Human beings lost the ability to detoxify uric acid millions of years ago. What implications does this have for our health today? Our story starts about 15 million years ago. It was the Miocene epoch. Things seemed to be......

Metabolic syndrome, also known as syndrome X, is a medical disorder characterized by the so-called "deadly quartet": abdominal obesity, high fasting blood sugars, high triglycerides, and high blood pressure. Metabolic syndrome can set people up for liver disease, stroke,......

Less than 2% of Americans achieve even the recommended minimum adequate intake of potassium due, primarily, to inadequate plant food intake. If you take any plant, burn it to ash, throw the ash in a pot of water, stir......

Plant-based diets may help rheumatoid arthritis by decreasing exposure to an inflammatory "Trojan horse" compound found in animal products called Neu5Gc. On Tuesday in my post How Tumors Use Meat to Grow I talked about the role Neu5Gc may......

Eggs have long been part of the traditional American diet especially when it comes to a hearty breakfast. Gym junkies also swear by eggs, highlighting the egg whites as a perfect low-fat, low-calorie source of protein. Others say eggs are an essential......

A recent article in the NY Times shocked many of us who follow health research: Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic now believe that saturated fat and cholesterol only play a minor role in heart disease.  They believe that a little-known......

Hormone replacement therapy for menopause grew to prominence in the 1990s when millions of women were sold hormones made from horse urine. Premarin (from the words pregnant mare urine) was promised to prevent age-related diseases. When the truth got......

For every ailment in today's world there is a pill. A solution in the form of a capsule or tablet or liquid with a concoction of chemicals inside designed to "cure" our misfortunes. Big Pharma has made their mark. As......

Most men and women who succumb to heart disease die suddenly without any known history of heart problems. As I note in my 3-min. NutritionFacts.org video How Do Nuts Prevent Sudden Cardiac Death?, up to 55% of men and......

The anti-inflammatory effect of plant-based diets is about more than just the power of plants. It's also the avoidance of animal foods. In my Care2 column last week, Dietary Treatment for Crohn's Disease, I profiled the extraordinary power of......

Inflammation has recently emerged as an important player in the development of age-related disability and many of our major chronic diseases including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease. Now that laboratory tests such as C-reactive protein have been......

The three top killers in the United States are no longer heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Stroke just moved down to number four. Number three is now COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, meaning respiratory disorders such as emphysema. We......

A disturbing analysis of mortality and morbidity was recently published in the Journal of Gerontology. Americans are living longer but sicker lives. We're now living fewer healthy years. Compared to a decade ago, we live about a year longer,......

This is another sampling of the more than 900 comments and questions I’ve responded to on the site NutritionFacts.org (so far!). Please feel free to leave any follow-up questions here or on any of the hundreds of videos on the more than a thousand......

Yesterday's NutritionFacts.org video-of-the-day, Atkins Diet: Trouble Keeping It Up, discusses a case report of a man who went on a low carb diet, lost his ability to have an erection, and nearly lost his life. That was just one......

The Adventist Health Studies offer some of the best science on the impacts of plant-based diets on health and longevity. Based in California, they include both the longest running study of vegetarians in history as well as the largest......

The cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor (atorvastatin) is the best-selling drug on the planet. Nearly a million Americans filled their prescriptions the first week after it went generic this month. Over the past 25 years, this one drug raked in $100......

The current batch of videos from volume 6 are set to run out before Christmas, and so starting December 26, and running through March here on NutritionFacts.org, I'll be rolling out the videos off my new Latest in Nutrition......

Back in the late 80's and early 90's the Partnership For a Drug-Free America launched a campaign to help fight narcotic drug abuse in the United States. It became known as the This Is Your Brain On Drugs campaign. It sparked a......

The genesis of NutritionFacts.org dates back to more than a decade ago. Like most doctors, I went into medicine because I wanted to help people, but found myself in some hospital-based practice often dispensing drugs to counteract the side-effects......

Decades ago, it was proven that heart disease could be reversed with a plant-based diet. And yet hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to needlessly die. Why the disconnect? That's the subject of this morning's NutritionFacts.org video-of-the-day The Tomato......

Last month an update was published on the intriguing suggestion that low levels of salicylic acid--the active component in aspirin--naturally found in plant foods may in part explain the health benefits of a plant-based diet. Some scientists go as......

As excitement builds towards the premiere this Saturday at 8 and 11pm ET of CNN's new documentary The Last Heart Attack--documenting Bill Clinton's attempt to reverse his heart disease through diet--pundits are eager to point out the downsides. Yes,......

Though bumped last night due to developments in Libya, the new CNN documentary The Last Heart Attack features Bill Clinton’s attempts to reverse his heart disease with a plant-based diet. In From omnivore to vegan: The dietary education of......

I received a note from a reader recently about someone who had just been told that olive oil was not good for you: Hi, I am so confused about the oil issue. The movie "Forks over Knives" says that......