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,
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 q
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
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
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 diab
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-generat
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 pa
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
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 ev
We create more than a hundred new videos every year. They are the culmination of countless hours of research. We comb through tens of thousands of scientific papers from the peer-reviewed medical literature so busy people like you don’t have to.In 2025, I covered a wide variety of hot topics. I rele
The extent of risk from bariatric weight-loss surgery may depend on the skill of the surgeon.After sleeve gastrectomy and Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, the third most common bariatric procedure is a revision to fix a previous bariatric procedure, as you can see below and at 0:16 in my video The Complica
Today, death rates after weight-loss surgery are considered to be “very low,” occurring in perhaps 1 in 300 to 1 in 500 patients on average.The treatment of obesity has long been stained by the snake-oil swindling of profiteers, hustlers, and quacks. Even the modern field of bariatric medicine (deri
How do barukas, also known as baru almonds, compare with other nuts?There is a new nut on the market called baru almonds, branded as “barukas” or baru nuts. Technically, it isn’t a nut but a seed native to the Brazilian Savannah, known as the Cerrado, which is now among the most threatened ecosystem
If the microbiome of those eating plant-based diets protects against the toxic effects of TMAO, what about swapping gut flora?“Almost 2,500 years ago, Hippocrates stated that ‘All disease begins in the gut.’” When we feed our gut bacteria right with whole plant foods, they feed us right back with be
Is “toxic mold syndrome” a real thing? What do we do about toxic mold contamination of food?In recent years, mold has been blamed for all sorts of “vague and subjective” symptoms, but we have little scientific evidence that mold should be implicated. However, this “concept of toxic mold syndrome has
The overall cost-benefit ratio for mycotoxins depends on which food is contaminated.Ochratoxin has been described as toxic to the immune system, developing fetus, kidneys, and nervous system, as well as being carcinogenic, but that is in animal studies. Ochratoxin “causes kidney toxicity in certain
Most crops are contaminated with fungal mycotoxins, but some foods are worse than others.Oats can be thought of as “uniquely nutritious.” One route by which they improve human health is by providing prebiotics that “increase the growth of beneficial gut microbiota.” There are all manner of oats, ran
Ever since the days of Hippocrates, 2,400 years ago, fasting has been offered as a treatment for acute and chronic diseases, based on the observation that when people get sick they frequently lose their appetite.Along with fever, decreased food consumption is one of the most common signs of infectio
One of the few food contaminants found at higher levels in those eating plant-based diets are mycotoxins, fungal toxins in moldy food ingredients, such as oats.In France, exposure to dietary contaminants was compared between vegetarians and meat-eaters, and the results showed that exposures to persi
How might we moderate the rare but very real risk of headbanging?If you search for heavy metal in the National Library of Medicine database, most of what you find is on heavy metal contamination in fish, which “makes it difficult to establish clearly the role of fish consumption on a healthy diet” a
What can reishi mushrooms, shiitake mushroom extracts, and whole, powdered white mushrooms do for cancer patients?“A regular intake of mushrooms can make us healthier, fitter, and happier, and help us live longer,” but what is the evidence for all that? “Mushrooms are widely cited for their medicina
Did the five randomized controlled trials of reishi mushrooms in cancer patients show benefits in terms of tumor response rate, survival time, or quality of life?Can mushrooms be medicinal? Mushroom-based products make up a sizable chunk of the $50 billion supplement market. “This profitable trade pr
In honor of National American Heritage Month, we are thrilled to share Chef Lois Ellen Frank’s Navajo Minestrone Soup with you. For more about Chef Lois, check out this interview.“Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and First Lady Phefelia Nez have been vocal proponents of healthy eating. President
The American Medical Association passed a resolution encouraging hospitals to offer healthy plant-based food options.“Globally, 11 million deaths annually are attributable to dietary factors, placing poor diet ahead of any other risk factor for death in the world.” Given that diet is our leading kil
