Category: Health Tips

 

David Franklin had spent months watching his company sell a drug to patients it was never approved to treat. He had the files. He had the proof. Now he had a decision to make.

The drug was Neurontin, a brand name for gabapentin. The FDA had approved it in 1993 for one narrow purpose: controlling seizures in epilepsy patients.

That was not how Parke-Davis was selling it.

Franklin worked as a medical liaison, a scientist paid to brief doctors on the evidence behind the company’s products. Beginning in 1996, he watched colleagues and supervisors instruct sales representatives to pitch Neurontin for conditions it had never been proven to treat: chronic pain, migraines, bipolar disorder, attention disorders, and more.

This was off-label promotion. It was illegal. And it was happening systematically.

Worse, Franklin discovered the company had buried the results of clinical trials that had failed to show Neurontin worked for these conditions. Doctors making prescribing decisions were not seeing the full picture. Patients were taking a drug based on hidden science.

In 1996, Franklin filed suit under the False Claims Act, a Civil War-era law that allows private citizens to sue on the government’s behalf when federal funds are defrauded. Medicaid and other federal programs were reimbursing millions of prescriptions written on the basis of the company’s misleading claims.

The legal battle ran for eight years.

Parke-Davis was acquired by Warner-Lambert. Warner-Lambert was acquired by Pfizer in 2000, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. The lawsuit followed the merger through every corporate transformation.

On May 13, 2004, Pfizer agreed to a settlement of $430 million. It included a $240 million criminal fine, the largest ever levied against a pharmaceutical company at that time for off-label marketing. Warner-Lambert entered a guilty plea.

Franklin received a portion of the civil recovery as the original whistleblower.

Neurontin remained on the market. Gabapentin is still widely prescribed. The case did not end off-label promotion in the pharmaceutical industry. But it established a legal template: individual scientists with evidence could file, survive, and win against companies many times their size.

A microbiologist. A courthouse. Eight years of waiting.

Sometimes one person with a file cabinet and a lawyer is enough.

1. Whisk 300 ml (double) cream
2. Add and whisk 2 egg yolks
3. Add vanilla and a pinch of salt
4. Add honey or other natural sweetener

Freeze and stir every hour for two or 3 hours.

Click to view the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOI8wh8qxYs

Hi Tom,

When you read the calorie count on a food label, do you assume that’s exactly what your body takes in?

I did, for years.

A new study suggests that isn’t quite true.

Researchers at Arizona State University have built a mathematical model, called DAMM, that follows food all the way through the highways and byways of your digestive tract. It estimates how much energy your body absorbs early on. And how much your gut bacteria add from whatever is left over.

That second part never makes it onto the label.

The calorie numbers on packaging come from a system more than 100 years old. Each gram of fat, carbohydrate, and protein gets an average calorie value, and the total is added up. It’s simple, and it’s useful. But it doesn’t ask what happens to the food that reaches your colon, or what your gut bacteria do with it.

And they do quite a lot.

Fiber and resistant starch that your own digestion can’t break down get fermented by gut bacteria into short-chain fatty acids. Some of those are absorbed into your bloodstream and used as energy.

According to the model, that adds up to about 140 calories a day. Roughly 7% of the usable energy in the diet came from what your gut bacteria made out of the food you couldn’t digest yourself.

When the researchers tested the model against real measurements from a controlled feeding study, it came closer than the traditional calorie method.

This is the part I found most interesting.

In that earlier study, healthy adults ate either a high-fiber, less processed diet or a typical Western-style diet. The people on the Western diet absorbed about 116 more calories a day.

And the people eating all that extra fiber didn’t report feeling any hungrier.

Which seems backwards at first.

The high-fiber diet gave their gut bacteria far more to work with, and they made more short-chain fatty acids. Yet overall, those people absorbed fewer calories. The upper gut took in less, and the microbes didn’t fully make up the difference.

A few caveats are worth knowing. DAMM is a research model, not a diet plan. It was tested against one small study of 17 healthy adults, and the authors say it needs testing in more people, including those with metabolic conditions, before anyone uses it to tailor diets. And, I will add, 116 calories a day isn’t a weight-loss strategy I know!

But what it does show is something I keep coming back to: Your food provides the raw materials. Your gut bacteria decide what happens next.

Which means fiber-rich, less processed foods aren’t just “good for you” in some vague way. They’re feeding a community of microbes that is doing real work on your behalf.

So, the next time you glance at a calorie label, remember it’s only half the story. The other half is happening in your gut.

Yours for better health, naturally,

Sarah Otto
Nutritionist (Master of Human Nutrition)
Goodness Lover Co-Founder

Scientific Reference:
Davis, T.L. et al. “Modeling the microbial contribution to human energy balance using the Digestion, Absorption, and Microbial Metabolism (DAMM) model.” PLOS ONE, May 2026. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0347668

Could the foods teenagers eat and the drinks they choose offer clues to their mental health? Researchers followed thousands of Australian students over three years to investigate the connection.1

In a recent study published in the journal Child and Adolescent Mental Health, researchers investigated whether greater fruit and vegetable intake and lower sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption were linked to common mental disorder (CMD) risk among adolescents in Australia. While greater fruit intake was linked to lower risks of meeting screening thresholds for depression and anxiety, higher SSB intake was associated with greater risk, with a numerically stronger association for anxiety among males. Fruit intake had an inverse relationship with both outcomes, with depression risk 13% lower and anxiety risk 7% lower for each additional daily serving. Based on the findings, everyday dietary choices may be relevant to adolescent mental health and inform early prevention strategies.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20261019/Fruit-and-sugary-drinks-stood-out-in-a-three-year-study-of-teenage-mental-health.aspx

79% of Australians say they check whether their canned tuna is sustainable, but only 15% look for an independently verified label. We went through the tuna sold at Coles, Woolworths, ALDI and IGA right now: independent sustainability ratings, ingredient labels, a 2026 blind taste test, price per kilo and each brand’s track record. Here are the 12 tins to think twice about, the 4 that are actually worth your money, and the 5 label checks that stop you getting caught out again.

Labels and prices referenced are current at the time of recording (October 2026). Recipes, sourcing and prices change, so always check the tin in store. Nothing in this video suggests any product is unsafe to eat.

Click to view the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjG3Q2AF3R0

My guess is it wont be adopted by psychiatrists. It would stop their cash flow.

I dont think life changing medical decisions should be done based on someone’s Facebook comment. If you are on psyche meds always get professional medical help to wean off them as they are destructively addictive and withdrawal can cause severe reactions. Research should be done. Here is a summary of what I found out.

• N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC) is both an FDA-approved prescription medication and a widely available over-the-counter dietary supplement.
• Glutathione Precursor: NAC is derived from the natural amino acid L-cysteine. Your body uses it to make glutathione, which is one of the most powerful natural antioxidants for fighting cellular stress.
• General Health & Wellness: Sold in pill, capsule, or powder form for antioxidant support, immune health, and reducing inflammation.
• Emerging/Investigational Uses: Studied for mental health and brain support (such as OCD, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia) as well as helping reduce substance use cravings.
• Regulatory Status: It occupies a unique “gray zone”/ Originally studied and approved as a drug, the FDA allows it to be sold as a dietary supplement.

Arginine does more than help build proteins — your cells also need this amino acid to produce immune-alert proteins that help T cells recognize infected or abnormal cells.

When arginine became scarce, the cellular machinery responsible for building these immune-alert proteins stalled, leaving fewer warning signals available to help the immune system detect threats.

In mice, increasing dietary arginine reduced colon tumor formation and improved outcomes in influenza and SARS-CoV-2 infections, benefits that disappeared when researchers disabled the immune pathway arginine supports, confirming the effect wasn’t coincidental.

Whole foods are the preferred starting point for maintaining healthy arginine intake, with grass fed beef, lamb and watermelon providing options without relying automatically on supplements.

Adequate protein, sufficient carbohydrates and lower linoleic acid intake support the broader cellular environment your immune system needs to produce energy, build proteins and respond effectively to threats.

(Tom: Some of the reasons I include L-Arginine in several of my nutrition powders.)

Finish reading:   https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2026/10/13/arginine-immune-function.aspx