Health Almanac

Dana White exposes why your doctor is ignoring the silent killer destroying your health "The day that we met, my blood pressure was 160 over 110. I was on blood pressure, cholesterol, and thyroid meds—none of which I'm on now. My last reading was 116 over 70" "I would keep doing blood work and the doctors were telling me everything was fine when I knew everything wasn't fine. I couldn't sleep, I had sleep apnea so bad that almost every night I would wake up choking and throwing up. They never fixed anything, they just kept putting me on more pills" "People can lose weight, I’ve done that before. What I didn't do was feel amazing. Now I feel like I'm in my 20s again, my workouts are off the charts, and I’ve never felt better in my life"

Dr. Mitch Rice reveals why relying on the wrong supplements is failing to fix your high blood pressure "The first one on this list and the one that I find helps my patients the most is magnesium glycinate. Magnesium is one of the most important minerals for blood pressure. It helps relax blood vessels, calm the nervous system, and improve sleep quality" "Low magnesium is very common, especially after the age of 60. When magnesium levels are low, arteries stay tight and blood pressure stays higher than it needs to be. This alone can lower systolic blood pressure by about five points" "Co-enzyme Q10 helps your cells produce energy and supports healthy blood vessels. This is especially important if you're taking blood pressure medications since some of them can lower CoQ10 levels" "Potassium helps balance sodium and relax arteries. Getting potassium from food is always the best option, but some people may benefit from low dose supplementation. This is not for everyone, especially if you have kidney problems"

Dr. David Sinclair reveals why eating late at night is sabotaging your metabolism and driving fat storage "You have clocks in your liver, your pancreas, your gut, and even your fat cells. They have their own clocks that are determined not by when we sleep, but predominantly by when you eat" "When you eat a big meal at 10 p.m., your brain thinks it's time to rest, but your organs think it's time to digest. It's that mismatch, what we call metabolic jet lag, that can mess with your sleep, impair your glucose control, and drive more fat storage" "Your insulin sensitivity is highest in the morning, meaning your body processes food best earlier in the day. So, when eating patterns don't line up with your body's clock, the result is metabolic dysfunction" "Some researchers even argue that obesity itself may be partly a chronobiological disease. It's not just about how much you eat, but just as much when you eat"

Dr. Leonid Kim reveals why your doctor is ignoring the hidden hormone driving your high blood pressure "Magnesium supplementation resulted in almost 8 mm of mercury drop in systolic blood pressure. Now, let's talk about insulin because insulin is one of the most underappreciated blood pressure hormones" "When insulin levels are elevated, the kidneys start to retain sodium. As a result, your kidneys hold on to sodium and they hold on to water and that in turn causes your blood pressure to go up" "This is why people with insulin resistance or pre-diabetes often end up with high blood pressure, and it's also why blood pressure often gets better when insulin levels drop even before someone loses much weight" "Salt or sodium can temporarily raise your blood pressure, but it's the persistently high insulin levels that turn this into a chronic problem. And this is also where"

Dr. Rhonda Patrick reveals why high glucose intake is secretly stiffening your heart and increasing your risk of heart attack "Why does the heart stiffen with time? Well, it has a lot to do with being exposed to a lot of glucose. When you're eating a lot of refined sugar and refined carbohydrates, you're having a lot of glucose around in your system." "This causes a chemical reaction called glycation, so you get these advanced glycation end products that react with the collagen lining your heart, and it causes it to stiffen. Now the heart can't really respond to stress well. It's stiff, and that plays a role in heart attacks." "Exercise is one of the best things you can do to move glucose out of your vascular system and get it into your muscles. Essentially, these 50-year-olds had their heart structure become bigger and less stiff after two years of this exercise protocol."

Dr. David Sinclair reveals why your constant snacking is sabotaging your longevity genes "I've got a couple of glucose monitors on my arm, and it's really quite amazing how after a few days, your glucose levels really flatten out. My liver is making its own sugar. I don't feel hungry at all. I feel really awake, alert. My brain's working well" "I've got lots of ketones circulating through my blood which are feeding my brain. You're burning fat, you need liquid. You need water to break down fat" "What I really like about this is that I know that it's turning on my longevity genes. My NAD levels would be high. My sirtuin activity would be high. My mTor would be repressed because there's not a lot of amino acids in my system"

Thomas DeLauer reveals why daily consumption of Brazil nuts is sabotaging your thyroid health "All you need is one to two Brazil nuts per week, and that gives you roughly 80 micrograms of selenium or more. That's enough even on its own to meaningfully give you decent selenium status if you're deficient" "The slow tissue incorporation that makes daily dosing super dangerous is also the same biology that makes weekly dosing work. Selenium stays active in your tissues so you don't have to redose it every day" "One nut can top off the system and then your body has time to use it before the next one comes in. So I recommend you test"

Dr. David Unwin reveals why your fatty liver is secretly sabotaging your ability to regulate blood sugar for 10 years before you feel a thing "This is the healthy liver here. Look at this one. It's yellow. It's the wrong color, and it's because of fat. It's larger because of so much fat in it, and that fatty liver interferes with the good work of insulin" "You develop a thing called insulin resistance, which means your insulin is no longer as powerful as it was. It's beginning to become difficult for you to deal with carbohydrate and sugar because your insulin isn't working as well" "This is called the long silent scream from the liver. You've got fatty liver for about 10 years and you don't even know. But unfortunately, fat is being laid down in the pancreas gland, and your ability to produce enough insulin collapses"

Dr. Alex reveals why the common "flush your kidneys" hydration myth is actually destroying your blood chemistry "There is this persistent myth in the wellness space that drinking enormous quantities of water is just really good for your kidneys. That more is always better, that you should always be drinking 3 to 4 liters a day, that your kidneys need to be constantly flushed" "In people who already have reduced kidney function, it can actually be really harmful because the kidneys struggle to excrete the excess water load. What this can cause is actually something called hyponatremia, which is a really low sodium level in your blood" "What the kidneys actually need really is just adequate perfusion, consistent sufficient blood flow, which requires you to not be dehydrated. And the easiest way to check whether you're getting enough fluid in isn't counting the amount that you drink, it's the color of your urine"

Andrew Huberman reveals why the cortico-striatal-thalamic loop is sabotaging your ability to filter intrusive thoughts "About 40 to 50% of OCD cases have some genetic component, some mutation or some inherited aspect. While that's interesting, I don't think it's terribly useful for most people. First of all, you can't really control your genes. Just know that there is a genetic component in about half of people with OCD, but not always" "Dozens, if not hundreds of studies have now identified a particular circuit or loop of brain areas that are interconnected and very active in obsessive-compulsive disorder. That loop includes the cortex, which is involved in action selection and holding back action, and the thalamus" "The thalamus is this incredible egg-like structure in the center of your brain that serves as a sort of gate as to which information is allowed to pass through up to your conscious experience and which is not. We now know based on neuroimaging studies it is intimately involved in generating obsessions and compulsions"

Derek reveals why relying on total testosterone is failing to measure your actual hormonal health "Total testosterone is the number that most people are familiar with, which reflects the total production that can be detected in your sample of blood. Just because it's in your blood though, it doesn't mean it's biologically active. If it's bound to these binding proteins produced by the liver, it could be entirely inactive" "SHBG is the primary one—sex hormone binding globulin. This acts as a regulator of androgenicity in the body. SHBG is about 60% of your total T, 38% is albumin, and then 2% to 3% is actually free testosterone" "The free testosterone number is just freely circulating, not bound to binding proteins, and it's readily available to be used by target tissues. A lot of people will just say look at your free testosterone because that's the number that matters, but it still doesn't reflect total production capacity"

Dr. Rhonda Patrick reveals why your sedentary lifestyle is destroying your heart’s elasticity "The Norwegian 4 by 4 is the gold standard. This is one of the most exciting pieces of evidence I’ve seen with respect to exercise and aging, and that is that being part of an exercise protocol was shown to reverse the structural changes that occur with age in the heart by 20 years" "As we age, our hearts shrink and they get stiffer. Why does the heart stiffen with time? Well, it has a lot to do with actually being exposed to a lot of glucose. When you’re eating a lot of refined sugar and refined carbohydrates, you’re having a lot of glucose around in your system" "This causes a chemical reaction called glycation, so you get these advanced glycation end products that react with the collagen that’s lining your heart, your myocardium, and it causes it to stiffen. Exercise is one of the best things you can do to move glucose out of your vascular system and get it to your muscles"

Dr. David Sinclair reveals why the standard three-meal-a-day eating pattern is sabotaging your metabolic health "My typical day is like this: I skip breakfast when I can. I'm not hungry till mid to late afternoon. If I get a little peckish, I just drink tea. Towards the later afternoon, I might eat a few nuts if I really feel like I need some energy" "The best thing about actually doing this diet is I can eat a really large meal at dinner and not feel guilty and not put on weight. Having switched to a window of eating which stretches from about 3:00 in the afternoon to about 9:00 at night, I've been able to keep my weight at a very consistent level" "It's been scientifically shown that maintaining a consistent body weight is very important for long-term health as well. So what works for me is this 18-hour fast. We call this the 18/6 fasting window"

Dr. Mike Israetel explains why capping mega profits is destroying the innovation that makes life-saving medicine affordable "If I am not allowed to make any more than a very nice but small amount of money at work, then my probability of going overtime for work falls super low" "The real question is what effect does incentivizing people with mega profits have on the output of society overall versus if we clamp those profits down" "If you have a high degree of free enterprise, you allow people to collect huge upside profits. They just innovate like crazy and the standard of living rises and they invent tons of medications" "They make processes that typically were reserved for luxury people normal. The people that founded and ran Uber and Lyft and all these car companies, they brought"

Tamsen Fadal reveals why the standard approach to weight loss in midlife is sabotaging your metabolic health "In perimenopause and menopause, our hormones shift, specifically estrogen that drops. When estrogen drops, our bodies start storing fat differently. The fat that used to live on your hips and your chest in your fertile years has moved to your middle" "It's not your imagination. It's not your fault. It is biology, which we didn't learn in biology. On top of that, you start losing muscle mass, which is your body's calorie burning engine" "When you say, 'I'm doing exactly what I did at 35 and it's not working,' you're right. It's not. The rules have changed and nobody told us about them"

Dr. Sten Ekberg exposes why the vegan diet is secretly sabotaging your body by ignoring critical nutrient deficiencies "Instead of just promoting a romanticized idea that everyone should be vegan and that vegetables are sacred, I have actually identified the nutritional deficiencies to help people understand that following a vegan diet involves some challenges." "In particular regarding vitamins A, D, E, and fat-soluble B6 and B12 vitamins, in addition to many other B vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids, and forms of iron, zinc, and calcium that are absorbable and usable." "I mention these things to help people understand that this might not be the optimal choice. I understand the desire of some to follow this approach from a philosophical perspective, but they must realize that exposing themselves to certain nutritional deficiencies is not necessarily healthy."

Derek explains why testing your testosterone levels early in the morning is failing to give you an accurate result "Typically the best way to assess peak levels would be early in the morning, and ideally you would have not taken certain confounding variable supplements like biotin that can cross-detect estrogens and whatnot" "Some people incorrectly think they have an elevated hematocrit level when in reality they're just super dehydrated when they go in, and they think they're going to have a heart attack and need to donate blood, which might not be the case" "You see a 495 total testosterone and think that's not great, it should be closer to 1,000. Some people haphazardly get on testosterone, but you definitely don't want to go off of one reading. You want to go off of symptoms and repeat measurements to confirm your findings"

Thomas DeLauer reveals why eating Brazil nuts daily is secretly poisoning your tissue stores "With most water-soluble nutrients, your body clears the excess really fast through the urine. Selenium does not work that way. Selenium status in the Brazil nut group remained elevated for weeks, not days" "Selenium does not just float around in your blood. It gets physically incorporated into selenoproteins. These proteins are embedded in tissues throughout your entire body. Once selenium is built into those structures, it stays there until the protein turns over" "If you're eating Brazil nuts daily and you happen to hit a few high selenium nuts in a row, you aren't just spiking blood levels. You are loading selenium into tissue stores that will take weeks to normalize" "It's not from one bad day, but from a little bit of accumulation that outpaces the body's ability to just turn those selenoproteins over. And that is how chronic selenosis develops"

Dr. Leonid Kim reveals why the standard diet is failing to give you enough magnesium and destroying your blood pressure regulation "The issue is how your body is processing it. And this is where the real causes of high blood pressure start to show up. One of the first things I look at is magnesium, which plays an absolutely critical role in blood pressure regulation" "When magnesium is low, blood vessels stay more constricted than they should, and that makes it more difficult for blood to move. This is what causes your blood pressure to go up" "Some estimates say almost half of the US population does not get enough magnesium through their diet. There is a meta-analysis of 22 studies that found that people with lower magnesium levels had higher odds of high blood pressure" "Eating a lot of sugar also makes your body lose magnesium in your urine, which then makes the problem even worse. Modern farming often pulls minerals out of the soil faster than they're being replaced"

Dr. Casey Means reveals why fatty liver disease is silently destroying your metabolism "Roughly one in three adults walking around right now has fatty liver, and the vast majority of these people don't even drink alcohol. The medical community actually renamed this disease because alcohol isn't the main driver anymore. Not even close" "Your liver isn't just some filter sitting inside your body; it is the master organ of your metabolism. When you overload it day after day, it starts storing fat right inside its cells like a sponge that got too full and starts leaking" "Once your liver gets fatty, your whole metabolism breaks down. You stop burning fat efficiently, your blood sugar gets harder to regulate, and your hormones get scrambled"

Dr. David Unwin reveals why waiting to treat your blood sugar is sabotaging your 93% chance of natural remission "People with pre-diabetes in my practice, 93% of them will get a completely normal blood sugar if they go low carb. That 93% resolution will last for years because I've checked" "If I can get you early with Type 2 diabetes, I've got a 73% chance of you having a normal blood sugar. But if we wait five years, you only stand a 50% chance" "The chances of me not needing drugs and being able to do a good job for you are diminishing. Really, it's a stitch in time"