The Essential Role of Thrombosis in Heart Attacks
Heart attacks occur, according to the modern view, primarily when unstable plaques in the lining of coronary arteries rupture. This causes a clot to develop, which in some […]
La enfermedad del hígado graso no alcohólico
Read this in: English Una epidemia silenciosa de desequilibrio nutricional Alrededor de setenta millones de estadounidenses podrían tener la enfermedad del hígado graso no alcohólico (EHGNA)1. La enfermedad […]
Why We Need Carbs
One of the lessons that comes across most clearly from the studies that Weston Price documented in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is that, although traditional diets all emphasized nutrient-dense […]
How to Know if Your Genetics Contribute to Blue Light Sensitivity and Poor Sleep — and What to Do About It
In a previous post, I discussed the role that vitamin A plays in generating our circadian rhythm and ensuring good sleep and alertness during the day by interacting […]
Saturated Fat Does a Body Good
Exploring the Biological Roles of These Long-Demonized Yet Heroic Nutrients Since the rise of the diet-heart hypothesis in the 1960s, the idea that saturated fat is the “bad […]
As the Cholesterol Consensus Crumbles, the Stance Against Saturated Fat Softens
In the last year, we have seen the consensus against cholesterol shatter and crumble before our eyes. The consensus against saturated fat has remained strong, but in the […]
Vitamin A Plays an Essential Role in Setting the Circadian Rhythm and Allowing Good Sleep
Although I have long been aware of vitamin A’s essential role in creating vision, I only recently discovered that vitamin A plays an analogous role in setting our […]
Vitamin D in Cod Liver Oil
An Enduring Mystery ARTICLE SUMMARY • In recent years, controversy has erupted over whether vitamin D2 or vitamin D3 is the predominant form of vitamin D in cod liver […]
When SAMe Helps, Consider Magnesium and Your Metabolic Rate
I have written quite a bit recently about the methylation cycle and its relation to nutrient balance. At Wise Traditions this November in Anaheim, one of my three […]
Are Kombucha and Other Fermented Foods Toxic Because of Their Aldehyde Content?
By Chris Masterjohn, PhD
Should We Avoid Animal Protein to Optimize Methylation?
A reader asked me to respond to a newsletter recently distributed through email by a representative of a company called Biotics Research Canada that cited two older articles […]
Did Cod Liver Oil Contribute to the Historical Decline in Measles Mortality and Mortality From Other Infectious Diseases?
Measles has been in the news a lot lately. It therefore seems timely to fulfill my now more than two-year-old promise to write a blog on the possibility […]
The Scientific Approach of Weston Price
Weston Price was far more than a dentist. He conducted his pioneering work in nutritional and medical anthropology, which culminated in his epic treatise, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration,1 […]
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Fatty Acid Analysis of Grass-fed and Grain-fed Beef Tallow
At the Burnsides Laboratory at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, we carried out an analysis of the fatty acids (fat molecules) in grain-fed and grass-fed beef tallow. The […]
Beyond Cholesterol
Article Summary • Between 1928 and 1945, Weston Price measured the fat-soluble vitamin content of over twenty thousand samples of butterfat from many different regions. He found that […]
An Ancestral Perspective on Vitamin D Status, Part 2: Why Low 25(OH)D Could Indicate a Deficiency of Calcium Instead of Vitamin D
In the first post in this series, I critiqued the “naked ape hypothesis of optimal serum 25(OH)D,” which I believe influences many researchers to interpret uncertainties in the […]
An Ancestral Perspective on Vitamin D Status, Part 1: Problems With the “Naked Ape” Hypothesis of Optimal Serum 25(OH)D
It has become increasingly common for health enthusiasts and now even typical patients in the doctor’s office to have a lab estimate their vitamin D status by measuring […]
Vitamins for Fetal Development: Conception to Birth
ARTICLE SUMMARY Good maternal nutrition during pregnancy can protect the offspring from diabetes, stroke, heart disease, kidney disease, and memory loss later in life. Special preconception and pregnancy […]
Undercarboxylated Osteocalcin: Marker of Vitamin K Deficiency, or Booster of Insulin Signaling and Testosterone?
Osteocalcin is a vitamin K-dependent protein that our bones produce. The job of vitamin K is to activate this protein by adding carbon dioxide to it, which in […]
Meat, Organs, Bones and Skin
Nutrition for Mental Health SUMMARY • My anxiety disorders became seriously aggravated on a vegetarian diet but were resolved after including nutrient-dense animal foods in my diet. • […]
The Scientific Approach of Weston Price, Part 7: Placing Price’s Work in Context
This is the seventh and final installment in a series of posts in which I am laying out the most salient points from my 2012 Real Food Summit […]
Does Carnitine From Red Meat Contribute to Heart Disease Through Intestinal Bacterial Metabolism to TMAO?
In April of 2011, I posted a rebuttal of a Nature paper from Stanley Hazen’s group at the Cleveland Clinic arguing that choline from animal foods causes heart […]
Thyroid Hormone and Vitamin A Protect Against Vitamin D Toxicity in Cows
I recently came across several papers published in The Veterinary Record in the 1960s documenting the efficacy and risks of injecting cows with a mega-dose of vitamin D […]
The Scientific Approach of Weston Price, Part 6: Conclusions — Real Food, and the Difference Between Knowledge and Wisdom
This is the sixth installment in a series of posts in which I am laying out the most salient points from my 2012 Real Food Summit talk, “Weston […]
The Scientific Approach of Weston Price, Part 5: Conclusions — Wheat and Other Cereal Grains
This is the fifth installment in a series of posts in which I am laying out the most salient points from my 2012 Real Food Summit talk, “Weston […]
The Scientific Approach of Weston Price, Part 4: Was Price’s Approach an “Evolutionary Approach”?
This is the fourth installment in a series of posts in which I am laying out the most salient points from my 2012 Real Food Summit talk, “Weston […]
The Scientific Approach of Weston Price, Part 3: The Scope of Price’s Work
This is the third installment in a series of posts in which I will lay out the most salient points from my 2012 Real Food Summit talk, “Weston […]
Could MGP Eventually Be Used as a Non-Invasive Marker for Cardiovascular Microcalcifications?
In my recent interview with Dr. Mercola, we discussed measuring vascular calcification with coronary CT scans. This technique offers valuable information, but also a large dose of radiation, […]
Nutritional Adjuncts to the Fat-Soluble Vitamins
Summary Vitamins A, D, and K2 interact synergistically to support immune health, provide for adequate growth, support strong bones and teeth, and protect soft tissues from calcification. Magnesium […]
The Scientific Approach of Weston Price, Part 2: Problems With Comparing Different “Racial Stocks,” With Inuit Adaptations in Vitamin D Metabolism As an Example
This is the second installment in a series of posts in which I will lay out the most salient points from my 2012 Real Food Summit talk, “Weston […]
An Upcoming Plasma Marker of Blood Vessel Vitamin K Status
As I first wrote about back in 2007 in my article, “On the Trail of the Elusive X Factor,” matrix Gla protein (MGP) is a vitamin K-dependent protein […]
The Scientific Approach of Weston Price, Part 1: Nature’s Closest Thing to an RCT
Last September I gave a two-part talk for Sean Croxton’s Real Food Summit over at Underground Wellness called “Weston Price on Primitive Wisdom,” which covered Price’s scientific approach, […]
Did Family Planning Contribute to the Modern Decline in Infectious Disease Mortality?
In 1976, Thomas McKeown published The Modern Rise of Population, wherein he argued that the increase in population that occurred in industrialized nations over the nineteenth and twentieth […]
Beyond Good and Evil
Article Summary • Successful traditional diets provided many nutrients that cooperate with one another to produce excellent health. This article provides several illustrative examples of this type of […]
Egg Study Redux: Correcting the Stats
In my last post, I criticized the recent study purporting to show that egg yolks increase atherosclerosis. After corresponding with the lead author, Dr. J. David Spence, I […]
Does Eating Egg Yolks Increase Arterial Plaque?
Please also see Egg Study Redux: Correcting the Stats Dr. J. David Spence of Ontario’s Stroke Prevention and Atherosclerosis Research Center and two of his colleagues have just […]
Why Animal Fats Are Good for You — My Low-Carb Cruise 2012 Lecture
The video of my 2012 Low-Carb Cruise Lecture, “Why Animal Fats Are Good for You,” is now up on YouTube! And that, of course, is thanks to Terry […]
I’m 95% Confident This is a Good Definition of a P Value
In my last post, “Being Statistically Significant Is Nothing Like Being Pregnant,” I explained why I took the following result seriously, even though with a P value of […]
Being Statistically Significant Is Nothing Like Being Pregnant
I just wanted to make that clear in case any of you fellas were afraid your P value might be <0.05. Actually I have a more serious reason […]
The Maasai, An Interlude — What Does All This Sociocultural and Historical Stuff Have to Do With Heart Disease?
In parts one and two of this series, I presented a “glimpse” of the Maasai, first of their way of life as it existed in a particular village […]
AJCN Publishes A New PUFA Study That Should Make Us Long For the Old Days
I just got back from the 2012 Low-Carb Cruise, where I gave a very well received 45-minute talk called “Why Animal Fats Are Good For You,” in which […]
Glutathione 101, Part 1: Cysteine Misbehaves, But Glutathione Saves
I’ve written a lot about our good friend glutathione on this blog (here and here), and I’ll be writing about him quite a bit more in the future. […]
With the Wave of a Wand, Raw Milk Wipes Away the Wheeze: How Our Good Friend Glutathione Protects Against Asthma
Our valiant, cape-wearing, free radical-wrestling, toxicant-thwarting Raw Milk is back in town with his courageous army of raw food volunteers, and this time their mission is to get […]
Good Fats, Bad Fats: Separating Fact from Fiction
Few driving factors have had such a profound influence on the transition from traditional to modern industrial diets as the campaign against animal fats and tropical oils. We […]
New Evidence of Synergy Between Vitamins A and D: Protection Against Autoimmune Diseases
One of the perennial topics of this blog is the synergy between vitamins A and D. A new Japanese study published last July in the journal Immunology Letters […]
Good Lard, Bad Lard: What Do You Get When You Cross a Pig and a Coconut?
An estimated 50,000 mice worldwide are charting new territories of chubbiness as they chow down on the infamous, lard-based, high-fat rodent diet, “D12492.” As I reported a few […]
Understanding Weston Price on Primitive Wisdom
Ancient Doesn’t Cut It In his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration,1 Weston Price put great emphasis on the degeneration in human health caused by the nutritional transition to modern industrial […]
Taking a Trip Down Memory Lane, Fishing for Our Good Friend Glutathione in the Waters of the Memory Hole: How T. Colin Campbell Helped Prove That Protein Protects Us
This past Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of The Curious Case of Campbell’s Rats, wherein we took a wild ride through over two decades of animal research in […]
The Masai Part II: A Glimpse of the Masai Diet at the Turn of the 20th Century — A Land of Milk and Honey, Bananas From Afar
As always, if the font is too small, you can enlarge it using the “control” and “plus” buttons. In keeping with the spirit of the first part of […]
Fat and Diabetes: Bad Press, Good Paper, and the Reemergence of Our Good Friend Glutathione
A number of people have asked for my comments on the recent headlines claiming that “high-fat diets cause diabetes,” based on a recent paper published in Nature Medicine […]
The Masai Part I: A Glimpse of Gender, Sexuality, and Spirituality in the Loita Masai (installment 3)
As always, if the font is too small you can use control and plus to enlarge it. This is the third and final installment of “Part I” of […]
The Masai Part I: A Glimpse of Gender, Sexuality, and Spirituality in the Loita Masai (installment 2)
Note: As always, if the font is too small, you can enlarge it using the control and plus buttons. This post is the second installment of “Part I” […]
The Masai Part I: A Glimpse of Gender, Sexuality, and Spirituality in the Loita Masai (installment 1)
As always, if the font is too small you can enlarge it using the control and plus buttons. The opening of Melissa Llewelyn-Davies’ five-part 1984 documentary, Diary of […]
The Masai: Introduction
As always, if the font is too small you can use the control and plus buttons to enlarge it. Those of us in the assortment of fat-and-cholesterol-aren’t-going-to-kill-you communities […]
Understanding Weston Price on Primitive Wisdom — Ancient Doesn’t Cut It
In Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Price put great emphasis on the degeneration caused by the nutritional transition to modern industrial diets. It can be tempting for us to […]
Weston Price Looked for Vegans But Found Only Cannibals
As I prepare for my talk in NYC this weekend, I have to tone down the blogging a bit. So it will be back to our regularly scheduled […]
Does Dietary Choline Contribute to Heart Disease?
I’ve been writing a lot about choline lately. Most recently, my article entitled “Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: A Silent Epidemic of Nutritional Imbalance” contained a major section on […]
Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease
A Silent Epidemic of Nutritional Imbalance Over seventy million Americans may have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.1 The disease begins with the accumulation of fat within the cells of the […]
The 2010 USDA/HHS Guidelines — A Rather Bizarre Definition of “Nutrient Dense”
The new USDA/HHS Guidelines are not entirely bad —for example, they recommend limiting added sugars, tossing the hydrogenated oils, and even limiting fruit juice, and they advocate sidewalks, […]
Vitamin D — Problems With the Latitude Hypothesis
As always, if the font is too small you can increase the size by pressing ‘control’ and the ‘plus’ sign. Virtually everything we know about vitamin D and […]
Is Vitamin D Safe? Still Depends on Vitamins A and K! Testimonials and a Human Study
As always, if the font is too small, you can use “control +” to increase its size. In the last several weeks, two momentous occasions have occurred in […]
Why Is My Cholesterol So High On This Diet?
As always, if the font is too small to read, you can increase its size by pressing “control” and “+.” Lots of people find that eating a WAP-friendly […]
Addendum to “The Curious Case of Campbell’s Rats”
Several readers forwarded me a response to my post “The Curious Case of Campbell’s Rats” that had been posted on the vegetarian site, 30 Bananas a Day!, and […]
Precious Yet Perilous
Understanding the Essential Fatty Acids George and Mildred Burr traversed the long roads leading from California to Minnesota in a Model T Ford Roadster in 1928, smuggling their […]
The Curious Case of Campbell’s Rats — Does Protein Deficiency Prevent Cancer?
By now, we’ve all heard of The China Study. First T. Colin Campbell, a lifetime expert researcher and policy maker at the highest levels, made it a best […]
The Biochemical Magic of Raw Milk and Other Raw Foods: Glutathione
If the font is too small, as always you can use “control” and “plus” to enlarge it. One of the many benefits of raw milk may be its […]
Reductionism and Holism Go Hand in Hand
One of the themes that has recently emerged with the resurgence of debate over the China Study is the supposed conflict between “reductionism” and “holism.” For example, T. Colin […]
Denise Minger’s Refutation of Campbell’s “China Study” Generates Continued Debate
Denise Minger’s recent critical review of Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study has elicited a response from Dr. Campbell himself. Minger made a brilliant response that can […]
Does Eating Fat Clog the Liver?
A note to readers: if the font is too small to read, please press “control” and the “plus” sign on your keyboard. I recently received the question from […]
Denise Minger Refutes the China Study Once and For All
As one reader recently commented on a different blog, I lit a fire to the China Study five years ago but Denise Minger just burned the whole thing […]
Update on Vitamins A and D
Pictured above are cod livers in a bowl. Vitamin D Experts Defend Cod Liver Oil In November of 2008, Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council published […]
New Evidence of Synergism Between Vitamins A and D — Can They Cure Diabetes?
In 2008, researchers discovered that adult mice harbor pancreatic stem cells. When the mice suffered pancreatic injury, they would make a chemical called “neurogenin-3” that made these stem cells turn into fully functional insulin-producing […]
Are Some People Pushing Their Vitamin D Levels Too High?
Has science proven that the minimal acceptable blood level of vitamin D, in the form of 25(OH)D, is above 50 ng/mL (125 nmol/L)? No. If you’ve been trying to maintain […]
Drs. Linday and Hollick and Colleagues Defend Cod Liver Oil, Citing the Weston A. Price Foundation!
In November of 2008, Dr. Cannell of the Vitamin D Council published a commentary in the journal Annals of Otology, Rhinology & Laryngology attacking cod liver oil because […]
Further Questions on Vitamin A
A number of people have tried asking questions or leaving comments on my blog post, “More Attacks on Vitamin A.” Due to a software gitch we are currently […]
More Attacks on Vitamin A
See also: Further Questions on Vitamin A Many people have asked me or the Weston A. Price Foundation to respond to a recent newsletter put out by Dr. […]
Does Meat Really Leach Calcium from the Bones?
In the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a group of “paleolithic nutrition” and “evolutionary health” researchers published an analysis of the acid-base balance of […]
Cure for Cancer: Activator X May Be the Missing Link
Originally published on April 30, 2009. In the spring of 2007, Wise Traditions carried my article, “On the Trail of the Elusive X Factor,” in which I argued […]
Vegetarianism and Nutrient Deficiencies
I decided to go vegetarian when I was 18 and vegan soon after, believing I would save the animals, the environment and my health. I thought that my […]
The Cod Liver Oil Debate
Science Validates the Benefits of Our Number One Superfood Article Summary Mankind has consumed marine liver oils for thousands of years and cod liver oil for at least […]
The Pursuit of Happiness
How Nutrient-dense Animal Fats Promote Mental and Emotional Health Weston Price observed healthy and cheerful dispositions accompanying the broad facial development and robust immunity to degenerative disease that […]
Cholesterol and Stroke
ARTICLE SUMMARY Stroke is the leading cause of disability and the third leading cause of death in the United States and most developed countries. There are two types […]
Bearers of the Cross: Crucifers in the Context of Traditional Diets and Modern Science
Contents Article Summary Main Article Crucifers in History The Dark Side of Crucifers: Goitrogens The Dark Side of Crucifers: Nitriles Cooking, Fermentation and Other Processing Crucifers and Cancer […]
On the Trail of the Elusive X-Factor: A Sixty-Two-Year-Old Mystery Finally Solved
Contents Article Summary On the Trail of the Elusive X-Factor (Main Article) A Sixty-Year Mystery Vitamin K: Three Discoveries Converge Perfect Correspondence Synergy with Vitamins A and D […]
Vitamin D in the Infant: Requirements for Safety
Article Summary Infants should receive at least 400 IU of vitamin D per day from all sources to protect against overt vitamin D deficiency. Doses of 2,000 IU […]
Saturated Fat Attack
Can One Meal Containing Saturated Fat Really Be that Bad? Or Why You Don’t Need Vegetable Oil in Your Carrot Cake and Milk Shake to Protect Your Arteries […]
From Seafood to Sunshine: A New Understanding of Vitamin D Safety
Pictured above are cod livers, a rich source of vitamin D. Table of Contents Introduction Sidebar: Diseases Against Which Vitamin D is Proven to or Suggested to Protect […]
Vitamin A On Trial: Does Vitamin A Cause Osteoporosis?
On the left is normal bone structure, and on the right is what would be described as osteoporosis. Table of Contents Introduction Vitamin A, Bone Mineral Density, and […]
Dioxins in Animal Foods: A Case for Vegetarianism?
Table of Contents Introduction Sidebar: Dioxins: Some Background Exposure to Dioxins Sidebar: A Modern Threat? Dioxin and Cancer: “Sufficient Evidence” Not Required Sidebar: Dioxins in Pastured Animal Products? […]
Vitamin A: The Forgotten Bodybuilding Nutrient
The dense forest of bodybuilding nutrition contains a paradox: the quantity of information available is abundant, but the wisdom of traditional diets to satisfy the primary concerns of […]