@DrewVento She had leverage and it wasn't fair to them. I knew it, yet time wasted there didn't matter. I would imagine this happens all too often too, screwing the juror and innocent party. I should have done what you did. 🥲
@DrewVento In which state? When I was living in S. California it was a two week trial paying me $150 where the -lawyer- got off easy (on the stand) because she hit someone while on her cell phone yet that fact was never accounted for. The couple she hit received no medical compensation. 🖕
I'm a cardiologist. I take seven supplements every day and I've told you about each one on this platform.
Now I need to tell you about the ones that can hurt you — because some of the most popular supplements in the world have been proven in large clinical trials to cause the exact diseases they were marketed to prevent.
This isn't anti-supplement. This is pro-truth. And the data is devastating.
I'll start with the one published two weeks ago — because 40 million Americans are taking it right now.
Glucosamine. The joint supplement your parents probably have in their medicine cabinet. A study published June 9 in Nature Metabolism — not a wellness blog, Nature Metabolism — found that glucosamine users with mild cognitive impairment were 25% more likely to progress to full Alzheimer's disease. Among patients with established dementia, glucosamine users had a 25% higher mortality rate.
The mechanism: glucosamine enhances a metabolic process called hyperglycosylation that is already overactive in Alzheimer's brains — essentially feeding the exact pathology that's destroying neurons. University of Florida researchers confirmed this in both human health records and mouse models.
40 million Americans take this supplement annually. It never worked for joint pain in rigorous trials — it performed no better than placebo. And it may be accelerating cognitive decline in the people most vulnerable to it.
Beta-carotene. Sold for decades as antioxidant protection. Two massive trials in smokers — the Finnish ATBC trial and the American CARET trial — found up to 28% more lung cancer in people taking beta-carotene supplements. The American trial was halted early because the harm became too clear to continue ethically.
The supplement marketed to prevent cancer caused cancer. And it kept selling after the results were published.
Vitamin E. Marketed for prostate health and longevity. The SELECT trial — 35,000 men, one of the largest supplement trials in history — found 17% more prostate cancer in men taking vitamin E. The trial was designed to prove the supplement protected against prostate cancer. It proved the opposite.
High-dose fish oil. I recommend moderate omega-3 supplementation — I take it myself. But the high-dose formulations marketed for cardiac protection carry a documented, dose-dependent risk of atrial fibrillation — the most common serious heart rhythm disorder I treat. Meta-analyses of randomized trials confirm it: the higher the dose, the higher the risk of developing the very arrhythmia you're trying to prevent.
Niacin. Doctors stacked this on statins for decades to raise HDL — "good" cholesterol. Two large trials totaling nearly 30,000 patients found no reduction in heart attacks. The larger trial — HPS2-THRIVE — also found more diabetes and more serious infections in the niacin group. We raised the number on the lab report without improving the outcome that mattered. The number moved. The patients didn't benefit.
Concentrated green tea extract. Found in weight-loss pills and "fat burner" supplements. Multiple documented cases of severe liver injury and acute liver failure. The risk is highest with high-dose EGCG taken on an empty stomach. Health authorities in multiple countries have issued warnings. The supplement aisle version of green tea bears no resemblance to the cup of tea that's been safely consumed for centuries.
Turmeric capsules — particularly the "enhanced absorption" formulations. A growing series of hospital reports ties high-bioavailability curcumin supplements to liver injury, including at least one death and evidence of genetic susceptibility. The irony is bitter: these products are marketed as anti-inflammatory liver protectors.
Here's what connects all seven of these.
Every one was marketed as safe, natural, and beneficial. Every one was sold on the premise that "natural" means "harmless." And every one was proven — in large trials or rigorous case series — to cause the exact harm it was supposed to prevent.
Beta-carotene: marketed to prevent cancer. Caused cancer.
Vitamin E: marketed for prostate health. Caused prostate cancer.
Fish oil megadoses: marketed to protect the heart. Caused arrhythmias.
Niacin: marketed to prevent heart attacks. Didn't prevent a single one.
Glucosamine: marketed for joint health. May accelerate brain death.
Green tea extract: marketed for metabolic health. Destroyed livers.
Turmeric capsules: marketed to protect the liver. Damaged livers.
The supplement industry generates over $60 billion annually in the United States alone. It is not regulated like pharmaceuticals. No supplement needs to prove it works before it goes on sale. No supplement needs to prove it's safe at the doses being sold. The marketing runs years ahead of the science — and when the science catches up with bad news, the product stays on the shelf.
I'm not telling you to stop all supplements. I take creatine, glycine, magnesium, CoQ10, vitamin D3 with K2, psyllium husk, and omega-3 fish oil every day. I've written about each one because the evidence supports them at the doses I recommend.
But the difference between a helpful supplement and a harmful one is the quality of the evidence behind it — and the honesty of the person recommending it.
The supplements that work have rigorous data, appropriate dosing, and honest acknowledgment of limitations. The supplements that hurt have marketing departments, celebrity endorsements, and a $60 billion industry that profits whether the science supports them or not.
Your body is not a dumping ground for everything labeled "natural." Arsenic is natural. Cyanide is natural. The word means nothing without evidence.
Before you take any supplement — especially high-dose or "enhanced absorption" versions — ask one question: what does the largest clinical trial show?
If your supplement company can't answer that, your supplement company is selling you hope in a capsule. And hope without evidence is how people get hurt.
I'm a cardiologist. NPR reported this morning on something that could save more lives than any drug I've ever prescribed.
One blood test. One vial. Screening for 50 different cancers simultaneously.
It's called Galleri. And the FDA could approve it later this year.
Right now, we routinely screen for exactly five cancers in the United States — breast, colon, cervical, prostate, and lung. Each requires its own separate scan or exam. For the rest — pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, liver cancer, esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, and dozens more — we have no routine screening at all. We find them when symptoms appear. By then, most are Stage 3 or 4. By then, for many patients, it's too late.
Pancreatic cancer has a 12% five-year survival rate — because we almost always catch it late. Ovarian cancer: 50%. Liver cancer: 21%. These numbers aren't medical failures. They're detection failures. The treatments exist. We just find the disease after the window for those treatments has closed.
Galleri changes the math entirely.
Here's how it works. Every tumor — no matter where it is in your body — sheds tiny fragments of DNA into your bloodstream as cancer cells die and divide. These fragments carry specific methylation patterns — chemical signatures that are unique to cancer cells and different from the DNA your healthy cells release.
Galleri captures these fragments from a standard blood draw and reads their methylation patterns using next-generation sequencing and AI-driven analysis. The AI doesn't just detect whether cancer is present. It predicts where it's coming from — which organ, which tissue type — with over 90% accuracy in studies. One vial of blood tells your doctor: there's a cancer signal, and it's likely originating in your pancreas, or your lung, or your liver.
Your physician then orders targeted follow-up imaging to confirm or rule out the finding. Galleri isn't a diagnosis. It's a precision compass that tells your doctor exactly where to look.
The data is building fast.
GRAIL has now sold over 475,000 Galleri tests commercially under a special FDA designation. The NHS-Galleri trial — the largest randomized controlled trial of any multi-cancer detection test in history — enrolled over 142,000 people aged 50-77 in England. The primary endpoint — an overall reduction in late-stage cancers — was not met. But by the third year of annual screening, they found a 26% reduction in Stage IV cancers in key deadly types including pancreatic, liver, lung, and gastric. The test detected four times more cancers overall when added to standard screening — catching cancers that would otherwise have been found late or not at all.
The U.S. Pathfinder 2 study — 25,490 participants — showed similar positive signals and forms the basis of the FDA submission filed in January 2026.
Congress has already acted. The Nancy Gardner Sewell Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act passed in February. If the FDA approves Galleri, Medicare will begin covering one test per year starting in 2028.
The current retail price is $950. Exact Sciences' competing test Cancerguard is $659. These prices will fall dramatically once FDA approval triggers insurance coverage and competition scales.
As a cardiologist, let me tell you why this matters far beyond oncology.
Cancer is now the number one killer of Americans over 50. Not heart disease. Cancer. And the patients I lose to cancer are often the same patients whose hearts I saved — patients who survived their cardiac event, optimized their metabolic health, and then received a late-stage cancer diagnosis that nobody screened for because no screening tool existed.
I've written on this platform about GLP-1 drugs reducing cancer metastasis by up to 50%. About personalized mRNA cancer vaccines cutting recurrence by 49%. About inflammation as the common root of heart disease and cancer. About AI detecting disease years before symptoms.
Galleri is the missing piece that connects all of it.
Detect the cancer early — with a blood test. Confirm it with AI-enhanced imaging. Treat it with personalized mRNA vaccines, targeted therapy, and GLP-1 drugs that may slow progression. Monitor response with liquid biopsy in real time.
That's not five separate breakthroughs. That's one integrated system of cancer prevention and treatment that didn't exist five years ago — and could be standard of care within five more.
The shift from reactive to proactive medicine — from "we found it too late" to "we caught it in time" — has been the central theme of everything I've written on this platform. Preventive cardiology. Advanced lipid testing. Inflammation detection. AI imaging. Gene editing.
Galleri applies the same principle to cancer. And it could save more lives than all of them combined.
One blood test. Fifty cancers. FDA decision expected this year.
Prevention is the new cure. And the science just took its biggest step yet.
https://t.co/2crrETWhRa
Scientists have identified a reversal of the long-standing Flynn effect—the roughly 200-year trend of rising average intelligence (measured via IQ and cognitive tests) across generations.
For the first time in modern recorded history, Generation Z (born roughly 1997–2012) shows lower performance than previous generations in key cognitive domains, including attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive function, problem-solving, and general IQ—despite spending more years in formal education than ever before.
Neuroscientist and educator Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, PhD, MEd, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on January 15, 2026, highlighting this shift. In his written testimony, he stated that cognitive development in children across much of the developed world has stalled or reversed over the past two decades, with declines evident in international assessments (e.g., PISA, TIMSS) and other large-scale data starting around the mid-2000s and accelerating post-2010.
Horvath attributes the primary driver not to reduced schooling, but to the widespread integration of digital screens and educational technology (EdTech) in classrooms. He argues that human brains evolved for deep, focused learning through face-to-face interaction and sustained attention, not fragmented skimming or constant task-switching encouraged by devices.
Key points from his testimony include:
- Teens now spend over half their waking hours on screens, with significant portions in school involving computers or tablets—often leading to off-task behavior and shallower processing.
- Evidence from meta-analyses and national/international studies shows a consistent pattern: higher classroom screen exposure correlates with weaker outcomes in reading, math, science, and higher-order reasoning.
- Digital tools may aid narrow, repetitive skill practice in controlled settings, but in core academic contexts, they tend to reduce depth of understanding, retention, and critical thinking.
Horvath describes this as a "structural mismatch" between human cognition and how digital platforms are designed (to capture and fragment attention), warning that unchecked EdTech adoption risks long-term harm to workforce skills, innovation, and societal reasoning.
[Horvath, J. C. (2026). Written testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. U.S. Senate]
@RealPostFolder Learn to accept the fact that real love forgives and treats you right. It's a blessing to be away from people who are only antagonists in one's life story.
The most dangerous 77 seconds ever recorded by a psychiatrist just broke containment again.
Thomas Szasz, the man the entire profession tried to erase, looked straight into the camera and said:
“We do not have an epidemic of mental illness.
We have an epidemic of psychiatry.”
Too fat → illness
Too thin → illness
Too happy, too sad, too much sex, too little sex → all illnesses
No free will, no responsibility left — only “chemical imbalances” fixed by products you can advertise on TV while alcohol cannot.
This forgotten 1:17 clip is now exploding across every timeline for a reason.
Jacob
we live in age of great moral panics about things that don’t matter and zero moral outrage over some of the most egregious societal sins we’ve ever seen