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. Sten Ekberg exposes why the original food pyramid is killing our health and fueling a $5.7 trillion medical crisis "75% of adults in the United States suffer from one or more chronic diseases. Even if we look at young people aged 18 to 34, 60% of them are already suffering from a chronic disease" "For children aged 12 to 17, one in three is now pre-diabetic, meaning their A1C level exceeds 5.7. Since the time these dietary guidelines were first recommended, obesity rates have skyrocketed from 15% in 1980 to 42% today" "Last year, healthcare spending in the United States reached $5.7 trillion, which is approximately $16,000 per person. When you look closely, almost all of this money is spent directly or indirectly on treating chronic diseases"

Dr. Mindy Pelz reveals why relying on weight loss drugs is failing to change your long-term physiology "If I put you on a medication and I change you through a pharmacological substance, the question is what happens if I take that medication away? And what we're noticing with these weight loss drugs is the answer is no. Fifty percent of the people that go on them are off of them within the first year" "We got to teach people how to make it themselves. There is actually research showing that there is an ideal GLP-1 plate that we can put together. It is a combination of fiber, protein, and healthy fat" "You want every single meal to look for 20 to 40 grams of protein. It is the most filling macronutrient you can possibly eat and it is one of the strongest natural triggers for GLP-1 hormone"

Dr. David Unwin reveals why your doctor is ignoring the simple dietary change that is failing to stop your type 2 diabetes "Nothing prepared me for what was going to happen that morning, and it's changed my entire life on that point. A patient marched in and said, 'You think you're going to tell me off, don't you, Dr. Unwin? Well, I've got news for you. I'm going to tell you off" "She said, 'When you do my blood tests, you will find that my blood glucose is completely normal despite not taking your metformin. In the last 10 years, did you ever once tell me that bread was sugar or breakfast cereals were sugar? I had to learn online that bread is sugar, that rice is sugar, that breakfast cereals are sugar" "I was dead scared because every word she said was true. I said, 'If this is true, will you meet me again? Let's do the blood test.' We did the blood test. It was true. It was the first case of drug-free type 2 diabetes I'd ever seen"

Dr. Eric Berg reveals why changing diagnostic thresholds for cholesterol is secretly destroying your health "In 1988, normal LDL was 190 and then in 2001, the committee dropped the 190 to 130. Statin prescriptions doubled in the next 3 years" "Then in 2013 they dropped it again. Overnight 12.9 million people were now diagnosed with high cholesterol" "Presently we have 86 million people diagnosed with high cholesterol, and most of them are put on medication"

Tamsen Fadal reveals why alcohol is the silent accelerant of belly fat in midlife "The bloating was a huge problem for me because I felt awful. It was debilitating sometimes. My stomach felt flatter just from less inflammation, not from weight loss or anything, just from less inflammation" "I cut way back on alcohol. And the reason is because it might have made one of the biggest differences out of all five, which I hate to admit" "Alcohol is one of the biggest accelerants of belly fat in midlife. The biggest reason is that alcohol literally stops your body from burning fat. The minute alcohol hits your system, your body stops burning fat" "Because alcohol is technically a toxin to your body, your body prioritizes burning the alcohol off before it does anything else, including burning the food you're eating or the fat that"

Dr. Mike Israetel reveals why the competitive spirit of the Olympics would be destroyed without the influence of money and sponsors "We paid no one any money for it and we didn't give out medals because it was kind of gross to rank people. How much of the beauty of competitive sport and humans at their best would we see at the Olympics? Bro, there wouldn't even be an Olympics. It would be like some event in Cincinnati, Ohio, and no one would care about it" "Because the Olympics are given so much praise and so many gold medals and money and contracts and sponsors, then man, athletes will grind their entire lives for one medal"

Dr. Ford Brewer reveals why the blood sugar spike your doctor ignores is destroying your artery walls "The first thing every artery cleaning diet has in common has to do with blood sugar, but it's something that standard annual checkups are just not going to catch" "Every time your blood sugar goes up, the lining of your arteries starts to take damage. We call that lining the intima or endothelium. It's delicate, and you don't want to damage it because it's so important" "There's a specific number that you need to be aware of, and that number is 140 mg per deciliter. Every time your blood sugar crosses that line after a meal, and it stays up there, it triggers an inflammation response in your artery wall. And that inflammation is what builds plaque" "It's not fat. It's not cholesterol by itself. The repeated blood sugar spikes twice a day every day for hour after hour, that's what damages your artery"

Dr. Mindy Pelz reveals why ignoring fiber is sabotaging your GLP-1 hormone and fat burning potential "Fiber slows down digestion. It blunts blood sugar spikes. It feeds the gut microbes in your gut that make things like GLP-1 hormone and produce short-chain fatty acids and make things like serotonin" "For menopausal women, you're losing hormones. You want to make sure that the hormones you are getting are in a format your cells can use. Fiber re-formats them" "One food choice, looking at getting 25g of fiber every single day, starts to help feed those microbes that make this miraculous hormone. Fiber also feeds the microbes of a whole set of bacteria called the estrobolome that break estrogen down so it becomes more usable" "Fiber also feeds the microbes that make melatonin that helps you sleep. Fiber also feeds the microbes that makes the neurotransmitter serotonin. This is the most important food group, in my opinion, for overall health"

Thomas DeLauer explains why eating even one Brazil nut could be sabotaging your thyroid function "You absolutely can get a serum selenium or GPX activity test and that's a pretty cheap test to get. If your levels are already adequate, adding Brazil nuts, even one a week, actually can push you into the wrong side of the U-shaped curve" "A 500-fold variability is a lot and it's documented. The tissue retention is documented. The narrow safety window is documented and knowing these things is what lets you use them safely instead of avoiding them entirely" "If you have selenotoxicity, it throws off all kinds of other mineral balances. It throws off enzymatic function and thyroid function. It's not good, so you do have to be careful with this"

Dr. Eric Berg reveals why taking the wrong form of NAC is failing to fix your fatty liver "Your liver is under attack every single day, not just from food, but from alcohol, plastics, air pollution, seed oils, pesticides, medications, stress hormones, and ultra-processed foods. To survive that assault, your liver relies heavily on this master antioxidant, glutathione" "If glutathione gets depleted, fat starts building in the liver, inflammation rises, and detox pathways get shut down. That means energy crashes harder and your metabolism starts to struggle. Most people are running on glutathione fumes" "Most NAC supplements are under-dosed, poor quality, or loaded with fillers. People buy random products online, take it for a few weeks, and notice nothing. They assume NAC doesn't work, but the quality was the problem"

Dr. David Jockers reveals why breaking a 72-hour fast with a large meal is destroying your immune regeneration "At 72 hours, the immune regeneration activates. White blood cell counts are dropping. The body is recycling its old immune cells. Stem cells are receiving the signal to shift from dormancy to self-renewal" "The single biggest mistake I see is people ending 72 hours with a large meal. That insulin spike immediately shuts down autophagy, creates digestive distress, and undoes a significant portion of what the body just spent 72 hours building" "I break every 72 hour fast the same way. Bone broth first. It provides amino acids and minerals to the gut wall in a completely digestible form without spiking insulin" "This is when the body is in its most receptive state. The newly generated immune cells need specific raw materials to fully differentiate and mature"

Dr. Ford Brewer reveals why the standard American diet is secretly destroying your arteries and sabotaging your heart health "A good diet actively supports a calm, low inflammation environment through the absence of heavily processed ingredients, especially heavily processed carb-heavy ingredients like grains that keep quietly irritating your blood vessels day after day" "The standard American diet does the most damage. It's high in refined carbs and ultra-processed food, while the vitamins, minerals, and plant compounds that your artery walls actually need to repair themselves are almost completely absent" "A meta-analysis of 22 studies found that people who ate the most ultra-processed food had 17% higher risk of heart disease and 23% higher risk of coronary artery disease. These are not rounding errors, 17% and 23%"

Dr. Mindy Pelz reveals why specific food combinations are destroying your ability to produce natural GLP-1 "What are the foods that are GLP-1 amplifiers? The best combination based off of everything that I just told you is to combine protein with fat. Eggs and fatty fish—this can be everything from cod to wild salmon to mackerels to sardines to anchovies" "Grass-fed meats and grass-fed dairy have that combo of high protein and high omega-3 ratio. That makes it a perfect food for supporting these microbes so that they can make you GLP-1 hormone" "Lentils are my new hero. I have them every single day, sprouted lentils, and they're so packed with protein and they have so much fiber" "Third category are some of your good mono-unsaturated fats. I have an avocado every day, olive oil, and nuts, but I want them to be raw nuts so they still have the enzymes in them that can feed the microbes in your gut that make this hormone"

Dr. Eric Berg reveals why overdiagnosis is secretly labeling 31 million people with chronic disease overnight "In 2017, a total cliff goes straight up in vertical. Overnight, 31 million people were now diagnosed with hypertension. Now, what's really wild about this is their blood pressure has not changed." "In 1988, an LDL level of 190 was considered normal. By 2001, that threshold had dropped to 130, and statin prescriptions doubled. The classification for high cholesterol dropped again in 2013." "Prediabetes was also introduced as a diagnostic category, and today more than 115 million Americans have diabetes or prediabetes. Expanded diagnostic classifications have not translated into longer life expectancy."

Dr. Ford Brewer reveals why your "normal" fasting lab results are secretly hiding the blood sugar spikes killing your arteries "His doctor looked at the number and said he was fine. But Mike was eating cereal in the morning and a sandwich at lunch. After these meals, his blood sugar was hitting 170, 180, and sometimes even higher every single day" "His fasting number looked clean because blood sugar comes back down overnight. The damage was happening in the hours after the meals, and nobody was checking it. Fasting labs are just not going to show this" "You need either a continuous glucose monitor that tracks blood sugar all day long or a basic glucometer to check about half an hour and then two hours after you eat. The damage isn't happening at your annual checkup, it's happening twice a day at least" "Every time a meal sends your blood sugar way over 140, you're damaging your vessels. The second thing every artery cleaning diet has in common is"

Gary Brecka reveals why eating dinner late is destroying your metabolism and liver health "I stopped eating before bed. There's a study that came out of Oxford published in Cell Metabolism that tracked people with fatty liver disease. Liver fat production literally ramps up overnight while you are sleeping. Insulin sensitivity drops and insulin resistance gets worse, in your liver, your muscles, and your belly fat, all at the same time" "People with fatty liver in this study were eating more than 40% of their daily calories at dinner. It's like your liver is trying to fix the house at night and you keep throwing more garbage in the front door every five minutes" "I was a late-night eater. Big dinner at 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. And then I'd snack after, maybe have a bowl of cereal at 11:00 p.m. I'd wake up at 7:00 a.m. feeling like a freight train hit me. I told my doctor I sleep eight hours and wake up exhausted. Not once did he ask me what time I eat dinner"

Andrew Huberman reveals why identifying your specific catastrophic fear is the only way to break the OCD loop "The most commonly used test for OCD is called the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale, the Y-BOCS. Before the clinician would proceed with any kind of direct questions, they would clearly define what obsessions and compulsions are" "Obsessions are unwelcome and distressing ideas, thoughts, images, or impulses that repeatedly enter your mind. Compulsions, on the other hand, are behaviors or acts that you feel driven to perform, although you may recognize them as senseless or excessive" "It becomes very important for the clinician and the patient to not just identify the obsessions and the compulsions in a generic way, but to really encourage or even force the patient to define very precisely what the biggest, most catastrophic fear is"

Dr. Casey Means reveals why the post-dinner couch habit is secretly destroying your liver "Walking after your meals is the lowest effort, highest reward habit I have ever discovered for fatty liver. It doesn't require equipment, it doesn't require fancy supplements, it doesn't even require sweating. Simply walk for 10 to 15 minutes after your meals." "When you sit down on the couch after dinner, like the average American does every single night of their life, that glucose goes right into the liver. Brick by brick, fat cell by fat cell. But when you walk, your muscles open up like a sponge. They pull glucose right out of the bloodstream and burn it for fuel." "The research on this is wild. A 10 to 20 minute walk after meals can reduce your post-meal blood sugar spike by up to 30%. That's not from medication, that's just from getting off the couch. And over time, this single habit pulls fat directly out of the liver." "I used to spend hours in the gym, I got nowhere with this. Then I started walking 15 minutes just after dinner and this worked to pull more fat from my belly than any elliptical or stair climber that I ever used. So, your action step after every meal or at the very minimal after your biggest meal of the day, go for a 10 to"

Dr. Ford Brewer reveals why ignoring muscle loss in your 50s is actively destroying your blood sugar control "Anytime you're in your late 50s or beyond, you really have to worry about maintaining muscle. Muscle isn't just about being strong, it's actually your body's main tool for clearing out blood sugar after meals. It's your best internal safety valve" "Lose the muscle, which happens naturally as we age if we're not actively working against it, and your blood sugar control just gets worse. Every meal hits harder" "That's a feedback loop that most diets never mention. Less muscle leads to higher spikes in your sugar, higher spikes in your sugar damage the arteries more, and the problem continues to spiral out of control as we age" "What does a diet that hits all three criteria look like on a real plate? And how do you know if what you're eating now really qualifies?"

Dr. David Sinclair reveals why your aging brain is failing to process glucose and how to switch to a more efficient fuel source "By cutting back on carbohydrates, you're flipping a switch that tells your body to start producing molecules as an alternative energy source besides glucose. Research shows that eating less often has been linked to improvements in metabolic health, insulin sensitivity, and even biomarkers of aging" "In 2018, a study asked what fuel does the aging brain still use as cognition declined. What the researchers found was that the brain became less able to use its normal fuel, glucose, but the ketone uptake remained relatively preserved" "This suggests that even when the aging brain struggles to use sugar for energy, it can probably still use ketones as the fuel"