Category: General Interest

2 cups chick peas
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup honey or maple syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Combine the chickpeas, nut butter, maple syrup/honey, vanilla, baking powder, and salt in a bowl or tall container. Blend with an immersion blender (or use a food processor) until completely smooth, scraping down the sides as needed.
3. Fold in the chocolate chips with a spatula.
4. Scoop tablespoon-sized portions onto the sheet and gently flatten them (they barely spread).
5. Bake 12–15 minutes until the edges look lightly golden and the tops are set. They firm up more as they cool—leave them on the pan for 5–10 minutes before moving.

Tips

– Natural (no-stir) nut butters work best.
– Pat the chickpeas very dry so the dough isn’t overly wet.
– Optional: add 2–3 Tbsp oat flour or coconut flour if the mixture seems too soft.
– Store in an airtight container in the fridge; they keep several days and freeze well.

Peanut Butter Alternatives (use the same amount, 1:1)

– Almond butter — Mild, creamy, and the most seamless swap.
– Cashew butter — Even milder and extra creamy.
– Sunflower seed butter (e.g., SunButter) — Best nut-free option; slightly earthier.
– Tahini — Milder savory-nutty note; you may want a touch more sweetener to balance it.

Chickpeas contribute roughly 14 g protein and 12 g fiber per cooked cup, which supports the satiety and gut-health claims, though the nut/seed butter and chocolate chips still add calories and fat. Enjoy as an occasional treat.

Nature continues to put drugs to shame, yet why has no one heard of this research?

In Part 1, honey beat a steroid fourteen-fold for chronic cough, turmeric stopped prediabetes in 100% of trial participants, and saffron ran even with Prozac. The response told us something: people are hungry for the studies nobody puts in a press release.

So for Part 2, we went back into the archive — 455,000 studies, hand-mapped since 2008 — and pulled ten more. This time we went after the drugs people take every day: the antibiotic for recurrent UTIs, the beta-blocker for blood pressure, the Alzheimer’s blockbuster, the stimulant given to millions of children, the benzodiazepine for sleep, and the antidepressants tens of millions of people take every morning.

Same rules as Part 1. Every study is a human trial. Every one is indexed in our database. Every one links to the long-form article or abstract so you can check the work yourself.

And the same caveat: this is research information, not medical advice. Some of these trials are large and well designed — the St. John’s wort meta-analysis covers 27 trials and 3,808 patients; the mindfulness trial ran in The Lancet. Others are smaller or single studies. I’ve given you the design and the numbers for each so you can weigh them. Never stop a prescribed medication without your practitioner.

Finish reading: https://open.substack.com/pub/sayerji/p/they-compared-the-spice-to-the-drug-5ba

How the companies that pay for the trials end up writing the rules your doctor must follow, from the Xigris scandal to ivermectin, and why getting caught never stops them.

https://open.substack.com/pub/pierrekory/p/medical-guidelines-are-not-guardrails

From a friend on Facebook:
Birth control is one of the most common gateway drugs into psychiatry for young women.

I see the pattern over and over. She starts the pill or an IUD. Months later she’s anxious, irritable or depressed. Nobody connects the dots, so she gets a diagnosis and a psych med while the hormones keep destabilizing her mood.

A Danish study followed over 1 million women. Every hormonal method raised the risk of ending up on an antidepressant, and for teens on the hormonal IUD that