and animal proteins, yet biological need rises sharply during stress, illness, and injury — and it’s difficult to get enough magnesium from food alone. Hypomagnesemia — meaning abnormally low magnesium levels — is characterized by fatigue, muscle spasms, abnormal heart rhythms, confusion, immune instability, and, in severe cases, seizures and cardiovascular failure.

These symptoms rarely appear alone. They overlap with infection, respiratory failure, and electrolyte chaos, which is why magnesium deficiency often goes unnoticed. Most people assume a standard blood test settles the question. It does not. Roughly 99% of your magnesium lives inside bone, muscle, and soft tissue, not in your bloodstream.

That means normal lab values frequently coexist with deep cellular depletion. This disconnect drives treatment delays that raise the risk of sepsis, prolonged ventilation, clotting dysfunction, and death during critical illness. When your body is facing severe illness, magnesium behaves less like a nutrient and more like a control signal.

When it falls out of balance, multiple systems drift at once. Once you understand how central magnesium is to cellular control systems, it becomes clear why researchers focus on its behavior during critical illness and what those findings reveal about survival itself.

Severe Illness Rapidly Destabilizes Magnesium at the Cellular Level

A paper published in Veterinary Clinics of North America: Small Animal Practice analyzed magnesium regulation in critically ill patients and animals, with a focus on why deficiency and excess both raise mortality risk.1 Rather than treating magnesium as a minor electrolyte, the researchers evaluated it as a central regulator of cellular stability, enzyme activity, and electrical signaling during severe stress.

• In critically ill intensive care unit (ICU) populations, magnesium disruption is the norm, not the exception — The paper reports that low magnesium levels appear in up to 65% of human ICU patients and more than half of critically ill dogs, compared to just 6% in general hospital populations. That gap shows magnesium loss tracks directly with illness severity, not diet quality or age alone.

• Low magnesium strongly aligns with worse survival markers in critical care — The paper links hypomagnesemia to higher sepsis rates, longer ICU stays, increased need for mechanical ventilation, and higher death rates. From a practical standpoint, this means magnesium status acts like a risk multiplier. When levels fall, other treatments lose effectiveness, and recovery slows.

The researchers highlight that kidney strain, medications, and metabolic disturbances drive steep magnesium losses. These factors stack together, meaning the sicker someone becomes, the faster magnesium depletion accelerates.

• Blood tests fail to reflect real magnesium status, creating a false sense of security — Since 99% of magnesium lives inside bone, muscle, and soft tissue, serum tests measure only the remaining 1%, which often stays normal even when cells are depleted. This explains why symptoms often persist despite “normal labs.”

• Magnesium acts as a calcium gatekeeper inside cells — One key mechanism described is magnesium’s role as a natural calcium antagonist. In simple terms, magnesium blocks excess calcium from flooding cells.

Without this control, nerves misfire, muscles spasm, blood vessels constrict, and heart rhythm destabilizes. The review also details magnesium’s role as a required cofactor for ATP-generating enzymes. When magnesium drops, energy production falters, leaving cells unable to maintain electrical balance or repair damage.

By regulating calcium flow, enzyme activity, immune signaling, and electrical stability, magnesium determines whether cells adapt or fail under stress. That framing helps explain why its loss predicts deterioration long before outward collapse appears.

• Too much magnesium is also dangerous, especially with kidney impairment — While less common, hypermagnesemia increases mortality when kidney filtration declines. Excess levels depress nerve reflexes, slow heart rate, lower blood pressure, and impair breathing.

Magnesium Acts as a Frontline Stabilizer in Pediatric Critical Care

A comprehensive review published in Cureus analyzed magnesium’s role in pediatric critical care, focusing on clinical impact, therapeutic use, dosing strategies, and safety monitoring rather than basic physiology.2 The goal was to determine how magnesium status affects real-world outcomes in hospitalized children facing life-threatening conditions.

The review addressed children admitted to intensive care with conditions such as sepsis, severe asthma, respiratory failure, cardiac arrhythmias, and neurological emergencies. Across these settings, disrupted magnesium balance consistently aligned with worse clinical trajectories, while correction aligned with measurable improvement.

• Correction of magnesium deficiency led to faster physiologic stabilization — Magnesium supplementation improved markers such as heart rhythm control, respiratory muscle function, and seizure frequency in acute care settings. In sepsis cases, magnesium administration aligned with improved lactate clearance, meaning cells regained the ability to produce energy more efficiently under stress.

Magnesium also helped steady dangerous heart rhythm problems, including sudden chaotic beats and very fast, irregular heart rhythms, reduced bronchospasm during severe asthma attacks, and lowered seizure burden in neurological crises. For parents and caregivers, this translates to fewer emergencies spiraling into multi-organ failure.

• The greatest gains occurred in high-risk pediatric subgroups — Children with sepsis, kidney stress, high diuretic exposure, or respiratory failure showed the clearest improvements after magnesium replacement. These groups experience rapid electrolyte loss, making magnesium restoration a decisive factor in recovery speed.

• Magnesium compared favorably against other supportive interventions — The review notes that magnesium often corrected arrhythmias and neuromuscular instability when potassium or calcium replacement alone failed. This comparison underscores magnesium’s coordinating role rather than acting as a secondary nutrient. The researchers explain that magnesium helps cells keep making energy when oxygen is low and inflammation is high.

Magnesium supplementation also moderated inflammatory signaling during sepsis and respiratory distress, reducing immune overreaction while preserving defense against infection. This balance matters because excessive inflammation often causes more damage than the original infection.

• Another magnesium benefit involves neuromuscular stabilization — By regulating neurotransmitter release at nerve endings, magnesium reduced excessive muscle contraction and airway tightening in asthma and respiratory failure. For a child struggling to breathe, this directly affects survival odds.

• Safety hinged on monitoring rather than avoidance — The review emphasized that adverse effects arose primarily in children with impaired kidney filtration receiving unchecked dosing. With proper monitoring, magnesium therapy remained both effective and controllable in pediatric ICU settings.

Magnesium status functions as a modifiable variable during critical illness rather than an unavoidable consequence. When tracked, adjusted, and individualized, it becomes a stabilizing tool that supports faster recovery and reduces escalation risk.

Why I Recommend Magnesium Supplements Over Food Alone

What researchers see in ICUs reflects a more extreme version of what happens under everyday stress. The same forces that drain magnesium during critical illness — medication use, inflammation, metabolic strain, and impaired absorption — operate more quietly in daily life. Magnesium loss rarely starts with poor choices.

It begins with depleted soil, chronic stress, medication use, and digestive strain that block absorption long before symptoms show up. If you feel foggy, wired at night, sore for no clear reason, or slower to recover, your cells are signaling a power shortfall. Food still matters, but when magnesium demand rises and absorption falls, supplements become the most reliable way to restore balance rather than a shortcut.

1. Start by matching magnesium support to how your body responds, not numbers on paper — If you deal with low mood, shallow sleep, muscle tension, headaches, or mental fatigue, treat those as real-world signals that your nervous system is underpowered. Tracking what you eat rarely tells you anything useful about magnesium status because absorption varies widely and most magnesium doesn’t show up on standard labs.

Instead, pay attention to how your body responds as you adjust magnesium support. Calmer sleep, steadier energy, fewer muscle tight spots, and improved focus are the feedback that tells you you’re moving in the right direction.

2. Stop relying on nuts and seeds even if labels say they’re “high magnesium” — I don’t recommend nuts or seeds because their linoleic acid (LA) content disrupts mitochondria and increases inflammatory stress. When metabolic or gut function is already strained, that stress increases cellular magnesium demand and worsens utilization rather than replenishing it.

Removing nuts and other LA-rich foods, like vegetable oils, reduces a hidden driver of magnesium strain instead of relying on a source that creates competing stress.

3. Identify what drains magnesium from your body every day — If you use acid reflux drugs, water pills, or alcohol, or deal with kidney stress, magnesium loss accelerates. The most effective next step is simply recognizing these drains. Each one you reduce or remove protects your magnesium reserve and steadies energy production without adding a single supplement.

4. Find your personal magnesium threshold before choosing a long-term form — I recommend taking magnesium citrate first because it reveals your limit. You increase the dose gradually until stools loosen, then back off slightly. That point marks your ideal intake. Once you know it, you can switch to better-tolerated forms without guessing on your ideal dose. This step builds confidence because your body gives clear feedback.

5. Choose the magnesium form that targets your biggest complaint — If stress or sleep problems dominate, magnesium glycinate fits best. If fatigue or muscle soreness leads, magnesium malate supports energy recovery. Treat this like matching the right tool to the job so you see results faster.

Magnesium works best when paired with daily movement, consistent sleep, and lower stress. It’s part of a healthy foundation you strengthen day by day, not a crutch you lean on. When your cells regain magnesium balance, everything built on top of that foundation becomes easier to support.

FAQs About Magnesium During Severe Illness

Q: Why does magnesium matter so much during severe illness?
A: Magnesium helps keep your cells stable when your body is under extreme stress. During severe illness, injury, or infection, magnesium demand rises sharply while losses accelerate. When levels fall, multiple systems lose coordination at once, including heart rhythm, immune control, nerve signaling, and energy production, which raises the risk of complications.

Q: Why do standard blood tests often miss magnesium problems?
A: Most of your magnesium is stored inside cells, bone, and soft tissue, not in your bloodstream. A normal blood test only reflects a small fraction of total magnesium and often looks fine even when cells are depleted. This disconnect explains why symptoms persist despite “normal labs.”

Q: Who is at the highest risk for magnesium depletion?
A: Risk rises if you experience chronic stress, inflammation, digestive strain, kidney stress, or use medications like acid reflux drugs or diuretics. In hospitals, the sickest patients lose magnesium the fastest, but the same mechanisms operate more quietly in everyday life.

Q: Why isn’t food alone enough to restore magnesium balance?
A: Modern soil depletion, impaired absorption, and higher metabolic demand make it difficult to meet magnesium needs through food alone. Even a nutrient-dense diet often fails to keep pace when stress or illness increases cellular demand, which is why targeted supplementation becomes necessary.

Q: How do you know if magnesium support is helping you?
A: The most reliable feedback comes from how you feel. Deeper sleep, steadier energy, fewer muscle tight spots, calmer nerves, and clearer thinking signal improved magnesium balance. Your body’s response matters more than tracking food intake or chasing lab numbers.

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What happens when a person becomes insulin resistant?

Cells absorb glucose more efficiently than normal
The body produces less insulin over time
Insulin resistance develops when cells become less responsive to insulin over time, making it harder for glucose to enter and forcing the body to raise insulin levels. Learn more.

Cells stop responding well, leading to higher insulin levels
Blood sugar drops too low after meals

Insulin resistance — a metabolic condition characterized by fatigue, abdominal weight gain, brain fog, and unstable blood sugar — now sits at the center of cancer research. Unlike a single blood test result, insulin resistance reflects how your cells respond to insulin over time.

This means glucose struggles to enter cells efficiently. Your mitochondria — the thousands of tiny power plants inside each cell that convert food into usable energy — lose their steady fuel supply, and energy production becomes erratic.

From a clinical perspective, insulin resistance often develops years before diabetes appears, which explains why many people live with symptoms without recognition. When insulin signaling breaks down, chronic inflammation and elevated insulin levels create biological signals that encourage abnormal cell growth and disrupt normal cellular repair.

Now, a large-scale analysis has used machine learning to connect this metabolic dysfunction directly to cancer incidence — revealing which cancers are most affected, why body weight alone misses the real risk, and how insulin resistance acts as an early warning signal across multiple organs.1

AI Model Reveals Insulin Resistance as a Cancer Risk Signal

For a study published in Nature Communications, researchers built a machine-learning model that predicts insulin resistance before diagnosable disease develop.2 Instead of relying on one lab test, the model looked at everyday health data — things like age, blood sugar, and triglycerides.

It calculated whether someone’s Homeostatic Model Assessment of Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR) score crosses a level that signals meaningful insulin resistance. HOMA-IR is a simple score calculated from fasting blood sugar and insulin levels that estimates how resistant your cells have become to insulin. The model was applied to the UK Biobank, which tracks long-term health data from adults ages 40 to 69.3

Among the 372,395 people who didn’t have cancer at the start, 51,193 were diagnosed during follow-up. Individuals flagged as insulin resistant consistently showed higher rates of diabetes, heart problems, and several cancers. This tells you risk builds years before diagnosis — which means prevention is still possible.

• Certain cancers showed stronger links to insulin resistance — Researchers reported connections to 12 cancer types overall, with the largest increases seen in uterine cancer (about 134% higher risk), kidney cancer (about 56% higher risk) and esophagus cancer (about 46% higher risk).
Pancreatic cancer risk rose roughly 29%, colon cancer 18%, and breast cancer 13% — all in individuals flagged as insulin resistant. Insulin resistance was not tied to one organ — it appeared across multiple systems, shifting it from a blood sugar issue into a whole-body metabolic warning signal.
• Metabolic health mattered more than body weight alone — People with higher body weight but no insulin resistance didn’t show the same risk pattern. Meanwhile, those with insulin resistance did — even when body weight looked similar. This means your metabolic function — how your body handles energy — provides more meaningful information than the number on a scale.
The connection between insulin resistance and cancer showed up in younger adults and older adults alike. The effect also stood out in people with a history of smoking, especially former smokers, where insulin resistance amplified risk. Your past exposures and current metabolic health interact, which explains why risk looks different from one person to another.
• Insulin resistance showed clear early disease timelines — Over several years of follow-up, people flagged as insulin resistant developed diabetes far more often, with more hospital admissions related to metabolic disease. One analysis showed more than seven-fold higher odds of developing diabetes during follow-up. That timeline highlights something important: insulin resistance shows up long before major disease, giving you measurable signals to act on.
• High insulin acts like a growth signal inside your body — When cells stop responding well to insulin, your body releases more of it to compensate. Elevated insulin then interacts with growth pathways that control how cells divide and survive. When that signal stays high for years, it creates conditions where abnormal cells gain an advantage — one of the earliest steps in tumor development.
Specifically, elevated insulin activates the IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor) signaling pathway, which tells cells to grow and divide faster — and suppresses the normal “self-destruct” signals that clear out damaged cells before they become dangerous.
• Ongoing inflammation creates a favorable environment for tumors — Insulin resistance often exists alongside chronic low-grade inflammation. This type of inflammation changes the environment around cells so damaged cells persist longer than they should. Metabolic stress and cancer risk move together because they share the same biological environment.
• Machine learning creates a practical “digital biomarker” for early action — Researchers described the concept of AI-derived insulin resistance as a digital biomarker — a single score that combines multiple metabolic signals into one risk indicator.
Instead of waiting for disease, this approach allows earlier monitoring and more targeted screening. That makes insulin resistance something visible and measurable over time, giving you a clearer way to track improvement rather than guessing about your metabolic health.

How to Remove the Drivers of Insulin Resistance

The research makes the risk clear — but it also reveals something empowering: insulin resistance is measurable and reversible. Insulin resistance develops when your cells struggle to receive glucose and mitochondria — the part of your cells responsible for producing energy — lose steady fuel. The priority is removing what blocks insulin signaling. When cellular energy production recovers, the entire disease trajectory shifts — including cancer risk.

As metabolic function improves, your cells produce more ATP (adenosine triphosphate) — the energy currency that powers virtually every cellular process — inflammatory signals drop and the reinforcing cycle between insulin resistance and mitochondrial dysfunction begins to reverse. The following steps address the root cause.

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A New Series of Health Insights Is on the Way
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Cortisol is built for emergencies, but modern life keeps it switched on 24/7. Designed to help you react fast in moments of danger, this hormone floods your system with energy when you need to fight or flee. But when the stress rarely stops, your cortisol doesn’t either. That’s when the very system meant to protect you begins to do damage.

You’re probably not sprinting from wild animals, but your body reacts the same way to constant deadlines, poor sleep, and emotional stress. Over time, that daily grind trains your body to live in survival mode. You stop recovering properly. Your energy dips. Your digestion slows. You store more fat, especially around your belly, and lose muscle even when you’re trying to stay active.

What makes this worse is how invisible it often is at first. You might feel tired, edgy, or wired at night. But underneath, your body is running on empty while cortisol stays elevated. And the longer that goes on, the more your hormone rhythms, metabolic function, and immune defenses unravel.

This isn’t about managing stress in the abstract — it’s about restoring your body’s ability to reset. If you’re feeling burned out, inflamed, or like your system is stuck in overdrive, there are simple, science-backed ways to flush out the excess and bring things back into balance.

Simple Habits That Help Flush Cortisol Naturally

A featured article in Vogue highlights advice from physician Dr. Liza Osagie-Clouard and registered dietitian Jodie Relf.1 It explores how to support your body’s natural cortisol-clearing processes through lifestyle changes, not medication. Their approach is built around simple tools — breathwork, sleep, movement, and blood sugar balance — that anyone can apply, even if you’re overwhelmed or short on time.

• People dealing with chronic stress symptoms benefit most from these changes — This information is aimed at people who feel “wired but tired,” have trouble sleeping, gain weight around the midsection, or struggle with irritability and sugar cravings. These signs point to cortisol overload, which is often worsened by morning coffee on an empty stomach or overtraining without proper rest.

• Breathwork stands out as a fast, drug-free tool to bring cortisol down — Dr. Osagie-Clouard recommends lengthening your exhale to shift your body into a parasympathetic state — the “rest and digest” mode that opposes stress activation. A quick version of this is the “parasympathetic sigh,” where you inhale, then take a second sip of air before slowly releasing it. This practice gives your nervous system the green light to relax and helps your body flush out excess cortisol naturally.

• Caffeine is a silent contributor to cortisol overload but timing matters — There’s a downside to relying on coffee to get through the morning fog, especially on an empty stomach. “Coffee is a stimulant which will raise cortisol levels,” says Relf. Having it before eating keeps you stuck in the stress cycle. Instead, wait until after breakfast, or reduce intake altogether if you already feel overstimulated. You don’t have to eliminate caffeine entirely, just shift when and how you drink it.

• Gentle exercise like walking reduces cortisol more effectively than high-intensity workouts — Forget marathon gym sessions. Regular, moderate movement helps balance cortisol levels without triggering more stress. The key is consistency, not intensity. People with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) or adrenal imbalances often see the greatest benefit from low-impact activities, which also improve insulin sensitivity and emotional resilience.

Reset Your Hormones by Fixing Sleep, Stabilizing Blood Sugar, and Finding Joy

If you’re tossing and turning at night, your cortisol rhythm is likely reversed — too high in the evening and too low in the morning. The solution isn’t just sleep quantity but bedtime rituals. A consistent sleep-wake time, along with calming wind-down habits like dim lights or reading, help your cortisol follow its natural cycle again.

• Blood sugar swings worsen cortisol imbalances — balanced meals are key — Spiking your glucose leads to more cortisol as your body scrambles to restore balance. Try pairing carbs with healthy fats and protein to slow absorption. Instead of eating fruit alone, combine it with raw, grass fed yogurt to reduce the sugar spike. That simple change lessens the hormonal stress response and leaves you with steadier energy.

• Ashwagandha supports cortisol regulation if used consistently and wisely — As an adaptogen, ashwagandha helps your body become more resilient to stress. Research shows that 250 milligrams (mg) to 800 mg daily for eight weeks led to measurable drops in cortisol.2 But sourcing matters. Look for 100% organic ashwagandha root, free of fillers, additives, and excipients. Unfortunately, adulterated ashwagandha products have been found on the market, so buyer beware.

• Spirituality, laughter, and fun are underrated cortisol detoxifiers — For people with a spiritual practice, prayer has been shown to lower cortisol and increase calm during life stress.3 If you’re not spiritual, the same benefits show up through meditation, community connection, or simple pleasures like laughter.4

Chronically Elevated Cortisol Throws Off Nearly Every Major Body System

Often labeled merely as a stress hormone, cortisol fulfills many other functions within your body. Its main role is to act as a vital defense mechanism, ensuring that your blood glucose levels don’t plummet to hazardous lows. By maintaining these levels, cortisol safeguards you against the severe danger of a hypoglycemic coma.5

Although cortisol’s actions are beneficial in the short term, consistently high levels negatively impact your health. As noted by the Cleveland Clinic, cortisol is a master regulator that affects your metabolism, sleep rhythm, blood pressure, inflammation, and immune defense.6 Chronic high cortisol damages these systems one by one. When left unchecked, the result is often accelerated aging, insulin resistance, and persistent fatigue that no amount of rest can fix.

• This is especially dangerous for people with hormonal imbalances or metabolic issues — Cortisol’s wide-ranging effects become especially harmful when your body’s regulatory loop — managed by your brain and adrenal glands — breaks down. Your hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal glands work as a team to keep cortisol in balance. But chronic stress overrides this system, causing dysfunction that leads to everything from sleep disruption to hormone depletion.

• Cortisol pushes blood sugar up, then blocks insulin from doing its job — When you’re stressed, cortisol signals your liver to release glucose so you have immediate energy. That part is normal. The problem comes when that stress doesn’t end. Cortisol also suppresses insulin — the hormone that helps move sugar into your cells for fuel. That double action creates blood sugar spikes followed by crashes, which leave you wired, hungry, moody, and ultimately insulin resistant over time.

• Over time, your immune system stops responding to cortisol at all — Short bursts of cortisol help tamp down inflammation, which is how your body prevents overreaction to stress or infection. But with constant elevation, your immune system becomes desensitized to cortisol’s signal. That means more inflammation, more infections, and slower recovery from illness. You feel run down, get sick more often, and take longer to heal, even from minor cuts or colds.

• Cortisol throws off blood pressure regulation and muscle metabolism — Cortisol influences blood pressure, though the exact mechanics aren’t fully understood. What is known is that people with chronically high cortisol often have high blood pressure. Additionally, cortisol breaks down muscle tissue to free up amino acids for emergency energy use. In a prolonged stress state, this leads to muscle wasting, physical weakness, and slower metabolic function.

• Without action, elevated cortisol creates long-term metabolic damage — The longer cortisol remains out of balance, the more entrenched the damage becomes. Chronically high cortisol leads to conditions like Type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, immune dysfunction, and in extreme cases, Cushing’s syndrome — a hormonal disorder marked by fat accumulation in the face and abdomen, muscle loss, and stretch marks.

Enjoyment, Breathwork, and Light Movement Lower Cortisol Fast

You don’t need expensive programs or clinical interventions to reduce cortisol — just daily behaviors that align with how your body naturally resets stress. Fun, healthy food, and movement are among the most underused remedies for stress overload.7

• Breathwork methods like the 4-7-8 technique directly influence the vagus nerve — This technique involves inhaling for four seconds, holding for seven, and exhaling for eight. Doing just a few rounds shifts your nervous system out of the “fight or flight” state and into the relaxation zone. Activating the vagus nerve — your body’s command switch for rest — lowers cortisol almost immediately and helps prevent your brain from getting stuck in stress loops.8

• Spending time with pets lowers stress markers through oxytocin release — Even a few minutes of petting a friendly dog or cat is enough to lower cortisol and increase oxytocin — a hormone linked to bonding, calmness, and trust.9 This is one of the fastest and most accessible ways to buffer cortisol spikes, especially if you feel isolated or overstimulated by daily demands.10

• Blue light exposure after sunset disrupts your body’s hormonal clock — Staring at phones or tablets at night keeps your brain locked in daytime mode. Blue light suppresses melatonin (your sleep hormone) and increases cortisol at exactly the wrong time. Shut off screens at least 60 minutes before bed or use blue-light blocking glasses to minimize the damage. Also opt for warmer, dimmer lighting in your home as it gets dark.

• Even food choices influence your cortisol rhythm — Fermented foods like kimchi, kefir, and sauerkraut are helpful for stress because they support gut health. Gut bacteria are directly linked to your brain’s emotional center, so improving your digestion improves how you process stress. Staying hydrated also helps — dehydration is a common trigger for temporary cortisol spikes, especially in the afternoon slump.

• Doing what you enjoy resets your stress response naturally — Whether it’s gardening, painting, or listening to music, joy acts as a cortisol buffer. Your body isn’t wired to stay in survival mode when you’re actively engaged in something meaningful. Fun isn’t optional — it’s a necessary signal that tells your brain you’re safe again.

Simple Steps to Reset Cortisol and Calm Your Stress System

If your stress feels like it’s running the show, you’re not imagining things — chronically high cortisol throws off everything from your mood to your metabolism. But it’s not permanent. You can reset your body’s stress response by making small, consistent changes that address the root cause: a nervous system stuck in overdrive, poor blood sugar control, and an overloaded lifestyle.

Whether you’re exhausted, wired, or feeling like your body just isn’t recovering like it used to, these are the steps I recommend to restore balance and help your body flush excess cortisol naturally. Here’s how to start:

1. Eat enough healthy carbs to stop cortisol spikes — If you’ve been cutting carbohydrates, your body is stuck in a stress pattern. Cortisol rises every time your blood sugar dips too low, so increasing healthy carbohydrate intake helps lower cortisol levels. Start by aiming for 250 grams of carbs per day, which supports sustained metabolic health and ensures that your mitochondria function efficiently.

Prioritize easy-to-digest options like fruit and white rice. When your gut is ready, meaning no bloating and no irregular bowel movements, gradually add in root vegetables, then legumes, additional vegetables, and well-tolerated whole grains.

2. Cut back on endurance exercise and overtraining — If you’re doing long cardio sessions, distance running, or frequent high-intensity interval training, you’re telling your body it’s constantly under threat. That pushes cortisol higher. Switch to shorter, gentle strength training, walking, dancing, or swimming. If you feel worse after a workout instead of better, that’s your body telling you it’s time to pull back.

3. Reset your nervous system with breathwork and rhythm — Use breathing techniques like the 4-7-8 method or a parasympathetic sigh to shift your body out of fight-or-flight mode. The 4-8 breathing technique — inhale for four seconds, pause, then exhale slowly for eight — also stimulates your vagus nerve and quickly lowers cortisol, guiding your body into a calmer, more restorative state.

This isn’t just mental — it’s physical. The longer your exhale, the more your vagus nerve activates, which tells your whole body, “You’re safe.” Do this before bed, when you’re feeling overwhelmed, or after meals to support digestion and hormone balance.

4. Make sleep non-negotiable — and fix your light exposure — Your cortisol rhythm depends on your circadian clock. That means getting bright morning sunlight and avoiding screens and dimming lights after sunset. Keep your bedtime and wake-up time as consistent as possible. If you’re dragging during the day, don’t depend on coffee — look at your sleep first. Rest is not a luxury. It’s how your body resets and clears out stress hormones.

5. Use natural progesterone to calm your brain and body — Natural progesterone is one of the most effective and affordable ways to bring your stress hormones back under control. Unlike synthetic progestins, natural progesterone is a hormone your body already recognizes and responds to. It acts directly as a cortisol blocker, helping lower the amount of cortisol circulating in your bloodstream and dialing down the stress response at its source.

FAQs About Cortisol

Q: What is cortisol, and why is it harmful when it’s too high for too long?
A: Cortisol is your body’s primary stress hormone. It’s designed to help you respond to immediate danger by raising blood sugar, blood pressure, and alertness. But when cortisol stays high for extended periods — due to ongoing stress, poor sleep, or overtraining — it disrupts nearly every system in your body. Long-term high cortisol contributes to belly fat, blood sugar imbalances, weakened immunity, sleep problems, and even muscle loss.

Q: How do I know if my cortisol is too high?
A: Common signs of chronically high cortisol include feeling wired but tired, difficulty falling asleep, belly fat that won’t budge, sugar and salt cravings, frequent illness, and irritability. You might also notice thinning hair, blood sugar crashes, or anxiety. These symptoms often worsen over time if the underlying stress isn’t addressed.

Q: What lifestyle habits help lower cortisol naturally?
A: Gentle daily habits like walking, breathwork (such as the 4-7-8 method), consistent sleep routines, and eating healthy carbohydrates all help your body reset cortisol levels. Avoiding blue light at night, reducing caffeine, and making time for joy or relaxation — like spending time with pets or enjoying hobbies — are also effective tools to calm your stress response.

Q: Why is sleep so important for cortisol balance?
A: Cortisol follows a daily rhythm — it should be highest in the morning and lowest at night. Poor or irregular sleep reverses that rhythm, making it harder for your body to recover and regulate inflammation. A fixed bedtime, morning sunlight, and avoiding screens at night help restore this natural cycle so cortisol doesn’t stay elevated after dark.

Q: How does natural progesterone help bring stress hormones back into balance?
A: Natural progesterone is a safe, effective, and affordable way to lower excess cortisol. It works as a direct cortisol blocker, reducing the amount of this stress hormone circulating in your system. Unlike synthetic progestins, natural progesterone supports your body’s own hormone rhythms without adding to the burden.

A New Series of Health Insights Is on the Way

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A New Series of Health Insights Is on the Way
Our team has been working behind the scenes to prepare new research and practical health strategies for our readers. While we finish preparing what’s coming next, we invite you to explore one of the most-read articles from our library below. See exactly what’s changing →

Occasional itching or peeling between your toes is often the first sign of a fungal infection starting to take hold. Athlete’s foot, or tinea pedis, is one of the most widespread fungal infections worldwide, thriving anywhere warmth and moisture linger — especially inside shoes, gym floors, and shared showers. Fungi multiply where your skin stays moist, whether that’s inside sweaty socks, between your toes after a shower, or in shoes that never fully dry.

Once established, the infection often lingers for weeks or even returns after treatment if the root cause isn’t addressed. Left unchecked, it doesn’t stop at surface irritation. The same fungi that attack your skin spreads to toenails, creating thick, brittle, discolored nails that are far harder to eliminate.

For anyone with diabetes, poor circulation, or compromised immunity, even small cracks in your skin open the door to more serious bacterial infections. Knowing how to interrupt that cycle — and restore your skin’s natural defenses — is the foundation for lasting relief. Recent findings reveal how targeted natural treatments and simple daily habits eliminate athlete’s foot and help you prevent it from coming back.

Natural Remedies Offer Real Relief for Athlete’s Foot Without Harsh Drugs

Athlete’s foot develops when fungi like Trichophyton overgrow on your skin. These organisms live harmlessly on your body until warmth and moisture allow them to multiply. As noted in Medical News Today, these fungi infect the outermost layer of your skin, and without treatment, they spread quickly to other areas.1

• Certain home remedies kill fungi as effectively as over-the-counter creams — Tea tree oil, garlic, hydrogen peroxide with iodine, and baking soda are standout remedies that directly attack fungal growth.2

A clinical study found that 25% and 50% tea tree oil solutions cured the infection in up to 64% of users, compared to only 31% with placebo.3 These results are meaningful for anyone who wants to treat athlete’s foot naturally without resorting to synthetic antifungal creams that often cause skin irritation or resistance.

• Tea tree oil disrupts fungal cell walls and reduces inflammation at the same time — Derived from Melaleuca alternifolia leaves, this essential oil contains a compound that breaks down fungal membranes. Because tea tree oil is potent, applying it with a carrier oil such as coconut oil prevents irritation. This combination works synergistically — tea tree oil fights fungus while coconut oil moisturizes and soothes cracked skin.

• Garlic is another powerful antifungal agent that works through sulfur-based compounds — Crushed garlic releases allicin, a natural antimicrobial that stops fungal replication and kills spores. A simple home remedy involves soaking your feet in warm water mixed with crushed garlic for 30 minutes twice a day.4 While it has a strong smell, garlic’s antifungal action makes it an effective, low-cost remedy that supports your body’s natural healing response.

• Hydrogen peroxide combined with iodine wipes out stubborn fungal colonies on contact — When used together, these two household antiseptics eliminate up to 16 fungal species more effectively than when used separately.5

Hydrogen peroxide releases oxygen that oxidizes fungal cells, while iodine denatures fungal proteins, rendering them inactive. This dual action also prevents secondary bacterial infections, which often occur when scratching opens small wounds on your feet. However, both solutions should always be diluted to avoid skin burns or discoloration.

• Baking soda alters your skin’s pH and reduces fungal survival — Sodium bicarbonate has mild antifungal properties that inhibit fungal enzyme activity.6 A daily 20-minute soak in a baking soda solution raises your skin’s pH to inhibit fungal growth and soothe inflammation. Once finished, feet should be dried completely without rinsing to allow a fine residue of baking soda to remain as protection.

Simple Soaks and Oils Offer Science-Backed Relief for Athlete’s Foot

A report from Health compiled findings from multiple studies evaluating home remedies for athlete’s foot and how they work to reduce fungal growth, itching, and inflammation.7 Ingredients like salt, apple cider vinegar, and natural oils interrupt fungal life cycles and restore your skin’s balance, offering practical steps that don’t rely on harsh over-the-counter creams.

• Foot baths combined with everyday kitchen ingredients act as powerful antifungal treatments — For example, a study published in PLOS One confirmed that salt disrupts fungal metabolism.8 Adding half a cup of salt to warm water and soaking your feet for 15 to 20 minutes, twice a day, helps reduce itching and redness.

• Rubbing alcohol and apple cider vinegar target fungi through dehydration and acidity — Rubbing alcohol — made of water and isopropyl alcohol — kills microbes by dissolving their outer membranes and drying them out.

Meanwhile, apple cider vinegar introduces acetic acid, a compound that lowers surface pH and interrupts fungal growth. Together, these solutions provide an environment hostile to fungal survival. Alternating between alcohol and vinegar soaks every few days keeps fungal colonies from returning.

• Tea tree oil, coconut oil, and neem oil are effective topical treatments for athlete’s foot — Tea tree oil damages fungal membranes, while coconut oil — rich in lauric and caprylic acids — kills microbes and moisturizes cracked skin.

Neem oil, derived from the seeds of the neem tree, contains compounds such as azadirachtin that reduce both fungal growth and inflammation. These oils can be safely diluted and applied two to three times a day, offering both antifungal action and soothing relief from irritation.9

The Hidden Triggers That Make Athlete’s Foot Hard to Heal

A report published by Rupa Health takes an integrative medicine approach, explaining that recurring fungal infections often signal an internal problem — such as blood sugar imbalance, gut dysbiosis, or heavy metal burden — rather than simply poor hygiene.10

While topical treatments remove surface symptoms, identifying and correcting internal imbalances leads to long-term resolution. This view challenges the conventional approach of relying solely on antifungal creams and highlights the connection between your overall metabolic health and how your skin defends itself.

• Underlying metabolic dysfunction makes you more prone to recurring fungal infections — People with blood sugar irregularities — especially insulin resistance or early diabetes — are more likely to develop athlete’s foot. High blood sugar creates an environment where fungi thrive and also weakens immune defense. Testing for fasting glucose, hemoglobin A1c, insulin, and C-peptide helps uncover hidden metabolic issues.

These tests reveal whether your cells are absorbing glucose properly or whether excess sugar is circulating in your bloodstream, feeding fungal growth. Correcting blood sugar through diet and lifestyle changes restores your body’s ability to keep fungi in check naturally.

• Gut and skin microbiome imbalances weaken your natural defense barrier — The health of your gut determines how your immune system responds to fungal invaders. When your gut microbiota — your internal ecosystem of microbes — becomes unbalanced, it increases inflammation and compromises your skin’s ability to resist infections.

Comprehensive stool tests reveal whether harmful bacteria or yeasts have overtaken beneficial microbes. Markers like zonulin, which measures intestinal permeability or “leaky gut,” show how fungal skin infections and digestive issues are often linked. By improving gut health, you improve immune balance and reduce the frequency of skin flare-ups.

• Environmental toxins and heavy metals further suppress immune resilience — Toxic buildup from sources like contaminated water, old dental fillings, or industrial pollution burdens your immune system. This chronic exposure makes it harder for your body to fight off everyday pathogens, including fungi.

Heavy metal testing helps identify whether toxins are contributing to repeated athlete’s foot infections. Once identified, supporting detoxification through nutrients and improved mitochondrial function helps restore immune strength.

• Topical probiotics restore balance to your skin microbiome and reduce relapse — The report highlights emerging research on applying probiotics directly to your skin to restore microbial balance. These beneficial bacteria occupy the same niches that harmful fungi use, preventing reinfection while calming inflammation. For people who experience frequent athlete’s foot flare-ups, this approach supports long-term resilience rather than temporary relief.

• The most successful results come from addressing both the internal and external triggers — Combining functional testing with targeted lifestyle changes gives you control over your recovery. By stabilizing blood sugar, improving gut health, and detoxifying heavy metals — alongside applying natural antifungal and probiotic remedies — you strengthen your body’s defenses from the inside out.

This layered approach turns treatment into a measurable process: as your gut balance improves, your skin clears, and your risk of recurrence drops dramatically.

How to Stop Athlete’s Foot at the Source and Keep It from Coming Back

If you’ve battled athlete’s foot more than once, you know how frustrating it is to treat the itching only to have it return weeks later. The key isn’t just killing the fungus — it’s changing the environment that allows it to thrive. Fungi feed on moisture, dead skin, and a weakened skin barrier. By restoring balance from the inside out and maintaining dry, resilient feet, you break the cycle for good. Here’s what I recommend you do to restore your skin’s defenses and stop athlete’s foot from coming back.

1. Strengthen your body’s defenses from within — If you’ve had repeated fungal infections, your immune or metabolic health needs attention. Elevated blood sugar and poor gut health feed fungal growth. Focus on reducing ultraprocessed foods, including seed oils high in linoleic acid, and increasing healthy carbs and other whole foods.

Carbs are key for giving your cells energy, especially since glucose is what your mitochondria (the powerhouses in your cells) love to use. To keep your gut happy, aim for about 250 grams of carbs a day. This step boosts your energy and supports your gut health.

Start slow with gentler options like white rice or whole fruits to let your gut adjust without causing trouble. Later, add veggies, whole grains, or starches as long as they’re well-tolerated. If your gut’s already struggling, hold off on high-fiber foods at first — too much fiber stirs up harmful toxins in your gut if it’s not healthy.

Once your gut feels better, eat more fiber. Fiber is the primary fuel for your beneficial gut microbes, allowing them to produce short-chain fatty acids like butyrate that strengthen your gut barrier. Also eat more resistant starches like cooked-then-cooled potatoes or green bananas — they fuel butyrate production.

2. Dry your feet completely every time you bathe or sweat — After showering, take an extra minute to dry between your toes with a clean towel or a hair dryer set to low heat. Fungus thrives in moisture, so leaving even a small amount of dampness invites it to return. Once dry, dust your feet with baking soda to absorb sweat and keep your skin cool throughout the day. If your shoes or socks feel damp, change them right away instead of letting them air-dry while you wear them.

3. Use natural antifungal soaks and oils consistently — Natural ingredients work best when used regularly, not just when symptoms flare. Mix half a cup of baking soda or salt into warm water and soak your feet for 20 minutes twice a day. These soaks change your skin’s pH, making it difficult for fungi to survive.

After soaking, apply a blend of diluted tea tree oil and coconut oil to the affected areas. The tea tree oil kills fungal cells, and the coconut oil repairs cracks and strengthens your skin barrier.

4. Try a dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and vinegar solution for stubborn infections — If your infection lingers despite routine care, try a topical solution combining DMSO and vinegar. DMSO helps carry the vinegar’s acetic acid deep into your skin, where the fungus hides, improving absorption and accelerating healing. If you decide to try this, apply it with a cotton pad to clean, dry skin and allow it to air dry completely before putting on socks or shoes.

5. Rotate your shoes and make smart hygiene choices — Fungi hide in the lining of shoes, especially tight or synthetic pairs that trap heat. Rotate your footwear daily to let each pair dry for at least 24 hours before wearing them again. Choose leather, canvas, or mesh shoes, and avoid plastic or rubber styles. Socks made from wool or bamboo pull sweat away from your skin. If you tend to sweat heavily, carry an extra pair of socks to change into mid-day.

Wash your feet nightly, clean your shower floor weekly, and don’t share towels, socks, or shoes. If you swim or use a gym, wear sandals in locker rooms and pool areas to block fungal exposure. By changing both your external environment and internal balance, you remove what the fungus depends on to survive. With these steps, you’ll not only eliminate athlete’s foot — you’ll build lasting resistance against it.

FAQs About Athlete’s Foot

Q: What actually causes athlete’s foot to keep coming back?
A: Fungi thrive in warm, moist environments — like sweaty shoes, damp socks, or areas between your toes that stay wet after bathing. If your skin barrier or immune system is weak, or if you wear tight or synthetic footwear, the fungus easily multiplies and returns even after treatment. Hidden factors such as blood sugar imbalance, gut dysbiosis, or toxin overload also make it harder for your body to keep fungal infections under control.

Q: Which natural remedies work best for treating athlete’s foot?
A: Several natural options are backed by research. Tea tree oil and garlic both destroy fungal membranes and reduce inflammation. Hydrogen peroxide mixed with iodine kills multiple fungal species at once, while baking soda soothes itching and shifts your skin’s pH to make it less hospitable to fungus. Salt and vinegar soaks, rubbing alcohol, and oils such as coconut and neem also help clear infection and restore healthy skin.

Q: How does DMSO with vinegar help stubborn fungal infections?
A: A topical mix of DMSO and food-grade vinegar has been found to be highly effective. This combination works because DMSO carries vinegar’s acetic acid deep into your skin, killing fungus at its root and helping the tissue heal faster.

Q: What lifestyle changes prevent athlete’s foot from returning?
A: Keeping your feet dry is essential. Always dry between your toes after bathing, use baking soda to absorb moisture, and wear breathable socks and shoes. Rotate your footwear to give each pair time to dry, and avoid walking barefoot in public locker rooms or pool areas. Inside your home, clean showers regularly and change socks daily to prevent reinfection.

Q: How does improving gut and metabolic health help stop athlete’s foot?
A: Your skin and gut are connected through your immune system. When your gut microbiome is balanced, your body is better equipped to fight fungal overgrowth naturally. Eating fewer ultraprocessed foods, lowering seed oil intake, and increasing nutrient-dense carbohydrates help stabilize blood sugar and support beneficial gut bacteria. This inside-out approach restores your body’s natural resistance so the fungus has nowhere to thrive.

1 What effect can larger indoor plants have on building spaces?

They trap heat near walls
They dry out the air to reduce humidity
They can make rooms feel cooler
Larger plant systems release water vapor into the air, which can improve humidity and make indoor spaces feel cooler and more comfortable. Learn more.

They block outside light

2 Which condition can trigger an oxygen supply imbalance linked to heart problems in younger women?

Anemia
Anemia can reduce oxygen delivery and help trigger an imbalance that strains the heart, especially during illness or physical stress. Learn more.

Arthritis
Migraines
Eczema

3 Molecular hydrogen helps protect mitochondria from oxidative stress in what way?

By thickening cellular membranes
By helping restore cellular energy
Molecular hydrogen may support mitochondrial function by reducing oxidative stress, which can help cells produce energy more effectively. Learn more.

By blocking all fatigue signals
By raising body temperature

4 What best explains the long-term rise of heart disease in the 20th century?

Seed oils became common first
Heart disease rose years after seed oils became common in the food supply, matching the slow buildup of plaque inside blood vessels over time. Learn more.

Exercise habits changed overnight
Doctors found more cases early
Smoking ended in most homes

5 What is the main reason health care spending keeps rising?

More medical services are used
Increased use of medical services is the biggest driver. Daily choices around food, sleep, and activity can also shape how often care is needed. Learn more.

Doctors are working fewer hours
Fewer people have insurance
Hospital buildings are older

6 What kind of diet may shorten your Peakspan?

A high-protein diet
A low-carb diet
Low-carb eating can limit the body’s main energy source. The guidance here suggests about 250 grams of healthy carbohydrates daily, adjusted higher for active people. Learn more.

A fruit-based diet
A low-salt diet

Test Your Knowledge with
The Master Level Quiz

1 Around which decade was Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) first discovered?

1960s
Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) was discovered in the 1960s and quickly drew major attention because of its reported use across many hard-to-treat conditions. Learn more.

1970s
1980s
1990s

2 Which of these does not worsen breathing problems like asthma?

Cigarette smoke
Household mold
Rodent exposure
Vapor from a diffuser
Smoking, mold, and rodents can irritate the lungs or trigger allergic reactions, whereas diffuser vapor doesn’t have any adverse health implications. Learn more.

3 What do you call the active compound in apple cider vinegar?

Acetic acid
Acetic acid may improve insulin sensitivity and help the body burn more glucose after meals, which can lower how much fat gets stored. Learn more.

Malic enzyme
Lactic fiber
Citric extract

4 In the 1950s, which corticosteroids were used to treat inflammatory and autoimmune diseases?

Penicillin and streptomycin antibiotics
Insulin and metformin blood sugar drugs
Prednisone and hydrocortisone corticosteroids
Corticosteroids reduce inflammation and calm immune overactivity, which helps manage autoimmune and inflammatory diseases such as lupus and multiple sclerosis. Learn more.

Aspirin and acetaminophen pain relievers

5 What can lead to treatment that does not address the real cause of a heart attack?

Delayed hospital transport
Misclassification of artery tears
Mislabeling artery tears as plaque-related events can lead to the wrong treatment, follow-up, and prevention plan. Learn more.

Low blood sugar readings
Mild chest discomfort

6 Which of these is not a type of hernia surgery?

Open surgery
Minimally invasive surgery
Laparoscopic repair
Surgical mesh
Mesh is a material used in some repairs, not a surgery type. The two main approaches are open surgery and minimally invasive surgery, including laparoscopic methods. Learn more.

7 Which quirkily named kind of poop may be a sign of excellent gut health?

Snake poops
Pebble poops
Ghost poops
These bowel movements leave no residue when wiping and sink in the toilet, which may suggest efficient digestion and good nutrient processing. Learn more.

Sticky poops

8 What is not true about hydrogen-rich water?

Improves athletic endurance and reduces fatigue

Only quenches thirst
Hydrogen-rich water may support endurance, reduce muscle fatigue markers like lactate, and make physical stress feel less exhausting. Learn more.

Raises lactate during exercise
Worsens feelings of exhaustion

9 Which airborne toxic chemical discovered in rural Oklahoma proved that such chemicals are not confined to industrial zones?

Polyvinyl flame dust (PDV)
Brominated metal fumes
Nitrate-based soot (NBS)
Medium-chain chlorinated paraffins (MCCP)
Medium-chain chlorinated paraffins (MCCPs) were detected in rural air, suggesting wider chemical spread than expected and raising concerns about hormone disruption and long-term buildup in fat. Learn more.

10 Green tea comes from which plant?

Aloe vera leaf
Camellia sinensis
Green tea uses Camellia sinensis unoxidized leaves, which helps preserve antioxidants and gives the drink its lighter flavor compared with black or oolong tea. Learn more.

Echinacea root
Hibiscus flower

11 How do seed oils raise heart disease risk over time?

Linoleic acid damages artery walls
Linoleic acid can oxidize easily, fuel inflammation, damage artery walls, and weaken plaque, which may quietly raise heart disease risk for years. Learn more.

Saturated fat blocks blood flow
Plaque forms in a few days
Protein intake weakens vessels

12 About how many new dementia cases are projected each year by 2060?

514,000
750,000
1 million
Researchers estimated about 514,000 new cases in 2020, then projected a doubling by 2060 as more people move into higher-risk older age groups. Learn more.

2 million

13 What kind of medications may be given within three hours to dissolve a blockage during an ischemic stroke?

Anti-seizure drugs
Blood pressure pills
Cholesterol blockers
Thrombolytic drugs
Thrombolytic drugs can break up the clot and help limit brain damage when treatment starts within the first three hours. Learn more.

14 What is one way to help lower long-term health care costs?

Move your body consistently
Rising Healthcare Costs, Peak Body Age, and Heart Attacks in Women Learn more.

Skip meals more often
Avoid sunlight completely
Sleep fewer hours

15 Which antioxidants found in eggs build up in the retinas of your eyes?

Vitamin C and copper
Lycopene and rutin
Lutein and zeaxanthin
Lutein and zeaxanthin help protect vision and may lower the risk of cataracts and macular degeneration. Learn more.

Selenium and calcium

16 Ibuprofen and naproxen are examples of what kind of medication?

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)
Ibuprofen and naproxen can narrow blood vessels in the kidneys by lowering protective hormone activity, which may reduce kidney function during dehydration or illness. Learn more.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)
Calcium channel blockers
Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs)

17 When does the human body usually perform at its best?

Around age 50
In the teenage years
In the 20s to early 30s
By about age 50, brain speed, strength, and endurance are often already below their top level, even when a person still feels healthy. Learn more.

After age 60

18 What approach have some pediatricians used to help reduce autism risk in predisposed infants?

Early drug treatment based on EEG results
Genetic screening followed by medication
Whole-body lifestyle modifications
Whole-body approaches focus on modifiable factors, such as reducing toxin and allergen exposure, to support early neurological and immune health. Learn more.

Intensive behavioral therapy in infancy

19 How does iodine intake affect thyroid health?

It supports thyroid function, but excess can trigger autoimmune thyroid disease
Iodine is needed to make thyroid hormones, but excess iodine may trigger autoimmune thyroid disease, especially in people with lower genetic tolerance. Learn more.

It blocks thyroid hormones and lowers immune activity in most people who have healthy thyroid function
It replaces thyroid hormones and repairs gland damage on its own to protect the gland
It prevents thyroid disease by raising genetic tolerance over time, allowing the gland to rest

I’ve written before about the many health benefits of aspirin that many people don’t hear about — from protecting your heart and preventing cancer to boosting your metabolism and balancing your hormones.

But new research is revealing something about aspirin and cancer that changes the story in ways nobody expected. It starts with a completely different way of looking at what drugs actually do to cancer cells. And it ends with a finding that turns decades of assumptions upside down.

How Cancer Drugs Have Always Been Tested — and Why It Misses So Much

For as long as modern cancer research has existed, scientists have tested drugs the same basic way. They put cancer cells in a dish, add the drug, and wait to see if the cells die. If most of them die, the drug is a winner. If they survive, the drug gets tossed.

This sounds perfectly reasonable. But stop and think about what it actually measures. It measures one thing and one thing only: death. Here’s the problem with that.

• Cancer isn’t just one thing going wrong — A cancer cell is a normal cell that has gone haywire in many ways at the same time. Think of it like a car where the engine is racing, the brakes are cut, and the steering is locked — all at once. Killing the car — running it into a wall — is one way to stop the problem. But what if you could just fix the engine, unlock the steering, reconnect the brakes, and turn the headlights back on? You would have a working car again.
• Cancer cells aren’t alien invaders — They’re your own cells running the wrong program. And a drug that could fix part of that program — slow the engine down, reconnect some of the brakes — would be completely invisible in the standard drug test, because the cells didn’t die. How many valuable drugs have been thrown in the trash because we were only looking at one thing?

Every Cell Runs a Program — Cancer Cells Are Running the Wrong One

To understand the new approach, you first need to understand one simple idea about how your cells work.

• Every cell in your body contains the same DNA, the same complete set of instructions — What makes a colon cell different from a brain cell or a skin cell is not which instructions they have, but which instructions they’re actually using. Out of roughly 20,000 genes, each cell type switches on a specific set and keeps the rest turned off. This pattern — which genes are on and which are off — is the cell’s program. It is what gives the cell its identity.
• Think of it like a massive mixing board in a recording studio — There are 20,000 sliders. A healthy colon cell has each slider set to a very specific position. The overall setting produces “healthy colon cell.” When a cell becomes cancerous, the sliders get moved. Some that should be turned down get cranked up. Others that should be up get pushed to zero.

The mixing board is still there, the sliders still work, but the overall setting now produces “cancer cell” instead of “healthy colon cell.” This is a crucial point. The cancer cell hasn’t been destroyed or replaced. It’s your cell, running the wrong settings.

A 100-Million-Cell Dataset Made a New Question Possible

Researchers at a company called Tahoe Therapeutics have built something that has never existed before.1 They measured how 1,100 different drugs changed the genetic settings in cancer cells — one cell at a time — across 50 different cancer cell lines. The result is a dataset containing 100 million individual cell measurements from 60,000 separate drug experiments. That’s 50 times more data than everything publicly available before it — combined.

• With this enormous dataset, they could finally ask the question that nobody had enough data to answer before — For every drug, does it push the cancer cell’s gene settings back toward the healthy pattern? Here’s how they did it. First, they used data from real colon cancer patients to map out exactly how the gene settings differ between healthy colon tissue and cancerous colon tissue. That gave them the “disease signature” — a precise measurement of what went wrong.
• Then, for each drug in their collection, they measured what it did to the mixing board — Did it move the sliders back toward the healthy positions? Or did it push them even further in the wrong direction? Or did it just move them to some random new pattern?
• They scored every drug with a simple number — A strong negative score meant the drug was reversing the cancer pattern — pushing the cell back toward normal. They call this “cell-state reversal.”2

The First Test: Does It Match What Doctors Already Know?

Before you trust a new method, you need to check it against reality. If drugs that are already proven to work in colon cancer patients don’t score well on this test, the whole approach is worthless. So, the researchers checked. And the results were clear.

• Top-scoring drugs matched the exact mutations driving colon cancer growth — The drugs that scored highest for pushing colon cancer cells back toward normal were exactly the ones that target the specific genetic mutations most commonly found in colon cancer — MEK inhibitors, BRAF inhibitors, KRAS inhibitors, and PI3K pathway inhibitors.
These are the drugs oncologists already use because clinical experience has shown they work. The framework figured this out on its own, from the data alone, without being told which drugs are effective in patients.
• It even caught subtleties that match real clinical practice — Among chemotherapy drugs, the ones that target DNA — like 5-fluorouracil and oxaliplatin, which are the backbone of standard colon cancer treatment — scored higher than the ones that target the cell’s internal scaffolding, called microtubule inhibitors. Microtubule inhibitors aren’t part of the standard treatment for colon cancer, and the data reflected that perfectly.

Now Here’s Where It Gets Really Interesting: The Aspirin Surprise

Among all the drugs tested, one result stood out as genuinely unexpected. It involved one of the cheapest, oldest, and most widely available medicines on Earth.

When the researchers looked at aspirin and its close chemical relatives in the dataset, they found that sodium salicylate — which is aspirin with one specific piece removed — produced stronger cancer-state reversal than aspirin itself. To understand why this is such a big deal, you need to know one thing about aspirin’s chemistry. Don’t worry — it is simpler than it sounds.

• Aspirin’s chemical name is acetylsalicylic acid — It’s made of two parts: salicylic acid, which comes from willow bark and has been used as medicine for thousands of years, and an acetyl group, which was attached to the salicylic acid by chemists at Bayer in 1897 to make it easier on the stomach.
• That acetyl group isn’t just a packaging improvement — It’s the part that gives aspirin its most famous ability — the power to shut down an enzyme called cyclooxygenase, or COX for short. COX produces inflammatory chemicals called prostaglandins. When aspirin blocks COX, inflammation goes down.
That’s how aspirin reduces pain, reduces fever, thins your blood, and — most researchers assumed — fights cancer. Here’s the catch. If aspirin’s anticancer power comes from blocking COX, then removing the acetyl group — the part that does the COX blocking — should make it worse at fighting cancer, not better.
• But the Tahoe data showed the exact opposite — Salicylate, without the acetyl group, was better at reversing the cancer cell’s genetic program than aspirin with it. That means the cancer-fighting effect isn’t coming from COX inhibition. It’s coming from the salicylate itself — through a completely different mechanism that nobody was paying attention to.

So, What Is Salicylate Actually Doing? The Answer Is Elegant

The Tahoe data showed what salicylate does to cancer gene patterns. But other research teams have been uncovering how it does it, and the picture is remarkably coherent. Your cells have an energy sensor — think of it as a fuel gauge.

It’s a protein called AMPK, which stands for AMP-activated protein kinase, but all you need to know is that AMPK is the alarm system that goes off when your cell’s energy balance changes.3 It’s one of the most powerful metabolic switches in your body. Salicylate switches AMPK on.4 When AMPK activates, it triggers a chain of events that’s devastating to cancer cells. Here’s the chain, step by step:

• Step 1: AMPK shuts down c-MYC — One of the most important genes in cancer is called c-MYC. Think of c-MYC as the gas pedal for cell growth. In a healthy cell, it’s carefully controlled. In many cancers — especially colon cancer — c-MYC is jammed to the floor, driving the cell to grow and divide nonstop. Salicylate-activated AMPK grabs c-MYC and tags it for destruction. The gas pedal gets released.
A 2025 study using a mouse model of colon cancer confirmed this. Mice given salicylate had dramatically lower c-MYC levels in their colon cells, and they developed fewer tumors.5
• Step 2: With c-MYC gone, a protective system switches on — Here’s something beautiful about your biology. You already have a built-in tumor defense system — a set of genes that suppress cancer. One of the most important is a group of tiny molecules called miR-34a and miR-34b/c.6 These are microRNAs — small pieces of genetic material that act like off-switches for cancer-promoting genes. They work by silencing specific genes that cancer cells depend on to grow and spread.Normally, a protein called NRF2 — think of it as your cell’s fire alarm system — is supposed to activate these cancer-fighting microRNAs. But c-MYC sits on top of NRF2 and keeps it silenced. It’s like a bully sitting on the fire alarm so nobody can pull it. When salicylate removes c-MYC, NRF2 is free. It activates miR-34a and miR-34b/c. Your body’s own tumor suppression system comes back online.
• Step 3: The cancer cells lose their ability to spread — When researchers blocked miR-34a and miR-34b/c in the lab, salicylate’s ability to stop cancer cell migration and invasion largely disappeared. That tells you these microRNAs are the key weapons. Salicylate isn’t directly attacking the cancer — it’s rearming your body’s own defense system.
• And here’s the most important part — Normally, miR-34 depends on a tumor suppressor gene called p53 — often called the “guardian of the genome.” But p53 is the single most commonly broken gene in human cancer. In more than half of all cancers, p53 doesn’t work. Salicylate’s pathway bypasses p53 entirely. It activates miR-34 through NRF2 instead.

This means it could theoretically work in the very cancers that have already lost their most important natural defense, which is exactly the cancers that need help the most. None of this involves COX inhibition. None of it requires the acetyl group. This is the ancient willow bark compound doing something we are only now beginning to understand.

The Clinical Trial That Changed the Guidelines

While these laboratory discoveries were piling up, a major clinical trial was delivering results that would change how oncologists treat colon cancer. The trial used aspirin, not salicylate — but remember, your body rapidly strips the acetyl group off aspirin and converts it into salicylic acid. So, every aspirin patient in this trial was effectively being dosed with salicylate.

The ALASCCA trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in September 2025, was the gold standard of medical research — a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, meaning neither the patients nor the doctors knew who was getting aspirin and who was getting a sugar pill.7

It was conducted across 33 hospitals in four countries: Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway. The trial focused on patients with stage I through III colon and rectal cancer whose tumors carried mutations in something called the PI3K pathway — a growth-signaling system that, when broken, helps cancer cells multiply unchecked. You don’t need to remember that name.

What matters is that these mutations are found in more than one-third of all colorectal cancers — so this isn’t a rare subtype. It is a big chunk of patients. After surgery, patients were randomly assigned to take either 160 milligrams (mg) of aspirin or a placebo every day for three years.

• The results were remarkable — Among patients with the most common type of PI3K mutation, aspirin cut the three-year recurrence rate roughly in half — from 14.1% with placebo down to 7.7% with aspirin.
The benefit held up across every subgroup the researchers checked: men and women, all disease stages, colon and rectal cancer, and regardless of whether patients also received chemotherapy. Lead researcher Anna Martling of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm called it “a clear example of how we can use genetic information to personalize treatment and at the same time save both resources and suffering.”8
• The National Comprehensive Cancer Network has since updated its recommendations — This organization, which writes the treatment guidelines oncologists follow, now formally recommend genetic testing for PIK3CA mutations in stage II-III colon cancer, and for patients who carry the mutation, three years of low-dose aspirin after surgery.9 This makes aspirin one of the first dirt-cheap, widely available drugs to be officially integrated into precision cancer treatment guidelines.

Aspirin Also Helps Your Immune System See the Cancer

The ALASCCA trial proved aspirin works in patients. But there’s another dimension to the story — aspirin may also be helping your immune system do its own cancer-fighting job. A 2024 study published in the journal Cancer found that regular aspirin use was linked to activation of immune surveillance in colorectal cancer patients.10 Here’s what that means in plain English.

• Your immune system is supposed to recognize and destroy cancer cells — That’s one of its main jobs. But cancer cells are sneaky — they learn to hide from your immune system by covering up the markers that would identify them as abnormal.
• Regular aspirin use linked to less spread and stronger immune attack — The researchers found that colon cancer patients who regularly used aspirin had two things going for them. First, they had fewer cancer cells that had spread to their lymph nodes. Second, they had more immune cells infiltrating their tumors — meaning the immune system was actually showing up to fight.
• Aspirin helps cancer cells reveal themselves to immune system defenses — When they treated colon cancer cells with aspirin in the lab, they found aspirin increased the expression of a protein called CD80 on the surface of the cancer cells. CD80 is like a flag that says “I am abnormal — come get me.”
It helps cancer cells present themselves to your T cells — the soldiers of your immune system — so they can be recognized and destroyed. In simple terms, aspirin was pulling the camouflage off the cancer cells so the immune system could see them.

Aspirin’s Benefits Go Far Beyond Cancer

As I’ve detailed in previous articles, aspirin’s health benefits reach into nearly every major organ system. Here’s an updated picture based on the latest research.

• Your liver — A clinical trial found that 81 mg of aspirin daily led to a 17.3% decrease in the amount of fat stored inside liver cells over six months, while patients taking a placebo saw their liver fat increase by 30.3%.11 Aspirin also improved markers of inflammation and scarring in the liver — two key factors in the progression of fatty liver disease.
• Your blood sugar — An analysis of 16,209 adults aged 65 and older found that low-dose aspirin was associated with a 15% lower risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and a slower rise in fasting blood sugar levels over time.12
• Your survival in critical care — A large study of 146,191 intensive care unit (ICU) patients found that aspirin use during ICU stays was linked to significantly lower death rates within 28 days, particularly in patients with widespread inflammation.13
• Your brain — Research found that low-dose aspirin use for more than 10 years was associated with a 31% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease, a 69% reduced risk of vascular dementia, and a 54% reduced risk of dementia from any cause — particularly in patients who already had heart disease.14
• Your lungs — Aspirin has been shown to reduce the scarring process in lung tissue by switching on a cellular recycling system called autophagy — your cells’ built-in method of cleaning out damaged proteins and preventing scar tissue from building up. When researchers blocked autophagy, aspirin’s anti-scarring effects disappeared, confirming that this recycling process is how aspirin protects the lungs.15
• Your metabolism — Aspirin helps your cells burn glucose for energy, reduces the release of linoleic acid (LA) — a harmful omega-6 fat — from your fat stores, lowers your cortisol levels, and increases your metabolic rate by partially uncoupling your mitochondria.16 Think of uncoupling as your cellular engines running a bit hotter and burning more fuel, which is why aspirin may help with weight management.

What About Salicylate and Willow Bark?

The Tahoe finding — that salicylate reversed the colon cancer gene signature more strongly than aspirin — has a practical implication that’s easy to overlook. When you take aspirin, your body quickly strips off the acetyl group and converts it into salicylic acid. That is what circulates in your bloodstream. That is what your cells actually see.

• Aspirin’s lasting anticancer effects stem from its salicylate metabolite — The acetyl group does its COX-blocking work during the brief window before it gets removed, but the salicylate metabolite is what sticks around and does the long-term work.
This means the anticancer effects are most likely coming from the part of aspirin that’s identical to what you would get from willow bark — the plant medicine that humans have used for thousands of years, long before Bayer attached an acetyl group to it in 1897.
• Willow bark provides the same active compound linked to anticancer benefits — If you’re sensitive to aspirin — if it bothers your stomach or you can’t take it for other reasons — this is important news. A salicylic acid supplement or willow bark extract delivers the very compound that the largest drug-response dataset in history identified as more effective than aspirin at pushing cancer cells back toward normal.
• Standardized willow bark dosing approximates common low-dose aspirin effects — For dosage, to approximate the effects of 81 mg of aspirin, you would need 400 mg to 800 mg of willow bark extract standardized to 15% salicin. To match the effects of a full 325 mg aspirin, you would need roughly 1 to 2 grams of standardized extract.
• Immediate-release aspirin with minimal additives aligns best with research dosing — If you prefer aspirin, opt for immediate-release, uncoated versions. Avoid coated extended-release formulations because of their additives. Check the inactive ingredients list — corn starch should be the only one listed. A dosage of 81 mg to 325 mg daily, taken with your largest meal, is the range supported by the current research.

Why This Changes How We Think About Medicine

Step back for a moment and consider what’s happened here. For decades, the entire cancer drug discovery pipeline has been built around one question: does this drug kill cancer cells? Billions of dollars, thousands of clinical trials, an entire industry — all oriented around cell death as the primary measure of success.

Now, using the largest dataset of its kind ever assembled, researchers have shown that you can score drugs by a completely different measure — how well they push diseased cells back toward being healthy cells. And when they did this, the results matched known clinical reality with remarkable precision.

• More importantly, this approach revealed something that the old method couldn’t see — A simple, ancient, inexpensive compound — salicylate, the active heart of willow bark — is doing something to colon cancer cells that ranks alongside purpose-built targeted cancer drugs. Not by killing the cells. By fixing them.
• This framework applies anywhere a disease is fundamentally a cell running the wrong program — Autoimmune conditions where immune cells attack your own body. Brain diseases where neurons lose their specialized function. Scarring diseases where cells produce too much fibrous tissue.
In all of these cases, the right question is not “can we kill the cell” but “can we push the cell back toward normal.” How many other cheap, safe, widely available compounds have cancer-fighting properties that we have completely missed because we were only measuring the wrong thing? We may be about to find out.

The Bottom Line

We’ve spent decades arguing about aspirin and cancer while asking the wrong questions. We asked whether aspirin kills cancer cells. The answer was not very impressive. We asked whether aspirin’s anti-inflammatory COX inhibition reduces tumor-promoting inflammation. The evidence was mixed.

But now, using 100 million cell measurements and a fundamentally different scoring method, we can see that salicylate — the ancient compound at the heart of aspirin, the same molecule found in willow bark — is doing something far more sophisticated than anyone imagined.

It’s not just killing cancer cells or reducing inflammation. It switches on your cells’ energy sensor, shuts down a major cancer-driving gene, reactivates your body’s built-in tumor defense, and pushes cancer cells back toward normal.

And it does all of this through a pathway that has nothing to do with COX inhibition — the mechanism many people assumed was responsible. This is a common, safe, inexpensive medicine whose full power we are only now beginning to understand — and it deserves far more attention than it’s getting.

FAQs About Aspirin and Cancer

Q: Why are researchers rethinking how aspirin affects cancer?
A: A drug-testing framework analyzed about 100 million individual cell measurements to see whether drugs push cancer cells back toward a healthy state rather than simply killing them. Using this method, salicylate — aspirin without its acetyl component — ranked higher than aspirin at reversing the gene patterns associated with colon cancer, suggesting the anticancer effect works through a different mechanism than previously assumed.

Q: What part of aspirin appears responsible for the cancer-related effects?
A: Evidence indicates the salicylate portion — the same compound derived from willow bark — drives the key biological changes. After ingestion, aspirin is rapidly converted into salicylic acid in your body, which persists longer in circulation and is likely responsible for many downstream cellular effects linked to tumor suppression.

Q: How does salicylate influence cancer biology at the cellular level?
A: Research shows salicylate activates AMPK, a cellular energy sensor that suppresses the cancer-promoting gene c-MYC and enables activation of tumor-suppressive microRNAs such as miR-34. This pathway operates even when p53 — commonly impaired in cancer — is dysfunctional, which helps explain broad relevance across tumor types.

Q: What clinical evidence supports aspirin use in colorectal cancer?
A: A randomized clinical trial published in The New England Journal of Medicine found daily aspirin after surgery reduced three-year recurrence from 14.1% to 7.7% among patients with PI3K-pathway mutations.17 These findings contributed to updated guidance recommending genetic testing for PIK3CA mutations and consideration of post-surgical low-dose aspirin in eligible patients.

Q: How do aspirin and willow bark compare in practical terms?
A: Because aspirin is converted into salicylate, both aspirin and standardized willow bark extracts deliver related active compounds. Approximate equivalence described in research discussions suggests 400 to 800 mg of willow bark extract standardized to 15% salicin corresponds to typical low-dose aspirin exposure, while higher extract amounts may approximate full-strength aspirin ranges. Clinical dosing equivalence remains an area of ongoing research.

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What is the “Peakspan exit”?

When performance drops below 90% of your best
Peakspan exit marks the point when decline becomes measurable, giving you a chance to act before smaller losses spread across more body systems. Learn more.

When a serious disease is first diagnosed
When all body systems start failing at once
When aging stops responding to treatment

A New Series of Health Insights Is on the Way

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A New Series of Health Insights Is on the Way
Our team has been working behind the scenes to prepare new research and practical health strategies for our readers. While we finish preparing what’s coming next, we invite you to explore one of the most-read articles from our library below. See exactly what’s changing →

More than 60 million Americans deal with heartburn each month,1 and for millions of them, relief comes in the form of over-the-counter or prescription acid blockers. These drugs — proton pump inhibitors, or PPIs — promise fast, long-lasting relief. But they also come with risks few people are told about.

What starts as a simple fix for reflux often becomes a long-term dependency that disrupts far more than digestion. These drugs don’t just neutralize acid; they shut down the very pumps your stomach uses to create it. That’s a problem because stomach acid isn’t a disposable nuisance; it’s essential for breaking down food, absorbing nutrients, and defending your gut from harmful microbes.

When that system is thrown off, your health begins to unravel in unexpected ways. The deeper issue isn’t just that acid is suppressed — it’s that your body didn’t need suppression in the first place. The real cause of reflux, for most people, is low stomach acid, not too much of it. And when PPIs suppress it even further, the result is fermentation, bloating, and pressure that pushes acid up into your esophagus.

But the concern doesn’t end in your gut. Long-term PPI use increases your risk of cardiovascular events, even if you have no history of heart disease.2 That includes heart attacks and death from heart-related causes. If you’re taking these drugs daily, thinking they’re harmless, it’s time to look at what the science actually says — and what safer, root-cause solutions are available.

Popular Heartburn Drug Linked to Higher Heart Attack Risk

In a large-scale analysis published in PLOS One, scientists from Stanford University reviewed more than 16 million electronic clinical documents covering 2.9 million patients.3 Their goal was to determine whether PPIs — drugs like omeprazole (Prilosec) and esomeprazole (Nexium) — were associated with cardiovascular events, specifically heart attacks.

• The population studied included people with acid reflux but no heart disease — The researchers focused on adults with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), the most common reason PPIs are prescribed.

They isolated individuals who had GERD but had not suffered a heart attack before. Importantly, they excluded people taking clopidogrel, a blood thinner often prescribed after a heart attack, to rule out drug interactions. This allowed them to evaluate how PPIs affect the general population, not just those at high cardiovascular risk.

• PPIs were linked to a 16% higher heart attack risk — The data revealed that GERD patients who used PPIs were 1.16 times more likely to experience a heart attack compared to those who didn’t take these medications. This increase was found in multiple datasets and remained consistent across different PPI brands.

• PPI users faced double the risk of dying from heart problems — In a long-term study of 1,503 adults who underwent heart imaging, researchers followed participants over several years.

They found that people taking PPIs were twice as likely to die from cardiovascular events, like heart attacks, strokes, or cardiac arrest, compared to those not taking the drugs. This increased risk remained even after accounting for factors like blood pressure and smoking history.

• H2 blockers did not show the same cardiovascular risks — To compare drug types, researchers also studied H2 blockers like famotidine (Pepcid), which reduce stomach acid by a different mechanism. Unlike PPIs, H2 blockers showed no increased risk of heart attack or cardiovascular death. This key distinction suggests the problem is something unique to how PPIs work.

• The biological mechanism involves a molecule that blocks nitric oxide — PPIs interfere with an enzyme responsible for breaking down a naturally occurring molecule that inhibits nitric oxide production. Nitric oxide is essential for healthy blood vessels, helping them stay relaxed, elastic, and resistant to clots.

Without enough of it, the lining of your blood vessels stiffens and becomes inflamed. In vein samples from coronary bypass patients, PPIs were shown to suppress nitric oxide production, confirming the drug’s impact on actual human blood vessels, not just cells in a lab.

Heartburn Drugs Silently Damage Your Kidneys, Bones, and Brain Over Time

Millions of Americans are taking PPIs without understanding the risks. These drugs are among the most popular in the world, with over 15 million U.S. users and billions in global sales.4 Beyond cardiovascular concerns, PPIs are associated with a wide range of long-term complications, many of which emerge silently and go undetected until damage is advanced.

• PPIs affect kidneys, bone density, and your nervous system — Long-term use of PPIs has been linked to serious kidney disorders such as chronic kidney disease,5 acute kidney injury and end-stage renal disease.

You leave your annual physical with clean bloodwork and a thumbs-up from your doctor — and assume that means your body is still running at full power. But what if you’ve already lost 15% of your cardiovascular capacity, your brain is processing information measurably slower than five years ago, and your recovery time has doubled — all while technically being “healthy”?

A perspective piece published in Aging and Disease reveals this uncomfortable truth: the window of time you spend at peak physical and mental performance is far shorter than many people believe.1 The researchers argue that modern medicine has been asking the wrong question.

Being disease-free tells you almost nothing about how well your body is actually performing — and the gap between “no diagnosis” and “operating at your best” is often enormous. You can pass every screening and still be operating well below your former best, with the gap widening year after year in ways that quietly erode your energy, sharpness, and resilience.

This reframe has practical consequences. Once you stop measuring health as the absence of illness and start measuring it as closeness to your peak, the entire strategy for how you take care of yourself changes. The research lays out exactly how that works through a concept the researchers call Peakspan, and it offers a new way to think about what you should be protecting and when.

Your Peak Performance Fades Earlier Than You Realize

The Aging and Disease paper introduced a concept called Peakspan, which tracks how long you stay close to your best physical and mental performance rather than just how long you avoid illness.2 Instead of asking, “Are you sick?” this research asks a more useful question: “How well are you actually functioning right now compared to your best?” That shift highlights a hidden decline that many people don’t notice until it becomes a problem.

• Most people lose peak function decades before they feel “old” — The researchers analyzed how different systems in your body perform across your lifespan and found that most reach their maximum in your 20s to early 30s. After that, performance steadily drops.
By around age 50, you’ve already fallen below 90% of your peak in many key areas, even though you might still feel healthy and have no diagnosed disease. That means for most of your adult life, you’re not performing at the level your body is designed to reach — and every year the margin grows wider.
• You spend years in a “healthy but declining” state without realizing it — The “functional gap” is the difference between your peak ability and your current performance. This gap grows slowly over time. You don’t notice it day to day, but it shows up as reduced stamina, slower thinking, and less resilience. From a practical standpoint, this affects how sharp you feel at work, how quickly you recover from stress, and how much energy you have left at the end of the day.
• Different parts of your body decline on different timelines — The study breaks down Peakspan across multiple systems, showing that decline doesn’t happen all at once. This staggered decline explains why you might feel mentally sharp but physically slower, or strong but less resilient to stress. For example:

◦ Your brain’s fast-processing abilities peak in your 20s and begin to decline soon after
◦ Your heart and lung performance peaks in your early 20s and drops steadily each decade
◦ Your muscle strength peaks between 20 and 35 and then gradually weakens

• Some abilities last longer, but they don’t offset early losses — Not every function drops early. Your fluid intelligence — the raw speed at which you process new information and solve unfamiliar problems — peaks in your 20s, while crystallized intelligence — your accumulated knowledge and vocabulary — peaks decades later.
That’s why you might feel wiser or more knowledgeable as you age. However, this doesn’t cancel out the decline in speed, endurance, and adaptability, which are important for high-level performance in daily life.
• The decline follows predictable rates you can track — The researchers highlight measurable rates of change that occur over time. For example:

◦ Aerobic capacity drops by about 10% per decade after your peak
◦ Kidney function declines steadily from your 30s onward
◦ Hormones such as testosterone decrease about 0.8 to 1% per year in men

Why Catching Early Decline Changes Your Entire Trajectory

The paper identifies a key turning point called “Peakspan exit,” which is when your performance falls below 90% of your maximum. This isn’t when disease begins. It’s when decline becomes measurable. Catching this moment early gives you the best opportunity to slow or reverse the trend before it spreads across multiple systems.

• Your body systems are interconnected, so one decline affects others — Once one system starts to decline, it often triggers changes in others. For example, reduced cardiovascular fitness lowers oxygen delivery, which affects brain performance and muscle endurance. Over time, these small changes compound, leading to broader loss of function.
• The goal shifts from living longer to staying capable longer — Extending lifespan without maintaining performance leads to more years of reduced function. The real target becomes extending the time you stay near your peak. That directly affects your independence, productivity, and quality of life.
• New AI tools are being designed to track your personal peak and predict decline — The study introduces advanced models that analyze your biological data, such as blood markers, fitness levels, and even wearable device data, to estimate how close you are to your peak performance. These systems don’t compare you to an average person. Instead, they compare you to your own best state. That gives you a personalized roadmap.
To make this practical, imagine your peak performance as a score of 100. The goal is to stay above 90 for as long as possible. Every small drop below that threshold represents lost capability. Tracking that score over time turns your health into something you can monitor, adjust, and improve.
• Small changes early have the biggest impact on your long-term performance — The paper emphasizes that early intervention delivers the greatest benefit because decline starts gradually. Waiting until symptoms appear means multiple systems have already lost ground. Taking action earlier keeps more of your systems operating near peak for longer.
Once you recognize that decline begins earlier than expected, you shift from reacting to problems to managing performance. That builds confidence and gives you a clear target: preserve your highest level of function for as many years as possible.

How to Keep Your Body Operating Near Its Peak Longer

Once you understand that your body starts losing peak performance decades before disease shows up, the goal becomes clear: slow that decline at its source. You aren’t trying to “fix aging.” You’re protecting your energy systems, your strength, your brain speed, and your resilience before they drop below that 90% range. Focus on actions that preserve function across multiple systems at once, because decline doesn’t happen in isolation.

1. Protect your cellular energy first, because everything depends on it — Your Peakspan rises and falls with your cells’ ability to produce energy. When cellular energy production drops, every system downstream — your brain, your muscles, your immune response — drops with it.
Prioritize daily sun exposure to support mitochondrial energy production and circadian rhythm. Mitochondria are the power generators inside each cell. When they slow down, every organ they supply runs at reduced capacity, like a building during a brownout. Ideally, get out in the sun within the first hour of waking.
Morning light hits receptors in your eyes that set your circadian rhythm — the internal clock that tells your cells when to ramp energy production up and when to shift into repair mode. When that timing signal is strong and consistent, your mitochondria produce energy more efficiently. When it’s disrupted by irregular light exposure, late-night screens, or spending entire days indoors, your cells lose that coordination and energy production drops across every system.
Avoid seed oils such as soybean, corn, and canola because linoleic acid (LA) disrupts mitochondrial function over time. Use stable fats like grass fed butter, ghee, or tallow instead. Keep alcohol out of your routine, as it directly damages mitochondrial function.
2. Fuel your body with enough carbohydrates to sustain performance — Low-carb approaches limit your body’s primary energy source, which could shorten your Peakspan. Aim for roughly 250 grams of healthy carbohydrates daily, adjusting higher if you’re active. Start with whole fruit and white rice, not ultraprocessed carbs. Add starches later, once your digestion is stable. Avoid relying on processed snacks, even those marketed as healthy, because they disrupt appetite control and energy balance.
3. Build and maintain muscle strength to delay physical decline — Your musculoskeletal system determines how long you stay physically capable. Train your muscles twice a week with resistance exercises to preserve strength and coordination. Focus on compound movements that build total-body strength.
Consume adequate protein — about 0.8 grams per pound of lean body mass (or 1.76 grams per kilogram) — and make one-third from collagen-rich sources like slow-cooked meats or bone broth to support the tendons, joints, and connective tissue that keep you training without injury.
4. Track your performance and metabolic health like a score you want to maintain — You stay motivated when you measure what matters. Think of your Peakspan like a score you want to keep high. Monitor simple markers like grip strength, endurance, reaction speed, and daily energy levels. Track your Homeostatic Model Assessment of Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR) score to understand your insulin resistance, since metabolic dysfunction drives early decline.
Anything below 1.0 is considered a healthy HOMA-IR score. If you’re above that, you’re considered insulin resistant. The higher your values, the greater your insulin resistance. Conversely the lower your HOMA-IR score, the less insulin resistance you have, assuming you are not a Type 1 diabetic who makes no insulin.
Set small, achievable goals each week to maintain or improve these markers. Use wearable devices or simple logs to track trends over time and treat consistency like a streak you don’t want to break.
5. Act early and adjust before decline compounds across systems — The biggest advantage comes from acting before major drops occur. Once multiple systems decline, recovery becomes harder. Pay attention to early signs like slower recovery, reduced stamina, or mental fatigue. Adjust your nutrition, sleep, and activity immediately when you notice changes.
Prioritize sleep regularity to support hormone balance and brain function. Keep your environment clean from toxins and processed foods that accelerate decline.

FAQs About Peakspan

Q: What’s Peakspan and why does it matter?
A: Peakspan is the period of your life when your body and brain operate at least 90% of their maximum ability. This matters because it shifts your focus away from just avoiding disease and toward maintaining high performance. Once your Peakspan ends, subtle declines begin to affect your energy, strength, and mental sharpness, even if you still feel “healthy.”

Q: At what age do most people leave their Peakspan?
A: Most people reach peak performance in their 20s or early 30s and begin declining shortly after. By around age 50, many key systems like cardiovascular fitness, brain speed, and muscle strength have already dropped below peak levels. This means a large portion of your adult life is spent below your highest capability.

Q: How do I know if I’ve already started declining?
A: You notice it through small changes, not disease. Signs include slower reaction time, reduced stamina, longer recovery after exercise, and lower daily energy. These changes reflect the “functional gap,” which is the difference between your peak ability and your current performance.

Q: Why is early decline such a big deal if I’m not sick?
A: Because decline spreads across systems. When one area, like cardiovascular fitness, drops, it reduces oxygen delivery and affects your brain and muscles. Over time, these small losses compound, leading to reduced productivity, independence, and resilience long before any diagnosis appears.

Q: What’s the most important thing I can do to protect my Peakspan?
A: Focus on maintaining function early, not reacting later. Support your cellular energy, build strength, track your performance markers, and monitor your metabolic health such as your HOMA-IR score. Acting early keeps more of your body operating near peak for longer, which directly improves how you feel and perform every day.

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How much did U.S. health care spending reach?

$3.1 trillion
$4.2 trillion
$5.3 trillion
Health care became the nation’s largest industry, affecting insurance costs, wages, and access to care. Learn more.

$6.8 trillion

Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published January 26, 2025.

Dr. Alan Christianson is a leading expert in the field of thyroid disorders, and his insights on this topic are invaluable. In fact, his expertise is so insightful that I’ve invited him to be the lead consultant for our upcoming health coaching program. This program will offer comprehensive protocols and practical steps for various health concerns, with a strong emphasis on thyroid health. I want to ensure the information we provide is top-notch, so we’re taking our time to get it just right.

In my previous interview with Christianson, we explored information about excess iodine and thyroid health. These principles are fundamental and will remain relevant for years to come. Before speaking with him, I felt lost when it came to understanding thyroid issues. I knew the conventional approaches, both in conventional and alternative medicine, were missing something important.

They didn’t address the root causes of thyroid problems. It became clear to me that the solutions were much simpler than I had imagined.

I even applied Christianson’s advice to my own health. At the time of our first interview, I was taking a significant dose of thyroid medication, including desiccated thyroid and Cytomel. I was operating under the common misconception that my thyroid issues stemmed from low thyroid hormone production. I was relying on outdated lab tests like thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and basal body temperature.

After understanding the true nature of thyroid autoimmunity, I was able to completely stop all thyroid medications within two weeks. My basal body temperatures are now completely normal 98.4 to 98.8. All my thyroid hormones are normal but my TSH is elevated, which is what you’d expect because my body is now producing its own thyroid hormone and that requires TSH to activate it. It should remain elevated for the next few months.

I’m incredibly grateful for Christianson’s expertise. So, let’s recap some of the key points from our latest discussion. Thyroid problems are incredibly common, and autoimmune thyroid disease is the most prevalent autoimmune condition.

Sadly, thyroid cancers are also on the rise. Conventional and even many natural approaches often assume the problem is simply a lack of thyroid hormone. However, this “empty tank” model doesn’t address the underlying cause. Christianson revealed that thyroid disease is closely linked to an individual’s genetic tolerance to iodine. By managing iodine intake within a safe range, many people actually reverse their thyroid issues.

The Unique Nature of Thyroid Autoimmunity

One of the biggest misconceptions I had before interviewing Christianson was that all autoimmune diseases have the same origin. This is simply not true.

• Thyroid autoimmunity is driven by a different mechanism — While many autoimmune conditions, like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and inflammatory bowel disease, are often linked to a leaky gut, thyroid autoimmunity has a different mechanism. In these other conditions, proteins leak through your damaged gut lining, triggering an immune response.

• The key difference lies in your body’s interaction with iodine — We need iodine for proper thyroid function, but our bodies are adapted to different levels of intake based on our ancestry. People with coastal ancestry generally tolerate higher amounts of iodine, while those with inland ancestry thrive on lower levels. Many people today, even those with inland ancestry, consume too much iodine.

This excess iodine matches the thyroid globulin and distorts the molecule to something your body is not typically expecting. This new protein structure then creates antibodies against it, causing your immune system to mistakenly attack the thyroid tissue.

• The good news is that this process requires an ongoing trigger — By reducing excessive iodine intake, you break this cycle. Your immune system then recognizes that the thyroid is not the enemy, and the autoimmune process often reverses. This reversal often happens surprisingly quickly, within a few months, unlike many other autoimmune conditions that take years to improve. In my own case, I saw significant improvement very rapidly.

While antibody levels are an indicator of thyroid autoimmunity and useful for screening, they don’t always tell the whole story. Some people with autoimmune thyroid disease never have measurable antibodies, while others with mildly elevated antibodies have no thyroid problems at all. Therefore, focusing solely on antibody levels isn’t always the most accurate approach.

The Thyroid-Gut Connection and Other Autoimmune Links

A fascinating connection exists between thyroid disease and certain gut issues. A condition known as thyrogastric syndrome, also called atrophic gastritis or autoimmune gastritis, is found in a significant percentage of people with autoimmune thyroid disease.

• It wreaks havoc on your stomach cells — This condition involves your immune system attacking your stomach’s parietal cells, which leads to poor absorption of important nutrients like iron, B12, and zinc.

• There’s a genetic link to autoimmunity — While this connection isn’t directly related to iodine intake, it suggests a broader genetic predisposition to autoimmunity. It seems that some genes are more specific to thyroid autoimmunity, while others are associated with a general increased risk of various autoimmune conditions. This could explain why people with thyroid disease are more likely to experience other autoimmune problems as well.

• Another common co-occurrence is fatty liver — This is now often referred to as metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD). Thyroid hormones play a role in regulating liver function, metabolism, body weight, and blood sugar. Therefore, hypothyroidism significantly contributes to the development of fatty liver.

Understanding Fatty Liver and Metabolic Fuel

My understanding of fatty liver has evolved over time. I previously believed it was primarily caused by an excess of omega-6 fats like linoleic acid (LA). While these fats certainly play a role, Christianson offered a more nuanced explanation.

• Fatty liver is fundamentally a problem of fuel balance within your body — According to Christianson, various fuel molecules, including carbohydrates, fats (like LA), and even alcohol, are processed into acetyl-CoA. When your body exceeds its capacity to use these fuel molecules, it shifts into storage mode.

• Where the body stores this excess fuel varies from person to person — Some people store it primarily as subcutaneous fat, while others accumulate it in their liver. The liver has two main storage compartments: triglycerides and glycogen.

A healthy balance between these two is essential for proper liver function. In fatty liver, the proportion of triglycerides becomes excessively high, creating a vicious cycle that makes it difficult for the liver to reverse the process.

• This explanation helps to understand why alcohol also contributes to fatty liver — Alcohol, like excess fats and carbohydrates, is ultimately converted into acetyl-CoA. Therefore, both excessive consumption of certain fats and alcohol overload your liver’s capacity to process fuel, leading to fat accumulation. This also explains why some people are more susceptible to fatty liver than others.

The Role of Gut Bacteria and Short-Chain Fatty Acids

Our conversation also touched on the crucial role of gut bacteria and short-chain fatty acids, particularly butyrate. Butyrate is often touted as the primary fuel source for colonocytes, the cells lining your colon. However, research has revealed a more complex picture.

• Butyrate only makes up about 20% of the short-chain fatty acids produced by gut bacteria — The majority, around 60%, is acetate, a precursor to acetyl-CoA. Propionate makes up the remaining 20%. This raises the question of whether the focus on butyrate has been misplaced. It’s possible that the initial research on short-chain fatty acids created a bias toward butyrate, overlooking the important roles of acetate and propionate.

• Clinically, butyrate is often administered in ways that are ineffective — Oral butyrate is poorly absorbed, and while rectal administration is more effective locally, it doesn’t reach the entire colon.

• A novel, time-release delivery system that effectively delivers nutrients — I’ve developed a novel time-release delivery system that effectively delivers substances, including beneficial bacteria and short-chain fatty acids, directly to the colon. This technology allows us to bypass the stomach’s harsh acidic environment and the small intestine, ensuring targeted delivery to the colon where these substances have the greatest impact.

This new technology opens the door for new research into the optimal ratios of short-chain fatty acids. I plan to explore different combinations, including a formulation with the natural ratio of 60% acetate, 20% propionate, and 20% butyrate, to see which approach is most effective.

The Thyroid-Estrogen Connection and the Importance of Prolactin

We also discussed the intricate relationship between thyroid hormones and estrogen. I’ve long believed that testing estrogen levels in the blood is misleading, as estrogen is primarily stored in tissues, not your bloodstream. This leads to inaccurate information and harmful treatment decisions, especially for post-menopausal women.

• Women are incorrectly treated for low estrogen — Christianson notes that women are often treated for low estrogen based on serum levels, even if they are not experiencing symptoms. This approach, based on flawed data, is unlikely to produce positive outcomes. The problem is often not low estrogen, but rather estrogen dominance, which is indicated by elevated prolactin levels.

• Taking exogenous thyroid hormones actually raises prolactin levels — Christianson says that this is due to a feedback loop between the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and thyroid. The same signal that tells your pituitary to produce thyroid hormone also stimulates prolactin production.

This explains why my own prolactin levels increased when I was taking thyroid medication. This information highlights the complexity of hormonal interactions within your body.

• Factors that influence prolactin levels — This led to a discussion of how various factors influence prolactin levels, including hormone replacement therapy, oral contraceptives, xenoestrogens, and reactions to thyroid medications.

This highlights the importance of considering the context when interpreting prolactin results. My own experience with progesterone lowering my prolactin levels suggests a clear estrogen connection. The good news is that prolactin testing is relatively inexpensive and accessible, making it a valuable tool for monitoring hormonal balance.

• Further discussions on thyroid health and its implications on metabolic health — As our conversation continued, we further discussed the complexities of thyroid health, the connection between thyroid, and other hormones and broader implications for metabolic health.

We also cover information about accurate thyroid testing. As Christianson explained, your body has intricate mechanisms for regulating hormone responses. It adjusts the number and activity of hormone receptors to maintain balance.

However, when you introduce external hormones, you disrupt these finely tuned systems. This is where the wisdom of nature comes into play. When do we support the body’s natural processes, and when do we intervene?

In cases of complete gland removal, like thyroidectomy, intervention is necessary. However, many people have abnormal lab results without a true inability to compensate. It’s important to distinguish between compensation and true dysfunction.

The 5 Golden Rules for Accurate Thyroid Testing

Christianson shared five essential rules for accurate thyroid lab testing. These rules are key for obtaining consistent and reliable results but are often overlooked, leading to inconsistent and confusing lab results. Implementing these guidelines significantly improves the accuracy and reliability of thyroid testing.

1. Time of day — Thyroid hormone levels fluctuate throughout the day. The most consistent results are obtained between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. Blood spot testing makes it easier to adhere to this timing.

2. Fasting — Fasting status significantly impacts thyroid hormone levels. It’s important to fast before testing.

3. Biotin — Supplemental biotin interferes with lab analyses. It’s recommended to avoid biotin supplements for three days before testing. Surprisingly, this effect is primarily seen with supplemental, not dietary, biotin.

4. Thyroid medications — If you take thyroid medication, take your lab tests before taking your medication that day. Testing shortly after taking medication will produce inaccurate results, especially for T3 and T4 levels.

5. Menstrual cycle — For menstruating women, thyroid hormone levels vary throughout the cycle. The most consistent results are obtained during days one to nine and 20 to 28 of the cycle. Testing during days 10 to 19 produces inconsistent results.

Rethinking Thyroid Screening and the Value of Clinical History

Our discussion then turned to the value of conventional thyroid testing, specifically TSH. I expressed my evolving view that TSH is not an effective screening tool. Christianson agreed, emphasizing the importance of considering treatment options.

• Synthetic hormones are not the only solution — In conventional medicine, the primary treatment for thyroid issues is synthetic thyroid medication. However, with the powerful influence of diet and lifestyle, other approaches are available.

• The importance of antibody testing — Christianson emphasized the value of antibody testing as a screening tool, as it’s more predictive of symptoms than TSH. While some individuals with overt hypothyroidism have negative antibodies, antibody testing still provides valuable information. It’s important to remember that normal antibody levels do not necessarily rule out thyroid disease.

This perspective aligns with the approach of clinicians like Broda Barnes, who effectively identified thyroid issues based on clinical history and symptoms, even before the advent of modern thyroid testing. It’s important to remember that while thyroid hormone levels are important, the correlation between those levels and symptoms is much looser than most people realize. In fact, many people with significantly abnormal thyroid hormone levels are surprisingly asymptomatic.

Dietary Considerations for Thyroid Health

We also discussed the importance of diet in thyroid health. I mentioned my red, green, and yellow food system from my book, “Your Guide to Cellular Health,” and how it differs from Christianson’s approach in “The Thyroid Reset Diet.” While my system focuses on general metabolic health, Christianson’s is specifically designed for individuals with autoimmune thyroid disease.

• Nuts are not a health food — I expressed concern about some of the “green” foods in Christianson’s diet, such as seasoned nuts. While nuts can be healthy, they’re high in LA and are best consumed in moderation, especially for those with high levels of stored linoleic acid. I also noted that my own food system is not suitable for thyroid health due to the inclusion of high-iodine foods.

Christianson explained that his dietary recommendations are not intended as a universal diet for everyone but rather as a specific tool for a specific situation — autoimmune thyroid disease.

• Modern practices contaminate healthy food sources — He also acknowledged the contamination of otherwise healthy foods, such as raw milk, with iodine due to modern agricultural practices.

The dairy industry commonly uses iodine-based disinfectants to clean teats and equipment. Although a hot water rinse helps mitigate iodine residues, the pervasive use of iodine teat dips introduces an additional, often unnoticed source of iodine into dairy products.

Diabetes and Metabolic Health

We also discussed diabetes, another major endocrine issue. Christianson described diabetes as a problem of fuel partitioning, where excess fuel accumulates in the bloodstream. He cited research showing that even small amounts of fat accumulation in the pancreas significantly impacts diabetes development.

• Glucose as your body’s preferred fuel source — I shared my understanding, influenced by the work of Ray Peat, that glucose is the preferred fuel for most cells, although some cells, like colonocytes and heart cells, primarily use fatty acids.

I also emphasized the dangers of overly restrictive low-carb diets, which trigger the release of stress hormones like cortisol. Christianson agreed, explaining that your body requires glucose and will produce it through cortisol-mediated muscle breakdown if dietary intake is insufficient.

• The ideal daily glucose intake — We agreed that 200 to 250 grams is a reasonable range for most individuals. We also discussed the dangers of excessive cortisol production, whether from dietary restriction or emotional stress, and its impact on sleep and overall health.

• The parathyroid gland — This tiny gland, nestled near your thyroid, plays a role in maintaining calcium balance in your bloodstream. Christianson argues that even slightly elevated calcium levels, especially if recurring, warrant investigation, particularly if accompanied by symptoms like fatigue, anxiety, or joint pain.

He emphasizes that conventionally accepted reference ranges for calcium are overly broad. Further, conventional medicine is limited in addressing parathyroid issues. Surgery is typically the only offered solution and there’s a lack of focus on root causes.

• Hormone replacement therapy — Finally, we touched on hormone replacement therapy, with both of us expressing caution regarding long-term use. Christianson emphasized the importance of considering both the benefits and risks of any intervention, particularly when it involves manipulating hormone levels. He stressed the need for strong evidence of net benefit before recommending such interventions.

Prioritizing Outcomes and Minimizing Harm in Thyroid Health

This in-depth discussion with Christianson illuminates the complex web of factors influencing thyroid health. By understanding the unique nature of thyroid autoimmunity, the importance of accurate testing and the interconnectedness of various bodily systems, we move beyond simplistic solutions and embrace a more holistic and effective approach to thyroid care.

This conversation emphasizes the importance of informed decision-making, prioritizing long-term health outcomes and supporting your body’s innate capacity for healing. By focusing on supporting your body’s natural processes and minimizing harm, you achieve true and lasting improvements in health.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Thyroid Health

Q: How does iodine intake affect thyroid health?
A: Iodine plays a crucial role in thyroid function, but excessive intake triggers autoimmune thyroid disease, especially in individuals with lower genetic tolerance. Managing iodine within a safe range helps reverse thyroid issues.

Q: What are the key factors for accurate thyroid testing?
A: Accurate thyroid testing requires:

• Testing between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.
• Fasting beforehand.
• Avoiding biotin supplements for three days.
• Taking tests before thyroid medication (if applicable).
• Timing tests with the menstrual cycle (days 1 to 9 or 20 to 28).

Q: How is thyroid autoimmunity different from other autoimmune diseases?
A: Unlike other autoimmune conditions linked to leaky gut, thyroid autoimmunity is primarily driven by an immune response to excessive iodine, which alters thyroid proteins and triggers an attack on thyroid tissue. Reducing iodine intake often reverses the condition.

Q: What is the connection between thyroid health and metabolism?
A: Thyroid function is closely linked to gut health, fatty liver, and metabolic balance. Hypothyroidism contributes to fatty liver disease, while excess fuel intake (from fats, carbs, or alcohol) overwhelms the liver’s storage capacity, leading to metabolic dysfunction.

Q: Why is a holistic approach essential for thyroid health?
A: A comprehensive approach, including dietary adjustments, lifestyle changes, and avoiding unnecessary hormone therapy, is key for optimizing thyroid function. Many thyroid conditions can be improved by addressing root causes rather than relying solely on medication.

Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published May 28, 2023.

This interview was recorded in November 2018 at the annual Academy for Comprehensive and Integrative Medicine (ACIM) convention in Orlando, Florida, but it was only last year that it ran on the site. At the time there was concern that the topic was too controversial, but now that six years have passed and COVID changed the controversial landscape, we thought it would be good to release the video on this important topic.

I had the opportunity to interview two experts on autism and dirty electricity, Peter Sullivan and Dr. Martha Herbert, who cowrote “The Autism Revolution: Whole-Body Strategies for Making Life All It Can Be.”1 Here, we discuss some of the toxic factors that contribute to the development of autism, especially the role of electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs) and dirty electricity.

Sullivan’s Journey

Sullivan has struggled with electromagnetic hypersensitivity, and still does to some degree, which was his primary motivation for learning more about it. He’s become a fount of knowledge as a result. As a software engineer in Silicon Valley in the 1990s, he was passionate about personal technology.

“I studied in Stanford. I did all kinds of human-computer interactions. I worked at multiple companies: as a troubleshooter in Silicon Valley, an engineer and a software designer at the very end. I worked at Netflix and some other companies people would know of,” he says.

In the early 2000s, problems began to take root. Fatigue and food allergies cropped up, and his children were struggling with developmental delays. He eventually realized he had toxic levels of mercury in his system.

“I eventually just took time off from work, in about 2005. I just said it’s ridiculous, with all these things going on, to have two people in the family working. I was focusing on my kids’ health and my health and really had some time and energy to really go deep and find out what was really out there.

I had a great doctor, Dr. Raj Patel … an integrative medical doctor who would talk about Candida overgrowth, mercury, and all that stuff. He got us on track. Eventually, the kids slowly got better, but even after detoxing, I did not. I kept getting worse.

I got down to 131 pounds. I became electrically sensitive. My brain kept telling me, ‘All the stuff is safe and well-tested. I love technology.’ But my body was reacting like there was something really wrong. I was catching myself just throwing a cellphone away — feeling cellphones and then transformers when I plugged them in.”

He eventually learned about dirty electricity, and once he started addressing his exposure, he regained 10 pounds in a couple of months, along with his health. Today, he’s passionate about sharing information about the dangers of EMFs and dirty electricity, and how to address electromagnetic hypersensitivity.

“We’re just trying to share the information, make the field credible, because it’s very credible, and make sure people don’t have to suffer,” he says.

He even created an EMF-free tent that he brings with him to different seminars and conferences that people can sit in, as many of these events are held in places where you’re exposed to very high amounts of EMF. He’s also funded some of Herbert’s research.

Herbert’s Story

I first met Herbert at a Cure Autism Now event (now Autism Speaks) in 2009. Herbert’s two children struggled with symptoms of autism when they were young. Today, they’re both grown and have fully recovered. Her initial focus was on mercury toxicity, looking at ways of doing noninvasive screening for toxic metals.

A lifelong environmentalist, Herbert went to medical school after getting a Ph.D. in history of consciousness at the University of California Santa Cruz. She studied pediatric neurology, and fell into working with autism after inheriting magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans from the first MRI study performed on autistic children in 1989.

“I was one of the first people — but not the only one — to identify white matter abnormalities in autism through brain imaging, not through gray tissue,” Herbert says. “That really violated the paradigm that behavior comes from the cortex. I was already kind of a whole-body person. I was seeing patients.

[Few of them] had these rare neurogenetic diseases that you’re trained for in pediatric neurology. But everybody was coming in with diarrhea and eczema, and they couldn’t sleep. It was almost like primary care in neuropsychiatry. That’s where I sort of edged my way into the whole-body approach.

I had an epiphany in 1999 … that all the stuff I was seeing in my patients really could connect with the environment … I started putting together and figuring out that this was really a systems [biology] approach to these conditions.”

A Systems Biology Approach to Autism

Systems biology looks at everything in biology as a web, in which everything is connected to everything else. When you tug at one part of the web, the rest of the web changes. In conventional science, individual components and variables are studied in isolation. That’s how clinical research is designed.

“We’re looking for pure forms of disease. But mostly in these conditions that we’re talking about, it’s a mess,” Herbert says. “Everybody has a bunch of different [symptoms], some of which are more prominent than others. Early on in figuring out autism as a systems problem, I was looking at specific language problems or developmental language disorder.

But if you look at these people carefully, they have coordination issues … You see this subtle breakdown of the precision and fine-tuning of the brain … I finally … I found a great article about the networks in the brain that are messed up in psychiatric illnesses (not just autism but also schizophrenia, depression, and so forth).

The hubs of these networks have very high-frequency gamma frequency … It turns out that this gamma frequency is driven by cells that are very high-energy demand mitochondrially centered cells …

We now have enough studies showing that the metabolic stuff going on in the brain match onto the networks going on in the brain. The proportion of network disturbance in some of these cases has been shown to be proportional to the amount of mitochondrial dysfunction.”

The Transcend Research Program

Herbert has created a brain research program at Harvard called TRANSCEND2 (Treatment, Research, and Neuroscience Evaluation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders). They use MRI, magnetoencephalography (MEG), and electroencephalogram (EEG). MEG measures the magnetic activity of the brain, whereas EEG measures the electrical activity.

“When you have electrical activity, the magnetic is at 90 degrees. They measure the same thing, but in somewhat different ways,” Herbert explains. Her hypothesis is that autism is not something you’re born with. It’s something you develop in response to environmental factors.

“In order to study that, I started studying babies from the time they were in their mother’s womb. We got biosamples from the mothers. We got biosamples at birth, and then — until the mothers stopped nursing — we get biosamples from them, plus EEG and autonomic … using wristbands … to see how things deteriorated in the kids who developed autism.

What we found was something that could be interpreted in a variety of ways. We’re working on publishing this. We have EEG data of 2-week-old babies, predicting their outcome at 13 months.

Now, I just finished saying that I think that autism is something you developed. That would sound like something you’re born with, but you can’t say that they have autism. The way I think about it is if their brains are really excited and irritated. So, it matters very much what happens [in their early environment to make them] more predisposed.”

Whole-Body Wellness Approach Can Minimize Autism Risk

Using this early predictive ability, a small number of primary care pediatricians have started implementing whole-body approaches to the parents and children, showing that when whole-body lifestyle modification is implemented, such as avoidance of toxins and allergens, virtually none of these predisposed babies actually develop autism.

“My feeling is what we need is a public health intervention where people are taught how to keep healthy from preconception to pregnancy to infancy. If they get an EEG that says that their brain is irritable, you don’t want to do a drug … You want to do safe and healthy things, because [drugs and toxins are] the problem in the first place,” Herbert says.

There are many anecdotal stories from families with autistic children suggesting EMF causes problems, and Herbert and Sullivan are working on setting up an online database to capture this data.

“That when you reduce the Wi-Fi, the symptoms abate a lot. I know a kid who was stimming like crazy. He liked to stim by the dishwasher. Guess what, there was dirty electricity in this dishwasher. They fixed it and he stopped that, and a lot of his symptoms remitted,” Herbert says.

Common Risk Factors

Essentially, Herbert believes autism can be predicted by looking at the level of brain irritability in the child. But what might contribute to this kind of irritability? Sullivan believes mercury, EMF, and glyphosate are three major triggers, even more so than vaccines.

Herbert believes processed food is another major contributor. “Simply reducing allergens in the mother’s diet from preconception to pregnancy is a really big deal,” Herbert says. That said, it’s really the total load that matters, not any particular given factor.

“There are 10,000 different ways to injure mitochondria. It all piles up. All these little seemingly innocuous exposures add to the pile, so they all matter,” she says. Sullivan has created a video talk and booklet, “Simplifying Autism Improvement and Recovery,”3,4 which includes a list of suspects for parents to consider.

One big one that few people consider is de novo mutations resulting from sperm being exposed to wireless radiation from cellphones and laptops. Men desiring healthy children would do well to avoid carrying their cellphone in their pants pocket while it’s on, as the cellphone radiation can mutate the genes in the sperm. If you’re going to keep it in your pocket, make sure it’s off or in airplane mode.

Herbert is currently enrolling patients for her Child Health Inventory for Resilience and Prevention (CHIRP) study, which will gather information about the associations between the total burden of environmental stressors and exposures and chronic disease in children. If you have a child between the ages of 1 and 15, you can apply5 by filling out two prescreening questionnaires to determine your eligibility.

Most Parents Start Treatment at the Wrong End

Herbert and Sullivan have worked with autistic children and have advised parents for a long time. What are some of the common mistakes they see people make? Sullivan replies:

“People assume it’s a problem with the child. They jump in and start treating the child. They assume it’s genetic or whatever, and they’re doing behavioral therapy. The things that I would do again for myself, if I could do it all again, is I would start with the environment. I would start with EMF, especially at night.

We turn off the baby monitor, the cordless phone base station, Wi-Fi, and even sometimes the circuit breaker for the bedroom … A wired baby monitor is safe … Plug everything into a power strip. Put the strip in the wall. When you go to bed, just pull out the power strip. In the morning, plug it back in. It’s not hard. Or, put it on a timer.

I would say it’s a state of overload not just for the kids, but for the entire family … There are [many] things you need to do [to clean up your environment]. The key is in the sequence. Do the easiest things that get you the most impact.

That’s why we’re starting with EMF. Because once you reduce that, you start sleeping better, and then you start to have more capacity. You want to build a spiral of capacity. You start an upward spiral …

Martin Pall’s paper6 on the neuropsychiatric effects from microwaves and EMFs show it’s a big factor, as is sleep, because sleep and [lowering] inflammation are fundamental to good mental health.”

More Information

For more information about autism and wireless radiation, how EMFs affect sleep, and recommendations for EMF meters and tips for EMF safety, see Sullivan’s website, ClearLightVentures.com. On Herbert’s site, drmarthaherbert.com, you can find information about how to improve your overall health and lower your total body stress burden for a healthy pregnancy and baby.

America spent $5.3 trillion on health care in 2024.1 That’s not a typo, and it’s not someone else’s problem — it directly affects what you pay, what care you receive, and how the system around you operates. Health care now consumes roughly $18 out of every $100 spent in the U.S., making it the largest industry by both total spending and employment.2

Your health choices don’t exist in a vacuum — they exist inside a massive economic engine that shapes your workplace benefits, your insurance premiums, and your take-home pay. That scale raises a direct question to consider: what exactly drives this spending surge, and why does it keep accelerating? The answer isn’t what many people assume.

Record Spending Reveals What Drives the System

Where does all that money go? A detailed analysis of federal spending data — published by ZeroHedge — breaks down what’s actually driving the expansion, and the answer challenges the assumption that prices alone are to blame.3 Instead of focusing only on price inflation, the report looks at total spending patterns, who pays, and which parts of the system grow fastest.

This matters because you experience the consequences directly through premiums, wages, taxes, and access to care. The analysis centers on national spending flows rather than individual medical treatments, which shifts the conversation from personal bills to structural drivers.

• Spending growth reflects system use more than price spikes — A central takeaway is that overall demand for medical services stands as the largest contributor to spending increases, not price growth alone. Prices rose 2.5% in 2024, below overall inflation at 2.9%, meaning the system grew because more medical care occurred — more visits, more procedures, more long-term management — rather than dramatic price surges.
• Per-person spending growth explains why costs feel relentless — Per-capita spending reached $15,474 and has increased every year since 2000, rising 77% faster than inflation over that period. This statistic translates into a practical reality: even when general inflation slows, your health expenses continue to climb faster than most other household costs.
The pattern reflects structural expansion — population aging, chronic disease management, technology adoption — which steadily increases how much care each person consumes.
• Health care dominates national spending categories — Another key detail shows health care spending exceeds spending on housing, groceries, national defense, and vehicles. That comparison clarifies scale in everyday terms. When the largest slice of national spending flows into one sector, it shapes labor markets, policy decisions, and employer compensation. You experience that indirectly when wages shift toward benefits or when insurance design changes to manage rising costs.
• Non-medical costs expand total spending — The report identifies $768 billion spent on non-medical health expenses, representing about 15% of total health care spending. Non-medical costs include administration, logistics, and system overhead — meaning money that doesn’t go directly to treatment still drives overall spending growth.
This helps explain why system complexity matters to your wallet. More layers, more coordination, and more administrative processes increase total cost even without additional clinical care.

What This Means for You and Your Wallet

Policy debates focus on who controls spending decisions. The analysis describes competing approaches: proposals that give consumers more direct control through funded health savings accounts versus strategies that rely on regulation and subsidies to manage costs. Decision control influences how you shop for care, compare prices, and manage long-term expenses. When responsibility shifts toward consumers, financial literacy and decision tools become more important.

• Funding flows reveal why the system feels complicated — Most health care funding originates from individuals through out-of-pocket payments, insurance premiums, taxes, and employer contributions that substitute for wages. Yet that money moves through multiple intermediaries — government programs, insurers, and employers — before reaching providers.
You pay, but the path between payment and care passes through many hands, which increases complexity and reduces transparency.
• Consumer anxiety reflects structural cost pressure — Polling cited in the report shows 66% of Americans worry about affording insurance premiums and medical bills, and 55% report rising health costs in the past year. Health expenses rank as a greater concern than utilities, food, housing, and gasoline, which highlights how strongly spending trends affect daily life. This emotional dimension matters because financial stress influences health behavior, care delays, and preventive choices.
• The findings translate into actionable awareness for you — Understanding that demand — not only price — drives spending growth changes how you evaluate prevention, lifestyle decisions, and long-term health strategy. When more care equals more spending, reducing disease burden becomes financially meaningful, not only medically important. Your daily choices influence how often you rely on the system.

Take Control of Your Health Spending Through Daily Choices

Here’s the good news — you’re not powerless in this. Health care spending rises because people rely on the system more often, not only because prices increase. If demand is the driver — and the data shows clearly that it is — then your daily health decisions directly shape how often you enter that system. That is power you already have. You just need to use it deliberately.

1. Build cellular energy as your first priority — Your mitochondria — the parts of your cells that generate energy — sit upstream of nearly every disease pathway. Think of mitochondria as your body’s power grid. When the grid weakens, every system that depends on electricity — your immune cells, your repair crews, your inflammation regulators — starts running on brownout mode.

When mitochondrial function declines, everything downstream suffers, and chronic symptoms that once would have resolved on their own become permanent fixtures.
So, how do you support them? Start with daily sunlight exposure — not through a window, but direct outdoor light, ideally in the morning. This sets your circadian rhythm, which governs mitochondrial efficiency. It’s important to avoid intense, direct sunlight during peak hours (typically 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in most regions), however, until you’ve eliminated seed oils from your diet for at least six months.
This is because stored linoleic acid (LA) — the polyunsaturated fat found in seed oils — in your skin increases your risk of sunburn. Also prioritize consistent sleep timing, because irregular sleep disrupts the very cycles your cells depend on to repair and regenerate. Aim for the same bedtime and wake time within a 30-minute window, seven days a week.
And make sure you’re eating enough healthy carbohydrates — around 250 grams daily for most adults, and more if you’re physically active — because glucose is the preferred fuel for clean adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production, the energy currency your cells depend on to power every function in your body. Glucose generates energy with fewer damaging byproducts (reactive oxygen species) compared to burning excessive amounts of fat, especially the LA found in seed oils.

When cellular energy improves, many people are able to reduce their reliance on medications, cut back on doctor visits, and resolve symptoms they had been managing for years. That’s real spending reduction, starting at the cellular level.

2. Reduce the drivers of chronic disease — Chronic disease is the main reason people use the health care system repeatedly. It’s not acute injuries or infections driving the spending numbers you just read — it’s the slow accumulation of metabolic dysfunction that turns into diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune conditions, and cognitive decline.
Every one of those conditions requires ongoing management, medications, specialist visits, and procedures. That is where much of the demand comes from.
It’s important to identify the biggest contributors in your own life. Ultraprocessed foods top the list — they damage your gut lining, spike insulin, and create systemic inflammation. Seed oils like soybean, canola, corn, and sunflower oil are found in nearly every packaged and restaurant food, and they’re high in LA, which embeds in your cell membranes and fat stores where it promotes oxidative damage long after you’ve eaten it. Replace them with stable, traditional fats: tallow, ghee, or grass fed butter.
Beyond diet, look at your movement and sleep. Sedentary behavior accelerates metabolic decline faster than many people realize. Walk every day, ideally for one hour — not as exercise, but as a baseline for human function. Build muscle through resistance training, because muscle is your largest metabolic organ and acts as a glucose sink that protects against insulin resistance.
Track simple, inexpensive markers like your resting heart rate (lower is generally better), and HOMA-IR, which tells you how insulin-resistant you’re becoming. These numbers reveal your trajectory before disease shows up on a scan.

3. Strengthen metabolic resilience to reduce your reliance on the health care system — If you find yourself frequently sick, persistently fatigued, or dependent on a growing list of prescriptions, metabolic resilience is the lever that changes your relationship with the health care system. Resilience means your body handles stress, recovers from illness, and maintains stable energy without constant medical intervention.
Protein intake is foundational here. I recommend about 0.8 grams per pound of ideal body weight, or 1.76 grams per kilogram — with one-third from collagen-rich sources like bone broth, slow-cooked meats with connective tissue, or a quality collagen supplement. Collagen provides glycine and proline, amino acids that many people are deficient in, which support gut integrity, joint health, and liver detoxification.
The remaining two-thirds should come from complete protein sources like pastured eggs, grass fed beef and dairy. When it comes to carbohydrates, if you’ve been low-carb for a long time and your metabolic markers have stalled or worsened, consider restoring carbohydrate tolerance gradually. Start with whole fruit and white rice.
As your tolerance improves, you can expand into well-cooked root vegetables, then non-starchy vegetables, starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes or squash, beans, legumes and, finally, minimally processed whole grains. Stable metabolism means fewer doctor visits, fewer medication adjustments, fewer emergency situations, and fewer long-term interventions. That is how you personally reduce the demand side of the spending equation.

4. Question the default path before it becomes your spending pattern — The health care system isn’t designed to ask whether you need less of it. It’s designed to deliver more. More referrals, more follow-ups, more imaging, more prescriptions — each one reasonable in isolation, but collectively they become a spending pattern that is very difficult to reverse once it starts.
I’m not telling you to avoid doctors or ignore symptoms. What I am telling you is to become a more deliberate participant in your own care. Before accepting a new medication, ask what the plan is for getting off of it or if nondrug alternatives exist. Before agreeing to a recurring appointment, ask what markers would indicate you no longer need it.

Before filling a prescription for a symptom that appeared after you started another prescription, pause and consider whether you’re treating a side effect with another drug — because that cascade is one of the most common ways people end up deeply embedded in the system.
This is where your own knowledge becomes your greatest asset. When you understand how your body works — what drives inflammation, what supports recovery, what your labs actually mean — you stop being a passive recipient of care and start making informed decisions about when the system serves you and when it simply generates more utilization.
That shift in mindset is worth more than any single intervention, because it changes your relationship with the largest industry in the U.S. from one of dependency to one of selective, strategic engagement.

5. Lead a healthy lifestyle that lowers demand for medical services — This is the most powerful solution, and it’s the one that directly addresses the central finding of the research: service demand is the primary driver of health care spending. Every improvement you make in your daily habits reduces how often you need care, and that’s what bends the cost curve — not for the system in the abstract, but for you personally.
Move your body every single day. Eat whole foods that your great-grandparents would recognize. Support your gut health by eating enough to maintain your metabolic rate — and be cautious about loading up on fiber before your digestion can handle it, because undigested fiber feeds bacterial overgrowth and worsens the problems you’re trying to fix.
Avoid alcohol, which damages your gut lining, disrupts sleep architecture, and burdens your liver with a toxin it has to prioritize over everything else. Maintain and build muscle mass throughout your life, because sarcopenia — the age-related loss of muscle — is one of the strongest predictors of frailty, hospitalization, and long-term care dependence.
Every one of these choices reduces your interaction with the system that just hit $5.3 trillion. You can’t control what happens at the policy level, but you can control the single biggest variable in your own health care costs: how resilient and metabolically healthy you are. That’s not a small thing. In an industry built on utilization, the most radical act is needing less of it.

FAQs About Health Care Spending

Q: Why is health care the largest industry in the U.S.?
A: Health care is the largest industry because total spending reached $5.3 trillion and continues to grow due to increased use of medical services, an aging population, and long-term management of chronic disease. More visits, prescriptions, and procedures expand the system even when price increases remain moderate.

Q: What’s the main reason health care spending keeps rising?
A: The primary driver is demand for services rather than price inflation. People live longer, manage more chronic conditions, and rely on ongoing treatment, which increases how often the system is used and expands overall spending.

Q: How does rising health care spending affect my personal finances?
A: Higher spending influences insurance premiums, deductibles, wages, and taxes. Employer health costs often replace salary growth, while out-of-pocket expenses and insurance complexity increase the financial burden on individuals and families.

Q: What does “reducing demand for care” actually mean for my health?
A: Reducing demand means improving metabolic health, strengthening cellular energy, and preventing chronic disease so you need fewer medications, appointments, and procedures. Fewer symptoms and better resilience translate into less reliance on the health system.

Q: What daily actions help lower your long-term health care costs?
A: Consistent movement, adequate protein intake with collagen, sufficient carbohydrates for cellular energy, avoidance of ultraprocessed foods and seed oils, quality sleep, sunlight exposure, and maintaining muscle mass all reduce chronic disease risk and decrease how often you need medical care.

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

Why are heart disease death rates going down even though heart disease is still the top cause of death?

Fewer people get heart disease
Better care helps people survive longer
Faster treatment and better emergency care save more lives after heart attacks and strokes, but the long-term damage driving heart disease still remains. Learn more.

High cholesterol levels are no longer a problem
Heart attacks have become uncommon

A New Series of Health Insights Is on the Way

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A New Series of Health Insights Is on the Way
Our team has been working behind the scenes to prepare new research and practical health strategies for our readers. While we finish preparing what’s coming next, we invite you to explore one of the most-read articles from our library below. See exactly what’s changing →

Kidney damage doesn’t always start with disease — it often starts with prescriptions. Many of the medications you’ve been told are safe are filtered through your kidneys, creating a constant workload that backfires over time. As drug use climbs, so does the hidden toll on this key organ.

Your kidneys handle far more than waste. They help balance fluids, regulate blood pressure, and support red blood cell production. But the more medications your body has to process, the more strain your kidneys are under, especially if you’re older, managing chronic illness, or taking multiple prescriptions.

Most people don’t think to question their medications until something goes wrong. But when kidney function declines, the signs often show up late, after the real damage has been done. That’s why catching the risk early matters. Let’s break down which drug classes pose the greatest kidney risks — and what to do to stay protected.

NSAIDs and Other Painkillers Are Tough on Your Kidneys

An article, published by AARP, highlighted how widely used medications, including both over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription drugs, damage your kidneys even when taken as directed.1 The most vulnerable include older adults, people with diabetes, and anyone who’s dehydrated or managing other illnesses. However, even people without diagnosed kidney issues are at risk if they take multiple medications or ignore dosage guidelines.

• Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) reduce blood flow to your kidneys — Drugs like ibuprofen and naproxen, often used to relieve pain, inflammation, or fever, work by blocking enzymes that cause inflammation. But they also reduce a hormone that keeps the blood vessels in your kidneys open. Without enough of that hormone, these vessels narrow, making it harder for blood to flow in. This leads to reduced kidney function, especially during illness or if you’re dehydrated.

• Don’t take them for too long — Clinical pharmacist Derek Owen, with the University of Chicago Department of Medicine, told AARP that NSAIDs shouldn’t be taken for more than 10 days in a row for pain, or more than three days for fever. These drugs seem harmless because they’re sold over the counter, but regular or prolonged use does real damage.

• Taking NSAIDs with blood pressure and water pills is dangerous — When NSAIDs are combined with ACE inhibitors (for blood pressure) and diuretics (to reduce swelling or fluid buildup), your kidneys are hit from multiple angles. This combination reduces blood flow and filtration pressure, leading to a dangerous drop in kidney function — often without early symptoms. It’s called the “triple whammy” for a reason.

• Get simple tests to check your kidneys — Your doctor can run basic lab tests to measure how well your kidneys are filtering waste and whether they’re leaking protein. Catching small changes early helps you adjust your medications before permanent damage occurs.

Antibiotics, Antivirals, and Immunosuppressants Are Powerful Drugs with Hidden Risks

Antibiotics, antivirals, and immunosuppressants come with serious risks for your kidneys. Even when taken as prescribed, these medications disrupt filtration, block urine flow or cause direct damage if not carefully managed.2

• Some antibiotics damage kidney cells directly — Drugs like tobramycin are especially hard on your kidneys. They build up inside the tiny filtering cells and cause structural damage. The longer these antibiotics are used, the greater the risk, which is why they’re usually only given in short courses under close supervision.

• Others block urine flow — Sulfonamides, another type of antibiotic, form crystals that don’t dissolve well in urine. If you’re dehydrated or your urine flow is slow, these crystals clog the tiny tubes in your kidneys, leading to inflammation, back pressure, and pain. Even if you don’t notice right away, your creatinine levels could start creeping up — a warning sign that filtration is slowing down.

• Doses need to match how well your kidneys are working — If your kidneys aren’t filtering properly and the dose isn’t adjusted, drugs like amoxicillin and ciprofloxacin build up and become harmful. In some cases, they even cause an allergic reaction in the kidneys, leading to swelling and more damage.3

• HIV and transplant drugs also harm your kidneys — Medications like tenofovir for HIV and cyclosporine to prevent organ rejection reduce blood flow in the kidneys and damage the same cells that handle waste removal. People taking these drugs are often on complex medication regimens, making it even more important to track kidney labs regularly.4

Proton Pump Inhibitors and Other Acid Suppressants Are Quiet Contributors to Chronic Kidney Trouble

Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), such as omeprazole (Prilosec), esomeprazole (Nexium) and lansoprazole (Prevacid), are widely used to reduce stomach acid. They’re commonly taken for heartburn, indigestion, or ulcers, sometimes for years. But long-term PPI use is linked to chronic kidney disease.5

• They inflame your kidney’s filters — PPIs are associated with a condition called interstitial nephritis, an allergic-type reaction that causes swelling in the spaces between kidney structures. This leads to fatigue, swelling in your legs, and darker urine. Because the symptoms are sometimes mild or vague, they often go unnoticed until serious damage has occurred.

• People often stay on these drugs too long — Many start taking PPIs for temporary symptoms but never stop. If you’re using PPIs, taper off slowly and switch to famotidine (Pepcid), a safer option that not only avoids PPI-related heart risks but also helps block excess serotonin that disrupts energy and drives inflammation.

• Lifestyle changes often replace the need for acid blockers — Low stomach acid — not high — is often the actual problem behind acid reflux. The solution isn’t just symptom relief with drugs. It’s optimizing your mitochondrial function to restore the foundation that helps your stomach break down food, absorb nutrients, and protect you from pathogens.

Laxatives Seem Harmless but Quietly Hurt Your Kidneys

Stimulant laxatives like senna and osmotic types like Miralax work by pulling water into your intestines or speeding up how fast things move through your gut. But if you’re not drinking enough fluids — or if you use these products regularly — you lose too much water. That drop in body fluid also reduces blood flow to your kidneys, making it harder for them to do their job.6

• Long-term use often leads to kidney stones — When you’re dehydrated, your urine becomes more concentrated with minerals like calcium and oxalate. Over time, these minerals form crystals and turn into kidney stones. These stones often block urine flow, cause pain, and damage the kidneys further if not treated.

• Frequent laxative use is more common than you think — Many people use laxatives several times a week, or even daily, without realizing it could be hurting their kidneys. This is especially true for older adults who are already prone to dehydration or who are on other medications that affect kidney function.

• There are safer, natural ways to manage constipation — Instead of relying on laxatives, try focusing on your gut health and increasing your intake of fiber-rich foods like fruit and vegetables. Drinking more water and moving your body daily also support regular bowel movements.

• Ask your doctor about safer options — If you feel like you can’t go without laxatives, talk to your integrative health care provider. You could have an underlying issue, like low stomach acid, a sluggish thyroid or imbalanced gut bacteria, that’s better off fixed naturally, without risking damage to your kidneys.

Imaging Contrast Dyes Overload Your Kidneys

Doctors often use contrast dyes during CT or MRI scans. These dyes highlight organs and blood vessels, but they also pass through your kidneys. In some people, especially those with diabetes, heart disease or reduced kidney function, these dyes reduce blood flow and damage the filters inside the kidneys.7

• Iodine-based contrast from CT scans trigger acute kidney problems — Some contrast agents contain iodine, which your kidneys have to filter out. In people with existing kidney concerns, this sudden workload leads to contrast-induced nephropathy, a condition where kidney function drops sharply within 48 hours of the scan.

• MRI dyes carry a different kind of risk — Gadolinium-based contrast dyes, used in MRI scans, have been linked to a rare condition called nephrogenic systemic fibrosis. This causes thickening of the skin and connective tissue, mainly in people with severely impaired kidney function.

• The risks go up if you’re sick or dehydrated — If you have a chronic illness, are already taking multiple medications or haven’t been drinking enough fluids, your kidneys could be too stressed to handle the extra load from imaging dyes. The effects don’t always show up right away but are often long-lasting.

How to Protect Your Kidneys

If you’re managing chronic pain, blood pressure, reflux, or inflammation with multiple medications, your kidneys are bearing the brunt, not because they’re weak, but because they’re forced to filter and excrete drug residues day after day. What starts as temporary relief quietly becomes permanent dependence, especially when no one revisits the original reason the drug was prescribed.

Breaking that cycle doesn’t begin with another pill. It starts by restoring your body’s own ability to function. Here’s how to take the pressure off your kidneys and reclaim control over your health:

1. Revisit the original reason for each drug — Was it for a short-term issue like post-surgery pain or an infection? Many people stay on medications for years simply because no one rechecked whether they still need them. If the root cause has resolved, the drug is likely doing more harm than good.

2. Watch for warning signs your kidneys are under strain — Fatigue, fluid retention, back pain, changes in urination, or brain fog all point to sluggish kidney function, especially if you’re on multiple medications. These symptoms are often dismissed as “just aging,” but they’re often your body’s early alert system. Don’t ignore them.

3. Support the systems that make medication unnecessary — Chronic symptoms like fatigue, bloating, reflux, or joint pain are often signs of deeper imbalances. Focus on restoring your body’s energy production, improving mitochondrial health, eating nutrient-dense carbs and avoiding vegetable oils that disrupt metabolism. As health improves, medications become easier to taper.

4. Switch out harmful drugs for safer strategies — NSAIDs damage kidney tissues over time but topical magnesium, turmeric, or gentle exercise offer relief without the risk. Acid blockers reduce stomach acid, but the real cause of reflux, for most people, is low stomach acid, not too much of it; switching to digestive bitters before meals to signal your body to start acid production could ease symptoms without long-term harm.

5. Make a medication review part of your routine — Set a calendar reminder every six months to review your medications with your doctor. Ask one powerful question: “Is this fixing the problem — or just covering up symptoms?” That single shift in thinking could help protect your kidneys for years to come.

When your treatment plan aligns with your biology — instead of working against it — most medications become optional, not mandatory. That’s the path to true healing and long-term kidney protection.

FAQs About Medications That Harm Your Kidneys

Q: Which types of medications are most likely to harm my kidneys over time?
A: Common culprits include NSAIDs (like ibuprofen and naproxen), antibiotics (such as tobramycin and sulfonamides), acid blockers (especially PPIs like omeprazole), certain antivirals and immunosuppressants (like tenofovir and cyclosporine), laxatives, and imaging contrast dyes. These drugs reduce kidney blood flow, cause inflammation, or block urine filtration, often without obvious symptoms at first.

Q: Why don’t most people realize their kidneys are being damaged by medications?
A: Kidney damage typically develops slowly and symptoms often appear late. Early signs, like fatigue, swelling, changes in urination, or brain fog, are frequently mistaken for aging or other conditions. Without routine lab tests, many people remain unaware until permanent damage is done.

Q: How do NSAIDs and acid blockers affect kidney function?
A: NSAIDs reduce a hormone that keeps kidney blood vessels open, leading to restricted flow and lower filtration, especially during illness or dehydration. PPIs cause an inflammatory reaction in kidney tissues known as interstitial nephritis and are also linked to chronic kidney disease with long-term use.

Q: Does using laxatives or undergoing medical scans also affect kidney health?
A: Yes. Overuse of laxatives cause dehydration and kidney stone formation, while contrast dyes used in CT and MRI scans reduce kidney function, particularly in people with preexisting conditions or poor hydration. Both scenarios increase your risk of long-term kidney damage if not managed carefully.

Q: How do I protect my kidneys if I use these medications?
A: Start by reviewing each drug’s original purpose to see if it’s still necessary. Also watch for signs of kidney stress while supporting your body’s natural healing systems through diet and lifestyle. Taper off unnecessary medications and explore safer nondrug alternatives. Set a six-month reminder to review all prescriptions regularly.