“People who use sunscreen frequently were observed to have higher skin cancer rates.” That headline is from a UK Biobank analysis involving more than 470,000 people. Researchers found that people reporting more frequent sunscreen use also had higher reported rates of: • Melanoma ( 292%) • Basal cell carcinoma ( 140%) • Squamous cell carcinoma ( 126%) A dose-response pattern was also observed. In other words, the more frequently sunscreen was reportedly used, the higher the observed skin cancer rates. Before anyone starts foaming at the mouth, this was an observational study. It does not prove sunscreen caused the cancers. But it does raise a question. If sunscreen is the answer, why do the heaviest users appear to have the highest rates of the very diseases it’s supposed to protect against? Personally, I think we’ve forgotten how to use the sun. The goal should never be burning. Build exposure gradually. Let your skin adapt. Use shade when the sun is intense. Wear appropriate clothing if you’re outside for hours. And if you’re going to be in strong sun all day, a mineral sunscreen containing zinc oxide makes far more sense to me than treating sunscreen like a force field and staying out until you’re cooked. The sun is not your enemy. Sunburn is. Study: Skin cancer risk and sunscreen use in the UK Biobank cohort. PMCID: PMC10840669

One of the strangest ideas in nutrition: The body manufactures cholesterol. Every cell uses cholesterol. Many hormones depend on cholesterol. Yet we’re supposed to believe cholesterol’s main purpose is harming us.

A calorie is a unit of heat. Humans are not bomb calorimeters. A bomb calorimeter burns food and measures how much heat comes off. Your body doesn’t burn food in a metal box. It digests it. Absorbs it. Stores it. Uses it to build tissue. Turns some of it into hormones, enzymes, neurotransmitters and cell membranes. 100 calories of steak and 100 calories of jelly beans may contain the same amount of energy on paper. That doesn’t mean your body responds to them in the same way. One tends to fill you up. One makes it easy to keep eating. One provides protein, iron, zinc and B vitamins. One provides mostly sugar. The calorie number is the same. The biological response is not. That’s why reducing nutrition to “calories in, calories out” has always felt too simplistic to me.

What if they’ve been lying to you about cholesterol this entire time……and the very drugs they prescribe to “fix” it are actually accelerating dementia and Alzheimer’s? The massive Swedish AMORIS study (800,000 people, 35 years) just dropped a bombshell: Every single centenarian had high total cholesterol. The higher the LDL, the longer they lived.

You are not hungry because you lack willpower. You are hungry because insulin is high, leptin is not being heard, and ghrelin is running the show. Fix the hormones. The hunger resolves. A meal that keeps you full for six hours is not a trick. It is protein and fat doing exactly what they are supposed to do. A meal that leaves you hungry two hours later is also not a trick. It is your biology telling you something went wrong.

I’m voting in the #BuschFlavorShowdown for a future Busch Light flavor! I’d love to crack open a Busch Light Peach 🍑.

Lipoprotein(a). The genetic one. Pronounced "lipoprotein little a." You cannot change it with diet. You cannot change it with exercise. You cannot change it with a statin. You are born with your level. 20% of the population has elevated Lp(a). Most have never been tested. Most doctors have never ordered it. If your Lp(a) is high, it does not mean you are doomed. It means you need to be more aggressive about managing every other risk factor. Insulin. Inflammation. Metabolic health. The things you CAN control. You cannot manage what you do not know about. An Lp(a) test costs under $40. It only needs to be tested once in your lifetime.

They just announced a gene therapy that permanently lowers LDL cholesterol. One shot. For life. They are calling it the future of heart disease prevention. Before you celebrate, look at this chart. The Women's Health Study. 27,939 women. 21 years. JAMA Cardiology. Every cardiovascular risk factor ranked. Diabetes: 10x risk. Metabolic syndrome: 6x. Inflammation: 2.98x. LDL cholesterol: 1.4x. Dead last. They just built a permanent gene edit to solve the 1.4x. Nobody is building anything for the 10x. 🧵