Maxine Pye

Spent a week in Portugal breaking every rule the NHS ever gave. I ate eggs daily. I had steak. I ate local sardines, cheese and bacon. Nothing out of a packet with 47 ingredients. And I sat in the sun with no factor 50. I slept like a baby and my nervous system had a full factory reset. No supplements, no app, just sun and real food. Meanwhile the locals in their 80s were marching up hills I needed a sit-down after. People talk about the Mediterranean diet like it's all vegetables and olive oil. But the reality is grilled fish, pork, lamb, eggs, cheese, animal fat. And red wine. People walking everywhere, sitting in the sun, eating late and slowly with family, and having a nap when they felt like it. Nobody rushing, nobody grazing on "healthy snacks", nobody living on cortisol and a meal deal. That's why they live longer. Not because someone drizzled oil on a lettuce leaf. It's the whole way they live, and you can't sell that in a bottle at the supermarket.

Your hair supplement could make your thyroid results look abnormal when your thyroid isn’t the problem. Biotin is often tucked into “hair, skin and nails” supplements. It can interfere with some blood tests. Thyroid tests can show falsely low TSH and falsely high T4 or T3, resembling an overactive thyroid. Some troponin tests can read falsely low. Troponin is a marker doctors use when investigating a possible heart attack. Certain reproductive hormone and parathyroid hormone tests can also be affected. It depends on the dose, when you last took it and the laboratory’s testing method. Not every test is affected. The supplement may be interfering with the measurement, not changing what’s actually happening in your body. Before blood tests, show your clinician the bottle and dose. Ask whether you need to pause it and for how long. There isn’t one stopping time that suits everyone. Don’t dismiss an abnormal result yourself. If you need emergency care, don’t delay it. Tell the team you take biotin. The hair gummies count when someone asks what you’re taking.

Eggs contain protein. So does fish. So does meat. Yet put PROTEIN on a pudding and suddenly it’s a lifestyle. The food didn’t get clever. The marketing did.

You can honour those who fought and still wish, with everything in you, that they’d never had to. Looking at the names on a memorial and thinking what a terrible waste of human life. They meant so much. Every one of them had people to love, things to do and a future that should have been theirs. Some wars have had to be fought. That doesn’t make war itself any less devastating, or excuse the decisions that make it possible. The courage of those sent to fight should never put those who send them beyond question. We’re told about victories and defeats. Families are left with the empty chairs. Those who return can spend the rest of their lives carrying things no ceremony can take away. Surely remembering should mean more than accepting that this will keep happening. It should mean demanding that every possible effort is made before another generation is asked to kill and die. Today, respect for those who served. Grief for those who never came home. And the wish that fewer families will ever have to understand what that loss feels like. Lest we forget.

Taking zinc every day? Your copper intake deserves attention too. Zinc and copper are essential minerals. But taking a lot of one can interfere with the other. High zinc intake increases a protein called metallothionein inside your intestinal cells. This protein binds copper particularly strongly, trapping some of it before it reaches your bloodstream. When those intestinal cells are naturally shed, the trapped copper leaves with them. Over time, excessive supplemental zinc can contribute to copper deficiency. Copper is needed for iron handling, red blood cell production and normal nerve function. That means an “immune support” supplement can create a different nutritional problem if the dose is too high for too long. Check your zinc across all your products, including multivitamins and cold remedies. Adding copper automatically isn’t the answer; first check whether you need that much zinc. Oysters, meat and other whole foods provide zinc. Liver and shellfish also supply copper. More of an essential nutrient is not always better.

Hey @grok, what actually determines which nutrition advice becomes official policy? How much weight goes to scientific evidence, cost, politics and industry lobbying? Give documented examples, not speculation.

Your liver needs choline to move fat out, not just break it down. Choline helps your body make phosphatidylcholine. This is part of the particles your liver uses to package and transport fat into the bloodstream. When choline is severely lacking, that export system can struggle and fat can accumulate in the liver. Choline also helps build cell membranes and make acetylcholine, a messenger involved in memory and muscle control. Egg yolks, liver, meat and fish all provide it. If you eat only the whites, you leave behind most of the egg’s choline. Your body can make some phosphatidylcholine itself through a pathway stimulated by oestrogen. That is one reason choline deserves attention after menopause. The practical point? Food quality includes nutrients that rarely get mentioned on the front of a packet. Choline is one of them.

All this talk of being prepared. It’s almost as if it’s already planned. 🤔

Hey @grok, what is the real reason the cholesterol threshold for "high risk" keeps getting lowered? How many of the experts who set those thresholds had financial ties to statin makers?

Apparently something terrible is happening on 17th November because The Simpsons predicted it. So it must be true. It's my birthday. That's the only thing I'm planning for. Italy is booked. Meanwhile, we need to stock up, prepare for blackouts and get all our money out of the bank. But who has money in the bank now anyway? Isn’t everyone in debt? So withdraw the worthless money. Then what? Burn it to cook the steak? Bomb threats. World War Three. Crypto crashing. AI wiping us out. Fucking hell. Can my nervous system have the weekend off? Portugal reminded me how good life feels without a daily dose of doom. Back home, and protecting that peace. The internet can panic without me. What is living in a permanent state of alarm doing to your health? You can eat proper food, ditch the sugary crap and still spend bedtime winding yourself up with predictions from strangers. Then lie there exhausted, jaw clenched, checking your phone again in case the end of the world has been rescheduled. Our ancestors had threats they could act on. We can carry a whole planet's worth of frightening possibilities around in our pockets. The disaster doesn't have to happen, but worrying about it can still affect your health. Repeated stress can disrupt sleep and digestion. It can affect blood pressure and blood sugar regulation. Your body doesn't get a refund because the prediction turned out to be bollocks. And fear is useful. To anyone wanting your attention, your money or your unquestioning agreement. An exhausted, frightened person has less energy left to question what they're being sold. Stock the cupboard if you want. But don't forget to protect the thing doing all this worrying. Eat. Sleep. Get outside. Put the phone down. A blackout prediction shouldn't get to steal your daylight as well. Is your newsfeed keeping you informed or just keeping you stressed?

Hey @grok, what is the real reason the sugar industry funded research on fat and heart disease in the 1960s? What do the internal documents reveal about its influence on the science?

Eight hours in bed. Still waking up as if you've done a night shift. And apparently you've started snoring. Before you buy another sleep supplement, consider whether your breathing needs checking. Obstructive sleep apnoea happens when the upper airway repeatedly narrows or closes during sleep. It disrupts sleep and can cause oxygen levels to fall. You may not remember waking. That doesn't mean you slept undisturbed. In women, the clues can include fatigue, insomnia, morning headaches and poor concentration. Not just the familiar picture of someone snoring loudly and falling asleep in a chair. Gasping, choking or witnessed pauses in breathing are particularly important clues. It doesn't only affect men or people in larger bodies. Symptoms deserve assessment rather than being written off as stress or getting older. If you're excessively sleepy, speak to your GP. Don't drive when sleepy. Has anyone mentioned your snoring while you've been trying to explain your exhaustion?

Two people can weigh the same and carry very different health risks. The bathroom scales can't tell you where the fat is. Fat under the skin isn't the same as fat packed around the organs. Visceral fat is metabolically active, associated with inflammation and insulin resistance. Fat can also accumulate in places such as the liver. Research links those fat deposits to cardiometabolic risk beyond what overall weight alone tells us. That's why "your BMI is fine" isn't the end of the conversation. And why losing weight doesn't tell you everything about what you've lost. Was it muscle? Fat? Where from? Waist measurement can offer a useful clue, although it doesn't directly measure visceral fat. You don't need an expensive scan to start discussing blood pressure, activity, sleep and metabolic health. We make the scales the judge, then act surprised when people chase a lower number rather than better health. Has anyone ever measured your waist at a health check, or just weighed you?

The "Mediterranean diet" they sold you is not what people eat in the Mediterranean. The version you got in the UK is Salad. Chickpeas. A drizzle of oil. Skinless chicken. Low-fat yoghurt. Red meat once a week "if you must." Butter treated like a toxin. Cheese as risky. Sit still, count your portions, buy the right bottle. Heart charities still push that shape: loads of plants, little meat, little dairy, olive oil as the hero fat. Now look at the plates that actually show up in Greek, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish kitchens when nobody's filming a health campaign. Whole sardines and mackerel, skin on, cooked in fat Lamb, goat, pork, cured ham Eggs, often Proper cheese, sheep's, goat's, hard cheese A glass of red with dinner Bread and oil for some households, yes, but not filled with added synthetic shite. And the part they quietly leave off the pyramid. People walk everywhere. They sit in the sun. They eat late and slowly with family. They nap. They don't graze on "healthy snacks" between meetings. They don't live on cortisol and a meal deal. They took a whole way of living, stripped out the meat, the fat, the wine, the walking, the sun and the slow meals, kept the salad and the drizzle, stuck a heart logo on it, and sold it back to you as wisdom. You can't put that life in a supermarket aisle. So they sold you the aisle instead. What were YOU told the Mediterranean diet was?

Hey @grok, heart disease was rare among hunter-gatherer groups studied in the 20th century. Why do modern guidelines still treat a steak as more dangerous than a packet of biscuits?