Tom's Blog on Life

Research suggests that spending more time in bright daytime light was linked to a lower risk of developing dementia, with measurable brightness targets that are often reached outdoors. However, the researchers caution these thresholds may not transfer directly to other populations.

In the study’s machine-learning analysis, bright daytime light ranked as a stronger predictor of future dementia risk than several familiar factors, including alcohol consumption, obesity, hearing loss, and traumatic brain injury.

The strongest association between brighter daytime light and lower dementia risk was found in people already at higher risk, including those with an evening chronotype and people who carry the APOE4 gene variant.

Research suggests sunlight supports your body in ways that extend beyond vitamin D, influencing compounds involved in circulation, mood, sleep, immune function, and your body’s natural daily rhythm.

Building simple habits such as spending time outdoors in the morning, taking daylight breaks during the day, and reducing dependence on dim indoor lighting may be a practical way to support long-term brain health.

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2026/09/17/brighter-daytime-light.aspx

For years, “healthy dessert” meant one thing: take something delicious and start removing bits of it. Less sugar. Less butter. Less of whatever made it worth eating in the first place, until you’re left with something that’s technically fine but nobody actually wants seconds of.

I don’t think that’s the right way to think about it anymore.

Finish reading: https://goodnesslover.com/blogs/health/7-gut-loving-desserts

Ten head-to-head clinical trials — pulled from the GreenMedInfo archive — in which honey, turmeric, saffron, ginger and a handful of other kitchen staples matched or outperformed prescription medications. Each one links to the full research write-up.

For nearly two decades, GreenMedInfo has done one thing most health publishers never bother with: we go into the National Library of Medicine and pull out the studies where researchers put a natural substance directly against a drug — same condition, same patients, same scoring — and then publish what they found.

Those studies exist. There are thousands of them. They just don’t get press releases, because nobody holds a patent on honey.

Below are ten of the most striking. Every one is a human trial. Every one is indexed in our database. And every one links to the long-form article where you can read the methodology, the numbers and the citations for yourself.

A word before we start: this is research information, not medical advice. Several of these trials are small. Some are single studies that have not been replicated. I have flagged which ones have the strongest designs. Read them, bring them to your practitioner, and decide for yourself. That is the entire point of having the archive.

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

The Great Mystery of the Mexican Lettuce

FDA has finally discovered Cyclospora at the Mexican operations linked to this summer’s record-breaking outbreak: one positive sample came from a tank holding outgoing wastewater at the Taylor Farms de Mexico processing plant, and another from a drainage ditch at one of its lettuce growers.

Nearly 13,000 Americans got sick. More than 570 were hospitalized. Two died.

And yet FDA says there is still “not enough evidence to conclusively determine how contamination occurred.”

Really?

Cyclospora is a fecal-oral parasite. Humans are its known host. It gets onto food when human feces contaminate water or soil.

So somewhere between human feces, wastewater, a drainage ditch next to a lettuce field, and Cyclospora showing up in all, lies one of the great unsolved mysteries of modern food safety. The FDA still can’t quite figure out the relationship.

So we made the Venn diagram for them.

Keep reading: https://open.substack.com/pub/rwmalonemd/p/poop-peppers-and-a-mouse-in-the-brine