Search
Everything on this site, in one list.
Reference pages, Atlas entries, constellation topics and investigations. Type to narrow it, or read down — the whole index is on this page, with or without scripts.
References 24
- AlanineReferenceAmino acid · Nonpolar, aliphatic · 37 sourcesThe amino acid with a single methyl group: the carrier that brings muscle’s nitrogen and carbon to the liver, the substrate of ALT, and, in its mirror form, the target of vancomycin.
- ArginineReferenceAmino acid · Positively charged · 49 sourcesThe substrate for nitric oxide, the hinge of the urea cycle and the start of creatine, and the supplement whose own first pass through the gut undoes most of what is claimed for it.
- AsparagineReferenceAmino acid · Polar, uncharged · 31 sourcesThe amide of aspartate: the anchor for sugars on proteins, the amino acid childhood leukaemia is starved of, and the precursor of the acrylamide in chips.
- AspartateReferenceAmino acid · Negatively charged · 27 sourcesThe shortest acidic amino acid: a carrier of electrons into mitochondria, of nitrogen into urea, and the metabolite growing cells breathe to make.
- CysteineReferenceAmino acid · Polar, uncharged · 32 sourcesOne of the rarest amino acids in protein, and nearly always at the place where the protein does its work.
- GlutamateReferenceAmino acid · Negatively charged · 35 sourcesThe brain’s main excitatory transmitter, the taste called umami, the fuel the gut burns first, and the hub that most of the body’s nitrogen passes through.
- GlutamineReferenceAmino acid · Polar, uncharged · 32 sourcesThe most abundant free amino acid in the body, the carrier of nitrogen between organs, and a supplement that, given to the critically ill in the largest trial, raised mortality.
- GlycineReferenceAmino acid · Nonpolar, aliphatic · 40 sourcesThe smallest amino acid, with a single hydrogen for a side chain: every third residue of collagen, the first atoms of haem, and an inhibitory transmitter in the spinal cord.
- HistidineReferenceAmino acid · Positively charged · 35 sourcesThe amino acid whose side chain changes charge at almost exactly the pH of a cell, which makes it the body’s buffer, its catalyst and its grip on metals.
- IsoleucineReferenceAmino acid · Nonpolar, aliphatic · 23 sourcesThe branched-chain amino acid with a second stereocentre: a twin, alloisoleucine, that only maple syrup urine disease piles up; a breakdown that ends half as ketone fuel and half as glucose; and the enzyme an antibiotic jams.
- KRASReferenceProtein · 55 sourcesA switch stuck on: the most frequently mutated oncogene in human cancer, and the one that three decades of work finally made druggable.
- LeucineReferenceAmino acid · Nonpolar, aliphatic · 48 sourcesThe amino acid that is also a message: the one a cell reads to decide whether there is enough to grow.
- LysineReferenceAmino acid · Positively charged · 33 sourcesThe limiting amino acid in the world’s grain, the anchor point for collagen’s cross-links and histone marks, and the supplement most often sold for cold sores.
- MethionineReferenceAmino acid · Nonpolar, aliphatic · 39 sourcesEvery protein you make starts with it, and every methyl group you hand out passes through it first.
- PhenylalanineReferenceAmino acid · Aromatic · 29 sourcesThe amino acid with a benzene ring, the start of the road to dopamine and thyroid hormone, and the reason every newborn has a heel-prick test.
- ProlineReferenceAmino acid · Nonpolar, aliphatic · 29 sourcesThe only amino acid whose side chain closes back onto its own nitrogen: a ring that bends protein chains, the residue collagen is built around once vitamin C has helped hydroxylate it, and a bond the cell turns to flip switches.
- PyrrolysineReferenceAmino acid · Written in a stop codon · 21 sourcesThe twenty-second amino acid, which no human cell makes or uses, and which matters to us through the microbes that do.
- SelenocysteineReferenceAmino acid · Written in a stop codon · 42 sourcesThe twenty-first amino acid: cysteine with one atom changed, written in a codon that means stop, and built on its own private machinery.
- SerineReferenceAmino acid · Polar, uncharged · 25 sourcesA small amino acid made from glucose that feeds the folate cycle, builds the brain’s fats and, when it runs short, lets the nervous system poison itself with the wrong lipid.
- Sickle cell diseaseReferenceCondition · 45 sourcesOne amino acid out of place in a protein of 146, and the first disease anyone traced to a molecule: a century of being able to name the cause before being able to do much about it, and then, very recently, a great deal.
- ThreonineReferenceAmino acid · Polar, uncharged · 32 sourcesAn essential amino acid that the gut keeps most of for itself, built into the mucus that lines it, and whose main enzyme in other mammals is broken in us.
- TryptophanReferenceAmino acid · Aromatic · 32 sourcesThe rarest amino acid in protein and the largest of the twenty, the source of serotonin and melatonin, and most of all the source of NAD.
- TyrosineReferenceAmino acid · Aromatic · 34 sourcesPhenylalanine with one oxygen added, and the raw material for dopamine, adrenaline, thyroid hormone and the pigment in skin.
- ValineReferenceAmino acid · Nonpolar, aliphatic · 26 sourcesThe smallest of the branched chains: the residue that, put in place of one glutamate, makes sickle haemoglobin; the amino acid penicillin is built from; and a breakdown route through a reactive intermediate that the cell has to clear quickly.
Atlas 47
- AluminiumAtlasElement 13 · Atlas entryThe third most abundant element in the crust, with no biological role at all — and one proven neurotoxic syndrome that medicine caused itself.
- AmygdalinAtlasMolecule · Atlas entryTwo sugars, a benzene ring, and a cyanide group waiting for an enzyme.
- ArsenicAtlasElement 33 · Atlas entryThe archetypal poison, a Group 1 carcinogen in the drinking water of a hundred million people — and a curative drug for one leukaemia.
- BerberineAtlasMolecule · Investigation 002An isoquinoline alkaloid carrying a permanent positive charge — which explains almost everything it does.
- BlastocystisAtlasOrganism · Atlas entryFound in a fifth of healthy people, sold as the cause of almost any gut symptom, and still without a settled answer either way.
- BoronAtlasElement 5 · Atlas entryNot established as essential in humans, sold as though it were, and genuinely does something to steroid hormones at a dose people actually take.
- CadmiumAtlasElement 48 · Atlas entryA biological half-life measured in decades, no way out of the body, and the single biggest source is cigarettes.
- CalciumAtlasElement 20 · Atlas entryThe most abundant mineral in the body, the most recommended supplement of the last fifty years, and the one whose supplement form has the least convincing case.
- Candida albicansAtlasOrganism · Atlas entryA normal resident of most people, a genuine cause of serious disease in a few, and the commercial engine behind an entire category of things that are not true.
- ChromiumAtlasElement 24 · Atlas entryA popular supplement whose randomised evidence does not support the thing it is sold for.
- CobaltAtlasElement 27 · Atlas entryRequired by exactly one molecule in human biology, and dangerous in every other form it arrives in.
- CopperAtlasElement 29 · Atlas entryThe counterweight to zinc, and the deficiency that imitates B12.
- CryptosporidiumAtlasOrganism · Atlas entryThe parasite that chlorine does not kill, and the reason a swimming pool can close a town's schools.
- CurcuminAtlasMolecule · Investigation 001The most-studied natural compound in medicine, and a molecule that misbehaves in every assay it enters.
- Faecal calprotectinAtlasMeasure · Atlas entryThe test that decides whether someone with abdominal pain needs a colonoscopy or needs to be believed.
- FluorineAtlasElement 9 · Investigation 006The most reactive element there is, and a public-health decision that is smaller than advertised in both directions.
- GadoliniumAtlasElement 64 · Atlas entrySeven unpaired electrons make it the best MRI contrast agent there is, and free it is acutely toxic — so the whole technology is a cage.
- Giardia duodenalisAtlasOrganism · Atlas entryThe most commonly diagnosed intestinal parasite in the developed world, and the one most often mistaken for a new food intolerance.
- HOMA-IRAtlasMeasure · Atlas entryThe cheapest useful estimate of insulin resistance, and a number that should never have been given a reference range.
- HydrogenAtlasElement 1 · Atlas entryOne proton. It is the most abundant atom in your body, the definition of pH, the currency your mitochondria actually run on — and the excuse for more bottled water than any other element.
- IodineAtlasElement 53 · Atlas entryThe only element whose deficiency is a leading preventable cause of intellectual disability.
- IronAtlasElement 26 · Atlas entryThe element the body can absorb but cannot excrete, which is why the gate is on the way in.
- LeadAtlasElement 82 · Atlas entryNo safe level has ever been identified, and the harm at the levels most adults already carry is measured in deaths, not in points of IQ.
- LithiumAtlasElement 3 · Atlas entryThe only psychiatric drug shown to reduce suicide — and the dose that works is close to the dose that poisons.
- MagnesiumAtlasElement 12 · Atlas entryRequired by every reaction that touches ATP, and measured by a test that cannot see most of it.
- ManganeseAtlasElement 25 · Atlas entryEssential, easy to get from food, and one of the few minerals where the supplement is more likely to harm than help.
- MelatoninAtlasMolecule · Investigation 003A timing signal, not a sedative — and the dose on the shelf is usually wrong by an order of magnitude.
- MercuryAtlasElement 80 · Atlas entryThree chemically different poisons share one name, the vaccine argument was about a fourth, and almost every public version of it confuses at least two.
- MetforminAtlasMolecule · Investigation 002Nine heavy atoms, no rings, and the most prescribed diabetes drug on earth.
- MolybdenumAtlasElement 42 · Atlas entryFour enzymes need it, nobody is short of it, and the disease of not having it is one of the most devastating in paediatrics.
- Monacolin KAtlasMolecule · Investigation 004A supplement ingredient that is molecularly identical to a prescription statin.
- NitrogenAtlasElement 7 · Atlas entryFour fifths of the air, inert to breathe, and the backbone of every protein and every neurotransmitter you have.
- OxygenAtlasElement 8 · Atlas entryThe only drug given to almost every acutely ill patient without a dose, a target or a second thought — and a large meta-analysis says giving more of it kills people.
- PlatinumAtlasElement 78 · Atlas entryA noble metal that does nothing in the body — until it is made into a square planar complex, at which point it cures testicular cancer.
- PotassiumAtlasElement 19 · Atlas entryAlmost nobody eats enough of it, and it is also the drug used for judicial execution. Both of those are true at once.
- SeleniumAtlasElement 34 · Investigation 008The clearest refutation available of how we think about nutrients.
- SiliconAtlasElement 14 · Atlas entrySold for hair, skin and nails; the real human evidence is about bone, and it is observational.
- SodiumAtlasElement 11 · Atlas entryThe most studied dietary exposure in medicine, and the argument about it is still not over.
- Strongyloides stercoralisAtlasOrganism · Atlas entryA worm that can live in one person for forty years without symptoms, and kill them in a week if they are given steroids.
- SulfurAtlasElement 16 · Atlas entryThe element directly above selenium, and the reason selenocysteine works at all — a whole nutrient category built on what sulfur does slightly worse.
- TechnetiumAtlasElement 43 · Atlas entryThe first element made rather than found, with no stable isotope at all — and it is injected into tens of millions of people a year.
- The dawn phenomenonAtlasProcess · Atlas entryThe reason a morning glucose reading can be the highest of the day after a night of eating nothing at all.
- The incretin effectAtlasProcess · Atlas entryThe gut tells the pancreas that food is coming, and that message is most of the insulin response — which is why it became the biggest drug class of the decade.
- TinAtlasElement 50 · Atlas entryHarmless in a can, useful in toothpaste, and — once you bolt three carbon chains onto it — the chemical that gave the word obesogen to science.
- TriiodothyronineAtlasMolecule · Atlas entryThe active thyroid hormone, and the place where iodine and selenium meet.
- VanadiumAtlasElement 23 · Atlas entryInsulin-mimetic in the laboratory. In the one clamp study that looked, it raised triglycerides and did nothing else.
- ZincAtlasElement 30 · Atlas entryStructural in three thousand proteins, and the most common supplement to quietly cause a second deficiency.
Investigations 8
- Ashwagandha and the Cortisol StoryInvestigationInvestigation 005 · Stress · SupplementsHow one hormone became a marketing category
- Berberine and the Metformin QuestionInvestigationInvestigation 002 · Metabolic · SupplementsSame target as the drug. A fraction of the funding.
- Melatonin Is Not a Sleeping PillInvestigationInvestigation 003 · Sleep · SupplementsThe dose almost everyone gets wrong, and the label that cannot be trusted
- Named for the MoonInvestigationInvestigation 008 · Supplements · Oncology · MetabolicAn essential nutrient and a recognised poison, and a narrower gap between them than almost anything else you can buy.
- Red Yeast RiceInvestigationInvestigation 004 · Cardiology · SupplementsThe supplement that contains a statin, and the label that will not say so
- The Fluoride DecisionInvestigationInvestigation 006 · Environment · Public health · NeurologyA quarter of a tooth, and everything it was traded for
- The Turmeric ProblemInvestigationInvestigation 001 · Inflammation · SupplementsOver a hundred trials, and still no clean answer
- What the Slide Cannot SayInvestigationInvestigation 007 · Oncology · Parasitology · DiagnosticsThree parasites cause cancer. Nobody is checking for a fourth.
Topics 705
- 2-OH vs 16-OH oestrogensTopicSex hormones · Concept · Not yet investigatedOestrogen is disposed of down two routes with different biology, and the ratio is sold as a cancer-risk test on evidence that has never been consistent.
- 4PYTopicCardiovascular risk markers · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedA 2024 finding: a niacin breakdown product that drives vascular inflammation — a mechanism for why raising niacin might hurt, twelve years after the trials said it did.
- 5-alpha-reductaseTopicSex hormones · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedThe enzyme finasteride blocks. The men born without it were the original observation — and the reason the drug exists at all.
- 5-HTPTopicMood & neurochemistry · Supplement · Not yet investigatedBypasses the rate-limiting enzyme, so most of a dose becomes serotonin outside the brain.
- 7-hydroxymitragynineTopicPsychiatry & nootropics · Compound · Not yet investigatedA trace alkaloid in the leaf and the main active after metabolism — now sold concentrated as a tablet, which is not a traditional preparation by any reading.
- Abeta*56TopicMood & neurochemistry · Finding · Not yet investigatedThe 2006 oligomer that shaped a field. The paper was retracted in 2024 after its images were found to have been altered.
- AcanthamoebaTopicProtozoa · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIts commonest human disease is contact-lens keratitis, and its commonest route is rinsing a lens case with tap water.
- AcetaldehydeTopicAlcohol · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe real toxin: a Group 1 carcinogen that binds DNA directly. Ethanol's harm is mostly what ethanol turns into in the first step.
- AcetaminophenTopicPain · Drug · Not yet investigatedNamed first-line for osteoarthritis over two decades; the pooled effect is too small to feel.
- Acetyl-L-carnitineTopicMood & neurochemistry · Supplement · Not yet investigatedCarnitine with an acetyl group attached, which is what lets it cross into the brain.
- AcetylcholineTopicMethylation & one-carbon · Compound · Not yet investigatedMemory, muscle and the parasympathetic nervous system run on it — and the anticholinergic burden of ordinary prescriptions is a dementia signal nobody adds up.
- ACTHTopicHPA axis · Hormone · Not yet investigatedDistinguishes adrenal failure from pituitary failure, and decays in an unchilled tube.
- ActinTopicMuscle, and the sarco- words · Protein · Not yet investigatedThe most abundant protein in most eukaryotic cells, and its sequence has barely changed in a billion years — a design that could not be improved on.
- AdaptogenTopicAdaptogens & botanicals · Concept · Not yet investigatedCoined in a 1947 Soviet lab, the word still has no regulatory definition.
- AdenomyosisTopicGynaecological conditions · Condition · Not yet investigatedEndometrial tissue inside the muscle of the uterus. Unlike endometriosis it IS visible on MRI, and it is still routinely missed.
- AdenosineTopicSleep & circadian · Compound · Not yet investigatedRises through every waking hour, falls in sleep; caffeine blocks its receptors.
- ADHDTopicNeurodivergence · State · Not yet investigatedCo-occurs with autism often enough that the old rule forbidding both diagnoses was abandoned in 2013.
- AdiponectinTopicFat as an organ · Hormone · Not yet investigatedThe one adipokine that goes DOWN as fat mass goes up, which is why it behaves like a protective signal rather than a burden signal.
- Adipose expandabilityTopicFat as an organ · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedFat tissue that cannot expand any further spills lipid into liver and muscle. On this account obesity harms you when the fat runs out of room.
- AdjuvantsTopicVaccines · Compound · Not yet investigatedAlum has been used since 1926 and how it works was argued about for eighty years. It is the immunologists' 'dirty little secret' — the antigen alone often does nothing.
- AdrenalineTopicCatecholamines · Hormone · Not yet investigatedThe first hormone ever isolated, in 1901. In anaphylaxis it is the only thing that works, it works in the thigh muscle, and antihistamines are not a substitute.
- AflatoxinTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Compound · Not yet investigatedAn Aspergillus toxin and one of the most potent liver carcinogens known — in the maize and the peanut, not in the person.
- Akkermansia muciniphilaTopicBacteria · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt eats the gut's mucus layer and, oddly, thickens it — and it is depleted in obesity, diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease.
- AlbendazoleTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedBarely absorbed on purpose when the target is in the gut, and deliberately taken with fat when the target is in tissue.
- Alcohol and cancerTopicAlcohol · Finding · Not yet investigatedSeven cancers, no safe threshold, and a 2025 US Surgeon General advisory calling for a warning label. Public awareness of the link sits under half.
- Alcohol and sleepTopicAlcohol · Finding · Not yet investigatedIt shortens the time to fall asleep and then suppresses REM and fragments the second half of the night. Sedation and sleep are measurably not the same thing.
- ALDH2 deficiencyTopicAlcohol · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedAbout 8% of the world flushes, because the enzyme that clears acetaldehyde barely works. Those who drink anyway have a sharply higher oesophageal cancer risk — a natural experiment in carcinogenesis.
- AldosteroneTopicSex hormones · Hormone · Not yet investigatedPrimary aldosteronism may cause one in twelve cases of hypertension and perhaps a fifth of resistant hypertension. Almost nobody is screened for it.
- Algal versus syntheticTopicAntioxidants · Concept · Not yet investigatedMost astaxanthin sold for feed is petrochemical and a different stereoisomer from the alga's. For supplements the source is on the label, and it is not the same molecule.
- Alkaline waterTopicLight, pressure & water · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedStomach acid is pH 1.5 to 3.5 and the stomach's whole job is to restore it. Blood pH is defended to within 0.05 by two organs.
- Alkalinising urine on purposeTopicHydrogen & the proton · Method · Not yet investigatedThe one real use of the same chemistry: uric acid stones dissolve in alkaline urine, and certain overdoses clear faster. The mechanism is sound; the wellness claim attached to it is not.
- Allithiamine (TTFD)TopicMicronutrients · Nutrient · Not yet investigatedFat-soluble thiamine crosses membranes the water-soluble salt cannot. The real question is who is actually deficient, not who feels tired.
- Aloe veraTopicSkin · Botanical · Not yet investigatedThe clear inner gel is mostly water and polysaccharide. The yellow latex just under the rind is a stimulant laxative that the FDA pulled from over-the-counter sale in 2002.
- Alpha-lipoic acidTopicLongevity & NAD · Compound · Not yet investigatedBoth water- and fat-soluble, which is unusual and is why it is sold as the 'universal' antioxidant.
- ALT and ASTTopicLiver & bile · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedThe upper limit of normal for ALT was set from populations that included people with fatty liver, so 'normal' is partly a description of the disease.
- Amphotericin BTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedNicknamed 'ampho-terrible' for what it does to the kidney. The liposomal form costs far more and spares it.
- AMPKTopicLongevity & NAD · Enzyme · Investigation 002Neither berberine nor metformin binds it; both act upstream, at complex I.
- AmylinTopicIncretins & appetite · Hormone · Not yet investigatedCo-secreted with insulin from the same granule, and it does the other half of the job — slowing the stomach and shutting off appetite.
- Anabolic resistanceTopicThe essential amino acids · Process · Not yet investigatedThe older muscle needs more leucine to respond at all — which is why protein recommendations built from nitrogen balance are too low for the people who need them most.
- Anaemia of inflammationTopicWhat is actually in the bottle · Condition · Not yet investigatedInflammation drives hepcidin up, locking iron inside cells. Ferritin then reads HIGH in someone who is functionally iron-deficient, and the supplement does not work.
- AnandamideTopicMood & neurochemistry · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe body's own cannabinoid, named for the Sanskrit for bliss, and broken down within minutes by FAAH.
- AnisakisTopicRoundworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedThe sushi worm. Killed by freezing, not by wasabi, and a growing cause of genuine fish allergy even when the worm is dead.
- AnthocyaninsTopicPolyphenols · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe pigment of every dark berry, absorbed at well under one per cent, with blood-pressure and vascular effects that keep replicating anyway.
- Anti-Müllerian hormoneTopicGynaecological conditions · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedIt counts the follicles left, and it does not predict natural fertility in a given month — which is exactly what the direct-to-consumer tests imply it does.
- ApigeninTopicPolyphenols · Compound · Not yet investigatedChamomile's flavone, a weak benzodiazepine-site ligand and a CD38 inhibitor — which is a plausible route to raising NAD without taking a precursor.
- ApoBTopicLipids · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedOne particle carries one ApoB, which is why the count can diverge from LDL-C.
- ApoC-IIITopicCardiovascular risk markers · Protein · Not yet investigatedIt blocks the clearance of triglyceride-rich particles. People with loss-of-function variants have low triglycerides and about 40% less coronary disease.
- Apricot seedsTopicCancer, found and missed · Supplement · Not yet investigatedSold as a cancer cure. The active ingredient is metabolised to cyanide, and enough of it will make a pulse oximeter read a healthy man as hypoxic.
- AromataseTopicSex hormones · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedIt turns testosterone into oestradiol, and it lives in fat — which is why body composition changes the hormone ratio without any change in production.
- ArtemisininTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedPulled from a 1,600-year-old Chinese fever recipe, extracted cold because heat destroyed it, and now the backbone of malaria treatment.
- Ascaris lumbricoidesTopicRoundworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedThe largest human intestinal roundworm — adults reach 35 cm — and its larvae pass through the lungs before it settles in the gut.
- AshwagandhaTopicAdaptogens & botanicals · Supplement · Investigation 005Most cortisol trials ran sixty days in stressed but healthy adults, with n under 100.
- Aspergillus fumigatusTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedAzole resistance in it is being bred in farm fields, not hospitals: agriculture sprays the same chemical class medicine prescribes.
- AstaxanthinTopicAntioxidants · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe pigment that makes salmon and flamingos pink, made by an alga. Farmed salmon are fed it, and the farmer picks the shade off a colour card.
- AutoimmunityTopicImmune · State · Not yet investigatedIn lupus and RA, self-antibodies appear years before symptoms; boosting is the wrong verb.
- AutophagyTopicLongevity & NAD · Pathway · Not yet investigatedIn humans it is read from blood markers that cannot tell induction from blocked clearance.
- Autumn crocus to colchicineTopicDrugs taken from nature · Drug · Not yet investigatedUsed for gout since the Ebers papyrus. In 2023 the same molecule became an approved cardiovascular drug — three thousand years to find the second indication.
- BabesiaTopicProtozoa · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedA malaria-like parasite that lives inside the red cell — and in sickle cell disease the cell it moves into is already failing.
- Bacopa monnieriTopicPsychiatry & nootropics · Botanical · Not yet investigatedOne of the few nootropics with replicated randomised evidence — and it takes eight to twelve weeks, which is why most people conclude it does nothing.
- BCAAsTopicThe essential amino acids · Supplement · Not yet investigatedThree of the nine. Taken alone they compete for the same transporter as the other six, and the trials that matter show whole protein beats them.
- BDNFTopicMood & neurochemistry · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedMost of what a serum assay measures is platelet cargo, not brain output.
- Bed bugsTopicMites, lice & ticks · Condition · Not yet investigatedNobody has proved they transmit anything. The harm is sleep, money and shame, and that is not nothing.
- Bee pollenTopicBees · Supplement · Not yet investigatedSold for allergies on the logic that it desensitises. The pollen that causes hay fever is wind-blown; bees collect the heavy, sticky kind that does not.
- Bee venom therapyTopicBees · Supplement · Not yet investigatedMelittin is a genuine membrane-lysing peptide with anti-inflammatory signalling behind it. Deliberate stings have also killed people, including in a clinical setting.
- Beetroot (dietary nitrate)TopicBotanicals & extracts · Botanical · Not yet investigatedNitrate to nitrite to nitric oxide, a conversion that needs mouth bacteria — so mouthwash can undo it.
- Before the tube reaches the labTopicCatecholamines · Method · Not yet investigatedCaffeine, paracetamol, standing up and the needle itself all move the number. More false positives here come from how the sample was taken than from any disease.
- Beige fatTopicFat as an organ · Concept · Not yet investigatedWhite fat cells that switch on UCP1 when asked. The browning agents sold for this work reliably in mice and have never been shown to matter in a person.
- Belladonna to atropineTopicDrugs taken from nature · Drug · Not yet investigatedNamed for the Renaissance habit of dilating pupils with it for beauty. It is still the antidote to nerve agents and to the mushrooms that do the opposite.
- Bempedoic acidTopicCardiovascular risk markers · Drug · Not yet investigatedIt blocks the same pathway as a statin two steps earlier, and it is activated by an enzyme muscle does not have — which is the whole design.
- Beta-blockersTopicCatecholamines · Drug · Not yet investigatedBlack's idea was to block the receptor rather than the hormone, and it won a Nobel. They are banned in archery and shooting, which is the clearest thing anyone has said about performance anxiety.
- Beta-caroteneTopicAntioxidants · Compound · Not yet investigatedTwo large trials gave it to smokers and had to stop early: more lung cancer, not less. The best-supported antioxidant hypothesis of its era, killed by its own test.
- Beta-glucanTopicWhat the microbiome makes · Nutrient · Not yet investigatedOats and barley. It lowers LDL through bile-acid binding, which is one of the few food claims with regulatory approval on both sides of the Atlantic.
- Betaine (TMG)TopicCardiometabolic · Supplement · Not yet investigatedTrimethylglycine donates a methyl group to recycle homocysteine back to methionine — a second route when the folate one is blocked.
- BHMTTopicMethylation & one-carbon · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedThe second route home for homocysteine, and it runs on betaine rather than folate — which is the mechanistic case for TMG in someone with an MTHFR variant.
- Bile acid sequestrantsTopicLiver & bile · Drug · Not yet investigatedThey bind bile acids in the gut and force the liver to make more from cholesterol — the oldest cholesterol mechanism there is, and it still works.
- Bile acidsTopicGut & microbiome · Compound · Not yet investigatedDetergents that also act as hormones, and gut bacteria rewrite them en route.
- Biotin interferenceTopicWhat is actually in the bottle · Finding · Not yet investigatedHigh-dose biotin breaks the streptavidin chemistry used in many immunoassays. It has caused falsely normal troponins in real heart attacks, and the FDA has warned twice.
- Bisphenol ATopicTin & the obesogens · Compound · Not yet investigatedRemoved from bottles and replaced with bisphenol S and F, which share the structure and the receptor activity. Regrettable substitution is the pattern, not the exception.
- Black cohoshTopicSex hormones · Botanical · Not yet investigatedThe best-studied botanical for hot flushes, with genuine trial support and a small but real signal for liver injury.
- Black seed (Nigella sativa)TopicBotanicals & extracts · Botanical · Not yet investigatedThymoquinone is the molecule under the folklore. The trials are small and the oil is not standardised.
- Black walnut hullTopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Botanical · Not yet investigatedJuglone is the active. Traditional for worms for centuries, with no controlled human trial in the modern literature.
- BlastomycesTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt mimics cancer on imaging convincingly enough that people have had lung resections for it.
- Blood cultureTopicBacteria · Method · Not yet investigatedTwo sets, twenty millilitres each, before antibiotics — because a single prior dose cuts the yield by roughly a third.
- Blood pHTopicHydrogen & the proton · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedHeld between 7.35 and 7.45 by three systems on three timescales. It is about forty nanomoles of free proton per litre, and no food moves it.
- Blood pressureTopicCardiometabolic · State · Not yet investigatedPast about age fifty, nearly all the outcome data rests on the top number.
- BloodlettingTopicSkin · Method · Not yet investigatedTwo thousand years of the wrong theory, and one narrow modern survivor: therapeutic venesection for haemochromatosis and polycythaemia, where removing iron or cells is the point.
- Blue-light glassesTopicLight, pressure & water · Method · Not yet investigatedThe Cochrane review found no benefit for eye strain. For circadian timing in the evening the case is entirely different, and that is not what they are sold for.
- Borrelia burgdorferiTopicBacteria · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedSerology cannot tell an active infection from a cured one, which is the entire chronic-Lyme argument in a sentence.
- BoswelliaTopicBotanicals & extracts · Botanical · Not yet investigatedBoswellic acids inhibit 5-LOX rather than COX — a different arm of inflammation from the NSAIDs.
- BPC-157TopicRegenerative therapies · Peptide · Not yet investigatedA fragment of a gastric protein with a large animal literature and, as of now, not a single published randomised human trial.
- Bracing for scoliosisTopicHypermobility & structure · Method · Not yet investigatedBrAIST was stopped early for benefit: bracing cut progression to surgery from 52% to 28%, and the effect tracked hours worn almost linearly.
- Broccoli sproutsTopicPolyphenols · Botanical · Not yet investigatedThree-day-old sprouts carry twenty to fifty times the glucoraphanin of the mature head, which is why the trials use sprouts and not vegetables.
- Brown adipose tissueTopicFat as an organ · Structure · Not yet investigatedAdults do have it — it was found by accident on PET scans being read for cancer, as symmetrical neck uptake radiologists had called artefact for years.
- ButyrateTopicWhat the microbiome makes · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe colonocyte's preferred fuel — it feeds the cell rather than the body, which is why serum levels tell you almost nothing.
- C-peptideTopicMeasuring glucose · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedCleaved off proinsulin in equal amounts to insulin and cleared far more slowly — so it measures what the pancreas made, even in someone injecting insulin.
- Caffeine and CYP1A2TopicPolyphenols · Concept · Not yet investigatedSlow metabolisers of caffeine show more cardiovascular risk from the same coffee. One enzyme, one common variant, opposite advice.
- Calabar beanTopicDrugs taken from nature · Drug · Not yet investigatedA West African ordeal poison: survive the bean and you were innocent. It gave us the first cholinesterase inhibitor, and the template for the Alzheimer's drugs.
- CandidaTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedA normal resident that becomes a pathogen in specific, identifiable circumstances — which is not what 'candida overgrowth' usually means.
- Candida aurisTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt appeared on three continents at once in the 2010s with no common source, resists most antifungals, and survives on hospital surfaces for weeks.
- Cannabinoid hyperemesisTopicCannabinoids · Condition · Not yet investigatedYears of heavy use, then cyclical vomiting relieved only by hot showers. An antiemetic plant causing intractable vomiting — and capsaicin cream, which mimics the shower, often works where antiemetics do not.
- CapsaicinTopicPain · Compound · Not yet investigatedDefunctionalises TRPV1 endings instead of numbing; the 8% patch is licensed for nerve pain.
- Carbon monoxideTopicOxygen & breathing · Compound · Not yet investigatedCarboxyhaemoglobin absorbs almost exactly like oxyhaemoglobin at the wavelength the oximeter uses, so the reading is normal or high while the blood carries almost nothing.
- CarvacrolTopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Compound · Not yet investigatedIt punches holes in bacterial membranes. That is also why undiluted it burns the mucosa it is being swallowed to treat.
- Castor oil (topical)TopicBotanicals & extracts · Botanical · Not yet investigatedRicinoleic acid, applied to skin. Traditional for packs and for candida; the evidence is thin and mostly not human.
- CB1 and CB2TopicCannabinoids · Protein · Not yet investigatedCB1 is the densest receptor in the brain and scarce in the brainstem, which is why cannabis does not stop breathing the way opioids do. CB2 is mostly immune.
- CBDTopicCannabinoids · Compound · Not yet investigatedIt barely touches CB1, which is why it is not intoxicating — and why explaining what it does instead is still an open research problem after a decade of sales.
- CBD and the liver enzymesTopicCannabinoids · Finding · Not yet investigatedIt inhibits CYP3A4 and CYP2C19 — the same interaction grapefruit is famous for. With clobazam the effect is large enough to need a dose change.
- CBSTopicMethylation & one-carbon · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedThe exit. It sends homocysteine into cysteine and glutathione, it needs B6, and it is the step that decides whether methylation and antioxidant defence compete.
- CD4 countTopicViruses · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedThe number that decides which infections are possible. Under 200 the opportunistic list opens, and prophylaxis starts before anyone is ill.
- Central sensitisationTopicPain · Concept · Not yet investigatedSpinal cord and brain turn up their own gain, so pain can outlast the injury.
- Ceramide scoreTopicCardiovascular risk markers · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedFour ceramides and three ratios, validated in Mayo's own cohorts, predicting events independently of LDL — and available in almost no laboratory.
- ChasteberryTopicSex hormones · Botanical · Not yet investigatedIt works on dopamine to lower prolactin, which is a real mechanism and the reason it is one of the few PMS botanicals with positive trials.
- ChemiosmosisTopicHydrogen & the proton · Process · Not yet investigatedRejected for years because nobody expected the answer to be a proton gradient. ATP synthase is a literal rotary motor, turned about a hundred times a second by protons falling through it.
- Chlamydia trachomatisTopicSexually transmitted infections · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedMostly silent. The damage is usually found years later, as infertility, in someone who never had a symptom.
- Chlorogenic acidTopicPolyphenols · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe main polyphenol in coffee, and most of the reason coffee's epidemiology looks the way it does — the caffeine gets the credit and the attention.
- CholangiocarcinomaTopicFlukes & tapeworms · Condition · Not yet investigatedBile-duct cancer, usually found too late to cut out — and in the fluke belt it is a parasite disease with a known, treatable cause.
- Cholecystokinin (CCK)TopicIncretins & appetite · Hormone · Not yet investigatedReleased by fat and protein in the duodenum; it empties the gallbladder and tells you to stop eating, in that order.
- CholineTopicMethylation & one-carbon · Nutrient · Not yet investigatedMost people do not reach the adequate intake and there is no routine test for it. It builds membranes, makes acetylcholine, and exports fat from the liver.
- ChondroitinTopicJoints & cartilage · Supplement · Not yet investigatedUsually sold alongside glucosamine on the strength of a combination the largest trial found no better than placebo — except in the severe-pain subgroup.
- Chronic rhinosinusitisTopicHypermobility & structure · Condition · Not yet investigatedTwelve weeks of symptoms plus objective inflammation. Without the objective half it is a label people carry for years on repeat antibiotics.
- Chronic stressTopicHPA axis · State · Not yet investigatedEverything downstream can be measured; the exposure itself is still a questionnaire.
- CiclopiroxTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedA nail lacquer, which sounds better than tablets until you see the cure rate: single digits in the registration trials.
- CinnamaldehydeTopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe smell of cinnamon and a real antimicrobial. Cassia carries coumarin alongside it, which is the liver risk the spice aisle does not mention.
- Cinnamon: Ceylon vs cassiaTopicBotanicals & extracts · Botanical · Not yet investigatedCassia carries coumarin, which is liver-toxic in quantity. Ceylon barely does. Most supermarket cinnamon is cassia.
- CitrininTopicLipids · Compound · Investigation 004A mold toxin, nephrotoxic in animals, turned up in four of twelve bottles.
- CitrullineTopicConditional amino acids · Compound · Not yet investigatedIt bypasses the first-pass metabolism that wastes arginine, so it raises plasma arginine better than arginine does. Watermelon is the dietary source.
- Clonorchis & OpisthorchisTopicFlukes & tapeworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedTwo liver flukes the IARC classifies as Group 1 human carcinogens. Northeast Thailand has the highest bile-duct cancer rate on earth.
- Clostridioides difficileTopicBacteria · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedThe disease is the antibiotic. It is the clearest case in medicine of a treatment creating the illness it is then treated for.
- Co-oximetryTopicOxygen & breathing · Method · Not yet investigatedThe only test that measures the haemoglobin species rather than calculating them — and the commonest error with it is not a wrong result but an unordered test.
- Cocaine as anaestheticTopicCatecholamines · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe first local anaesthetic, 1884, and still stocked in some ENT theatres because it numbs and constricts at once. Every -caine since is an attempt to keep the first half.
- CoccidioidesTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedValley fever. Cases rise with drought-then-rain cycles, and it is treated as bacterial pneumonia first almost every time.
- Cocoa flavanolsTopicPolyphenols · Compound · Not yet investigatedCOSMOS randomised 21,442 people for three and a half years: no effect on the primary endpoint, a 27% reduction in cardiovascular death on a secondary one.
- ColchicineTopicInflammation · Drug · Not yet investigatedIsolated in 1820 for gout, now approved for heart disease on trials that disagree.
- Cold exposureTopicFat as an organ · Concept · Not yet investigatedMild cold — around 17 °C for hours — recruits brown fat far more reliably than an ice bath, which mostly recruits shivering.
- Collagen peptidesTopicJoints & cartilage · Supplement · Not yet investigatedBroken to amino acids like any protein — with the exception of a few di- and tripeptides that do appear intact in blood, which is where the argument lives.
- Common-cold trial designTopicImmune · Concept · Not yet investigatedEvery trial defines a cold differently, and few confirm that a virus was there.
- Cone snail to ziconotideTopicDrugs taken from nature · Drug · Not yet investigatedA marine snail's harpoon peptide, a thousand times more potent than morphine and not an opioid — but it only works injected into the spinal fluid.
- Congenital syphilisTopicSexually transmitted infections · Condition · Not yet investigatedNearly every case follows a missed or untreated test in pregnancy. It is preventable with one injection of a drug from 1943.
- Continuous glucose monitoringTopicMeasuring glucose · Method · Not yet investigatedIt measures interstitial fluid, not blood, and lags it by five to fifteen minutes — which is invisible at rest and matters enormously during a fall.
- CoQ10: ubiquinone vs ubiquinolTopicLongevity & NAD · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe same molecule oxidised or reduced. Which one is absorbed better is a marketing argument with some evidence under it.
- Coronary artery calciumTopicCardiovascular risk markers · Method · Not yet investigatedA score of zero in a symptom-free adult is one of the strongest negative predictors in medicine — and it cannot see soft plaque, which is the kind that ruptures.
- Correlates of protectionTopicVaccines · Concept · Not yet investigatedThe antibody titre that means 'protected'. For measles it is known and precise; for many vaccines it has never been established, which is why boosters are argued about.
- CortisolTopicHPA axis · Hormone · Investigation 005Swings several-fold across a day, so the hour of the blood draw decides the number.
- Cortisol awakening responseTopicHPA axis · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedRises by about half 30 to 45 minutes after waking, and only if the wake time is verified.
- Coverage and clusteringTopicVaccines · Concept · Not yet investigatedA national average of 93% hides postcodes at 60%, and outbreaks happen in the postcode, not the average. Clustering is the whole story.
- COX-2TopicPain · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedBlocking it selectively spares the stomach; the cardiovascular risk turned out to be shared.
- Craniocervical instabilityTopicHypermobility & structure · Condition · Not yet investigatedReal in a small number of connective tissue patients, diagnosed on measurements that vary with head position, and operated on abroad far more often than at home.
- CreatineTopicMicronutrients · Supplement · Not yet investigatedOne of the few supplements where the strength data are solid and the brain data are not.
- Creatine kinaseTopicMuscle, and the sarco- words · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedIt rises after any hard session, so a raised CK alone means very little. Black men run higher at baseline, and reference ranges rarely say so.
- CRHTopicHPA axis · Hormone · Not yet investigatedTravels to the pituitary by a private portal circuit, so it is given, not measured.
- CrocinTopicBotanicals & extracts · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe carotenoid that makes saffron red and most of what a standardised extract is standardised to.
- CryptococcusTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIts polysaccharide capsule makes the ink-stain diagnosis possible and the immune response nearly useless.
- Cupping and hijamaTopicSkin · Method · Not yet investigatedDry cupping leaves marks; wet cupping draws blood. The marks are not toxins leaving — they are broken capillaries, and the trials are small, unblindable and mostly for pain.
- CurcuminoidsTopicInflammation · Concept · Investigation 001Only one of the three compounds sharing this label is curcumin itself.
- CyanocobalaminTopicMicronutrients · Nutrient · Not yet investigatedThe B12 on most hospital formularies carries a cyanide group and must be converted. Hydroxo- and methylcobalamin do not.
- CyclosporaTopicProtozoa · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt needs days outside a host to ripen, so it arrives on imported produce and never passes person to person.
- CYP3A4TopicAdaptogens & botanicals · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedPiperine inhibits it, lovastatin is cleared by it, and the pair sits untested.
- CytomegalovirusTopicViruses · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedThe commonest infectious cause of congenital deafness, and it is almost never tested for in pregnancy.
- D-serineTopicConditional amino acids · Compound · Not yet investigatedA right-handed amino acid, which biology is not supposed to use — and it is the co-agonist the NMDA receptor requires alongside glutamate.
- D2 versus D3TopicWhat is actually in the bottle · Concept · Not yet investigatedD3 raises and holds 25-OH-D better than D2 at the same dose. D2 is the yeast-derived vegan form and the one most often prescribed at high dose.
- DemodexTopicMites, lice & ticks · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedTwo mites live in almost every adult face. The disease is their density, not their presence — which is the whole difficulty in treating it.
- Dental amalgamTopicTin & the obesogens · Concept · Not yet investigatedHalf elemental mercury, alloyed with silver, tin and copper. Every public argument is about the mercury; the metallurgy that made it last is mostly about the tin.
- DermatophytesTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedTrichophyton, Microsporum, Epidermophyton. They eat keratin, so they never reach living tissue — and the drug has to grow out with the nail.
- Desiccated thyroidTopicTreating the thyroid · Drug · Not yet investigatedPig thyroid, standardised by iodine content rather than by hormone, at a T4:T3 ratio of about 4:1 where a human runs closer to 14:1.
- Deuterium-depleted waterTopicHydrogen & the proton · Supplement · Not yet investigatedOne hydrogen in 6,400 carries a neutron. The kinetic isotope effect is real chemistry; the cancer claim rests on a handful of small studies from a narrow set of investigators.
- DHEA-STopicHPA axis · Hormone · Not yet investigatedLasts hours in the blood where DHEA lasts minutes, which is why the sulfate is drawn.
- DHTTopicSex hormones · Hormone · Not yet investigatedThree to five times more potent at the androgen receptor than testosterone, and made locally in skin and prostate rather than in the testis.
- Diamine oxidase (DAO)TopicHistamine & mast cells · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedThe gut's histamine-degrading enzyme. The serum test correlates poorly with symptoms, and the supplement is a pig-kidney extract that cannot reach the bloodstream.
- Diatomaceous earthTopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Supplement · Not yet investigatedFood grade is amorphous silica. Pool grade is calcined to crystalline silica, a lung carcinogen. The bags look almost identical.
- Dientamoeba fragilisTopicProtozoa · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt has no cyst stage, so an ordinary ova-and-parasite smear cannot see it at all; it needs a fixed stain or PCR.
- DIM and I3CTopicSex hormones · Supplement · Not yet investigatedFrom cruciferous vegetables, and it does shift that ratio. Whether shifting it changes anything a person experiences is the part nobody has shown.
- DisulfiramTopicAlcohol · Drug · Not yet investigatedIt blocks the same enzyme ALDH2 deficiency disables — a drug that deliberately causes the Asian flush. Found when rubber workers got sick after a beer.
- DMSOTopicPain · Compound · Not yet investigatedAn industrial solvent that carries whatever is dissolved in it through skin — which is both the appeal and the danger.
- DNA barcoding botanicalsTopicWhat is actually in the bottle · Method · Not yet investigatedA 2013 barcoding study found outright substitution in about a third of herbal products — the labelled plant absent entirely. The method has real limits, and the finding still held up.
- Doxy-PEPTopicSexually transmitted infections · Concept · Not yet investigatedA doxycycline dose after sex cut bacterial STIs by about two thirds in trials — and it is an antibiotic taken by well people, indefinitely.
- DoxycyclineTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedIt kills the Wolbachia living inside filarial worms, which sterilises the worm — an antibiotic used as an antiparasitic.
- DPP-4TopicGlycemic control · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedClips both incretins within minutes, which is what made inhibiting it a drug class.
- Drugs that do itTopicOxygen & breathing · Drug · Not yet investigatedDapsone, benzocaine, nitrites, some local anaesthetics. A teething gel and a throat spray have both put children in intensive care.
- DSHEA 1994TopicWhat is actually in the bottle · Concept · Not yet investigatedThe law that made supplements neither food nor drug. No approval before sale, and the burden is on the regulator to prove harm AFTER it is on the shelf.
- Dwarf tapewormTopicFlukes & tapeworms · Pathogen · Investigation 007In 2015 a man's tumours turned out to be the tapeworm's cancer, not his. One case, and it changed what a tumour can be.
- DXA body compositionTopicFat as an organ · Method · Not yet investigatedThe same scan that measures bone will separate fat from lean and tell you the visceral fraction — and almost nobody orders it that way.
- EchinocandinsTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedThey attack a cell-wall component human cells do not possess — which is what selective toxicity is supposed to look like.
- EchinococcusTopicFlukes & tapeworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedHydatid cysts grow silently for years, and puncturing one can seed the abdomen and cause anaphylaxis on the table.
- EDTA chelationTopicRegenerative therapies · Drug · Not yet investigatedTACT reported a modest benefit in diabetic patients and was criticised for its conduct. TACT2 was run to settle it and found nothing.
- EGCG / green tea extractTopicBotanicals & extracts · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe catechin that carries the claims, and the one behind the hepatotoxicity reports when it is concentrated.
- Ehlers-Danlos syndromesTopicConnective tissue & dysautonomia · State · Not yet investigatedThirteen types, twelve with known genes. The hypermobile type is the common one and the only one still without a test.
- Electrolyte drinksTopicElectrolytes · Supplement · Not yet investigatedMost contain a fraction of the sodium a heavy sweater loses in an hour, and the ones that do not are sold to people sitting down.
- EllagitanninsTopicPolyphenols · Compound · Not yet investigatedPomegranate and walnut. They are not absorbed as such; their whole effect depends on what your bacteria make of them.
- EMDRTopicPsychiatry & nootropics · Method · Not yet investigatedIt works, and the dismantling studies suggest the eye movements are the part that does not — which makes it effective exposure therapy with an unnecessary ritual.
- Endocrine disruptorsTopicTin & the obesogens · Concept · Not yet investigatedThe category's hardest problem is the dose-response: effects appear at concentrations a toxicology screen built around organ damage would call clean.
- EndometriosisTopicGynaecological conditions · Condition · Not yet investigatedIt affects roughly one woman in ten and cannot be seen on any scan or blood test — diagnosis still means surgery.
- Entamoeba histolyticaTopicProtozoa · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIdentical under a microscope to the harmless E. dispar; only antigen or PCR separates the one that drills into liver.
- EosinophiliaTopicRoundworms · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedThe blood count that suggests a worm — except in the infections where it is conspicuously absent, which are the dangerous ones.
- EPA for depressionTopicPsychiatry & nootropics · Finding · Not yet investigatedThe meta-analyses separate on one variable: formulations with at least 60% EPA work, and DHA-dominant ones do not. A dose-response hiding inside a null result.
- EPA vs DHATopicLipids · Concept · Not yet investigatedTwo different fatty acids sold as one product. The cardiovascular trials that worked used high-dose pure EPA.
- EpidiolexTopicCannabinoids · Drug · Not yet investigatedPurified CBD, approved for three rare epilepsies on real trials — at 10 to 20 mg per kilogram per day. A 25 mg gummy is roughly one fiftieth of that dose.
- Epstein–Barr virusTopicViruses · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedOver 90% of adults carry it. A ten-million-person military cohort put it upstream of multiple sclerosis with a 32-fold increase in risk.
- Escherichia coliTopicBacteria · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedMost strains are harmless residents. O157:H7 makes a toxin, and giving antibiotics for it makes the kidney complication more likely, not less.
- Essential amino acidsTopicThe essential amino acids · Supplement · Not yet investigatedAll nine at once, which is the fix for what BCAAs get wrong — and about twelve grams is where the muscle-synthesis response plateaus.
- EstradiolTopicWomen's health · Hormone · Not yet investigatedSwallowed, it passes the liver first; the patch does not, and clotting risk differs.
- Eugenol (clove)TopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Compound · Not yet investigatedA genuine local anaesthetic, used in dentistry for a century — and hepatotoxic in overdose, with children the usual victims.
- ExosomesTopicRegenerative therapies · Concept · Not yet investigatedReal cell-to-cell messengers and a genuine research field. Every exosome product sold in a clinic today is unapproved, and several outbreaks have followed injections.
- Extract standardisationTopicAdaptogens & botanicals · Concept · Not yet investigatedA trial tests one extract, not the plant: KSM-66 results do not transfer to Sensoril.
- Fasciola hepaticaTopicFlukes & tapeworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedThe sheep liver fluke, caught from watercress — and the one fluke praziquantel does not reliably kill.
- Fasting glucoseTopicGlycemic control · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedOne measurement, taken at the hour growth hormone and cortisol are already lifting it.
- Fasting insulinTopicMeasuring glucose · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedThe test that would catch insulin resistance years before glucose moves, and it is not standardised between laboratories — which is why it is rarely trusted.
- FerritinTopicWomen's health · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedAn acute-phase protein first and an iron store second, so inflammation hides a deficiency.
- FGF21TopicFat as an organ · Hormone · Not yet investigatedReleased by the liver under protein restriction and alcohol, and it drives a specific behaviour: it makes animals stop choosing sweet things.
- Fibre typesTopicMuscle, and the sarco- words · Concept · Not yet investigatedSlow and fast are real and largely set by the nerve, not the muscle. Cross-innervate them in an animal and the fibres convert — the nerve is giving the orders.
- FibroidsTopicGynaecological conditions · Condition · Not yet investigatedUp to 70–80% of women have them by fifty. The question is never whether they exist but whether they are causing what is being blamed on them.
- FisetinTopicSenescence & senolytics · Compound · Not yet investigatedA strawberry flavonol with the strongest senolytic signal in mouse screens, and human trials that have been running for years without reporting.
- Fish tapewormTopicFlukes & tapeworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt competes for B12 well enough to cause a megaloblastic anaemia indistinguishable from pernicious anaemia.
- FluconazoleTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedOne 150 mg capsule for thrush. At repeated high doses in the first trimester it is a teratogen, which the capsule does not say.
- FlucytosineTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedUseful only in combination: given alone, resistance appears within days. It is also unavailable in much of the world where it is most needed.
- FluorideTopicEnvironment & exposure · Compound · Investigation 006The most-swallowed drug never prescribed: added to water at 0.7 mg/L, and the contemporary caries benefit measures about a quarter of a tooth.
- Fluoride & cognitionTopicEnvironment & exposure · Outcome · Investigation 006Seventy-four studies, a federal court, and one number that keeps moving: where does the dose-response actually start?
- Fluoride & iodineTopicEnvironment & exposure · Mechanism · Investigation 006Two halogens, one transporter. The displacement story is popular, mechanistically plausible, and the best direct test of it came back negative.
- FolateTopicMicronutrients · Compound · Not yet investigatedHigh-dose folic acid can mask the anemia of B12 deficiency while nerve damage advances.
- Folic acid vs folateTopicMicronutrients · Nutrient · Not yet investigatedNot the same molecule. The synthetic form needs a reduction step many people run slowly, and it can mask a B12 deficiency while the nerves keep going.
- Formalin fixationTopicCancer, found and missed · Method · Investigation 007Formaldehyde stops biology mid-sentence by cross-linking protein. It preserves shape beautifully and shreds DNA doing it.
- Foxglove to digoxinTopicDrugs taken from nature · Drug · Not yet investigatedWithering worked out the dose in 1785 from a Shropshire woman's family recipe. The therapeutic window is still so narrow that we measure the blood level.
- Free T3TopicThyroid · Hormone · Not yet investigatedDeiodinase enzymes outside the thyroid make most of it, and they need selenium.
- Free T4TopicThyroid · Hormone · Not yet investigatedThe thyroid's main output, and largely a prohormone: tissue converts it to T3.
- FructosamineTopicMeasuring glucose · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedTwo to three weeks of glucose instead of three months. The test to use when HbA1c is unreliable — anaemia, pregnancy, haemoglobin variants.
- GABA, taken orallyTopicConditional amino acids · Supplement · Not yet investigatedIt is the brain's main inhibitory transmitter and it does not meaningfully cross the blood–brain barrier, so any effect is from the gut or from expectation.
- Gabapentin and pregabalinTopicPsychiatry & nootropics · Drug · Not yet investigatedNamed for GABA and they do not touch its receptors — they block a calcium channel subunit. Sedation, falls, weight gain and a real withdrawal syndrome.
- GallstonesTopicLiver & bile · Condition · Not yet investigatedMost are silent and stay that way. Rapid weight loss is a strong risk factor, which is the link nobody mentions alongside a GLP-1 prescription.
- Garlic (allicin)TopicBotanicals & extracts · Botanical · Not yet investigatedAllicin only exists after the clove is crushed — which is why preparation changes the dose more than the dose does.
- Gastric emptyingTopicIncretins & appetite · Process · Not yet investigatedThe rate-limiting step for both fullness and the glucose spike — and the mechanism behind most of what GLP-1 drugs feel like from the inside.
- GDF15TopicSenescence & senolytics · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedThe strongest single blood predictor of mortality most people have never heard of — and the hormone that causes the nausea of pregnancy and of metformin.
- GhrelinTopicCardiometabolic · Hormone · Not yet investigatedRises before meals, yet no drug that blocks it has produced weight loss in people.
- Gila monster to exenatideTopicDrugs taken from nature · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe lizard's exendin-4 resists the enzyme that destroys human GLP-1 in two minutes. Every GLP-1 drug in a pen today descends from that one reptile peptide.
- GingerTopicBotanicals & extracts · Botanical · Not yet investigatedGingerols and shogaols; drying converts one to the other, so fresh and dried are not the same remedy.
- Ginkgo bilobaTopicPsychiatry & nootropics · Botanical · Not yet investigatedGEM randomised 3,069 older adults for six years and found no reduction in dementia. The standardised extract is also a genuine platelet inhibitor.
- GIPTopicGlycemic control · Hormone · Not yet investigatedLevels stay normal in type 2 diabetes; the beta cell stops answering them.
- GLP-1TopicGlycemic control · Hormone · Not yet investigatedSecreted at the meal and gone in minutes, which is why the drugs are modified copies.
- GLP-2TopicIncretins & appetite · Hormone · Not yet investigatedThe other product of the same gene, and it does something entirely different: it grows intestinal mucosa. Teduglutide is the drug version.
- GlucosamineTopicJoints & cartilage · Supplement · Not yet investigatedSulfate and hydrochloride are not interchangeable in the trial record, and most of the positive evidence used the sulfate form the negative trials did not.
- GlutathioneTopicConditional amino acids · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe body's main intracellular antioxidant, and swallowing it mostly does not work — it is broken to its amino acids before it arrives.
- GlycATopicCardiovascular risk markers · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedAn NMR signal from glycosylated acute-phase proteins — a more stable inflammation marker than CRP, because it averages several proteins at once.
- Glycaemic indexTopicMeasuring glucose · Concept · Not yet investigatedMeasured on 50 g of available carbohydrate from a single food, in fasted people, one food at a time. Almost nothing about a real meal survives that.
- Glycaemic variabilityTopicMeasuring glucose · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedTwo people with the same HbA1c can have completely different days. The average hides the swings, and the swings may be what does the damage.
- Glycine:methionine ratioTopicLongevity & NAD · Concept · Not yet investigatedMuscle meat is rich in methionine and poor in glycine; skin, bone and connective tissue carry the balance. The ratio, not the protein, may be what matters.
- Grapefruit and CYP3A4TopicPolyphenols · Concept · Not yet investigatedFuranocoumarins knock out intestinal CYP3A4 for about a day, which can double the dose of a drug you took correctly.
- Grapefruit seed extractTopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Supplement · Not yet investigatedIndependent testing has repeatedly found the antimicrobial activity comes from synthetic preservatives added to it, not from grapefruit.
- Graves' diseaseTopicTreating the thyroid · Condition · Not yet investigatedThe eye disease follows its own course and can get worse after the thyroid is treated — especially after radioiodine, and especially in smokers.
- GriseofulvinTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedFrom a Penicillium mould in 1939. It binds keratin as the hair grows, so the cure IS the hair growing out.
- Grounding / earthingTopicLight, pressure & water · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedThe proposed mechanism is electron transfer from the earth. Nobody has demonstrated that transfer in a person, and the trials are small and unblindable.
- Group A StreptococcusTopicBacteria · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedOne organism causes a sore throat, scarlet fever, necrotising fasciitis and, weeks later, rheumatic heart disease.
- GSK-3betaTopicMood & neurochemistry · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedThe enzyme joining lithium, insulin signalling and tau phosphorylation — and the least famous node on this map.
- Guinea wormTopicRoundworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedFrom an estimated 3.5 million cases a year in the 1980s to a handful today, with no drug and no vaccine. A cloth filter did it.
- H&ETopicCancer, found and missed · Method · Investigation 007Two dyes, pink and blue, unchanged since the 1870s. Almost every cancer diagnosis on earth is made on them.
- H. pyloriTopicBacteria · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedThe precedent everybody forgot: a bacterium causing ulcers and gastric cancer, dismissed for a decade, then a Nobel Prize.
- H1 antihistaminesTopicHistamine & mast cells · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe first generation cross into the brain, which is why they sedate — and why their long-term anticholinergic load is a genuine concern in older people.
- H2 blockersTopicHistamine & mast cells · Drug · Not yet investigatedBuilt to cut stomach acid, and they were the world's best-selling drug before the proton pump inhibitors — now used off-label as the second antihistamine in MCAS.
- Hair mineral analysisTopicToxic metals · Method · Not yet investigatedSplit samples from one head sent to different laboratories have come back with different results and opposite advice. It is useful for methylmercury and for very little else.
- Hashimoto's thyroiditisTopicTreating the thyroid · Condition · Not yet investigatedAntibodies can precede the failure by years, which makes it one of the few autoimmune diseases you can watch arrive.
- HbA1cTopicGlycemic control · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedWeighted toward the last month, and red cell turnover moves it in both directions.
- HDLTopicLipids · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedRaising it with drugs failed every outcome trial, which is why it stopped being a target.
- HDL efflux capacityTopicCardiovascular risk markers · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedHow much cholesterol HDL can actually pull out of a cell — which predicts events where the HDL NUMBER famously does not.
- Head liceTopicMites, lice & ticks · Condition · Not yet investigatedKnockdown-resistance mutations are now close to universal in US lice, so the first-line treatment often fails and gets blamed on the parent.
- Heavy menstrual bleedingTopicGynaecological conditions · Condition · Not yet investigatedThe commonest cause of iron deficiency in women of reproductive age, and the one nobody asks about before ordering the ferritin.
- Heavy metals on the shelfTopicWhat is actually in the bottle · Finding · Not yet investigatedProtein powders, ayurvedic formulations and cacao have all tested above California's Prop 65 limits. The plant concentrates what the soil held, and nobody tests the soil.
- Helminth immunomodulationTopicImmune · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedWorm exposure tracks LOWER rates of autoimmune and metabolic disease. The immunology runs opposite to the folklore about parasites.
- Hepatic encephalopathyTopicLiver & bile · Condition · Not yet investigatedTreated with a laxative that acidifies the colon and an antibiotic that stays in it — both aimed at bacteria, for a brain problem caused by a liver.
- Hepatitis ATopicViruses · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedFaecal–oral, no chronic carriage, and — unusually — far worse the older you are when you get it.
- Hepatitis BTopicViruses · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIts DNA integrates into the host genome, so 'cure' means suppression — and stopping treatment can cause a flare worse than the disease.
- Hepatitis CTopicViruses · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedCurable since 2014 in eight to twelve weeks, at a price that kept most of the world from being cured.
- Hepatitis ETopicViruses · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedMortality near 20% in the third trimester of pregnancy, and in Europe it is a pork-borne infection rather than a travel one.
- HepcidinTopicWhat is actually in the bottle · Hormone · Not yet investigatedThe master switch on iron absorption. One oral dose raises it for a day and shuts the door — which is why taking iron every day absorbs less than taking it every other day.
- Hereditary alpha-tryptasemiaTopicHistamine & mast cells · Condition · Not yet investigatedExtra copies of the TPSAB1 gene, in about one person in twenty, raising baseline tryptase for life — described only in 2016, and it explains a lot of previously unexplainable people.
- Herpes simplexTopicViruses · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt hides in the nerve ganglion, where no antiviral reaches. That is why there is treatment and no cure.
- HibiscusTopicBotanicals & extracts · Botanical · Not yet investigatedOne of the few herbal teas with blood-pressure trials rather than blood-pressure testimonials.
- HirsutismTopicGynaecological conditions · Condition · Not yet investigatedThe hair follicle's sensitivity to androgen matters more than the androgen level, which is why two women with the same testosterone look entirely different.
- HistamineTopicHistamine & mast cells · Compound · Not yet investigatedFour receptors, four different jobs — stomach acid, wakefulness, itch and immune signalling — which is why blocking one does nothing for the others.
- Histamine intoleranceTopicHistamine & mast cells · Condition · Not yet investigatedA real mechanism with no validated test. The low-histamine diet works for some people, and every attempt to predict who has failed.
- HistoplasmaTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedThe Ohio and Mississippi valleys. The calcified lung nodules it leaves behind are read for decades as old tuberculosis.
- HIVTopicViruses · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedUntreated it destroys CD4 cells; treated, life expectancy is close to normal and undetectable means untransmittable.
- HMG-CoA reductaseTopicLipids · Enzyme · Investigation 004Every statin works by blocking this one rate-limiting step in cholesterol synthesis.
- HNMTTopicHistamine & mast cells · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedThe other disposal route, and the one that works inside cells rather than in the gut — which is why it, not DAO, is the one that matters in the brain.
- HolotranscobalaminTopicMethylation & one-carbon · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedThe fraction of B12 actually deliverable to cells, which is about a fifth of what the standard assay counts.
- HomocysteineTopicMicronutrients · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedB vitamins lower it reliably; the trials found no drop in heart attacks or deaths.
- Honey for coughTopicBees · Finding · Not yet investigatedA Cochrane review puts it ahead of no treatment and roughly level with dextromethorphan in children — one of the few kitchen remedies with that kind of evidence.
- HookwormTopicRoundworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt drinks blood through the gut wall, which makes it the classic tropical cause of iron deficiency — and it gets in through bare feet.
- Hormonal acneTopicGynaecological conditions · Condition · Not yet investigatedDriven by DHT at the sebaceous gland and by insulin through IGF-1 — which is the mechanistic bridge between the glycaemic and the dermatological.
- Horsetail (Equisetum)TopicGlycemic control · Botanical · Not yet investigatedA traditional antidiabetic with almost no human evidence and a real thiaminase problem: it destroys the thiamine you already have.
- House dust miteTopicMites, lice & ticks · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedThe allergen is in the faecal pellet, not the mite, which is why killing them does less for symptoms than removing what they left.
- How cancer is testedTopicCancer, found and missed · Method · Investigation 007Six steps between the tumour and the diagnosis, and every one of them was designed to answer a different question than the one a parasite would raise.
- How peptides are actually soldTopicRegenerative therapies · Concept · Not yet investigated'Research use only, not for human consumption' is a label that transfers liability, not a statement about what the vial contains or who will inject it.
- How protein quality is scoredTopicThe essential amino acids · Method · Not yet investigatedPDCAAS caps its own score at 1.0, so it cannot tell a good protein from an excellent one. DIAAS does not cap, and it demotes most plant proteins.
- HPA axisTopicHPA axis · Pathway · Not yet investigatedThree organs in one feedback loop, which is why a single cortisol value says little.
- HPVTopicSexually transmitted infections · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedTypes 16 and 18 cause most cervical cancer, and in vaccinated cohorts invasive cancer has already fallen.
- HPV self-samplingTopicSexually transmitted infections · Method · Not yet investigatedA swab taken at home performs about as well as one taken by a clinician, and it reaches the people screening programmes keep missing.
- hs-CRPTopicInflammation · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedNonspecific enough that a head cold moves it, and still predictive after LDL is counted.
- Hyaluronic acid injectionTopicJoints & cartilage · Drug · Not yet investigatedGuidelines contradict each other on this more than on almost anything else in orthopaedics, and the effect size sits right at the edge of what a patient notices.
- Hydrogen breath testingTopicHydrogen & the proton · Method · Not yet investigatedHuman cells make no hydrogen, so every molecule in your breath came from gut bacteria. Elegant physiology, and the weakest widely-ordered test in this atlas.
- Hydrogen waterTopicLongevity & NAD · Supplement · Not yet investigatedA gas dissolved in water at millimolar concentrations, with small positive trials and an unresolved question about how something that inert does anything at all.
- HydroxychloroquineTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedAn antimalarial that became a rheumatology drug. The long-term risk is the retina, not the heart.
- Hyperadrenergic POTSTopicDysautonomia & long COVID · Condition · Not yet investigatedStanding noradrenaline above 600 pg/mL. It is the subtype where beta blockade helps and where fluid loading alone often does not.
- Hyperbaric oxygenTopicLight, pressure & water · Method · Not yet investigatedThirteen indications with real evidence, and a clinic industry built on the ones not on that list. Pressure and oxygen are both drugs with real toxicity.
- Hyperbaric oxygenTopicOxygen & breathing · Method · Not yet investigatedCurative for a short, specific list — carbon monoxide, decompression sickness, gas embolism, some diabetic foot ulcers. Sold for a much longer one.
- HyperhomocysteinaemiaTopicCardiometabolic · State · Not yet investigatedRaised homocysteine tracks clots and strokes. Whether it CAUSES them, or just marks the damage, is still the open question.
- HyperkalaemiaTopicElectrolytes · Condition · Not yet investigatedThe ECG changes are the reason it kills, and calcium is given first — not to lower potassium, but to stabilise the heart while everything else works.
- Hypermobility spectrum disorderTopicHypermobility & structure · Condition · Not yet investigatedSymptomatic hypermobility without a genetic diagnosis. It is not a lesser version of Ehlers-Danlos; it is what most people actually have.
- HyponatraemiaTopicElectrolytes · Condition · Not yet investigatedAlmost always too much water rather than too little salt — and correcting it too fast causes osmotic demyelination, which is permanent.
- Icosapent ethylTopicCardiovascular risk markers · Drug · Not yet investigatedPurified EPA cut events by 25% in REDUCE-IT, and the comparator was mineral oil, which may have raised the control arm's risk. The argument has not ended.
- IGF-1TopicPsychiatry & nootropics · Hormone · Not yet investigatedGrowth hormone's actual messenger. High is associated with cancer, low with frailty and cognitive decline, and the optimum is somewhere nobody has pinned down.
- IL-6TopicInflammation · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedMade in fat, muscle and immune cells, and the direct trigger for CRP in the liver.
- Immune boostingTopicImmune · Concept · Not yet investigatedMarketing sells a single quantity that no laboratory test actually measures.
- ImposexTopicTin & the obesogens · Finding · Not yet investigatedFemale dog whelks near marinas grew penises, at water concentrations in nanograms per litre. One of the first unambiguous proofs that a synthetic chemical could disrupt an endocrine system.
- IndolepropionateTopicWhat the microbiome makes · Compound · Not yet investigatedA tryptophan metabolite made by one bacterium, strongly protective against type 2 diabetes in cohort data, and absent in people without that organism.
- Infant botulismTopicBees · Condition · Not yet investigatedUnder one year the gut has no competing flora, so swallowed spores germinate and make toxin in place. It is the entire reason honey carries an age warning.
- InfluenzaTopicViruses · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt reassorts eight separate gene segments, which is why the vaccine is rebuilt every year and why a pandemic strain can appear in one step.
- Innate immunityTopicImmune · Concept · Not yet investigatedMost cold symptoms come from the host response, not from the virus itself.
- InositolTopicMicronutrients · Nutrient · Not yet investigatedMyo- and D-chiro-inositol shift insulin resistance and ovulation in PCOS trials — one of the few supplements with both a mechanism and a signal.
- Insulin resistanceTopicGlycemic control · State · Not yet investigatedDefined by a clamp almost nobody gets, so it is inferred from cheaper proxies.
- Intestinal permeabilityTopicGut & microbiome · Concept · Not yet investigatedMuch of the leaky-gut literature rests on a zonulin ELISA that does not measure zonulin.
- Intravenous vitamin CTopicAntioxidants · Method · Not yet investigatedIntravenous reaches plasma levels oral cannot — roughly seventyfold — and at those levels it becomes a pro-oxidant, generating peroxide. That is the mechanism, and it is not antioxidant.
- Inulin and FOSTopicWhat the microbiome makes · Nutrient · Not yet investigatedThe best-studied prebiotics and the most likely to cause bloating — in SIBO they feed exactly the bacteria in the wrong place.
- Iodine in the specimenTopicCancer, found and missed · Method · Investigation 007Iodine reaches tissue three ways before a pathologist ever sees it, and it kills organisms on contact. Whether that is why parasites go unreported is a different question.
- Iron deficiency & microcytosisTopicMinerals & iron · State · Not yet investigatedSmall pale cells send everyone looking for iron. Copper deficiency produces the same picture and nobody checks it.
- IsavuconazoleTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe newest of the azoles: fewer interactions, no cyclodextrin vehicle, and it covers the moulds fluconazole never did.
- ItraconazoleTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedCarries a heart-failure boxed warning and interacts with almost everything through CYP3A4 — including drugs the patient forgot to mention.
- IV NAD+TopicRegenerative therapies · Method · Not yet investigatedNAD+ is too large and too charged to enter cells intact, so an infusion raises plasma and then the precursors it is broken into. The flush is real; the rationale is not.
- IvabradineTopicDysautonomia & long COVID · Drug · Not yet investigatedIt slows the sinus node without touching blood pressure, which is exactly the problem in POTS — and it is the only drug with a randomised crossover trial in it.
- IvermectinTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Investigation 007Avermectins came out of one soil sample near a Japanese golf course and won a Nobel. The cancer claim is a real preclinical signal with no human trial behind it.
- KavaTopicPsychiatry & nootropics · Botanical · Not yet investigatedReal anxiolytic trial evidence and a liver-injury history that tracks to acetone extracts and aerial parts rather than to the traditional water-extracted root.
- KetoconazoleTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedOral use was restricted worldwide after liver failure and adrenal suppression. The shampoo was never the problem.
- KlothoTopicSenescence & senolytics · Protein · Not yet investigatedMice without it age catastrophically; mice with extra live longer. In people it is a circulating protein that falls with kidney disease and tracks cognition.
- KratomTopicPsychiatry & nootropics · Botanical · Not yet investigatedThe leaf is a partial opioid agonist with a ceiling on respiratory depression. Concentrated 7-OH products remove that ceiling, which is a different drug.
- Kynurenine pathwayTopicMood & neurochemistry · Pathway · Not yet investigatedInflammation induces IDO, which pulls tryptophan away from serotonin.
- L-5-MTHFTopicMethylation & one-carbon · Supplement · Not yet investigatedThe form that skips MTHFR entirely. Worth having — and it is sold to people whose folate status was never measured in the first place.
- L-carnitineTopicWhat the microbiome makes · Compound · Not yet investigatedIt carries fat into the mitochondrion, and it is also the TMAO substrate — so the supplement and the risk marker are the same molecule.
- L-theanineTopicConditional amino acids · Compound · Not yet investigatedA glutamine analogue from tea that DOES cross into the brain — which is the contrast that makes the oral-GABA problem clear.
- LactoferrinTopicMinerals & iron · Protein · Not yet investigatedAn iron-binding protein from milk, trialled as an iron supplement that is gentler on the gut.
- Lavender (silexan)TopicBotanicals & extracts · Botanical · Not yet investigatedThe oral preparation used in anxiety trials is a specific standardised oil, not the essential oil in a diffuser.
- LDL-CTopicLipids · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedCalculated by subtraction on most panels, and least reliable when triglycerides run high.
- Legionella pneumophilaTopicBacteria · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt lives inside amoebae in plumbing. The 1976 outbreak that named it was traced to a hotel cooling tower, and it is still a plumbing disease.
- LeishmaniaTopicProtozoa · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedSandfly-borne: the skin form heals to a scar, the visceral form kills almost everyone it is left untreated in.
- Lemon balmTopicBotanicals & extracts · Botanical · Not yet investigatedIt inhibits the enzyme that clears GABA — the same target as an epilepsy drug. Whether that survives a cup of tea is the question.
- Lemongrass oilTopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Botanical · Not yet investigatedCitral-rich and impressive against Candida in a dish. So far, only in a dish.
- LeptinTopicCardiometabolic · Hormone · Not yet investigatedFound in mice that cannot make it; most people with obesity have high levels.
- Leptin resistanceTopicFat as an organ · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedObesity is a state of high leptin, not low. Giving more does nothing except in the handful of people with a real deficiency — and in them it is transformative.
- LeucovorinTopicMethylation & one-carbon · Drug · Not yet investigatedReduced folate given to rescue cells from methotrexate — and, in a much stranger story, trialled for a subset of autism with folate receptor antibodies.
- LevothyroxineTopicTreating the thyroid · Drug · Not yet investigatedOne of the most prescribed drugs on earth, and its absorption is wrecked by coffee, calcium, iron and a full stomach — which is most mornings.
- Light exposureTopicSleep & circadian · Concept · Not yet investigatedA lit room runs a few hundred lux; an overcast morning outside runs several thousand.
- Lipid nanoparticlesTopicVaccines · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe delivery, not the message, is the hard part — and the ionisable lipid is why the vials needed a freezer and why the arm aches afterwards.
- LipodystrophyTopicFat as an organ · Condition · Not yet investigatedToo little fat causes the same metabolic disease as too much, which is the cleanest proof that the problem is where fat goes, not how much there is.
- Lipopolysaccharide (LPS)TopicWhat the microbiome makes · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe outer coat of gram-negative bacteria and the most inflammatory molecule biology makes. 'Metabolic endotoxaemia' is the claim that a little of it leaks daily.
- Liposomal claimsTopicWhat is actually in the bottle · Concept · Not yet investigatedA real liposome is a bilayer vesicle with a measurable size distribution. Most 'liposomal' supplements publish no particle data at all, which is the whole claim unverified.
- Live attenuated vaccinesTopicVaccines · Drug · Not yet investigatedGrown until it loses its edge. They give the broadest, longest immunity of any type, and they are the one class you cannot give to the immunosuppressed.
- Liver flukesTopicFlukes & tapeworms · Pathogen · Investigation 007Opisthorchis and Clonorchis cause bile-duct cancer and are also Group 1 carcinogens. Endemic to tens of millions of people.
- Loa loaTopicRoundworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedThe eye worm. Ivermectin given to someone heavily infected with it can cause fatal encephalopathy, which is why mass treatment stops at its range.
- Long COVIDTopicDysautonomia & long COVID · Condition · Not yet investigatedNot one illness. The dysautonomic, the post-exertional and the organ-damage presentations behave differently and are being averaged together in most trials.
- Low-dose lithiumTopicMood & neurochemistry · Drug · Not yet investigatedDoses far below the psychiatric range inhibit GSK-3 and track lower dementia rates. The trials so far are small, and two of them disagree.
- Lp(a)TopicLipids · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedSet almost entirely by genes, worth measuring once, and rarely measured at all.
- Lp-PLA2TopicCardiovascular risk markers · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedAn enzyme carried on LDL that marks plaque inflammation. The drug built to block it failed twice in large trials, which is its own lesson.
- LuteolinTopicPolyphenols · Compound · Not yet investigatedCelery and thyme. It is one of the few dietary flavones with real mast-cell stabilising data, which is why it keeps turning up in MCAS protocols.
- Lye (sodium hydroxide)TopicGut & microbiome · Compound · Not yet investigatedCaustic. Used in traditional food preparation and, dangerously, in 'natural' remedies — it liquefies tissue on contact.
- Lymphatic filariasisTopicRoundworms · Condition · Not yet investigatedThe disfigurement is the immune reaction to dead and dying worms, not the living ones — so treatment can make the limb worse before better.
- Madagascar periwinkleTopicDrugs taken from nature · Drug · Not yet investigatedScreened as a diabetes folk remedy. It did nothing for blood sugar and wiped out white cells — which is how childhood leukaemia became survivable.
- Magnesium glycinateTopicMinerals & iron · Supplement · Not yet investigatedThe glycine half is the interesting half — it is the part with a route to homocysteine. The autism claim is weaker than it sounds.
- Magnesium L-threonateTopicPsychiatry & nootropics · Supplement · Not yet investigatedDesigned to raise magnesium in brain rather than blood, on rodent data. The human trials are small, industry-run, and use composite cognitive endpoints.
- MalasseziaTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt lives on nearly every adult's skin and needs lipid to grow, which is why the shampoos that work are the ones that strip oil.
- MalathionTopicMites, lice & ticks · Drug · Not yet investigatedAn organophosphate for head lice: it kills the eggs where permethrin does not, and it is flammable on the hair.
- Manuka and methylglyoxalTopicBees · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe activity comes from dihydroxyacetone in the flower converting to methylglyoxal in the jar over months. The UMF number is that conversion, sold by the grade.
- MAO inhibitorsTopicCatecholamines · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe first antidepressants, found by accident in a tuberculosis ward. They still work when nothing else does, and the cheese reaction is why almost nobody prescribes them.
- MASLD (fatty liver)TopicCardiometabolic · State · Not yet investigatedRenamed out of NAFLD in 2023, and still diagnosed in most people without a biopsy.
- Mast cell activation syndromeTopicConnective tissue & dysautonomia · State · Not yet investigatedContested diagnostic criteria, real mast cells. The argument is about who meets the definition, not whether mast cells misbehave.
- Mast cell stabilisersTopicHistamine & mast cells · Drug · Not yet investigatedCromolyn is barely absorbed, which is the point when the target is the gut — and a genuine limitation everywhere else.
- MeaslesTopicViruses · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt erases existing antibody memory — 'immune amnesia' — so the damage outlasts the rash by years. R0 of 12 to 18.
- Measuring Lp(a)TopicCardiovascular risk markers · Method · Not yet investigatedIt is about 90% genetic and essentially fixed for life, so it needs measuring once — and most people never have it measured at all.
- MebendazoleTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe same family, absorbed even less — which is why it works for pinworm and is useless for hydatid.
- Medical-grade honeyTopicBees · Supplement · Not yet investigatedLicensed for wounds in Europe and the UK. It is gamma-irradiated, because raw honey carries Clostridium spores and a wound is exactly where they would germinate.
- MelaninTopicSkin · Compound · Not yet investigatedEumelanin and pheomelanin, from the same amino acid. Redheads make the second kind, which offers little protection and may generate damage in the dark, without any sun at all.
- MelittinTopicBees · Peptide · Not yet investigatedHalf the dry weight of the venom, and it punches holes in any lipid bilayer it meets. That is why it kills cells in a dish, and why targeting it in a body is hard.
- Mendelian randomisationTopicAlcohol · Method · Not yet investigatedGene variants are assigned at conception, not by lifestyle, so they cannot be confounded by who chooses to drink. Run on alcohol, they find harm at every level for blood pressure and stroke.
- Menstrual cycle phaseTopicWomen's health · Concept · Not yet investigatedAfter ovulation, core temperature rises about 0.3 C; insulin and CRP shifts are small.
- Mesenchymal stromal cellsTopicRegenerative therapies · Concept · Not yet investigatedThe name was contested by the man who coined it: they are mostly not stem cells, and what they do appears to be signalling rather than replacing.
- Metabolic syndromeTopicCardiometabolic · Concept · Not yet investigatedAny three of five thresholds earn the label, and each one is treated the same alone.
- MethaemoglobinaemiaTopicOxygen & breathing · Condition · Not yet investigatedThe oximeter drifts toward a fixed 85% whatever the truth, the blood is chocolate brown, and the antidote is methylene blue — often called the first fully synthetic drug used in medicine.
- Methane and hydrogen sulfideTopicHydrogen & the proton · Method · Not yet investigatedMethane at ten parts per million defines a different entity that tracks with constipation, not diarrhoea. A two-gas analyser still misses the third.
- Methylmalonic acidTopicMethylation & one-carbon · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedIt rises when B12 runs short, and it rises before serum B12 falls — which is why a normal B12 does not settle the question.
- MetronidazoleTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedActivated only inside organisms running anaerobic metabolism, which is both why it is selective and why it wrecks the gut flora.
- Milk thistleTopicLiver & bile · Botanical · Not yet investigatedSilymarin is the extract and silybin the active. Intravenous silibinin is genuine emergency treatment for Amanita poisoning; the capsule is a different proposition.
- Mimosa pudica seedTopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Botanical · Not yet investigatedSold as a 'gut scrub'. The mucilage is real; the photographs of what it supposedly pulls out are not evidence.
- MitohormesisTopicAntioxidants · Concept · Not yet investigatedA small mitochondrial stress makes the cell better at handling the next one. It is the reason 'less oxidative stress' is not automatically the goal.
- MitophagyTopicSenescence & senolytics · Process · Not yet investigatedAutophagy aimed specifically at broken mitochondria. It is what most 'mitochondrial support' supplements claim and almost none demonstrate.
- Monoamine hypothesisTopicMood & neurochemistry · Concept · Not yet investigatedIts best-known 2022 rebuttal reviewed serotonin alone, not the other monoamines.
- Mould to penicillinTopicDrugs taken from nature · Drug · Not yet investigatedFleming's plate was 1928; the drug was 1942, and only because a mouldy Peoria cantaloupe carried a strain that yielded enough of it to treat anyone.
- mRNA vaccinesTopicVaccines · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe breakthrough was modifying one base so the RNA did not trip the innate alarm. That single chemical change sat unfunded for a decade and then won a Nobel.
- MRSATopicBacteria · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedMethicillin resistance is one gene, mecA, carried on a cassette that moves between staphylococci — resistance as a package, not a mutation.
- MSMTopicJoints & cartilage · Supplement · Not yet investigatedAn organosulfur compound with small positive trials and a plausible sulfur-donor mechanism, sold on a claim about joints it has never earned.
- MTHFRTopicMethylation & one-carbon · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedThe most over-interpreted result in consumer genetics. C677T is carried by a third to half of people, and in folate-replete populations it does very little.
- mTORC1TopicLongevity & NAD · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedRapamycin extends mouse lifespan even when started late; no human trial has that endpoint.
- MucormycosisTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Condition · Not yet investigatedIt follows iron and acid. India's COVID wave produced tens of thousands of cases in months, and the treatment is surgery plus amphotericin.
- Muscle loss on GLP-1sTopicIncretins & appetite · Finding · Not yet investigatedRoughly a quarter to forty per cent of the weight lost is lean mass — which is about what any rapid weight loss costs, and is not therefore nothing.
- Mycobacterium lepraeTopicBacteria · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt cannot be grown in culture at all — it is grown in armadillos and mouse footpads — and it doubles about once a fortnight.
- Mycobacterium tuberculosisTopicBacteria · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedA quarter of the world tests positive and roughly 5–10% of them will ever be ill. The test finds exposure, not disease.
- Mycoplasma genitaliumTopicSexually transmitted infections · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedDescribed in 1981 and still not routinely tested for; macrolide resistance now exceeds half of isolates in many settings.
- Myo- vs D-chiro-inositolTopicWomen's health · Concept · Not yet investigatedSame formula, different shape, different job — and the ovary's ratio is not the blood's.
- MyosinTopicMuscle, and the sarco- words · Protein · Not yet investigatedIt walks along actin using ATP, and the stroke is about 10 nanometres. Rigor mortis is what myosin does when the ATP runs out and it cannot let go.
- MyostatinTopicMuscle, and the sarco- words · Protein · Not yet investigatedThe brake on muscle growth. Cattle, whippets and at least one documented child lack it and are visibly, enormously muscled — and blocking it has so far added bulk without adding function.
- N-acetylcysteineTopicLongevity & NAD · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe paracetamol antidote, sold as a supplement. Synthetic, and the safety record is the part the criticism has to answer.
- NAD+ precursorsTopicLongevity & NAD · Concept · Not yet investigatedRaising blood NAD+ is settled; raising it inside tissue is not.
- Naegleria fowleriTopicProtozoa · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt enters through the nose, not the mouth — which is why drinking the water is safe and rinsing a sinus with it is not.
- Nano-hydroxyapatiteTopicEnvironment & exposure · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe fluoride-free alternative is the mineral your enamel is already made of — which is both the case for it and the reason to ask what a nanoparticle of it does elsewhere.
- NatamycinTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe eye drop for fungal keratitis, and a legal preservative on cheese rind. Same molecule, two industries.
- Neisseria gonorrhoeaeTopicSexually transmitted infections · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt has defeated every antibiotic class ever used against it in turn. Ceftriaxone is the last one standing.
- NeurocysticercosisTopicFlukes & tapeworms · Condition · Not yet investigatedThe leading cause of acquired epilepsy in the world, and killing the cysts can make the seizures worse before better.
- NF-κBTopicInflammation · Pathway · Not yet investigatedNearly every botanical anti-inflammatory claims to switch it off, usually in a dish.
- NiacinTopicCardiovascular risk markers · Nutrient · Not yet investigatedIt raises HDL more than anything else and lowers Lp(a), and two large outcome trials found no benefit and real harm. The biomarker moved; the patients did not.
- NiacinamideTopicSkin · Compound · Not yet investigatedIt blocks pigment transfer to the keratinocyte and rebuilds ceramides. A 2015 trial also cut new skin cancers by 23% in high-risk patients — at 500 mg twice a day, oral.
- Nicotinamide ribosideTopicLongevity & NAD · Supplement · Not yet investigatedTwo weeks of dosing lifts whole blood NAD+; the clinical endpoints have not followed.
- NitazoxanideTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe only drug with any label at all for Cryptosporidium — and in the patients who need it most, the immunosuppressed, it barely works.
- Nitrous oxideTopicMood & neurochemistry · Drug · Not yet investigatedIt oxidises the cobalt atom at the centre of vitamin B12 and switches the vitamin off. Your blood level can look completely normal while the spinal cord is failing.
- NK3 receptorTopicSex hormones · Protein · Not yet investigatedHot flushes come from a specific set of hypothalamic neurons, and blocking their receptor stops them without hormones — the first new mechanism in decades.
- NMNTopicLongevity & NAD · Compound · Not yet investigatedExcluded from the supplement category by the FDA in 2022, after a drug filing came first.
- NociceptionTopicPain · Concept · Not yet investigatedTissue damage generates a signal; whether it is felt as pain is decided further up.
- Non-thyroidal illnessTopicTreating the thyroid · Condition · Not yet investigatedIn serious illness T3 falls and reverse T3 rises. Treating that as hypothyroidism has been tried, and it did not help — it may be an adaptation, not a failure.
- Nrf2TopicPolyphenols · Pathway · Not yet investigatedThe master switch for the cell's own antioxidant machinery — which is why activating it may beat swallowing antioxidants, and why cancers activate it too.
- NSAIDsTopicPain · Drug · Not yet investigatedRubbed on the skin, the same drug reaches the enzyme at a fraction of the blood level.
- NystatinTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe same polyene chemistry as amphotericin, too toxic to inject — so it is only used where it can stay on a surface. Named for New York State.
- Occult tethered cordTopicHypermobility & structure · Condition · Not yet investigatedThe 'occult' version has no imaging finding by definition, which makes the surgery for it unfalsifiable — and that is the objection, not the symptoms.
- Omega-3 (EPA/DHA)TopicMicronutrients · Supplement · Not yet investigatedPrescription EPA cut cardiac events; the same dose off a shelf has not been shown to.
- Onchocerca volvulusTopicRoundworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedRiver blindness. What damages the eye is the inflammation around dying microfilariae, not the adult worm.
- Oral glucose tolerance testTopicMeasuring glucose · Method · Not yet investigated75 grams of glucose and two hours of waiting. Unpleasant, poorly reproducible, and still the test that diagnoses what HbA1c misses.
- Oral rehydration solutionTopicElectrolytes · Concept · Not yet investigatedGlucose and sodium share a transporter, so adding sugar is what makes the salt absorb. Called the most important medical advance of the twentieth century by the Lancet.
- Oregano oilTopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Botanical · Not yet investigatedCarvacrol is the active fraction, and 'oil of oregano' products run from 30% of it to under 1%. The label almost never says which.
- OrexinTopicSleep & circadian · Compound · Not yet investigatedNarcolepsy type 1 is the loss of these neurons; the newest sleep drugs block their receptors.
- Original antigenic sinTopicVaccines · Concept · Not yet investigatedYour immune system answers a new flu with the antibodies it made for the first one you ever met, in childhood. It shapes every response you will have for life.
- OrnithineTopicConditional amino acids · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe hinge of the urea cycle. A defect here is how an infant ends up comatose from protein, with a normal liver.
- Orthostatic intoleranceTopicDysautonomia & long COVID · Condition · Not yet investigatedSymptoms on standing without the heart-rate criterion POTS requires — which is most of the people who are told their tilt table was normal.
- OsteoarthritisTopicPain · State · Not yet investigatedX-ray damage and reported pain track each other loosely, which complicates every trial.
- Ova & parasites (O&P)TopicProtozoa · Method · Not yet investigatedThree samples on different days, and it still misses Strongyloides, Dientamoeba and most flukes — the test most ordered and least adequate.
- Ovulation as a vital signTopicGynaecological conditions · Concept · Not yet investigatedA cycle is a monthly readout of the whole endocrine system, and the pill replaces it with a withdrawal bleed that reports nothing.
- Oxygen toxicityTopicOxygen & breathing · Condition · Not yet investigatedTwo effects named before 1900: Paul Bert, seizures at high partial pressure, and Lorrain Smith, lung injury from prolonged exposure. Divers know the first; hospitals meet the second.
- OxytocinTopicSex hormones · Hormone · Not yet investigatedIntranasal oxytocin is one of the most replicated-and-failed findings in psychology, and the nine-amino-acid peptide is genuinely essential in labour.
- Ozone therapyTopicLight, pressure & water · Method · Not yet investigatedOzone is a lung toxicant with no safe inhaled concentration. The clinical claims rest on it being a controlled oxidative stress, which is a hypothesis, not a finding.
- Pacific yew to paclitaxelTopicDrugs taken from nature · Drug · Not yet investigatedThree or more century-old trees died per patient treated, which nearly ended the programme. A semisynthesis from a hedge yew's needles is why the drug exists at all.
- PAINS (pan-assay interference compounds)TopicInflammation · Concept · Investigation 001Curcumin is the textbook molecule that looks active against every target in the dish.
- Papaya seedTopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Botanical · Not yet investigatedOne 60-child Nigerian trial cleared stool parasites in most of those given dried seed in honey. One trial, cited as though it were a literature.
- ParagonimusTopicFlukes & tapeworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedThe lung fluke, from raw crab, and routinely treated as tuberculosis: the chest film, the cough and the blood in the sputum all match.
- Passive surveillanceTopicVaccines · Method · Not yet investigatedAnyone can file a VAERS report, and that is the design: it is a smoke alarm, not a verdict. It found the rotavirus intussusception signal in 1999 and it cannot prove cause.
- PCOSTopicWomen's health · State · Not yet investigatedAny two of three Rotterdam criteria qualify, which is how one name covers four phenotypes.
- PCSK9TopicCardiovascular risk markers · Protein · Not yet investigatedFound because two families could not make it and had lifelong low LDL and no heart disease. A natural experiment that became a drug class.
- Pelvic inflammatory diseaseTopicSexually transmitted infections · Condition · Not yet investigatedDiagnosed clinically because no test is good enough, and treated on suspicion because the cost of waiting is a blocked tube.
- PEMFTopicLight, pressure & water · Method · Not yet investigatedFDA-cleared for non-union fractures on decades of orthopaedic data, and sold for everything else on none of it.
- Peppermint oilTopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Botanical · Not yet investigatedEnteric-coated, it is one of the very few botanicals with guideline support in IBS. Uncoated, it just causes reflux.
- Peptide YYTopicIncretins & appetite · Hormone · Not yet investigatedRises for hours after a meal and is highest after protein — which is most of why a protein-heavy meal keeps you full longer than its calories predict.
- PerimenopauseTopicWomen's health · State · Not yet investigatedCycle-length variability defines it, not symptoms; estradiol runs high before it drops.
- PermethrinTopicMites, lice & ticks · Drug · Not yet investigatedA synthetic copy of a chrysanthemum's own insecticide, made stable in sunlight — the natural original breaks down in hours.
- PhaeochromocytomaTopicCatecholamines · Condition · Not yet investigatedA tumour that makes adrenaline in bursts — headache, sweating, pounding heart, blood pressure that spikes and settles. Rare, curable, and missed for years as anxiety.
- PhosphatidylserineTopicPsychiatry & nootropics · Supplement · Not yet investigatedIt used to be made from cow brain, and the switch to soy in the 1990s happened for BSE — and the soy version has never matched the bovine trial results.
- PhotobiomodulationTopicLight, pressure & water · Method · Not yet investigatedRed and near-infrared light absorbed by cytochrome c oxidase. The mechanism is real; the dose-response is biphasic, so more is reliably worse.
- PhthalatesTopicTin & the obesogens · Compound · Not yet investigatedPlasticisers that are not bonded to the plastic, so they migrate out — into food, dust and urine, where they are measured. Anti-androgenic in animals at ordinary exposures.
- PinwormTopicRoundworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedDiagnosed with sticky tape at the anus before washing, not with a stool sample — stool finds it under 5% of the time.
- PiperineTopicAdaptogens & botanicals · Compound · Investigation 001The same glucuronidation block that raises curcumin levels raises drug levels too.
- Pit viper to captoprilTopicDrugs taken from nature · Drug · Not yet investigatedBrazilian snake venom drops blood pressure by blocking ACE. The first rationally designed drug from a venom, and the ancestor of every -pril on the shelf.
- Plant sterolsTopicCardiovascular risk markers · Compound · Not yet investigatedThey lower LDL by competing with cholesterol for absorption. In the rare people who absorb sterols themselves, that same chemistry causes premature atherosclerosis.
- Plasma metanephrinesTopicCatecholamines · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedThe tumour leaks metabolites continuously even when the hormone comes in bursts, so this catches what a catecholamine level misses. Supine, cannulated, rested — or the result is noise.
- PlasmodiumTopicProtozoa · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedFive species infect people, and two of them park a dormant form in the liver that no blood-stage drug touches.
- PMDDTopicGynaecological conditions · Condition · Not yet investigatedNot more hormones — an abnormal response to normal ones, which is why blood levels are normal and why the treatment is the cycle rather than the hormone.
- Pneumocystis jiroveciiTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedClassified as a protozoon for eighty years. It is a fungus — and no antifungal treats it, because it has no ergosterol.
- Poppy to morphineTopicDrugs taken from nature · Drug · Not yet investigatedSertürner isolated it in 1804 — the first alkaloid ever purified from a plant, and the moment 'the active ingredient' became a thing you could hold.
- Post-exertional malaiseTopicDysautonomia & long COVID · Process · Not yet investigatedThe delayed crash that separates ME/CFS from deconditioning, and the reason graded exercise was withdrawn from the guideline that recommended it.
- Post-finasteride syndromeTopicSex hormones · Condition · Not yet investigatedPersistent sexual and cognitive symptoms after stopping. The label carries it, the mechanism is unknown, and the trials were never designed to find it.
- Postprandial glucoseTopicGlycemic control · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedDrifts upward years before the fasting number does, and a fasting draw never sees it.
- Potassium chlorideTopicElectrolytes · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe salt substitute in one aisle and the third drug in a lethal injection in another. Route and rate are the entire difference.
- Potassium iodideTopicElectrolytes · Drug · Not yet investigatedIt saturates the thyroid so radioactive iodine cannot enter, and it protects that one organ from that one isotope. Nothing else.
- POTSTopicConnective tissue & dysautonomia · State · Not yet investigatedPostural orthostatic TACHYCARDIA syndrome — the heart rate rises on standing; the blood pressure usually does not fall.
- PPAR-gamma and RXRTopicTin & the obesogens · Protein · Not yet investigatedTogether they are the master switch turning a precursor into an adipocyte. It is also the target of the glitazone diabetes drugs, which are well known to build fat.
- PramlintideTopicIncretins & appetite · Drug · Not yet investigatedHuman amylin aggregates into amyloid in the islet, so the drug is the rat sequence, which does not. A species substitution as the whole design.
- PraziquantelTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedIt makes the fluke's skin leak calcium and the host's own immune system finishes it — and it does not touch Fasciola.
- PrimaquineTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe only widely available drug that clears the dormant liver form of malaria — and it destroys red cells in G6PD deficiency.
- Probiotic strain specificityTopicBacteria · Concept · Not yet investigatedEffects are strain-specific and most labels name only the species — which is like prescribing 'a dog' and expecting a guide dog.
- ProgesteroneTopicWomen's health · Hormone · Not yet investigatedMicronized oral doses convert to allopregnanolone, a GABA-A modulator; progestins do not.
- PropionateTopicWhat the microbiome makes · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe short-chain fatty acid that reaches the liver, where it suppresses gluconeogenesis — and it is also a very common bread preservative.
- PropolisTopicBees · Botanical · Not yet investigatedBee-collected plant resin, so its chemistry is whatever was flowering — poplar in Europe, Baccharis in Brazil. Two jars can share a name and share almost no compounds.
- ProprioceptionTopicHypermobility & structure · Process · Not yet investigatedHypermobile joints report their own position badly, which is why strength training helps more than stretching — the joint needs a brake, not more range.
- Prostaglandin E2TopicPain · Compound · Not yet investigatedOne lipid does two jobs: sensitising nerve endings and maintaining the stomach's mucus.
- Proton pump inhibitorsTopicHydrogen & the proton · Drug · Not yet investigatedThey block the pump that puts hydrogen ions into the stomach. Among the most prescribed drugs on earth, and among the most continued indefinitely without anyone revisiting why.
- Provoked urine testingTopicToxic metals · Method · Not yet investigatedA chelator is given, urine is collected, and the result is compared to an UNPROVOKED reference range. That comparison is invalid by construction.
- PRPTopicJoints & cartilage · Drug · Not yet investigatedPlatelet-rich plasma is whatever the centrifuge produced that day: leukocyte-rich and leukocyte-poor preparations behave differently and are reported as one thing.
- PRP beyond the jointTopicRegenerative therapies · Method · Not yet investigatedHair, skin, tendon, and the endometrium. The same preparation problem applies everywhere: nobody is standardising what is in the syringe.
- PsylliumTopicWhat the microbiome makes · Botanical · Not yet investigatedGel-forming rather than fermentable, so it does what inulin does for stool without what inulin does for gas.
- PterostilbeneTopicPolyphenols · Compound · Not yet investigatedResveratrol with two methyl groups, which raises oral bioavailability from about 20% to roughly 80% — and raised LDL in the one trial that measured it.
- Pulse oximetryTopicOxygen & breathing · Method · Not yet investigatedIt infers saturation from two wavelengths of light, and the dissociation curve is flat at the top — so a patient on far too much oxygen reads the same as one on exactly enough.
- Pulse oximetry and skin toneTopicSkin · Finding · Not yet investigatedMelanin absorbs the red light the device relies on. Occult hypoxaemia is roughly three times more common in Black patients, and it changed who got treated in 2020.
- Pumpkin seedTopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Botanical · Not yet investigatedCucurbitin is the traditional anthelmintic principle, and the modern evidence is one small trial against praziquantel.
- Pyrantel pamoateTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedDepolarising paralysis: the worm simply lets go and is passed alive. Sold over the counter.
- Pyridoxine (B6)TopicMicronutrients · Nutrient · Not yet investigatedThe vitamin that reliably causes harm: at supplement doses pyridoxine causes a sensory neuropathy that is regularly missed for months.
- QuercetinTopicPolyphenols · Compound · Not yet investigatedOnions and capers, poorly absorbed as the aglycone and better as the glycoside — and it is a CYP3A4 inhibitor, so it is not inert alongside prescriptions.
- QuinidineTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedQuinine's mirror image: a better antiarrhythmic, a better antimalarial, and more cardiotoxic than either.
- QuinineTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedFrom cinchona bark. Banned by the FDA for leg cramps in 2010 after deaths from thrombocytopenia, and still sold in tonic water.
- RabiesTopicViruses · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedEssentially 100% fatal once symptoms begin, and essentially 100% preventable in the days after the bite.
- Rauwolfia to reserpineTopicDrugs taken from nature · Drug · Not yet investigatedAn Ayurvedic root that lowered blood pressure and caused depression — and that side effect is where the monoamine theory of depression came from.
- Red clover and S-equolTopicSex hormones · Botanical · Not yet investigatedIts isoflavones only work if your gut converts them to equol, and only about a third of Western people carry the bacteria to do it.
- Red yeast riceTopicLipids · Supplement · Investigation 004Twelve bottles of the same labeled dose held a hundredfold spread of active drug.
- Resistant starchTopicWhat the microbiome makes · Nutrient · Not yet investigatedStarch that survives to the colon. Cooking and cooling rice or potato converts some of it, which is a real effect and a small one.
- ResveratrolTopicLongevity & NAD · Supplement · Not yet investigatedActivation of sirtuins vanished once the assay peptide lost its fluorescent tag.
- RetatrutideTopicIncretins & appetite · Drug · Not yet investigatedThree receptors: GLP-1, GIP and glucagon. Adding glucagon to a weight-loss drug is counterintuitive until you remember it also burns fat in the liver.
- RetinoidsTopicSkin · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe only topical class with decades of evidence for photoageing, and it works by making the skin behave younger, not by moisturising it. It is vitamin A, and it is teratogenic.
- Retinopathy of prematurityTopicOxygen & breathing · Condition · Not yet investigatedIncubator oxygen made it the leading cause of childhood blindness in the 1950s. Restricting oxygen then raised deaths and cerebral palsy. There was no setting of the dial that was free.
- Reverse T3TopicThyroid · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedAn inactive isomer that rises in illness and fasting; guidelines say not to order it.
- RhabdomyolysisTopicMuscle, and the sarco- words · Condition · Not yet investigatedMuscle contents into the blood: the urine goes dark, and it is myoglobin, not blood. The kidney is what kills, and the treatment is fluid, fast.
- RhinovirusTopicImmune · Concept · Not yet investigatedMore than 150 types circulate, and immunity to one buys little against the rest.
- Rhodiola roseaTopicAdaptogens & botanicals · Supplement · Not yet investigatedRosavins are the marker that catches R. crenulata sold as rosea; salidroside is not.
- Riboflavin (B2)TopicMethylation & one-carbon · Nutrient · Not yet investigatedMTHFR's cofactor. In people carrying the TT genotype, riboflavin lowers blood pressure — which is a gene-by-nutrient interaction with actual trial support.
- Rocky Mountain spotted feverTopicBacteria · Condition · Not yet investigatedMost cases are nowhere near the Rockies, untreated mortality is around 20%, and the test only turns positive after the window to treat has closed.
- RosemaryTopicSkin · Botanical · Not yet investigatedCarnosic acid makes it one of the few natural preservatives that actually works, which is why it appears in clean-label food. The hair-growth trial against minoxidil is small and real.
- Royal jellyTopicBees · Supplement · Not yet investigatedIt makes a queen from an ordinary larva, which is real and astonishing. What it does in a human who swallows it is a much smaller and much weaker claim.
- RoyalactinTopicBees · Protein · Not yet investigatedThe protein credited with making queens — and a 2016 rebuttal in Nature could not reproduce it. A rival line of work says the caste is set by what the pollen in worker food WITHHOLDS.
- SaffronTopicMood & neurochemistry · Botanical · Not yet investigatedSeven randomised trials put it level with fluoxetine for mild-to-moderate depression. It is also the most adulterated spice on earth.
- Salt substitutesTopicElectrolytes · Concept · Not yet investigatedReplacing a quarter of the sodium with potassium cut stroke and death in a 21,000-person trial — the strongest hard-endpoint result in the whole sodium field.
- Salt, fluid and compressionTopicDysautonomia & long COVID · Concept · Not yet investigatedTen grams of salt, three litres of water, and abdominal compression rather than stockings — the splanchnic bed is where the blood actually pools.
- SAMeTopicCardiometabolic · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe body's main methyl donor, made from methionine — and what homocysteine is left over from.
- Sampling errorTopicCancer, found and missed · Concept · Investigation 007A core needle takes about a thousandth of a tumour and the slide shows four microns of that. The arithmetic of what is never looked at.
- SarcoidosisTopicMuscle, and the sarco- words · Condition · Not yet investigatedNamed 'flesh-like' for the skin nodules, and it is not a muscle disease at all — it is granulomas, anywhere, with no known cause after 150 years.
- SarcomaTopicMuscle, and the sarco- words · Condition · Not yet investigatedCancer of connective tissue rather than lining — about 1% of adult cancers, which is why they are missed, and why a lump that keeps growing gets imaged before it gets cut.
- SarcopeniaTopicMuscle, and the sarco- words · Condition · Not yet investigatedGrip strength predicts mortality better than most blood tests, and it costs nothing to measure. Almost no routine check-up measures it.
- SarcosineTopicConditional amino acids · Compound · Not yet investigatedN-methylglycine. It blocks glycine reuptake at the synapse, which is a genuinely different way to approach the negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
- SARS-CoV-2TopicViruses · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIts spike binds ACE2 — the same enzyme the blood-pressure drug class is named after.
- Satellite cellsTopicMuscle, and the sarco- words · Structure · Not yet investigatedMuscle's stem cells, sitting dormant under the basal lamina. They donate nuclei to a fibre after damage, and those nuclei may be what 'muscle memory' actually is.
- SaunaTopicLight, pressure & water · Method · Not yet investigatedThe Finnish cohort data are unusually strong — four to seven sessions a week tracked with markedly lower cardiovascular and all-cause mortality — and observational.
- Savant syndromeTopicNeurodivergence · State · Not yet investigatedRare, and rarer still as the popular image of autism. Roughly one in ten autistic people, not the majority.
- ScabiesTopicMites, lice & ticks · Condition · Not yet investigatedThe itch is an allergic response to the mite's faeces, which is why it starts weeks after infestation and continues weeks after cure.
- Schistosoma haematobiumTopicFlukes & tapeworms · Pathogen · Investigation 007A parasite the IARC classifies as a Group 1 human carcinogen. Infection causing cancer is established science, not a fringe claim.
- ScoliosisTopicConnective tissue & dysautonomia · State · Not yet investigatedA sideways curve with rotation. Most is idiopathic; some is the first visible sign of a connective tissue disorder.
- ScurvyTopicAntioxidants · Condition · Not yet investigatedCollagen cannot cross-link without it, so old wounds reopen and old scars come undone. Lind ran a controlled trial in 1747 and the Navy waited nearly fifty years.
- Selenium sulfideTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe dandruff shampoo. It is not the selenium your thyroid wants, it is not absorbed, and it is not a selenium supplement.
- SemaglutideTopicIncretins & appetite · Drug · Not yet investigatedA GLP-1 analogue engineered to survive DPP-4 and bind albumin, which is the whole reason a gut hormone with a two-minute half-life became a weekly injection.
- Senescent cellsTopicSenescence & senolytics · Concept · Not yet investigatedCells that have stopped dividing and refuse to die, and then spend years shouting inflammatory signals at their neighbours.
- SenolyticsTopicSenescence & senolytics · Concept · Not yet investigatedDrugs that kill senescent cells rather than suppressing them. Dasatinib and quercetin is the combination with the most human data, and that data is small.
- SerotoninTopicGut & microbiome · Compound · Not yet investigatedNinety per cent is made in the gut, and that fraction never reaches the brain.
- SHBGTopicSex hormones · Protein · Not yet investigatedIt decides how much of your testosterone is available, so a normal total with a high SHBG is a low free level — and insulin drives SHBG down.
- ShilajitTopicWhat is actually in the bottle · Supplement · Not yet investigatedA Himalayan rock exudate rich in fulvic acid. Raw, unpurified material has repeatedly tested high for lead and arsenic — the traditional purification step is not decoration.
- Short-chain fatty acidsTopicGut & microbiome · Compound · Not yet investigatedButyrate, propionate, acetate — the cells lining the colon run mostly on the first.
- SIBOTopicGut & microbiome · State · Not yet investigatedToo many bacteria in the small bowel; the breath test and the culture often disagree.
- SirtuinsTopicLongevity & NAD · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedOf the seven in humans, only three are strong deacetylases; all of them consume NAD+.
- Sleep-onset latencyTopicSleep & circadian · Concept · Not yet investigatedMinutes between lights out and actual sleep; melatonin trials shorten it by about seven.
- Small dense LDLTopicCardiovascular risk markers · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedThe same LDL cholesterol can be carried by few large particles or many small ones, and the count predicts events better than the cholesterol does.
- Small fibre neuropathyTopicDysautonomia & long COVID · Condition · Not yet investigatedDiagnosed by a 3 mm skin punch biopsy, invisible to nerve conduction studies, and present in a substantial minority of POTS and fibromyalgia patients.
- Soluble fibreTopicGut & microbiome · Compound · Not yet investigatedViscous types bind bile acids and lower LDL-C; fermentable types feed the bacteria.
- SpermidineTopicSenescence & senolytics · Compound · Not yet investigatedA polyamine from wheat germ and aged cheese that induces autophagy, with one of the better observational mortality associations in nutrition.
- Spiked 'natural' productsTopicWhat is actually in the bottle · Finding · Not yet investigatedSildenafil analogues in libido capsules, sibutramine in slimming teas, steroids in muscle blends — hundreds of FDA recalls, and the pattern is always an undeclared real drug.
- SpinosadTopicMites, lice & ticks · Drug · Not yet investigatedFermented from a bacterium found in soil from an abandoned rum distillery in 1982, and it kills lice that permethrin no longer does.
- Spreading protein across the dayTopicThe essential amino acids · Concept · Not yet investigatedThe same daily protein split into three meals builds more muscle than the same amount loaded into dinner, because the threshold has to be crossed each time.
- SSRIsTopicMood & neurochemistry · Drug · Not yet investigatedTransporter blockade is complete within hours; the mood change takes weeks.
- St John's wortTopicMood & neurochemistry · Supplement · Not yet investigatedInduces CYP3A4 and P-gp hard enough to cause transplant rejection and contraceptive failure.
- Stannous fluorideTopicTin & the obesogens · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe tin salt does something the sodium salt has no mechanism for: it is antibacterial, and it plugs dentine tubules. Its old drawback was staining teeth brown.
- Staphylococcus aureusTopicBacteria · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedAbout a third of people carry it in the nose and never know. It is a resident that occasionally becomes an invader.
- Statin myopathyTopicLipids · State · Investigation 004In people who had already quit statins, placebo months hurt nearly as much.
- Statins and dementiaTopicLipids · Finding · Not yet investigatedThirty-six cohorts point the other way from the rumour — less dementia on statins, not more. Observational, so read it carefully.
- Stem cell clinicsTopicRegenerative therapies · Concept · Not yet investigatedHundreds of US clinics selling unapproved products; the documented harms include blindness after intravitreal injection of adipose cells.
- Steroid injectionTopicJoints & cartilage · Drug · Not yet investigatedReliable relief for weeks, and repeated injections were associated with GREATER cartilage loss in a two-year randomised trial.
- Structured waterTopicLight, pressure & water · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedWater does form ordered layers at surfaces, over nanometres and for picoseconds. Everything sold on that fact is sold well past where the physics stops.
- Subclinical hypothyroidismTopicThyroid · State · Not yet investigatedRaised TSH with a normal free T4; in 737 adults over 65, levothyroxine matched placebo.
- SulforaphaneTopicPolyphenols · Compound · Not yet investigatedNot in broccoli: the plant carries glucoraphanin and the enzyme separately, and chewing or chopping brings them together. Cooking destroys the enzyme.
- Sulfur and the jointTopicJoints & cartilage · Concept · Not yet investigatedCartilage matrix is loaded with sulfated glycosaminoglycans, which is why sulfur keeps reappearing here — as MSM, as glucosamine SULFATE, as a spa water.
- Sunscreen and vitamin DTopicSkin · Finding · Not yet investigatedThe trial objection that sunscreen causes deficiency has not held up: field studies with proper application found 25-OH-D rose across a sunny holiday anyway.
- Suprachiasmatic nucleusTopicSleep & circadian · Concept · Not yet investigatedAbout twenty thousand neurons above the optic chiasm, set by light through the eye.
- Sweat sodiumTopicElectrolytes · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedIt varies roughly fivefold between people and barely at all within one, so a single measurement is worth more here than in almost any other physiology.
- Synovial fluidTopicJoints & cartilage · Structure · Not yet investigatedNot a lubricant that sits there — it is squeezed out of the cartilage under load, which is why joints that never move stiffen and joints that move stay wet.
- SyphilisTopicSexually transmitted infections · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedUS cases are at their highest level since the 1950s, and congenital cases have more than quadrupled in a decade.
- T4 alone, or T4 with T3TopicTreating the thyroid · Concept · Not yet investigatedThe trials show no average benefit from adding T3 — and a subgroup carrying a DIO2 variant reports feeling better on it, which an average cannot see.
- TACT2TopicRegenerative therapies · Finding · Not yet investigatedThe replication that closed the question: no reduction in cardiovascular events, in the exact subgroup where the first trial had found one.
- Taenia soliumTopicFlukes & tapeworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedYou get the tapeworm from the pork and the brain cysts from human faeces. Same parasite, two entirely different diseases.
- TauTopicMood & neurochemistry · Protein · Not yet investigatedTangles track cognitive decline better than plaques do, which has always been an awkward fact for the amyloid story.
- TaurineTopicConditional amino acids · Compound · Not yet investigatedA 2023 Science paper had it falling with age and extending life in mice when replaced. It is also in every energy drink, which is not the same evidence.
- Tea tree oilTopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Botanical · Not yet investigatedTerpinen-4-ol is the active; oxidised old oil is the allergen. The 2007 report tying it to gynaecomastia has never been cleanly replicated.
- TelomeraseTopicSenescence & senolytics · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedSwitching it back on is how a cell becomes immortal, which is also how a cell becomes a cancer. That tension is the whole field.
- TelomeresTopicSenescence & senolytics · Concept · Not yet investigatedThey shorten with division, and the tests sold to measure yours have measurement error wider than a decade of ageing.
- TerbinafineTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedTwelve weeks of tablets for a toenail, with liver monitoring, and complete cure in roughly a third — and resistance is now spreading.
- TerpenesTopicCannabinoids · Compound · Not yet investigatedMyrcene, limonene, pinene — the same molecules in hops and citrus peel. They carry the smell, and most vaporise below the temperature the flower is usually burnt at.
- Testing for leadTopicToxic metals · Method · Not yet investigatedVenous, not fingerstick — a capillary sample picks up lead from the skin. And blood lead misses the 90% stored in bone, which the skeleton releases for decades.
- TestosteroneTopicHPA axis · Hormone · Not yet investigatedAshwagandha trials report modest rises, in men who were tired or overweight to begin with.
- THCTopicCannabinoids · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe raw plant carries THCA, which is not psychoactive. Heat removes a carboxyl group and makes the drug — so eating a cannabis leaf does almost nothing.
- The 1998 retractionTopicVaccines · Finding · Not yet investigatedTwelve children, no control group, retracted in full, licence revoked. Fourteen later studies covering millions of children found nothing — and the effect on coverage has outlived all of them.
- The amyloid cascadeTopicMood & neurochemistry · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedThirty years of drug development aimed at plaques. The plaques are real and visible; that they are the CAUSE is the part still contested.
- The antioxidant paradoxTopicAntioxidants · Concept · Not yet investigatedExercise works partly BECAUSE it makes free radicals — the signal that drives adaptation. High-dose C and E during training have been shown to blunt the gains.
- The autism spectrumTopicNeurodivergence · State · Not yet investigatedOne diagnosis since 2013, after four separate ones were merged — which is why prevalence figures before and after cannot be compared.
- The autoinjectorTopicCatecholamines · Method · Not yet investigatedThe needle was designed for nerve-agent antidote in soldiers. It is often too short for an adult thigh, and the commonest failure is still hesitating to use it.
- The Beighton scoreTopicHypermobility & structure · Method · Not yet investigatedNine points, five joints, and it was built to screen populations rather than diagnose people — it misses the spine, the jaw and anyone who has stiffened with age.
- The coca leafTopicCatecholamines · Botanical · Not yet investigatedChewed at altitude for millennia, it delivers a fraction of a percent by weight, slowly. The difference between the leaf and the isolate is the whole of pharmacology.
- The cold chainTopicVaccines · Concept · Not yet investigatedMore doses are lost to a broken freezer than to any argument about them. Thermostable formulation, not persuasion, is what raises coverage in hot countries.
- The collagen typesTopicJoints & cartilage · Concept · Not yet investigatedType I is skin and bone, type II is cartilage, type III is vessels and gut. A supplement labelled only 'collagen' has not told you which one.
- The deiodinasesTopicTreating the thyroid · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedThree selenium-containing enzymes that decide locally how much active hormone a tissue gets — so the brain can be hypothyroid while the blood is normal.
- The diagnostic delayTopicGynaecological conditions · Finding · Not yet investigatedSeven to ten years from first symptom to diagnosis in endometriosis, and the commonest reason recorded is that the pain was normalised.
- The dissociation curveTopicOxygen & breathing · Concept · Not yet investigatedA sigmoid, not a line. Above 90% saturation it is nearly flat and below it falls off a cliff, which is why the oximeter is precise where it does not matter.
- The dose makes the poisonTopicDrugs taken from nature · Concept · Not yet investigatedParacelsus, 1538. Every drug in this constellation is a poison at the next dose up, and 'natural' has never once been the thing that decided which.
- The EDS–POTS–MCAS triadTopicHypermobility & structure · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedThree conditions that cluster in the same patients far more than chance allows, with no agreed mechanism linking them — which is a real observation and not yet an explanation.
- The eight vitamin E formsTopicAntioxidants · Concept · Not yet investigatedSupplements are almost all alpha-tocopherol, which suppresses gamma — the form that mops up nitrogen radicals. Taking one can lower the other.
- The endocannabinoid systemTopicCannabinoids · Pathway · Not yet investigatedFound because researchers went looking for what THC binds to. The receptor came first, the body's own ligand second — the plant led us to a human system.
- The entourage effectTopicCannabinoids · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedThe claim that terpenes and minor cannabinoids shape the whole. Widely asserted, and the controlled tests that exist have mostly failed to find it — terpenes barely touch CB1.
- The filtersTopicSkin · Concept · Not yet investigatedMineral filters scatter; organic filters absorb and are absorbed — plasma levels of oxybenzone exceed the FDA's own threshold for further testing after one day's use.
- The four B12 formsTopicMinerals & iron · Concept · Not yet investigatedCyano-, hydroxo-, methyl-, adenosyl-. Only two are used by human enzymes; the cyano form carries a cyanide group.
- The four PCOS phenotypesTopicGynaecological conditions · Concept · Not yet investigatedRotterdam needs two of three features, which produces four different conditions under one name — and the metabolic risk differs sharply between them.
- The GIP receptor paradoxTopicIncretins & appetite · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedBlocking GIP causes weight loss in animals. So does agonising it, in people. Both cannot be simply true, and the field has not resolved it.
- The hangoverTopicAlcohol · Condition · Not yet investigatedCongeners, dehydration, acetaldehyde and rebound all contribute, and no supplement has beaten placebo in a decent trial. Time and fluid remain the only treatment.
- The herd immunity thresholdTopicVaccines · Concept · Not yet investigatedIt is not one number — it depends on R0, on mixing, and on whether the vaccine blocks transmission or only disease. Measles needs about 95%; most things need far less.
- The hypoxic driveTopicOxygen & breathing · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedThe textbook reason not to over-oxygenate a CO₂ retainer. Measurement says the real mechanisms are lost hypoxic vasoconstriction and the Haldane effect — the advice survived, the explanation did not.
- The imaging discordanceTopicJoints & cartilage · Finding · Not yet investigatedRadiographic osteoarthritis and painful osteoarthritis overlap poorly in both directions. Treating the film rather than the person starts here.
- The iron formsTopicWhat is actually in the bottle · Concept · Not yet investigatedFerrous sulfate is cheap, effective and hard on the gut. Bisglycinate is gentler at a lower elemental dose — and alternate-day dosing beats daily, because hepcidin blocks the second dose.
- The J-curveTopicAlcohol · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedDecades of studies showed moderate drinkers outliving abstainers. The curve survives only when the comparison group is built badly — and it usually was.
- The Korean epidemicTopicTreating the thyroid · Finding · Not yet investigatedScreening ultrasound raised thyroid cancer incidence fifteenfold in a decade, and mortality did not move at all. The clearest overdiagnosis experiment ever run.
- The leucine thresholdTopicThe essential amino acids · Concept · Not yet investigatedRoughly 2.5 to 3 grams of leucine in one sitting turns muscle protein synthesis on. Below it, adding calories does not.
- The liver 'detox'TopicLiver & bile · Concept · Not yet investigatedPhase I and phase II are real biochemistry. A juice cleanse does not accelerate either, and a liver that needed help would be an emergency.
- The low-histamine dietTopicHistamine & mast cells · Concept · Not yet investigatedThe published food lists contradict each other badly, because histamine in food depends on how long it sat, not on what it is.
- The magnesium formsTopicElectrolytes · Concept · Not yet investigatedOxide is about 4% absorbed and is most of what is sold. Citrate, glycinate and malate are not interchangeable, and the label rarely gives elemental content.
- The methionine cycleTopicMethylation & one-carbon · Pathway · Not yet investigatedMethionine becomes SAMe, donates a methyl group, becomes homocysteine, and is either remethylated or sold off to make cysteine. Everything else here hangs on that loop.
- The methyl-folate trapTopicMethylation & one-carbon · Mechanism · Not yet investigatedWithout B12, folate piles up in a form it cannot leave. Giving folic acid then fixes the blood count and lets the neurological damage continue.
- The myocarditis signalTopicVaccines · Finding · Not yet investigatedReal, highest in young men after the second mRNA dose, and higher still after the infection it prevents. Both halves of that sentence are needed and one is usually missing.
- The NASA lean testTopicDysautonomia & long COVID · Method · Not yet investigatedTen minutes against a wall with a blood pressure cuff. It finds most of what a tilt table finds, and it can be done in any room.
- The non-producersTopicHydrogen & the proton · Finding · Not yet investigatedRoughly a fifth of people carry flora that make methane instead of hydrogen. They cannot produce a positive hydrogen test no matter what is wrong with them.
- The obesogen hypothesisTopicTin & the obesogens · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedThat a chemical can predispose to obesity by rewriting developmental fate rather than by adding calories. Strong receptor pharmacology, unsettled in humans — and the word was coined for tin.
- The ORAC scoreTopicAntioxidants · Method · Not yet investigatedA test-tube number that sold a decade of superfoods. The USDA withdrew its own database in 2012, saying the values had no relevance to anything happening in a human.
- The oxygen targetTopicOxygen & breathing · Concept · Not yet investigatedPooling 25 trials and 16,037 acutely ill adults, MORE oxygen raised in-hospital mortality by 21%. The harm appears to start around a saturation of 94 to 96 per cent.
- The red-light dose problemTopicLight, pressure & water · Concept · Not yet investigatedAlmost no consumer panel states irradiance, and without it the joules per square centimetre — the only number that matters — cannot be worked out.
- The repurposing problemTopicRegenerative therapies · Concept · Not yet investigatedAn old drug with a patent expired has no sponsor for a definitive trial, so the evidence stays thin whether or not the drug works. That cuts both ways.
- The sarcomereTopicMuscle, and the sarco- words · Structure · Not yet investigatedThe repeating unit that makes muscle striped. Every contraction in your body is this one two-micron machine, copied about ten billion times.
- The SASPTopicSenescence & senolytics · Mechanism · Not yet investigatedThe senescence-associated secretory phenotype: the cytokine broadcast that makes one senescent cell a problem for the tissue around it.
- The SELECT trialTopicAntioxidants · Finding · Not yet investigated35,000 men on vitamin E and selenium for prostate cancer. It stopped early, and on longer follow-up the vitamin E arm had MORE cancer — 17% more.
- The sick quitterTopicAlcohol · Concept · Not yet investigatedLump lifelong abstainers together with people who stopped because they were ill, and abstention looks lethal. Separate them and most of the J-curve goes flat.
- The skin barrierTopicSkin · Structure · Not yet investigatedBricks of corneocyte and mortar of ceramide. Filaggrin mutations break the mortar, and they are the strongest known genetic risk for eczema — and for the allergies that follow it.
- The sodium:potassium ratioTopicElectrolytes · Concept · Not yet investigatedThe ratio predicts cardiovascular mortality better than either alone, and almost every dietary guideline still sets two separate targets.
- The timing hypothesisTopicSex hormones · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedThe WHI enrolled women a decade past menopause and the result was read as a verdict on everyone. Started near menopause the risk-benefit looks different.
- The two-day CPETTopicDysautonomia & long COVID · Method · Not yet investigatedTest, rest a day, test again. Healthy people reproduce their result; ME/CFS patients fall on the second day — which is the objective finding that field lacked.
- The vagus nerveTopicMethylation & one-carbon · Structure · Not yet investigatedEighty per cent of its fibres run from the body to the brain, not the other way — so it is mostly a sensory nerve people describe as a control knob.
- The zinc:copper ratioTopicMinerals & iron · Concept · Not yet investigatedZinc and copper compete for the same transporter. Long high-dose zinc is a recognised cause of copper deficiency.
- Theta-burst stimulationTopicPsychiatry & nootropics · Method · Not yet investigatedThree minutes instead of thirty-seven, non-inferior in a 414-patient randomised trial — which is what turned TMS from a research device into a clinic service.
- Thiamine (B1)TopicMicronutrients · Compound · Not yet investigatedMetformin inhibits the transporter that absorbs it; the clinical evidence is thinner.
- Thiamine in dysautonomiaTopicDysautonomia & long COVID · Hypothesis · Not yet investigatedA genuinely interesting small literature — high-dose thiamine for fatigue in autoimmune and post-viral states — that has never had a properly powered trial.
- ThimerosalTopicVaccines · Compound · Not yet investigatedEthylmercury, cleared in days, not the methylmercury that accumulates. Removed from childhood vaccines in 2001 as a precaution — and autism diagnoses kept rising.
- Third-party certificationTopicWhat is actually in the bottle · Method · Not yet investigatedUSP, NSF and Informed Sport test identity, contamination and dose. None of them tests whether the ingredient works — only that it is what the label says.
- ThujoneTopicBotanicals & extracts · Compound · Not yet investigatedBlamed for a century of absinthe madness. Measured in preserved pre-ban bottles, there was never enough of it to matter.
- Thymic involutionTopicSenescence & senolytics · Process · Not yet investigatedThe thymus starts shrinking in childhood and is mostly fat by fifty. One small trial reversed it on imaging, and nobody has replicated that.
- ThymolTopicAntimicrobial botanicals · Compound · Not yet investigatedFrom thyme, and the active ingredient in the original Listerine — which was sold first as a surgical antiseptic and then as a floor cleaner.
- Thymosin alpha-1TopicRegenerative therapies · Peptide · Not yet investigatedApproved in dozens of countries for hepatitis B and as a vaccine adjuvant, and not in the United States — which is a regulatory fact, not a scientific one.
- ThyroglobulinTopicTreating the thyroid · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedThe tumour marker after thyroid cancer surgery — and antibodies against it make the assay read falsely low, which is why both must be measured together.
- Thyroid nodulesTopicTreating the thyroid · Condition · Not yet investigatedHalf of adults have one on ultrasound. Whether it is found decides almost everything that happens next, and that is a decision about scanning.
- Tilt table testingTopicDysautonomia & long COVID · Method · Not yet investigatedThe reference standard, with a false-positive rate high enough that a positive result in someone without symptoms means very little.
- Time in rangeTopicMeasuring glucose · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedThe endpoint continuous monitoring made possible, and the first real competitor to HbA1c in forty years.
- TinidazoleTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedMetronidazole's longer-lived cousin: a single dose where the older drug needs a week.
- TirzepatideTopicIncretins & appetite · Drug · Not yet investigatedOne molecule agonising two receptors, GIP and GLP-1 — and nobody can yet say how much of the extra weight loss the GIP half is responsible for.
- TitinTopicMuscle, and the sarco- words · Protein · Not yet investigatedThe largest protein known, a molecular spring spanning half a sarcomere. Its full chemical name runs to 189,819 letters, which nobody has ever needed.
- TLR4TopicWhat the microbiome makes · Protein · Not yet investigatedThe receptor that recognises LPS, and the reason a nanogram of bacterial membrane produces a fever.
- TMAOTopicWhat the microbiome makes · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedMade by bacteria from choline and carnitine, associated with cardiovascular events — and fish raises it more than steak does, which nobody has satisfactorily explained.
- TNF-αTopicInflammation · Pathway · Not yet investigatedBlocking it transformed rheumatoid arthritis and made heart failure worse at higher doses.
- Tongue-tieTopicHypermobility & structure · Condition · Not yet investigatedRelease rates rose several-fold in a decade with no change in the underlying anatomy, and the posterior tie is the diagnosis doing most of that work.
- Too little stomach acidTopicHydrogen & the proton · Condition · Not yet investigatedAcid is what frees B12 from food protein and reduces iron to the absorbable form — so suppressing it long enough has nutritional consequences that take years to show.
- Topical capsaicinTopicJoints & cartilage · Drug · Not yet investigatedIt works by exhausting the nerve ending rather than by numbing it, so it has to burn before it helps — which is why compliance is the main failure mode.
- ToxocaraTopicRoundworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedThe dog and cat roundworm cannot mature in a person, so its larvae wander instead — through liver, lung and sometimes the retina.
- Toxoplasma gondiiTopicProtozoa · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt completes its sexual cycle only in cats, and the cyst it leaves behind sits in muscle and brain for the rest of your life.
- TPO antibodiesTopicThyroid · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedPresent in most Hashimoto's cases, and in one adult in ten with normal thyroid labs.
- Transepidermal water lossTopicSkin · Method · Not yet investigatedThe barrier measured as grams of water per square metre per hour. It is the only objective number most skincare claims could be tested against, and almost none are.
- Transient elastographyTopicLiver & bile · Method · Not yet investigatedIt measures stiffness, which is fibrosis — the thing that actually predicts outcome — in five minutes and without a biopsy.
- TributyltinTopicTin & the obesogens · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe most effective antifouling paint ever put on a hull, and a nanomolar agonist at the two nuclear receptors that decide whether a cell becomes a fat cell.
- TrichinellaTopicRoundworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIts larvae rebuild the muscle cell they invade into a 'nurse cell' and live inside it — which is why undercooked pork and bear meat matter.
- Trichomonas vaginalisTopicProtozoa · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedWet-mount microscopy found 26% of what PCR found in one 980-woman comparison — the commonest curable STI, missed by the test most often used.
- Trichophyton indotineaeTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedA terbinafine-resistant ringworm that spread out of South Asia and reached the United States in 2023. New, and moving.
- TriclabendazoleTopicAntiparasitic drugs · Drug · Not yet investigatedThe one drug that does kill Fasciola, and the FDA only approved it in 2019.
- TriglyceridesTopicLipids · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedThe one lipid a recent meal moves enough to change what the panel says.
- TrimethyltinTopicTin & the obesogens · Compound · Not yet investigatedA selective hippocampal poison, used deliberately in animal models of neurodegeneration. Nothing about tin metal predicts it.
- Trypanosoma bruceiTopicProtozoa · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt swaps its entire surface coat faster than antibody can be raised against it — which is why a century of work has produced no vaccine.
- Trypanosoma cruziTopicProtozoa · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedAn estimated 240,000–350,000 people in the United States carry Chagas disease, and about 30% will develop heart or gut damage from it.
- TryptaseTopicHistamine & mast cells · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedThe one blood test that objectively documents mast-cell activation — and it has to be drawn within a few hours of an episode, which is why it almost never is.
- TSHTopicThyroid · Hormone · Not yet investigatedPituitary output, not thyroid: a small free T4 shift swings it tenfold.
- TSH receptor antibodiesTopicTreating the thyroid · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedThe one thyroid antibody that is directly causal rather than a bystander: it switches the receptor ON, which is what Graves' disease is.
- TUDCATopicLiver & bile · Supplement · Not yet investigatedA bear bile acid. Its close relative ursodeoxycholic acid is an approved drug, which is the whole reason TUDCA is sold on the internet with no trials.
- Tyrosine hydroxylaseTopicCatecholamines · Enzyme · Not yet investigatedThe rate-limiting step for dopamine, noradrenaline and adrenaline alike. Everything downstream is throttled here, which is why tyrosine supplements rarely do much.
- UCP1TopicFat as an organ · Protein · Not yet investigatedIt short-circuits the mitochondrion on purpose: protons leak back without making ATP, and the energy leaves as heat.
- Umbilical and amniotic productsTopicRegenerative therapies · Concept · Not yet investigatedMarketed as living cells. Independent analyses of several products found essentially no viable cells at all in the vial.
- UncouplersTopicHydrogen & the proton · Compound · Not yet investigatedPunch a hole in the gradient and the energy leaves as heat. DNP killed slimmers in the 1930s, was banned, and still kills people who buy it online.
- Undenatured type II collagenTopicJoints & cartilage · Supplement · Not yet investigatedIt works by oral tolerance rather than by supplying building blocks, which is why the dose is 40 mg and not 10 grams — a genuinely different mechanism.
- Unmetabolised folic acidTopicMethylation & one-carbon · Finding · Not yet investigatedAbove roughly 400 µg a day, synthetic folic acid appears unconverted in blood. What it does there is unsettled, which is not the same as nothing.
- Urine mycotoxin testingTopicFungi & mycotoxins · Method · Not yet investigatedSold as proof of mould illness. No panel has been validated against a known exposure, and the reference ranges are the laboratories' own.
- Urine pHTopicHydrogen & the proton · Biomarker · Not yet investigatedIt genuinely changes with diet, which is why the test strip is the industry's favourite prop. It reports what the kidney excreted, not what the blood is doing.
- Urolithin ATopicSenescence & senolytics · Compound · Not yet investigatedNot in food at all — the gut makes it from pomegranate ellagitannins, and only about forty per cent of people carry the bacteria to do it.
- Ursodeoxycholic acidTopicLiver & bile · Drug · Not yet investigatedFirst-line for primary biliary cholangitis, and the drug that makes the argument: same molecular family as TUDCA, decades of evidence, and a prescription.
- ValerianTopicPsychiatry & nootropics · Botanical · Not yet investigatedThe subjective sleep benefit is consistent and the objective one is not — and valerian is one of the harder botanicals to standardise at all.
- Varicella–zosterTopicViruses · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedChickenpox and shingles are the same virus decades apart, and the vaccine that prevents the second is the live one grown in the 1970s.
- Viral vector vaccinesTopicVaccines · Drug · Not yet investigatedA harmless virus carrying someone else's gene. Prior immunity to the vector can blunt the dose, which is why some use a chimpanzee adenovirus nobody has met.
- Visceral adiposityTopicCardiometabolic · State · Not yet investigatedDrains into the portal vein, but supplies at most a fifth of the liver's fatty acids.
- Vitamin B12TopicMicronutrients · Compound · Not yet investigatedMetformin lowers its absorption, and the deficiency mimics the neuropathy of diabetes.
- Vitamin CTopicAntioxidants · Nutrient · Not yet investigatedHumans, guinea pigs and fruit bats share a broken gene for making it. Absorption saturates around 200 mg a day, and the rest leaves in the urine.
- Vitamin DTopicMicronutrients · Compound · Not yet investigatedThe VITAL trial gave 25,871 adults 2000 IU daily; cancer and heart events did not move.
- Vitamin D as a hormoneTopicMicronutrients · Hormone · Not yet investigatedVitamin D is not a vitamin. It is a secosteroid hormone acting through a nuclear receptor — which is why 'just take more' is the wrong frame.
- Vitamin ETopicThyroid · Nutrient · Not yet investigatedThe thyroid runs on trace elements in balance, not in isolation — selenium, iodine and the antioxidants that protect the gland while it works.
- Vitamin K1, K2, MK-4, MK-7TopicLipids · Concept · Not yet investigatedK1 from leaves, K2 from bacteria and fermentation, and MK-4 and MK-7 behave differently enough to change a trial.
- Vitamin K2TopicMicronutrients · Compound · Not yet investigatedMatrix Gla protein needs it for carboxylation; trials show no slower calcification.
- VoriconazoleTopicAntifungals · Drug · Not yet investigatedVisual disturbance on the first doses, and after long use photosensitivity and then squamous cell skin cancer.
- What BMI cannot seeTopicFat as an organ · Concept · Not yet investigatedA ratio invented in 1832 by an astronomer, on Belgian men, to describe populations. It has no term for where the fat is, and where it is decides the risk.
- What happens on stoppingTopicIncretins & appetite · Finding · Not yet investigatedIn the withdrawal trial two thirds of the lost weight came back within a year. It is a treatment for a chronic condition, not a course.
- What HbA1c cannot seeTopicMeasuring glucose · Concept · Not yet investigatedIt measures how long red cells live as much as how sweet the blood is — so it reads low in haemolysis and high when cells are old.
- What is in a CBD bottleTopicCannabinoids · Finding · Not yet investigatedAn FDA survey found many products well off their labelled content, and some with THC that was not declared. The gap between the trial drug and the shelf is the point.
- What is in a melatonin gummyTopicWhat is actually in the bottle · Finding · Not yet investigatedA 2023 analysis of 25 products found doses from 74% to 347% of the label, and one carried 1.3 mg of CBD that was not declared at all.
- What the tongue-tie trials showTopicHypermobility & structure · Finding · Not yet investigatedRandomised evidence supports release for a classic anterior tie with a feeding problem, and does not support the posterior and lip-tie releases now sold alongside it.
- WhipwormTopicRoundworms · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedIt stitches its thin end into the colon wall; a heavy load in a child prolapses the rectum.
- Why cartilage does not healTopicJoints & cartilage · Mechanism · Not yet investigatedNo blood supply, no nerves, and chondrocytes that divide almost never. Everything else in this constellation is downstream of those three facts.
- Why silymarin barely absorbsTopicLiver & bile · Concept · Not yet investigatedOral bioavailability in the low single figures, which is why the phospholipid complexes exist and why two milk thistle products are not the same drug.
- Why we retired 'Asperger's'TopicNeurodivergence · Concept · Not yet investigatedTwo reasons, and they are different: DSM-5 folded it into one spectrum in 2013, and archival work later described Hans Asperger's wartime conduct.
- Willow to aspirinTopicDrugs taken from nature · Drug · Not yet investigatedSalicin from bark, hydrolysed in the gut to salicylic acid, which wrecked stomachs. Acetylating it fixed the tolerability and created the modern drug industry's first blockbuster.
- WolbachiaTopicBacteria · Pathogen · Not yet investigatedA bacterium living inside insects and inside filarial worms. Releasing infected mosquitoes cut dengue by 77% in a randomised trial.
- WormwoodTopicBotanicals & extracts · Botanical · Not yet investigatedA herb famous for a psychosis it does not cause, with a small steroid-sparing trial in Crohn's that nobody has replicated.
Pages 9
- AboutPageThe show and the physicianAzka Afzal, MD, and why this exists.
- EpisodesPageAll investigationsEvery investigation, newest first.
- Medical disclaimerPageEducation, not adviceNothing here is medical advice.
- PrivacyPageWhat is and is not collectedThe privacy policy.
- SourcesPageThe working bibliographyEvery source saved against a topic, grouped by constellation.
- TermsPageTerms of useThe terms.
- The AtlasPageEvery entry, by kindStart from the element, not the episode.
- The letterPageThe newsletterEvery source, in your inbox.
- The MethodPageHow the show decidesWhat counts as evidence here, and what does not.