The Plant Power Doctor
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A Prescription For GLOVES
This is Dr. Gemma Newman. Sheโs a GP (General Practitioner, British equivalent to what is called a family doctor in America), and she realized that she was treating a lot of patients while nobody was actually getting better.
So, she set out to help people actually get betterโฆ But how?
The biggest thing
The single biggest thing she recommends is a whole foods plant-based diet, as thatโs a starting point for a lot of other things.
Click here for an assortment of short videos by her and other health professionals on this topic!
Specifically, she advocates to โlove foods that love you backโ, and make critical choices when deciding between ingredients.
Click here to see her recipes and tips (this writer is going to try out some of these!)
Whatโs this about GLOVES?
We recently reviewed her book โGet Well, Stay Well: The Six Healing Health Habits You Need To Knowโ, and now weโre going to talk about those six things in more words than we had room for previously.
They are six things that she says we should all try to get every day. Itโs a lot simpler than a lot of checklists, and very worthwhile:
Gratitude
May seem like a wishy-washy one to start with, but thereโs a lot of evidence for this making a big difference to health, largely on account of how it lowers stress and anxiety. See also:
How To Get Your Brain On A More Positive Track (Without Toxic Positivity)
Love
This is about social connections, mostly. We are evolved to be a social species, and while some of us want/need more or less social interaction than others, generally speaking we thrive best in a community, with all the social support that comes with that. See also:
How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation
Outside
This is about fresh air and itโs about moving and itโs about seeing some green plants (and if available, blue sky), marvelling at the wonder of nature and benefiting in many ways. See also:
Vegetables
We spoke earlier about the whole foods plant-based diet for which she advocates, so this is that. While reducing/skipping meat etc is absolutely a thing, the focus here is on diversity of vegetables; it is best to make a game of seeing how many different ones you can include in a week (not just the same three!). See also:
Three Critical Kitchen Prescriptions
Exercise
At least 150 minutes moderate exercise per week, and some kind of resistance work. It can be calisthenics or something; it doesnโt have to be lifting weights if thatโs not your thing! See also:
Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
Sleep
Quality and quantity. Yes, 7โ9 hours, yes, regardless of age. Unless youโre a child or a bodybuilder, in which case make it nearer 12. But for most of us, 7โ9. See also:
Why You Probably Need More Sleep
Want to know more?
As well as the book we mentioned earlier, you might also like:
The Plant Power Doctor โ by Dr. Gemma Newman
While the other book we mentioned is available for pre-order for Americans (itโs already released for the rest of the world), this one is available to all right now, so thatโs a bonus too.
If books arenโt your thing (or even if they are), you might like her award-winning podcast:
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5 Reasons Why You Canโt Squat Deep
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If youโre struggling, these are the likely stumbling blocks and how to get past them:
Drop it like itโs squat
The deep squat (also called resting squat, sitting squat, Slav squat, Asian squat, and more) is a natural resting position that most Western adults lose due to lack of regular use, leading to reduced mobility in associated areas too. And because of how the body works in terms of musculoskeletal system and fascia, “associated areas” ends up being pretty much the whole body.
So, with that in mind, here are the 5 things, and what to do about them:
- Ankle mobility: this becomes a problem when limited ankle dorsiflexion stops your shin from moving forward, causing your heel to lift and your weight to shift forwards
- ankle test: stand about 10cm from a wall, and move your knee forwards while keeping your heel flat; if your knee can touch the wall without your heel lifting, your ankle dorsiflexion is sufficient; if not, then work is needed on it
- ankle fix: do elevated heel raises, by lowering your body from a step and rising onto your toes (and repeat), to build strength and mobility through full range
- Knee flexion: insufficient knee bend beyond 120ยฐ stops depth early, usually due to tight quads, joint stiffness, or prior injury
- knee fix: do the “couch stretch” by elevating your back foot, putting your back knee down, squeezing your glutes, and driving your hip forwards, to restore knee and hip mobility
- Hip mobility, general: limited hip flexion or tight adductors prevent your pelvis from dropping between your thighs, often causing lower back rounding or hip compression
- hip fix (CARs): do controlled articular rotations (CARs) by lifting your knee, rotating it out, and moving it through a full circular range, to train active control
- hip fix (sumo squat): hold a weight, take a wide stance with toes turned out, sink deep, and push your knees outwards to build strength and mobility at the end of your range of motion
- Hip external rotation: weak or tight external rotators cause your knees to collapse inwards, and your squat to feel unstable
- stance adjustment: turn your toes outwards until your knees track naturally over your feet, to match your individual hip structure
- external rotation fix: do side-lying banded clamshells, by opening your top knee while keeping your feet together, to strengthen your glutes
- Thoracic mobility: a stiff upper back causes your chest to collapse forwards, even if your lower body mobility is sufficient
- thoracic fix (foam roller): extend your upper back over a foam roller, segment by segment, to improve extension
- thoracic fix (counterbalance squat): hold a light weight in front of your chest while squatting, to keep your center of mass forwards and maintain an upright torso
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
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- Ankle mobility: this becomes a problem when limited ankle dorsiflexion stops your shin from moving forward, causing your heel to lift and your weight to shift forwards
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Ovarian cancer is hard to detect. Focusing on these 4 symptoms can help withย diagnosis
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Ovarian cancers are often found when they are already advanced and hard to treat.
Researchers have long believed this was because women first experienced symptoms when ovarian cancer was already well-established. Symptoms can also be hard to identify as theyโre vague and similar to other conditions.
But a new study shows promising signs ovarian cancer can be detected in its early stages. The study targeted women with four specific symptoms โ bloating, abdominal pain, needing to pee frequently, and feeling full quickly โ and put them on a fast track to see a specialist.
As a result, even the most aggressive forms of ovarian cancer could be detected in their early stages.
So what did the study find? And what could it mean for detecting โ and treating โ ovarian cancer more quickly?
Ground Picture/Shutterstock Why is ovarian cancer hard to detect early?
Ovarian cancer cannot be detected via cervical cancer screening (which used to be called a pap smear) and pelvic exams arenโt useful as a screening test.
Current Australian guidelines recommend women get tested for ovarian cancer if they have symptoms for more than a month. But many of the symptoms โ such as tiredness, constipation and changes in menstruation โ are vague and overlap with other common illnesses.
This makes early detection a challenge. But it is crucial โ a womanโs chances of surviving ovarian cancer are associated with how advanced the cancer is when she is diagnosed.
If the cancer is still confined to the original site with no spread, the five-year survival rate is 92%. But over half of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer first present when the cancer has already metastatised, meaning it has spread to other parts of the body.
If the cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes, the survival rate is reduced to 72%. If the cancer has already metastasised and spread to distant sites at the time of diagnosis, the rate is only 31%.
There are mixed findings on whether detecting ovarian cancer earlier leads to better survival rates. For example, a trial in the UK that screened more than 200,000 women failed to reduce deaths.
That study screened the general public, rather than relying on self-reported symptoms. The new study suggests asking women to look for specific symptoms can lead to earlier diagnosis, meaning treatment can start more quickly.
What did the new study look at?
Between June 2015 and July 2022, the researchers recruited 2,596 women aged between 16 and 90 from 24 hospitals across the UK.
They were asked to monitor for these four symptoms:
- persistent abdominal distension (women often refer to this as bloating)
- feeling full shortly after starting to eat and/or loss of appetite
- pelvic or abdominal pain (which can feel like indigestion)
- needing to urinate urgently or more often.
Women who reported at least one of four symptoms persistently or frequently were put on a fast-track pathway. That means they were sent to see a gynaecologist within two weeks. The fast track pathway has been used in the UK since 2011, but is not specifically part of Australiaโs guidelines.
Some 1,741 participants were put on this fast track. First, they did a blood test that measured the cancer antigen 125 (CA125). If a womanโs CA125 level was abnormal, she was sent to do a internal vaginal ultrasound.
What did they find?
The study indicates this process is better at detecting ovarian cancer than general screening of people who donโt have symptoms. Some 12% of women on the fast-track pathway were diagnosed with some kind of ovarian cancer.
A total of 6.8% of fast-tracked patients were diagnosed with high-grade serous ovarian cancer. It is the most aggressive form of cancer and responsible for 90% of ovarian cancer deaths.
Out of those women with the most aggressive form, one in four were diagnosed when the cancer was still in its early stages. That is important because it allowed treatment of the most lethal cancer before it had spread significantly through the body.
There were some promising signs in treating those with this aggressive form. The majority (95%) had surgery and three quarters (77%) had chemotherapy. Complete cytoreduction โ meaning all of the cancer appears to have been removed โ was achieved in six women out of ten (61%).
Itโs a promising sign that there may be ways to โcatchโ and target ovarian cancer before it is well-established in the body.
What does this mean for detection?
The studyโs findings suggest this method of early testing and referral for the symptoms leads to earlier detection of ovarian cancer. This may also improve outcomes, although the study did not track survival rates.
It also points to the importance of public awareness about symptoms.
Clinicians should be able to recognise all of the ways ovarian cancer can present, including vague symptoms like general fatigue.
But empowering members of the general public to recognise a narrower set of four symptoms can help trigger testing, detection and treatment of ovarian cancer earlier than we thought.
This could also save GPs advising every woman who has general tiredness or constipation to undergo an ovarian cancer test, making testing and treatment more targeted and efficient.
Many women remain unaware of the symptoms of ovarian cancer. This study shows recognising them may help early detection and treatment.
Jenny Doust, Clinical Professorial Research Fellow, Australian Women and Girls’ Health Research Centre, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Antidepressant Contact Lenses!
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…and other items from this week’s health science news:
Seeing life in a better light?
Bringing new meaning to the idea of “looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses”, researchers at Yonsei University have developed soft, transparent contact lenses with built-in ultrathin electrodes that deliver mild electrical stimulation through the retina*, and in mice with induced depression, this treatment produced antidepressant-like effects comparable to fluoxetine (Prozac) after three weeks.
*because the retina is anatomically directly connected to the brain (and by some reckonings, the eyes can even be considered to be extensions of the brain), researchers used it as a non-invasive access point to influence the neural pathways involved in mood regulation.
How it works: the lenses use temporal interference, where two harmless electrical signals intersect at precise points in the retina, allowing targeted stimulation of mood-related brain circuits, all without invasive brain implants or drugs.
What they did: depressed mice received 30 minutes of retinal stimulation daily for three weeks, and outcomes were compared with untreated depressed mice, healthy controls, and mice treated with fluoxetine.
What that did: treated mice had a 48% reduction in blood corticosterone (a stress hormone), a 47% increase in serotonin levels, and lower inflammatory markers in the brain compared with untreated depressed mice. Additionally, mice using the contact lenses showed reduced depression-like behaviors at levels similar to those seen with Prozac-treated mice.
You may be wondering how the scientists acquired depressed mice, and how they diagnosed the mental health of mice sufficiently clearly as to conduct this experiment. The answer is that they induced depression thus:
โA chronic corticosterone-induced stress mouse model recapitulating depression-associated behavioral phenotypes was established following the protocol outlined by Pereira et al. C3H/HeNCrlOri (rd1, 25โ30 g, male) mice were randomized into three groups, including the control (sham group), depression (Dep group), and TI-TES treatment (TES group). For depression induction, corticosterone by subcutaneous administration (s.c.) of a total 100 ฮผL of corticosterone cocktail (20 mg kgโ1 body weight) dissolved in 20% Tween 80, 0.2% DMSO (all purchased from Sigma, St. Louis, MO), and 0.9% saline were chronically treated. It should be noted that the corticosterone paradigm used in this study does not represent human major depressive disorder itself but rather a preclinical stress model that recapitulates specific behavioral and biological features associated with depression.โ
Translated from sciencese: they gave them drugs that resulted in the same behaviors and measurable biomarkers as depression; as such, this is broadly assumed to be representative of depression in humans, but is not necessarily exactly the same thing.]
Next, up the researchers want to test long-term safety in larger animals, and customize stimulation, before human clinical trials:
Read in full: Contact lenses treat depression in mice as effectively as anti-depressant medication
Related: Does This New Machine Cure Depression?
COVID in the house? This antiviral cuts transmission by โ !
Researchers (Dr. Anne Luetkemeyer et al.) found that taking ensitrelvir within 72 hours of the first household memberโs COVID symptom onset reduced the risk of symptomatic COVID in exposed household contacts by about two-thirds, compared to placebo.
In numbers:
- Dosage: participants took 375mg on day 1, then 125mg daily on days 2โ5.
- Effect: symptomatic COVID by day 10 occurred in 2.9% of the ensitrelvir group versus 9.0% of the placebo group (a 67% relative risk reduction).
- Interpretation: in the full intention-to-treat analysis, infection occurred in 4.4% with ensitrelvir versus 10.2% with placebo (a 57% relative risk reduction).
In the US, the FDA hasn’t weighed in on this one yet, but ensitrelvir is already approved in Japan for mild-to-moderate COVID treatment and, based on this trial, for postexposure prophylaxis.
You can read more about it here:
Read in full: Antiviral ensitrelvir cuts risk of COVID-19 in household contacts by two-thirds, study finds
Related: Getting antivirals for COVID too often depends on where you live and how wealthy youย are
Kratom crisis?
First, what kratom is: it’s a plant containing psychoactive compounds, most notably mitragynine, sold in powders, capsules, teas, liquid shots, and newer concentrated products such as 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH), which can be substantially more potent than traditional kratom.
A recent national survey analysis found kratom use in the US has reached its highest recorded level, with lifetime use rising from 1.6% of Americans aged 12+ in 2021 to 1.9% in 2024โmore than 5 million people, including over 100,000 adolescents aged 12โ17.
Yes, we’re getting these figures in 2026 because science takes its time sometimes (to analyze the data, get peer-reviewed, etc), so probably the numbers are even higher now.
In particular, synthetic or concentrated derivatives like 7-OH pose greater overdose or dependence risks because of much stronger opioid-like effects, and these products are increasingly sold in convenience stores and smoke shops:
Read in full: Kratom use is on the rise in the US
Related: Addiction Myths That Are Hard To Quit
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Cordyceps: Friend Or Foe?
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Cordyceps: friend or foe?
Cordyceps is a famously frightening fungus. Itโs the one responsible for โzombie antsโ and other zombie creatures, and itโs the basis for the existential threat to humanity in the TV show The Last of Us.
Itโs a parasitic fungus that controls the central and peripheral nervous systems of its host, slowly replacing the hostโs body, as well as growing distinctive spines that erupt out of the hostโs body. Taking over motor functions, it compels the host to do two main things, which are to eat more food, and climb to a position that will be good to release spores from.
Fortunately, none of that matters to humans. Cordyceps does not (unlike in the TV show) affect humans that way.
What does Cordyceps do in humans?
Cordyceps (in various strains) is enjoyed as a health supplement, based on a long history of use in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and nowadays itโs coming under a scientific spotlight too.
The main health claims for it are:
- Against inflammation
- Against aging
- Against cancer
- For blood sugar management
- For heart health
- For exercise performance
Sounds great! What does the science say?
Thereโs a lot more science for the first three (which are all closely related to each other, and often overlapping in mechanism and effect).
So letโs take a look:
Against inflammation
The science looks promising for this, but studies so far have either been in vitro (cell cultures in petri dishes), or else murine in vivo (mouse studies), for example:
- Anti-inflammatory effects of Cordyceps mycelium in murine macrophages
- Cordyceps sinensis as an immunomodulatory agent
- Immunomodulatory functions of extracts from Cordyceps cicadae
- Cordyceps pruinosa inhibits in vitro and in vivo inflammatory mediators
In summary: we can see that it has anti-inflammatory properties for mice and in the lab; weโd love to see the results of studies done on humans, though. Also, while it has anti-inflammatory properties, it performed less well than commonly-prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs, for example:
โC. militaris can modulate airway inflammation in asthma, but it is less effective than prednisolone or montelukast.โ
Against aging
Because examining the anti-aging effects of a substance requires measuring lifespans and repeating the experiment, anti-aging studies do not tend to be done on humans, because they would take lifetimes to perform. To this end, itโs inconvenient, but not a criticism of Cordyceps, that studies have been either mouse studies (short lifespan, mammals like us) or fruit fly studies (very short lifespan, genetically surprisingly similar to us).
The studies have had positive results, with typical lifespan extensions of 15โ20%:
- The lifespan-extending effect of Cordyceps sinensis in normal mice
- Cordyceps sinensis oral liquid prolongs the lifespan of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster
- Anti-aging activity of polysaccharides from Cordyceps militaris
- Anti-aging effect of Cordyceps sinensis extract
Against cancer
Once again, the studies here have been in vitro, or murine in vivo. They do look good though:
In vitro (human cell cultures in a lab):
In vivo (mouse studies):
Summary of these is: Cordyceps quite reliably inhibits tumor growth in vitro (human cell cultures) and in vivo (mouse studies). However, trials in human cancer patients are so far conspicuous by their absence.
For blood sugar management
Cordyceps appears to mimic the action of insulin, without triggering insulin sensitivity. For example:
The anti-hyperglycemic activity of the fruiting body of Cordyceps in diabetic rats
There were some other rat/mouse studies with similar results. No studies in humans yet.
For heart health
Cordyceps contains adenosine. You may remember that caffeine owes part of its stimulant effect to blocking adenosine, the hormone that makes us feel sleepy. So in this way, Cordyceps partially does the opposite of what caffeine does, and may be useful against arrhythmia:
Cardiovascular protection of Cordyceps sinensis act partially via adenosine receptors
For exercise performance
A small (30 elderly participants) study found that Cordyceps supplementation improved VO2 max by 7% over the course of six weeks:
However, another small study (22 young athletes) failed to reproduce those results:
Cordyceps Sinensis supplementation does not improve endurance exercise performance
In summaryโฆ
Cordyceps almost certainly has anti-inflammation, anti-aging, and anti-cancer benefits.
Cordyceps may have other benefits too, but the evidence is thinner on the ground for those, so far.
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How Internal Organs Can Be Affected By Spicy Foods (Doctor Explains)
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Capsaicin has an array of health-giving properties in moderation, but consumed in immoderation and/or without building up tolerance first, can cause problemsโserious health issues such as heart attacks, brain spasms, torn esophagus, and even death can occur.
Heating up
Capsaicin, the compound that gives peppers their “heat”, is a chemical irritant and neurotoxin that activates pain receptors (TRPV1) tricking the brain into sensing heat, leading to a burning sensation, sweating, and flushing. The pain signal can also trigger the fight-or-flight response, causing a surge of adrenaline. Endorphins are eventually released, creating a pain-relief effect similar to a runner’s high, and ultimately it reduces systemic inflammation, boosts the metabolism, and increases healthy longevity.
However, in cases of extreme consumption and/or lack of preparation, woe can befall, for example:
- A man ruptured his esophagus after vomiting from eating a ghost pepper.
- A participant experienced severe brain blood vessel constriction (reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome) after eating a Carolina reaper.
- A 25-year-old suffered permanent heart damage from cayenne pepper pills due to restricted blood flow.
- A teenager died after the “one chip challenge,” although the cause of death was undetermined.
So, what does moderation and preparation look like?
Moderation can be different to different people, since genetics do play a partโsome people have more TRPV1 receptors than other people. However, for all people (unless in case of having an allergy or similar), acclimatization is important, and a much bigger factor than genetics.
Writerโs anecdote: on the other hand, when my son was a toddler I once left the room and came back to find him cheerfully drinking hot sauce straight from the bottle, so it can be suspected that genetics are definitely relevant too, as while I did season his food and he did already enjoy curries and such, he didn’t exactly have a background of entering chili-eating competitions.
Still, regardless of genes (unless you actually have a medical condition that disallows this), a person who regularly eats spicy food will develop an increasing tolerance for spicy food, and will get to enjoy the benefits without the risks, provided they donโt suddenly jump way past their point of tolerance.
On which note, in this video you can also see what happens when Dr. Deshauer goes from biting a jalapeรฑo (relatively low on the Scoville heat scale) to biting a Scotch bonnet pepper (about 10x higher on the Scoville heat scale):
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Capsaicin For Weight Loss And Against Inflammation
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Finally! Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Biomarkers Identified
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And other items from this weekโs health news:
Good news for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome sufferers
Historically considered a syndrome that has no observable signs (only symptoms reported by the sufferer), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) now has some biomarkers identified, achieving 90% diagnostic accuracyโoffering objective proof for a disease often dismissed due to a lack of lab evidence.
How it was done: researchers (Dr. Julia Oh et al.) showed how the gut microbiome, immune cells, and metabolites correlate with symptoms like fatigue, pain, and sleep disturbances. ME/CFS patients had reduced butyrate (a gut-beneficial fatty acid), elevated tryptophan and benzoate (indicators of microbial imbalance), and increased inflammatory responses, especially in cells linked to gut health. In terms of which parts did what, immune cell data best predicted overall symptom severity, while gut microbiome data correlated most with gastrointestinal, emotional, and sleep-related symptoms. Meanwhile, symptoms like dizziness, sleep disturbances, and headaches were linked directly to disruptions in gut-immune-metabolic networks, offering a systems-level disease view.
In other words, a lot of data.
It was also worthy of note that biological disruptions were less extensive in patients ill for under four years compared to those ill over a decade, implying worsening dysregulation over time.
Which makes it all the more important that we now have ways to categorically identify and thus usefully diagnose it:
Read in full: Previously undetectable biomarkers in gut microbiome may predict “invisible” chronic fatigue syndrome, long COVID
Related: How To Be 7.5x More Likely To Develop Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Texas is taking the lead!
But not in good ways, unfortunately. This time it’s not about measles, though, and rather is about STI rates, especially on a county level. For example, Dallas county ranked 7th (in the US), with 1,314.5 STI cases per 100,000 people.
You might be wondering what STIs specifically, and: chlamydia and gonorrhea dominate case numbers, but syphilis and HIV are steadily rising, particularly in urban areas.
The report identified the following factors as being the main reasons the rates are rising so much:
- inadequate sex education
- limited access to affordable care and regular testing
- high infection rates among youth lacking primary care
- stigma and misinformation
- racial and economic disparities (impacting accessibility of testing and treatment)
In Texas, people aged 15โ29 represent the largest portion of new infections, but before you write that off as “young people nowadays” who cannot contain their hormones, note that that’s new infectionsโthe only reason older demographics score lower is because each instance of infection is less likely to be one’s first, the further one goes through life. Overall infection rates (i.e., not just “new infections”) are rising the highest in adults over 50.
Read in full: Texas counties have some of the highest STD rates in US, new report says
Related: Why STIs Are On The Rise In Older Adults
The change
Prostate cancer is one of the major killers of men, the top cancer for men by prevalence, and affects over 60% of men over the age of 60 (with that percentage then rising each year thereafter). Note that this means “if something else doesn’t kill you first, you are more likely to get this than not”.
Prostate cancer is also something where the early stages of it are often described “nothing to worry about for now; let’s keep an eye on it”.
Happily, researchers have now discovered how prostate cancer evolves into its most lethal form, neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC). This was a win for medical AI (while both are called “AI”, this is incredibly different from ChatGPT et al.), and specifically, it was a 3d genome mapping breakthrough; using advanced genomic tools, they created the first 3D map of how prostate cancer cells rewire their DNA structure to enable and promote the aforementioned shift to NEPC.
Some technical bits for those who want it:
- The key proteins involved have been identified: FOXA2 and NKX2-1 drive the transformation by reprogramming the cancer cells; FOXA2 opens inaccessible DNA regions, allowing NKX2-1 to activate NEPC-related genes.
- The role of cbp and p300 enzymes have been identified: these enzymes help activate oncogenes crucial to the NEPC transformation, acting as co-drivers of the aggressive cancer form.
- A potential treatment has been identified: the drug CCS1477, a CBP/p300 inhibitor in clinical trials, successfully halted NEPC tumor growth in lab studies.
The latter is particularly important, as it allows for new treatment avenues for prostate cancers that become resistant to hormone therapy, by preventing or reversing the NEPC transition.
Read in full: Study uncovers how prostate cancer becomes deadly, offers hope for new treatments
Related: Prostate Health: What You Should Know
Take care!
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