Food scientists at The Florida State University conducted a pilot study of four men and five postmenopausal women, all aged 51 to 57 and prehypertensive. All nine participants showed improved arterial function and lower aortic blood pressure, suggesting that watermelon can be an effective natural weapon against prehypertension, a precursor to cardiovascular disease. In the first investigation of its kind in humans, researchers administered six grams of the amino acid L-citrulline/L-arginine from watermelon extract to the subjects on a daily basis for six weeks. L-citrulline is converted in the body to L-arginine which is required for the formation of nitric oxide essential to the regulation of vascular tone and healthy blood pressure. Although L-arginine is available as a dietary supplement, for many people it can cause nausea, gastrointestinal tract discomfort, and diarrhea, whereas watermelon has none of those effects. Dubbing watermelon a "functional food," the lead author, FSU Assistant Professor Arturo Figueroa, suggested that it has a vasodilatory effect which may prevent prehypertension from progression to full-blown hypertension, a major risk factor for heart attack and stroke. His co-author, FSU Professor Bahram H. Arjmandi, defined "functional foods" as those "scientifically shown to have health-promoting or disease-preventing properties, above and beyond the other intrinsically healthy nutrients they also supply." According to the study published in the American Journal of Hypertension, watermelon is the richest edible natural source of L-citrulline, and is also a good source of vitamins A, B6 and C, as well as fiber, potassium and the antioxidant lycopene. L-citrulline is also available as a supplement and the authors believe that supplementation might allow a reduced dosage of drugs prescribed to control blood pressure. A previous study by Dr. Figueroa showed that four weeks of L-citrulline supplementation slowed or weakened the increase in aortic blood pressure in response to cold exposure which, combined with hypertension, is associated with higher rates of myocardial infarction.

All disease begins in the gut.” Hippocrates whispered this truth more than two thousand years ago. Modern science is finally catching up, and what we are discovering is breathtaking: within the trillions of microbes that call your intestines home lives a pharmacy more sophisticated than anything humans have ever engineered. Your gut bugs make neurotransmitters. They calm your stress response. They shape your mood, your memory, and your very sense of self. The answer has been hiding in plain sight. A groundbreaking 2024 review by Braga, Thongngam, and Kumrungsee published in npj Science of Food explored how gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the primary calming neurotransmitter in your brain, is also produced in astonishing quantities by specific strains of gut bacteria. This discovery sits at the heart of a revolutionary new field called psychobiotics: live microorganisms that, when consumed in adequate amounts, confer measurable mental health benefits through the gut-brain axis. The term psychobiotic was coined in 2013 by neuroscientists Ted Dinan, Catherine Stanton, and John Cryan in a Biological Psychiatry paper that defined a psychobiotic as a live organism that, when ingested in adequate amounts, produces a health benefit in patients suffering from psychiatric illness. The definition has since expanded to include prebiotics (compounds that feed beneficial bacteria), synbiotics (combinations of probiotics and prebiotics), and postbiotics (bioactive metabolites produced by microbes). The Gut-Brain Axis: Your Body’s Most Fascinating Conversation To truly appreciate psychobiotics, you must first understand the gut-brain axis. This is the bidirectional communication superhighway connecting the 500 million neurons of your enteric nervous system (often called your “second brain”) with the 100 billion neurons of your central nervous system. Four primary routes carry these molecular messages. 1. The Neural Pathway: The Vagus Nerve Superhighway The vagus nerve is the tenth cranial nerve and the longest in the autonomic nervous system. It wanders from your brainstem to every major organ. Approximately 80 percent of its fibers carry sensory information from the gut upward to the brain. Landmark research by Bravo and colleagues, published in PNAS in 2011, demonstrated that ingestion of a specific Lactobacillus strain regulated emotional behavior and central GABA receptor expression in mice, an effect completely abolished when the vagus nerve was severed.

Peanuts are roughly half fat by weight. Which fat you get depends entirely on the variety of peanut you start with, and that's where things go sideways. A standard peanut runs up to 30% linoleic acid, an omega-6 polyunsaturated fat. That's the same fat family that makes up the bulk of seed oils, the ones I've been telling you to get out of your kitchen for years. The problem is structural. Linoleic acid has two double bonds, and double bonds are where oxidation attacks. Oleic acid, the monounsaturated fat that makes up most of olive oil, has one. Fewer double bonds, slower oxidation. So a jar of conventional peanut butter is degrading the whole time it sits in your pantry. By the time you scrape the bottom of it, you're eating oxidized fat. Which means it’s rancid, in plain English. Then there's the mold problem. Peanuts grow underground, get harvested wet, and sit in storage. That's close to ideal conditions for the molds that produce aflatoxins, which is why peanuts are one of the most aflatoxin-tested crops in the world. Better options would be almond butter, sunflower, etc. anything but peanuts (and cashews which have similar issues as peanuts)

When the USDA erroneously decided all animal fat and meat were poison, Americans were told to eat more plant foods, like soy. Soy was touted as a perfect protein and source of fat to replace meat, lard and butter. Soybean oil was marketed as a versatile cooking oil that wouldn’t increase your cholesterol, textured protein crumbles made in a lab were smashed together and dyed to look like hamburger patties and soybean oil was hydrogenated to be solid at room temperature. “Eat margarine,” they said, “it's better than butter,'' they said. Well folks, it turns out hydrogenated vegetable oil is a source of trans fat. And eating trans fat not only increases your risk of heart disease but the Food and Drug Administration now prohibits food manufacturers from adding the major source of artificial trans fat to foods and beverages. But, I digress, let’s get back to the soyification of the world. So the government declares all animal meat and fat bad, processed plant foods are better. AKA “we know better than nature what is healthy”. So, cheap soy floods the market. And now you can pick up 80% of the items in the grocery store and see soy in the ingredient list. Soybean oil, lecithin from soy, soy protein, textured vegetable protein (also soy), vegetable gum, vegetable broth, vegetable starch, this list goes on. The 4 Dangers of Eating soy: #1 Weed-killer in Soy Soy is a leading food source of glyphosate (the weed-killer Roundup). Oats, wheat and corn are up there as well and you’ll notice I don’t recommend eating those either. Glyphosate is a synthetic herbicide patented by the Monsanto Company and now manufactured and sold by many companies in hundreds of products. Glyphosate has been associated with: - Cancer - Liver damage - Reproductive and developmental issues According to the Environmental Workgroup (EWG) genetically engineered soy has the highest levels of Roundup: “Crop scientists have genetically engineered soy to survive blasts of Roundup so farmers can spray this chemical near crops to get rid of weeds. But some so-called “super weeds” resistant to Roundup have developed. In turn, some farmers use yet more Roundup to try to kill those hardy weeds. This leads to more Roundup chemicals being found on soybeans and ultimately in the food supply.”

A 2024 University of New Mexico study found microplastics in every one of 23 human testicles tested. The average concentration was 329 micrograms/gram of tissue, nearly 3x higher than dogs in the same geographic environment. The most abundant polymer was polyethylene, the material of plastic bags and bottles. The second was PVC, which researchers noted has been shown to interfere with sperm production and act as an endocrine disruptor. Concentrations were highest in men between the ages of 20 and 45. Peak reproductive years. The same lab then examined placenta samples in a separate study. Every one contained microplastics too, at concentrations ranging from 6.5 to 790 micrograms/gram, averaging 127. That's tissue that only exists for eight months of pregnancy. The concentration built up that fast. Then they moved to the brain. A study published in Nature Medicine in early 2025 found microplastic concentrations in the frontal cortex to be higher than in the liver or kidney. Comparing 2016 samples to 2024 samples, average concentrations rose approximately 50% in eight years. In samples from patients diagnosed with dementia before death, concentrations were up to 5x higher than the 2024 average. That would be one thing if the plastic just sat there. Microplastics have been documented in umbilical cord blood, meaning they cross the placenta and enter the developing baby's circulation directly. Concentrations found range from 1.1-10+ particles/gram of cord tissue. The same particles have been found in amniotic fluid, the medium the fetus develops in for nine months. So the baby soaks in the mother’s exposure, and researchers are just starting to document the correlations with real harm. Honestly, they should have gotten more attention than they have. A 2025 study found that women who developed pregnancy-induced hypertension had 46% higher microplastic concentrations in umbilical cord tissue than women who had healthy pregnancies. The correlation tracked with frequency of plastic tableware use, plastic-packaged beverage consumption, and takeout meals.