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Your Microbes Are Part of Your Training

Training changes your gut, and your gut bacteria may help you run longer. You know training changes your muscles, heart and lungs. But you may not know that it also changes the microbes in your gut, and that effect may run in both directions.

Eating With Others Might Do More for Your Mental and Physical Health Than You Think

Why living under the same roof as your family may not protect your mood the way you’d expect. The two questions Gallup added to a 150,000-person global survey, and the well-established predictors of wellbeing they went head to head with. What shows up on brain scans of older adults who eat alone, and why better diet quality doesn’t fully account for it.

Is Chronic Inflammation Really Behind Heart Disease?

A drug that shut down inflammation exactly as designed, in 6,300 patients, and what it did to their heart attacks and strokes. Why the same theory has now produced both convincing wins and outright failures, sometimes with the same drug in the same kind of patient. What all of this means for the claim that one process quietly drives heart disease, dementia, and colon cancer alike.

The Science of Mitochondria – A New Look at the Role of Energy in Health and Disease

In Western Medicine, we often think about health in terms of symptoms. Do we have pain somewhere in our body or do we suffer from indigestion? Are we sleeping well? Is our digestion working properly? Are we able to think clearly and stay resilient when life becomes stressful? In contrast much of the focus in Traditional Chinese Medicine has to do with the concept of energy or chi, a viewpoint that until recently Western Medicine has completely neglected.

Eight Questions That Predict How Long You’ll Live

Answer “yes” to just two of these and average life expectancy is 72 for men and 77 for women; answer yes to five and it jumps to 81 and 86; answer all eight and it climbs into the 90s. Notably, having a primary care doctor isn’t on the list — research shows annual checkups alone don’t reduce mortality. The real value of a primary care relationship, the panel noted, comes from earlier conversations about end-of-life wishes and quality of life, not the checkup itself.

GLP-1 Drugs Are Changing Healthcare — But Are They Solving the Real Problem?

Grocery spending among GLP-1 users has dropped, but one category of purchases is quietly surging. One drugmaker built a direct-to-patient platform that’s quietly rerouting how people get prescribed these drugs. Dr. Mayer weighs in on whether these drugs solve the real problem or just add one more pill to the pile.

It’s Not Only Mom’s Microbiome That Matters for the Baby’s Health 

A new study altered gut bacteria in male mice using nothing more than laxatives and antibiotics, then watched what happened three generations later. The fathers showed no signs of health problems. Their offspring were a different story. There’s one detail in this study that could reshape how we think about preconception health altogether.

Choosing The Right Seafood For Optimal Health

The six fish that are both good for your health and good for the planet — and the six popular ones that are neither. How much omega-3 you actually need per day, and which fish get you there fastest? Why locally caught freshwater fish may be one of the most contaminated foods in the American diet.

How to Remove Microplastics from Your Body

The average participant in this study had BPA levels 96 times higher than the European safety limit. One group made a single change — and it wasn’t to their diet. The intervention that moved the needle least was the one most people would try first. The one that worked fastest isn’t what you’d expect.

Can We Reset the Biological Age of Human Cells?

Scientists may have discovered how to reverse aging at the cellular level. The first human trial is underway – resetting the biological age of cells in the eye. A $3 billion company backed by Jeff Bezos is racing to make this real – in near-total secrecy

A Revolutionary New Way To Treat Menopause Symptoms – Targeting The Microbiome

Why do some women sail through menopause while others are blindsided by symptoms? The answer may not be in your ovaries — it’s in your gut. A specialized community of gut bacteria called the “estrobolome” can actually recycle estrogen back into your bloodstream, potentially buffering the hormonal crash of menopause. And unlike your ovaries, your microbiome can be changed — starting with what you eat.

Why So Many Mental Health and Brain-Gut Disorders Overlap

A massive Nature study of 1+ million people shows that depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and even gut-related conditions share common genetic pathways — challenging how we think about diagnosis and treatment.

How to Live to 117: Lessons from the World’s Oldest Woman

When Maria Branyas Morera passed away in August 2024, she was 117 years old, the oldest living person on Earth. Unlike many of us imagine old age, she didn’t spend her last years bedridden or cognitively impaired. She read books, gardened, played piano, enjoyed yogurt and olive oil, walked daily, and kept the company of friends and dogs. Her life was quiet, but her healthspan, the years she lived free from major disease, was extraordinary.

The Sweeter Side of Big Food: Real Change or “Greenwashing?”

One of the stated goals of the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement is to improve the quality of the American diet, including removal of UPFs from our food supply, but the success of this movement in a climate of hostility for any regulation in the production and processing of our food will need to be seen.

The Science Behind Diet and Fertility

As if we didn’t have enough challenges dodging all the social media chatter how to optimize our health and identifying a healthy lifestyle – are you struggling with infertility? If you are, you’re not alone. According to recent studies, one in six individuals face fertility challenges.

What Happens to Your Body When You Stop Eating Meat?

In my practice, I have never asked a patient to become a vegan or vegetarian for health reasons. However, I do recommend reducing meat consumption to approximately 25% of total daily caloric intake, and I fully understand if somebody decides to go vegetarian for ethical or environmental reasons.

Are GLP-1 Agonists More Than Just Anti-Obesity Drugs?

A recently published article in the journal, Nature Medicine, discusses a significant study on the effects of blockbuster obesity drugs like Ozempic, which are known as glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists.

The Hidden Dangers in Plant-Based Food

As I have consistently discussed in my three books and in many posts in this newsletter, there is overwhelming evidence for the overall health-benefit of a largely plant-based diet, an essential component of the traditional Mediterranean lifestyle.

Has the Obesity Epidemic Plateaued?

Obesity has long been one of the most pervasive health challenges in the United States, with rates steadily climbing for decades. In a recent post, I wrote about some troubling report published in the medical journal, The Lancet.