Plastic food containers leach estrogenic chemicals that could disrupt hormones, contribute to obesity, and harm fertility. Now, a 2025 study published in Toxicological Sciences has disturbingly validated those concerns: the "BPA-free" alternatives used in thermal paper receipts and food packaging may be even more toxic than BPA itself. Researchers at McGill University tested five BPA alternatives (TGSA, D-8, PF-201, DBSP, and the widely used BPS). They found that several were highly cytotoxic to human cells, dramatically increased lipid droplet accumulation, and disrupted DNA repair pathways. The most concerning finding was that these chemicals are now ubiquitous in our environment, detected in cash receipts, food packaging labels, newspapers, and even toilet paper made from recycled thermal paper, and that they migrate into food products that come into contact with these materials. Whether a material contains BPA or one of its supposedly safer alternatives, plastic leaches endocrine-disrupting chemicals into your food. The solution remains the same as in 2011: use glass containers for storage, stainless steel for water bottles, and avoid heating food in any type of plastic, regardless of the label claims.

You've probably spent a fortune on vitamin C serums promising to reverse aging and brighten your complexion, but new research from the Journal of Investigative Dermatology suggests you might be better off eating your antioxidants instead. Researchers measured vitamin C levels in different skin layers and found that dermal cells (fibroblasts) contained seven times more vitamin C than epidermal cells, with the highest concentrations supporting collagen synthesis deep in the skin. When participants with low vitamin C status ate two kiwifruit daily for eight weeks (delivering about 250 mg of vitamin C), their skin ascorbate levels increased significantly, skin density improved by nearly 50%, and epidermal cell proliferation increased by 30%. The study demonstrated that vitamin C travels from your bloodstream into your skin through active transport, with the epidermis particularly responsive to changes in plasma levels. This matches a large body of evidence on vitamin C's critical role in collagen production, and it reinforces what functional medicine practitioners have known for years: true skin health comes from within, not from a bottle on your bathroom counter.

Stevia comes from the leaves of Stevia rebaudiana, a plant native to South America. Its leaves are packed with compounds called steviol glycosides — the most abundant being rebaudioside A and stevioside — which are about 200–300 times sweeter than table sugar. The stevia you’ll find in foods and drinks today isn’t the same form as the crushed leaves people used for centuries to sweeten tea. The FDA only allows the use of high-purity stevia extracts containing 95% or more steviol glycosides, compounds that don’t raise blood sugar, provide calories, or have the same metabolic and hormonal impacts as sugar. So why the scrutiny? For starters, when stevia hit the U.S. market in 2008, it followed decades of backlash against artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose and got inaccurately lumped into the same category. How Is Stevia Metabolized in the Body? Stevia moves through your body like a widget on a factory line: - Your small intestine passes it to your colon - In the colon, workers (your gut bacteria) break it down into parts.  - Then it rolls down the conveyor belt to your liver, which repackages it into a harmless form — steviol glucuronide— and ships it off to your kidneys.  - They prep it for delivery and send it out to be excreted in urine, no scraps left behind. Here’s how that process works in a bit more detail. 1. Digestion and absorption The chemical structure of steviol glycosides includes a steviol backbone with sugar molecules that your digestive enzymes can’t break apart.

Microplastics are plastic particles ranging in size from 1 micrometer (1/1,000 of a millimeter) to 5 mm. Nanoplastics are even smaller, less than one micrometer. These particles are invisible to the naked eye, but are constantly being generated during the manufacturing, storage, transportation, and decomposition of bottles. Low-quality plastics, in particular, are prone to release microscopic debris due to sunlight, temperature changes, and physical manipulation. Unlike other plastic particles that enter the body through the food chain, those derived from plastic bottles are of concern because they are ingested directly with drinking water. Once in the body, microscopic plastics can enter the bloodstream and reach vital organs. This triggers a chronic inflammatory response and exposes cells to oxidative stress, which can lead to hormone system disturbances, impaired reproductive function, and damage to the nervous system. It has also been linked to various types of cancer.

Chlorophyll is an alternative energy source for the human body. And actually, all animals have this ability. Because it goes into the mitochondria as a metabolite. It enables the mitochondria to capture sunlight energy, which photo-energizes the Krebs cycle in such a way that it produces significantly more ATP, which is sort of the energy currency of the body, without increasing oxidative stress. This is a new study that came out last year, which completely undermines our classical understanding of our bodies as able to live only by eating other things. Basically, we can, if we have adequate chlorophyll in our diet - wheatgrass being one of the best sources - directly capture the sunlight. Not only does it increase the production and efficiency of ATP in our body, but it also increases longevity, at least in the earthworm model, which is what they use it for. We will see animal studies and probably human studies soon. Basically, this reclassifies us from heterotrophs, which depend on other things, to photo-heterotrophs, which means we can actually take sunlight directly into our bodies. Keep in mind, it doesn't just mean the wavelengths that are, like you know, obviously the sunlight we see. Red, for example, is a wavelength that goes deep into our tissue as well. It can even penetrate the skull and enter our brain, energizing it.