Dr. Joseph Mercola - Take Control of Your Health

Nearly 90% of U.S. health care spending now goes toward chronic disease, much of it driven by dietary guidance that favored processed foods over real, nourishing meals
The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans reverse decades of low-fat advice and no longer treat saturated fats from whole foods as dietary threats
Highly processed foods and added sugars are now explicitly identified as harmful because they disrupt appetite control, energy balance, and long-term metabolic health
Excess linoleic acid (LA) from seed oils damages mitochondria, and keeping intake under 3 grams per day supports brain function, energy production and overall resilience
Building meals around real protein, natural fats, and personalized portions restores appetite regulation and gives you lasting control over your health

What you eat before and after hard workouts shapes how much internal stress your body experiences and how quickly you recover
Eating carbohydrates before high-intensity training helps limit excessive stress during the workout and protects your ability to train consistently
Whole foods rich in natural antioxidants support recovery after exercise without interfering with the signals that drive training progress
Relying on antioxidant supplements or frequent high-intensity sessions backfires by disrupting recovery and slowing improvement
Matching food timing, training intensity, and recovery allows exercise stress to build strength instead of draining energy and motivation

A McGill University study found that childhood adversity combined with altered brain insulin signaling increases metabolic disease risk in women, even before clinical signs like diabetes or heart disease appear
Early stress reprograms brain regions that govern reward, impulse control, and energy balance, raising visceral fat storage and disrupting insulin sensitivity decades after the original stress occurred
Women with higher brain insulin signaling activity were more vulnerable to metabolic harm from childhood stress, showing greater fat gain and a higher risk for metabolic syndrome than men
Stress-related metabolic disruption often remains undetected because changes like visceral fat buildup and inflammation occur below standard clinical thresholds, delaying recognition until the disease is more advanced
Reducing ongoing stress, improving insulin sensitivity, limiting linoleic acid (LA) intake, restoring energy production, and supporting hormonal balance can help counteract early stress and lower long-term metabolic risk

SSRI antidepressants are one of the most harmful medications on the market, and because of just how many people they are given to (often for no good reason as only a minority of patients benefit from SSRIs) they have had a profound effect on the consciousness of our entire society
This article will review some of the more common side effects of SSRIs (and SNRIs), such as losing the ability to have sex, becoming numb to life, becoming severely agitated or imbalanced (sometimes to the point one becomes violently psychotic or commits suicide), losing your mind, and the development of birth defects
Like many other stimulant drugs (e.g., cocaine) SSRIs can be very difficult to quit. Because of this, patients frequently get severely ill when they attempt to stop them (withdrawals affect roughly half of SSRI users). Worse still, it is often extremely difficult to withdraw from them and very few doctors know how to safely facilitate this
Due to widespread denial in psychiatry about the issues with their drugs the common SSRI side effects (e.g., withdrawals) are often misinterpreted as a sign the individual had a pre-existing mental illness and needs more of the drug — which all too often then leads to catastrophic events for the over-medicated patient
This article will provide the critical information SSRI patients are rarely warned about and resources for patients already trapped in challenging mental health situations

Fear-based learning can intensify pain in people with IBD even when inflammation is no longer active, showing that emotional processing plays a major role in chronic symptoms
IBD patients in remission reported significantly higher pain intensity and unpleasantness compared to healthy individuals, despite experiencing the exact same heat stimulus
The brain can hold onto pain memories through a process called fear conditioning, which teaches the nervous system to expect discomfort even without a current physical trigger
People with IBD often feel isolated and emotionally overwhelmed due to unpredictable flare-ups, brain fog, shame, and the invisible nature of their pain
Therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy offer a promising path to reduce pain by addressing the brain's learned fear responses