This is the story of a young Englishman following dietary guidelines and professional advice but developed IBD which within three years required that his colon be removed. He describes in graphic detail how he was required to manually manipulate his gut to ease the passage of plant material and eventually remove it in a bag. He finally improved his quality of life by eating a 100% animal-based diet. This is a cautionary tale of how one-size-fits-all dietary recommendations can be harmful.

Until recently I believed that eating plant fibre was required by everyone for gut lining health. Once again, it appears that I was wrong. I’ve also recently found out that dietary fibre may even be harmful for people suffering from gut issues like IBS and IBD. The good news is that gut lining health is enabled by a handful of beneficial metabolites, only one of them originating from dietary fibre. The key is metabolic flexibility.

Healthy cholesterol is good for me and the speakers in this embedded discussion do a fabulous job of explaining that. They also describe better risk factors for ill health including blood clotting factors and a certain type of damaged LDL called sdLDL. I hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I did.

There is good evidence that many, if not most, of us are deficient in Vitamin D. We’ve known for a long time that this can cause rickets, an easily identified symptom. It is now becoming evident that lack of Vitamin D may result in frequent infections and things like cancer and osteoporosis. There are ways to get enough Vitamin D, read on if you’re interested.

As we age, we lose muscle mass unless we train for strength, eat enough real food and get enough sleep. Each of these can be achieved with a little effort and attention. We can preserve muscle mass and strength with things like yoga, calisthenics, and weight lifting. Those exercises must be accompanied by eating enough protein from real food. The third component, sleep, is often overlooked but it is vital because our body builds muscle as we sleep.

What are the best food sources of things like protein, vitamins, and minerals? As someone I used to work with might say, that depends. It depends upon whether you mean total or bioavailable. It also depends on your dietary preferences. I’m interested in the most bioavailable real food irrespective of the source. In this post, I present data from the academic literature showing that animal-based foods are the most suited to our human digestion and metabolism.

Have you ever heard the term “food is medicine”? The first time I heard it my gut reaction was positive…of course that makes sense plus it’s snappy and easy to remember. Turns out I was wrong. Real food is so much more important than medicine and eating what’s good for us can stop us from needing medicine. Read on for more

What happens when many people around the world don’t get enough of an essential micronutrient? It turns out that blood tests for magnesium aren’t very useful and we may be able to correct for a lack of magnesium in the short-term at the expense of our long-term health. The good news is that there are things that can be done to correct a deficiency. Read on if you want to learn more.

One of the great achievements of modern agriculture has been the increase in yields since the 1960s that have allowed us to feed a growing population. However, this increase in yield has come at a price. The micronutrient content of many fruits, veg, meats and dairy has decreased considerably since our grandparents’ days. This decline is as high as 50% for certain micronutrients and it affects product from much of Europe and USA. We need to take care to consume a diverse range of real foods in order to satisfy our short- and long-term nutritional needs.

When I was diagnosed with heart disease despite following contemporary nutrition guidelines and my doctor’s advice for years I decided to change my lifestyle. That included eliminating two major food ingredients, namely seed oils and simple carbohydrates. In this post I describe why I eliminated seed oils and how they likely contributed to my disease.

Have you ever tried to figure out how much sugar is represented by certain types of food? It can be difficult but I’ve found a series of infographics that helped me to eliminate ingredients that may have contributed to my heart disease.

Have you ever suffered from a lack of certain things like vitamins in your body? I have and I realised decades ago that when I supplemented with lysine, magnesium, vitamin D3, and quercetin, to name a few, I felt much better. After I started to believe that my health is largely driven by the nature of what I eat, it wasn’t long before I started to consider cutting down on the supplements I take every day and trying to get them from a more natural source. This post describes what I’ve discovered.

Did you have an opportunity to read what I found out about the currently popular Diet Heart Hypothesis of what causes heart disease? If so, were you surprised by what I discovered? I was blown away, and I have to say disappointed, by what I learned. In this post I’ve tried to describe the other, less popular, Thrombogenic Hypothesis. If you read on you’ll read of a simpler theory about how a natural blood clotting repair mechanism may be hijacked and distorted by our poor lifestyle choices to cause heart disease. You’ll also learn about the positive steps I’ve taken to fix my heart disease.

Do you or does someone close to you suffer from heart disease? Are you trying to understand the cause and what you can do to stop and maybe even reverse the damage? I found myself asking those questions and decided to delve into what is known about the causes of heart disease. This is the first of a two-part description of what I discovered. In this post you’ll learn what I discovered about the currently popular Diet Heart Hypothesis.

Are you intrigued by the current popularity of certain fermented foods such as kefir and kimchi and interested in understanding if they really are beneficial? I consume fermented food every day and can describe some of their benefits. Fermented foods offer rare nutritional benefit to our bodies and our gut microbiota in a single package. Luckily, fermented food is easy to make at home because their full health benefits are delivered unpasteurized, and because home fermenting allows us to eat real seasonal food produced locally.

If, like me, you shy away from food guidelines for various reasons, you may be surprised by what I present here. A group of academics have raised concerns about prominent international food guidelines and their relation to good published science. This is important because in the absence of transparent evidence-based health metrics, people can make poor decisions about sources of nutrient-dense food. Children and the elderly are especially at risk from food that lacks the most important vitamins and minerals

Understanding how our metabolism works is important because it explains why an outwardly healthy athlete following conventional dietary and medical advice (me) can still contract a serious chronic disease.

The gut microbiome is a vital part of the human holobiont providing a virtuous cycle of health outcomes when we nourish it properly.  There is much still to be learned about how we can nourish our gut microbiota but we do know that each of us is different and we are likely to benefit from a range of carbohydrates from a range of sources.

After a routine medical examination in 2017, I was diagnosed with advanced heart disease. After a years-long investigation, I’ve concluded that I’d become malnourished and as a result was suffering from serious ill-health.