Wellness

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

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

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

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

Why might healthy lifestyle choices wipe out 90% of our risk for having a heart attack, while drugs may only reduce risk by 20% to 30%? On the standard American diet, atherosclerosis—hardening of the arteries, the number one killer of men and women—has been found to start in our teens. Investigators collected about 3,000 sets

By losing 15% of their body weight, nearly 90% of those who have had type 2 diabetes for less than four years may achieve remission. Currently, more than half a billion adults have diabetes, and about a 50% increase is expected in another generation. I’ve got tons of videos on the best diets for diabetes,

Sugar and high fructose corn syrup are the original industrial sweeteners—inexpensive, filled with empty calories, and contributing to diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, cavities, and metabolic syndrome. Artificial sweeteners, like NutraSweet, Splenda, and Sweet’N Low, are the second-generation sweeteners. They are practically calorie-free, but cautions have been raised about their adverse effects. Sugar

What happened when topical olive oil was pitted against an ibuprofen-type drug for osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis? Fifty million Americans suffer from arthritis, and osteoarthritis of the knee is the most common form, making it a leading cause of disability. There are several inflammatory pathways that underlie the disease’s onset and progression, so various anti-inflammatory

Weight regain after bariatric surgery can have devastating psychological effects. How Sustainable Is the Weight Loss After Bariatric Surgery? I explore that issue in my video of the same name. Most gastric bypass patients end up regaining some of the fat they lose by the third year after surgery, but after seven years, 75% of

Losing weight without rearranging your gastrointestinal anatomy carries advantages beyond just the lack of surgical risk. The surgical community objects to the characterization of bariatric surgery as internal jaw wiring and cutting into healthy organs just to discipline people’s behavior. They’ve even renamed it “metabolic surgery,” suggesting the anatomical rearrangements cause changes in digestive hormones