When we think of bone health we all think about calcium. But bones are actually 50% collagen protein matrix, which gives it the slight flexibility it needs to avoid snapping. The body then fills in the spaces with various minerals, including calcium, to give the bone compressive strength. The number 1 way to optimise bone health is diet - eat what your bones are made of! Reduce highly processed carbs, grains, and sugars and eat foods with collagen, proteins, and minerals. Steak (especially the gristle) contains all of these.

Most supermarket meat is muscle meat — steaks, chops, burgers. Excellent protein but lack the nutrients that organ meat provides. Compared with steak, per 100g: 
• Liver: ~550% DV vitamin A (steak is ~0), ~25–50× B12, ~100× copper, ~30× folate, ~3–4× choline, ~10× B5, ~2–3× heme iron
• Kidney: huge selenium + riboflavin, plus far more B12 than steak
• Heart: ~4× the CoQ10 of muscle meat, and much more taurine If you only eat muscle, you’re eating half the animal. Nose-to-tail is how we ate for most of history. A little liver goes a long way. You don’t need to eat organs in equal weight to steak.

25 years after 9/11, there’s still a group we know surprisingly little about: The children who breathed the dust. Around 25,000 kids lived or went to school near the World Trade Center. Many were exposed before they were even born. Now the CDC is preparing a major long-term study to look for problems involving lung health, heart disease, metabolism, reproductive health, brain and mental health, and cancer. There are already warning signs. Earlier research found higher rates of respiratory symptoms and asthma among children exposed to the dust cloud. The bigger worry is what may only be starting to show up now: cancer, heart disease, reproductive problems and other conditions that can take decades to emerge. Better late than never.

We may be about to learn a lot more about what’s actually in American tap water. The EPA has launched a new study that will screen drinking water for more than 1,000 potential contaminants. That includes things like: • drug residues from antibiotics, antidepressants and painkillers • microplastics • a much broader range of PFAS • hormones and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals • chemicals from personal-care products • compounds researchers weren’t even specifically looking for Most routine drinking-water testing looks for a defined list of known contaminants. This new approach casts a much wider net. While overdue, its a good step toward improving our drinking water.

Nearly 1 million Americans are about to get $500 back on their health insurance. The refunds are going to people in 30 states who bought coverage through the ACA Marketplace and paid full-price premiums without subsidies. The federal Marketplace collected more in insurer “user fees” than it ultimately needed to operate. CMS has since lowered the fee for 2027, and the Tump administration has now directed the excess to be returned directly to qualifying consumers. Checks are expected to start going out in October. Not everyone with an ACA plan qualifies, but if you paid the full premium yourself, this one is worth checking.

Maybe there’s a reason food outbreaks seem to be everywhere lately. AP reports FDA inspections of foreign food facilities are down about 35% compared with 2019, even as the U.S. continues to rely heavily on imported food. One example: the Mexican farm linked to this year’s major Cyclospora outbreak reportedly hadn’t been inspected by FDA since 2019. That outbreak alone sickened thousands of Americans. Fewer inspections don’t prove why we’re seeing so many outbreaks. Contamination can happen even at regularly inspected facilities. But if you’re looking for one possible piece of the puzzle, a 35% drop in overseas food inspections is hard to ignore.

Apparently how hot you drink your coffee might matter more than the coffee itself. According to a new study of nearly 980,000 adults, people who preferred their drinks “hot” had about 2x the risk of one type of esophageal cancer compared with those who drank them warm. Those who preferred them “very hot” had about 3x the risk. Importantly, the concern wasn’t coffee or tea itself. It was the temperature of the liquid. The study didn’t measure exact temperatures, but the IARC already classifies drinks above 65°C (149°F) as “probably carcinogenic.” The absolute risk is still low. Practical takeaway: keep the coffee. Just let it cool a little before drinking it. Study: doi.org/10.1002/ijc.70654

Apparently Americans are actually drinking more water. CDC data shows water went from 46.9% of adults’ non-alcoholic beverage intake in 2013–14 to 57.3% in 2021–23. Sugary drinks fell from 14.9% to 11.2%. A rare piece of health news where things seem to be moving in the right direction.

Apparently young adults are more tired than seniors. New CDC data found that 19.5% of adults aged 18–34 said they felt very tired or exhausted most days or every day. Among adults 65+, it was just 12.9%. Apparently being young isn’t as energizing as they say it is.

Fever isn’t the illness. It’s part of the response. A higher temperature makes the body a worse place for some viruses and helps immune cells work. That’s why the impulse to automatically suppress it is worth questioning. Some older infection studies found fever-reducers associated with a weaker antibody response or longer viral shedding. The flu-specific human data is mixed, so the answer isn't to never take Tylenol, it’s just to not treat a working defense like a bug. If you can rest through a moderate fever, let the biology finish the job. You only need to take drugs if the discomfort is worse than an extended duration.

A new randomized trial from Washington University School of Medicine adds an interesting piece of evidence to the debate over which diet works best. Researchers took adults with obesity, prediabetes and fatty liver and put them on one of 3 diets: ketogenic, Mediterranean, or low-fat and plant-forward. Weight loss was deliberately kept roughly equal at ~10%. One thing was clear: everyone benefited from losing weight. Muscle insulin sensitivity improved about 50% across all 3 groups. But keto produced a ~67% reduction in liver fat versus ~45% with the other diets, while 24-hour insulin fell 74% versus 44% and 27%. That adds an important second part to the picture: losing weight helped across the board, but the metabolic effects were not identical. For someone with obesity, prediabetes and fatty liver, keto appears to be a particularly powerful metabolic tool—even when the amount of weight lost is held roughly constant. Study: sciencedirect.com/science/ar…

More Americans now smoke marijuana than cigarettes!! According to new Gallup data: 17% say they smoke marijuana 11% smoke cigarettes 9% vape 4% use nicotine pouches Meanwhile, alcohol use has fallen to its lowest level in Gallup's 87-year trend. The collapse in cigarette smoking is obviously good news. But I’m not sure “more people smoke marijuana than cigarettes” is quite the public-health victory it might sound like.

Meta is on trial against 29 states over claims it deliberately built Facebook and Instagram to hook kids. And its own internal messages are now doing a lot of the talking. “oh my gosh yall IG is a drug” “We’re basically pushers.” “We are causing Reward Deficit Disorder bc people are binging on IG so much they can’t feel reward anymore” “The young ones are the best ones.” “We do very little to keep U13s off our platform.” Another employee wrote that “top down directives drive it all towards making sure people keep coming back for more.” The states are seeking potentially enormous penalties and changes to how Facebook and Instagram are designed. The trial is expected to run for several more weeks.