Healing Nutrition of Sonoma

08/31/2026

Natura Health Products Artemis Plus is a supplement that played a big role in my integrative approach when my cancer spread to liver and bones. I used it alongside my therapies and then for several years afterwards in remission.

It’s best to use in rotation, one week on and one week off. Dosing gets tricky with any drug that is metabolized via CYP3A4 especially those that are taken daily. But it is possible to bring in Artemisinin on weeks off of therapy or timed carefully once on Oncology side effects are established and can be monitored. The other consideration is iron level. If you are anemic, artemisinin may make your anemia worse because it works through ferroptosis.

The remarkable story of artemisinin, from sweet wormwood and malaria to today's cancer research — explored by Donnie Yance.

08/30/2026

I’m following this woman because of her experience supporting a loved one with Alzheimer’s. This one hits home for me as someone who lives with chronic pain but has found meaning in my daily life that gives me the resilience to keep going and not let it stop me from accomplishing goals I set for myself.

https://fb.watch/JjZiI4es2Z/?mibextid=wwXIfr

08/24/2026

My father models this behavior beautifully. He’s 94 and has very little pain and sleeps well despite advanced osteoporosis and heart failure. Every day he does a 45 minute exercise routine that includes stretching, strengthening, and time on an exercise bike and then he goes for a short walk. He never misses it!

From Rhonda Patrick PhD:

Keeping a regular daily schedule is often recommended as part of good sleep hygiene, but its relevance may extend beyond sleep itself. Researchers tested whether more consistent timing of everyday activities was associated with pain, depressive symptoms, and body mass index (BMI) among older adults with and without insomnia.

The analysis included data from 37 older adults with insomnia and 30 good sleepers who had participated in an earlier sleep study. Participants recorded when they got out of bed, first interacted with someone, began work or housework, ate dinner, and went to bed for seven days. Researchers used those records to calculate a daily routine regularity score.

More regular daily routines were associated with less pain, lower BMI, and fewer depressive symptoms.
Insomnia did not clearly change the links between routine regularity and any of the three health outcomes.

Older adults with insomnia reported more pain and depressive symptoms than good sleepers with similarly regular daily routines.

When daily activities shift repeatedly, the body's internal rhythms may receive inconsistent signals about when to be active, eat, and rest. A steadier routine could reduce that mismatch and support circadian control of sleep, hormone release, metabolism, and immune function. Routine regularity may therefore act as a broad stabilizing signal across biological timing and behavior.

Regular routines did not simply mirror whether participants had insomnia or not. They captured a wider relationship in which consistent daily timing may tie sleep, pain, mood, and metabolic health to the same underlying pattern of behavioral organization.

Regular timing of daily activities, like sleeping, eating, and engaging social interactions, may synchronize internal circadian rhythms with the 24-h light

08/20/2026

Thank you Robb Wolf for shedding light on why the panic over UC Davis’s recent study on avocado oil products may not be warranted. I smelled something “off” when I read the study results. I wasn’t sure what it was but it seemed strange to me that products from companies like Chosen Foods whose avocado oil has verified purity are somehow not pure. I hope more research is done to validate and expand the Codex standards he talks about. Meanwhile I’ll continue to limit chips made with any oil (junk food regardless of the oil) and will continue to use Chosen Foods mayo in my salmon salad and salmon cakes. I don’t eat much of it in the scheme of my overall diet anyway.

About a month ago (as of this writing) a study from UC Davis made headlines as it suggests most avocado oil based products such as mayonnaise, salad dressings and chips may NOT in fact be avocado oil.

08/19/2026

Through August 31, enjoy 20% off Nutrition Genome’s DNA Nutrition Test Kit with code: BACKTOSCHOOL20

This is great for anyone who has been thinking about getting this testing to help guide diet and lifestyle support or anyone who has an older test that they ordered using their 23 and me dataset. Nutrition Genome has added many new genes and an updated reporting format that shows you at a glance where you need the most support. If you already have done a test in the past with them with an original saliva sample, you may be eligible for an upgraded report for a lesser fee. Contact the company directly to find out about this.

https://nutritiongenome.com/shop-nutrition-genome/ref/520/

08/13/2026

Cadmium in dark chocolate is a huge issue. But there is also great variability between countries. Best to look for chocolate made from cacao that is sourced from Africa.

Elevated cadmium (Cd) levels in cacao products have been detected in a major cacao-producing region of Colombia, with concentrations well above those permitted for export and posing a potential threat to human health. Geochemical and petrographic analyses of fertilizer, soil and rocks from three far...

08/08/2026

I’ve been missing my smoked salmon. Time to bring it back with a vitamin C chaser!

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1970468540531374&id=100027047427020&mibextid=wwXIfr

If you eat bacon, ham, salami, or hot dogs, this is for you.

A new paper published last week in the Journal of Theoretical Biology mapped out what actually happens in your stomach when you eat processed meat, and offers something practical you can do about it.

Cured meats contain sodium nitrite, added as a preservative and to fix the pink color. In your stomach, that nitrite meets stomach acid and turns into a reactive form. That reactive form attacks proteins from the meal and produces a class of compounds called nitrosamines. NDMA, NDEA, and NMBA are the most studied. They are the same compounds that triggered the FDA recalls of valsartan, ranitidine, and metformin in recent years. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies them as probable human carcinogens, and they are a leading hypothesis for why processed meat consumption tracks with elevated risk of stomach and colorectal cancer in large epidemiologic studies.

Vitamin C disarms this reaction. It converts the reactive nitrite compound back into nitric oxide, which is harmless and diffuses away. This chemistry has been known since the 1970s, which is why the meat industry already adds ascorbic acid during processing. The question is whether you can do anything on your end, after the meat is already in your gut. That is what the new model addressed.

McNicol, Basu, and Layton at the University of Waterloo built a mathematical model that tracks how nitrite, vitamin C, and the resulting chemistry move through saliva, stomach, and intestine over the hours after a meal. They ran simulations across realistic dietary patterns and found two things.

First, when vitamin C is naturally present in the meal, as it is in leafy greens and most fruits and vegetables, the protective effect is substantial. The vitamin C is right there when the chemistry happens. This is likely why dietary nitrate from vegetables does not track with cancer risk the way nitrite from processed meats does.

Second, for meals where vitamin C is not naturally present, like a bacon sandwich or a charcuterie board, taking vitamin C after the meal produced a moderate predicted reduction in nitrosamine formation. Not transformative. Measurable.

A few important things to know. This is a modeling study, not a clinical trial. The model is calibrated against decades of published chemistry, but no trial has yet measured nitrosamine biomarkers in people randomized to take vitamin C after meals versus placebo. Treat the predicted effect as a reasonable hypothesis backed by mechanism, not as proven outcome.

Practical version. If you regularly eat vegetables with your meals, the vitamin C is already there and you are doing most of the work. If you eat cured meats without vegetables in the same sitting, taking 200 to 500 mg of vitamin C with water 30 to 60 minutes after the meal has a defensible mechanistic basis and a modest predicted effect. The dose matters less than the timing. Above about 200 mg in a single oral dose, absorption efficiency drops sharply, so megadoses are not the answer.

The bigger idea is that a meal is a chemical environment you can shape. The same food can be a problem or a non-event depending on what else is in the gut at the same time, and when.

McNicol et al., J Theor Biol, 2026
Tannenbaum & Wishnok, Am J Clin Nutr, 1991
Hord, Tang & Bryan, Am J Clin Nutr, 2009

07/29/2026

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1576072133883453&id=100044420439969&mibextid=wwXIfr

The World Health Organization (WHO) has updated its guidelines for reducing dementia risk and now recommends using multidomain interventions and avoiding exposure to air pollution—and that’s a step forward. WHO also echoed recent research that about half of all dementia cases are preventable, but the number is far higher, as they still don’t account for other major factors like sleep (!) or mycotoxins or hormones or leaky gut or omega-3 or numerous other factors.

Isn’t the goal the same for all of us—to reduce the global burden of dementia? Does WHO stand for World Health Organization or World Halfway Organization? Let’s do everything possible for best outcomes—the evidence is already there for you to protect your brain now. https://www.medpagetoday.com/neurology/dementia/122266

07/21/2026

Are you focusing on on resistance exercise? Getting in enough hours each week?

From Rhonda Patrick PhD:

“A new 30-year study of nearly 150,000 adults suggests that resistance training also deserves a spot in the conversation.

Doing just 1–29 minutes per week of resistance training was associated with a 5% lower all-cause mortality risk. That increased to a 13% lower risk among people doing between 90 minutes and 2 hours per week.

The lowest risks generally appeared among people combining resistance training and aerobic exercise—doing up to 2 hours of resistance training with progressively greater aerobic volumes was associated with roughly 30% to 45% lower mortality.”

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/60/12/874?utm_source=brevo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=resistance_training_mortality

07/21/2026

Great perspectives on sugar cravings.

Post-meal sugar cravings may signal blood sugar swings, gut imbalances, or reward loops. Discover the root causes and clinician-tested strategies to stop them for good.