We wish you all a Happy and Healthy New Year. The above quote sent to me by my good friend Gordon Bernhardt encapsulates nicely an ideal way of looking at the new year and how to frame strategies for growth and change.
One of my goals is to increase the amount and frequency of information I share with you all. In celebration of my 25th year of practicing medicine, I’ll strive to create more helpful content and information. We look forward to hearing about your goals and plans for 2025.
Journaling’s Impact on the Brain: Unveiling the Cognitive and Emotional Benefits
This good article takes an important look at the benefits of journaling – from expanding neuroplasticity, regulating emotions, improving memory, and enhancing mindfulness – there’s much to gain by putting thoughts to paper.
The history of journaling is as rich and varied as the human experience itself. From the introspective musings of Marcus Aurelius to the vivid accounts of explorers like Lewis and Clark, journals have long served as windows into the minds of their authors. In recent years, however, there’s been a growing interest in journaling not just as a means of self-expression, but as a powerful tool for cognitive and emotional well-being.
Lab and plant-based meat delusions collide with reality – from Chris Kresser
Yet another “alt meat” company, Motif FoodWorks, is going out of business. According to food business expert Julian Mellentin, approximately one of these types of businesses folds each week, due to poor retail sales of lab and plant-based meat and declining investor interest.
I’ve written extensively on this topic in the past – lab- and plant-based meat failed to demonstrate health benefits relative to real meat, and even their supposed environmental benefits turned out to be grossly overstated – especially when the true impact of all inputs was considered. The best option we have (from both a health and ecological perspective) continues to be meat from regeneratively-raised animals.
Chief Medical Officer of Pendulum Therapeutics, Dr. Adam Perlman, talks about probiotics and health in this video interview from A4M
Dr. Perlman is a good friend and colleague who has had an impressive medical career in the academic and integrative space. We worked together early in our careers in New Jersey. He was one of the first clinicians to introduce me to the burgeoning field of evidence-based integrative medicine and wellness 25 years ago. His company produces among other products the excellent GLP-1 Probiotic.
Dr. Perlman is the Chief Medical Officer at Pendulum Therapeutics, bringing a wealth of experience in integrative and functional medicine. Before joining Pendulum, he held several prestigious positions, including senior associate consultant in General Internal Medicine at Mayo Clinic, Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness at Duke University Health System, and Executive Director for Duke Integrative Medicine.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Perlman was the Executive Director of the Institute for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at UMDNJ, where he also served as an Associate Professor and held the Hunterdon Endowed Professorship in Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Creatine: Far More Than a Performance Enhancer
Creatine, best known for its ability to build muscle and enhance athletic performance, is also critical for fertility, digestion, mental health, protecting your hearing, and keeping your skin vibrant and youthful.
In this episode, Alex Leaf of Examine.Com and I discuss everything you need to know about creatine. I focus on the basic science of what it does in the body, and Alex takes the lead in discussing the practicalities of supplementation.
Methylation and Creatine
We are now learning that creatine has many important properties. One of the most important benefits of creatine supplementation is that it improves methylation. It is believed that about 30% of our body’s methylation process is dedicated to creating creatine. By supplementing with creatine, we can offload this methylation burden, thus allowing more methyl groups to be used for important functions.
US Still Last for Life Expectancy Among English-Speaking Countries
A study in August demonstrated that Americans continue to rank dead last in life expectancy among their English-speaking brethren. The researchers pointed out that people in the U.S. more often fall prey to accidental deaths, homicides, and chronic diseases.
On the other hand, Australians had the longest life expectancy of any English speakers, with a life expectancy nearly four years longer than the U.S. for women and fiver more years for men. U.S. women live on average of 81.5 years and men 76.5 years.
Factors such as location can be critical to life expectancy; more longevity is generally seen in California and Hawaii and less in the South which may be correlated to income and access to health resources.
One of the main drivers of why American longevity is so much shorter than in other high-income countries is our younger people die at higher rates from largely preventable causes of death, like drug overdose, car accidents and homicide,” Ho said in a Penn State news release.
Middle-aged Americans ages 45 to 64 also have higher rates of death from drugs, alcohol and chronic illnesses like heart disease […].
“Some of the latter could be related to sedentary lifestyle, high rates of obesity, unhealthy diet, stress and a history of smoking,” Ho said. “It’s likely that these patterns of unhealthy behaviors put Americans at a disadvantage in terms of their health and vitality.
A New Revolutionary Technology That Can Predict Cardiovascular Risk With Precision, Part 1
Dr. Ronald Hoffman is an excellent internist and integrative medicine pioneer. Here in this podcast, he interviews Dr.James Min, the CEO of Cleerly and a leader in cardiovascular imaging. They speak about the exciting field of CT Angiograms and other improved imaging studies to better assess heart health. I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Min a few years ago when I started experimenting on myself and began sharing with patients how to use these technologies.
“Current ways of visualizing the coronary arteries with calcium scoring are limited: the presence of calcium doesn’t always determine risk; its absence doesn’t fully eliminate the possibility of soft plaque, which is actually more dangerous than stable calcium deposits. Dr. James Min is an expert on cardiovascular imaging and founder and CEO of Cleerly, a company that has developed an improved scan that can differentiate between dangerous unstable plaque, and more benign lesions.
The test can be used to establish risk, and then medication and/or lifestyle modification with diet, stress reduction, exercise and supplements can be undertaken. Subsequent tests can yield a report card for how successful the preventive interventions have been. Dr. Min emphasizes that even in settings of high cholesterol the test can show minimal risk, reducing the need for cholesterol medication; conversely, people with low cholesterol may have substantial dangerous plaque. The Cleerly test promises to revolutionize our approach to cardiovascular prevention. Click HERE for part 2.”
NAC for the Prevention of the Flu
This classic and very impressive study showed that taking N-acetylcysteine (NAC) a precursor of glutathione and which has been used in hospitals for more than 30 years, reduced the number of people with symptoms of flu from 79% to 25%.
The dosage used was 600 mg twice daily for the winter season. This is the same dose found in our custom Immune Armor supplement. We also like it as an individual ingredient or with other lung-supportive supplements in these products on Fullscript.
Look out for upcoming posts on the best of 2024 where I’ll be sharing my favorite articles, health trends, favorite supplements and health products, most important labs and studies, the latest on Covid, and what I’ve been reading and working on with my brother in the field performance, virtues, and classical learning.
