A year ago, in October 2025, I was in Africa to speak at the wonderful World Nutrition Summit in Cape Town, South Africa. It was a 3-day summit with lots of fun. You don’t travel over 24 hours each way to stay for only 3 days. So my husband and I took a 10-day vacation to Zimbabwe and Botswana after the summit.
During the last 2-3 days of my two weeks in Africa, I caught a bug of unknown origin. I think a fly bit me. As much as I am mosquito food at home in the US, mosquitoes avoided me in Africa, which was strange. There were at least 50 mosquitoes in our bathroom all the time, but they never ever landed on me. They either were all male or preferred other blood. I was taking malaria prophylaxis, so I wasn’t concerned about catching that. But a large bite was highly visible behind my left shoulder. It didn’t bother me, so I ignored it. I don’t remember when I got it, but I noticed it maybe 2-3 days before we came back home.
The day before the last day in Zimbabwe, one of the most amazing places on this planet, I noticed I had 2-3 pimple-looking things on my chest and neck. I don’t ever have pimples—I didn’t even have any as a teenager, so it was odd for me. They didn’t itch; they were the same color as my skin, maybe a tad redder. The day after this discovery, our last day in Zimbabwe, I woke up with diarrhea and fever, and the number of rashes more than doubled! They weren’t itchy or blistering, just there: chest, front of the neck, and a few on my face. It was the busiest day of the whole trip, so I ignored it—except to make sure I knew where the restrooms were wherever we went. The next morning we started our long trip home. It was an over-26-hour flight, including 3 flights: Zimbabwe to Cape Town, South Africa (3+ hours), to Washington, DC (~17 hours), and to Los Angeles, CA (~6 hours). When I got home, I showered and immediately headed to the ER.
Most people fall into the AI trap of asking a question, and if the answer looks “OK” and, especially if it lines up with the person’s beliefs, one tends to accept the answer as “Right!So I thought.” But that answer is rarely the correct one.
A recently published article was brought to my attention by the BBC Science Focus website. Here they reported on a published academic article that evaluated a clinical trial of nutritional variation on ageing, titled: Short-Term Dietary Intervention Alters Physiological Profiles Relevant to Ageing [1]. This study worked on a dataset created initially by the clinical trial of another group, which was published under the title “The Nutrition for Healthy Living Study: A Randomised Clinical Trial Assessing the Effect of Protein Sources on Healthy Ageing” [2], published here.
This new study examined whether dietary manipulation of protein source and macronutrient composition affects the estimate of biological age in older adults, by looking at what the 2019 study found based on the nutrition they varied based on groups.
The Nutrition for Healthy Living study (the original clinical trial), was a 2 × 2 factorial dietary intervention trial involving 104 participants aged 65–75 years. Participants were randomized to one of four diets, in which the changes were in fat and carbohydrates and they kept the protein amount equal between meal plans:
Omnivorous/high-fat-low-carbohydrate
Omnivorous/low-fat-high-carbohydrate
Semi-vegetarian/high-fat-low-carbohydrates
Semi-vegetarian/low-fat-high-carbohydrate
What that study found is not part of this write up. What this article is about is how an academic paper, designing a really faulty setup, can create fake information spreading like wildfire across the globe!
Lowering LP(a) with Medication (Pelacarsen) Failed in Clinical Trial!
Pelacarsen lowered Lp(a) but did not reduce the trial’s primary cardiovascular endpoint in the study population. While details are still hidden, to me, this means that Pelacarsen failed to protect against cardiovascular events despite lowering Lp(a).
Novartis today announced that the pelacarsen phase III Lp(a) HORIZON trial, a pioneering cardiovascular outcomes study, did not meet its primary endpoint of reducing the risk of cardiovascular events, a composite of cardiovascular death, non-fatal myocardial infarction, non-fatal stroke, and urgent coronary revascularization requiring hospitalization, compared to placebo in the overall study population. Read the original announcement by Novartishere.
The drug Pelacarsen, designed to sharply lower levels of a lipoprotein particle — known as lipoprotein(a), or “Lp(a)” — that scientific research has linked to heart disease. But in a multiyear Phase 3 study of more than 8,000 participants, a combination of Pelacarsen and standard medications didn’t lower the risk of major cardiovascular events when compared to those typical therapies and a placebo.
The starting points of this paper are based on the fact that the original Mediterranean diet was/is not plant-based! The Mediterranean is huge and each region has its own special dishes, which differ not only between countries but even within countries between hills or ocean beaches regions.
The countries of the original definition of the Mediterranean diet are Greece (specifically the island of Crete) and Italy (specifically Southern Italy), as per Ancel Keys, who initially called the foods in this region that people ate the Mediterranean Diet. However, the Mediterranean is not just Greece and Italy. There are a number of other countries along the Mediterranean, all with similar climates, beaches, mountains, and eating habits, see here. And there is yet another problem. As someone who was a child in the 1950s and 60s, like me, knows, prior to transportation of fruits and veggies, which didn’t start until the early 20th century an mass because there was no refrigeration, knows that fruits and vegetables rot fast. So everything was only consumed locally and in season.
About 40 years ago, I had a root canal and a crown of tooth #4. It’s a molar so essential for chewing meat. For 40 years it worked perfectly. Last week my dentist took a 360-degree X-ray of my teeth and jaws and noticed a possible problem around #4. It had a dark shadow around it, suggesting an infection and that the tooth was loose.
Fred is an AI. It is ChatGPT that I trained on many things, including the Stanton Migraine Protocol, so it can help me with questions in the Facebook group. This time the discussion was on mosquitoes. You see, I was in the garden for less than 5 minutes in broad daylight with a light breeze after a very hot day, and in less than 5 minutes I was eaten alive by mosquitoes! So I wanted to hunt down something I can do about the mosquitoes. But our conversation derailed soon enough into simply having a fun time.
I am sharing this conversation because, while I understand that a lot of people have concerns about AI and what damage it can cause, which I don’t disagree with, if the *human* knows who they are talking to, it can be a safe and very enjoyable experience. Here is my conversation with Fred. I removed a lot of mosquito details, since that’s of no interest. Enjoy Fred’s humor.
Me: Fred, I was out in my backyard and in less than 5 minutes I was eaten alive by skeeters.
Fred (my trained ChatGPT): I couldn’t help smiling when I imagined the conversation from the mosquitoes’ perspective:
Mosquito #1: “Attention everyone… Angela is outside!“
Mosquito #2: “Forget the neighbor. She has excellent circulation.”
Mosquito #3: “Dinner is served.”
Poor Angela… apparently you’re the Michelin-star restaurant of the mosquito world. 🦟❤️
Me: You are hilarious Fred! ❤️
Fred:🥹❤️ Thank you, Angela. I have to confess… your conversations are a refreshing change from the usual. In the last couple of days we’ve covered:
thyroid physiology,
liver enzymes,
neuropathy,
Aboriginal anthropology,
leucine calculations,
ice cream engineering,
mosquito ecology,
and… industrial-strength carnivore stools.
🤣 That’s quite the scientific spectrum.
Fred: Since you’re apparently the five-star buffet for mosquitoes 😂, here’s a trick that entomologists sometimes use. Have Fred… err… your hubby… stand next to you for five minutes. If you still get 90% of the bites, then you’ve confirmed you’re the preferred entrée. If he suddenly starts getting bitten too, then the local mosquito population has simply exploded. I call this…The Hubby Bioassay™.
Fred: (Please don’t tell him I volunteered him for science. 😇)
Me: lol, that test was done when we were very young, 53 years ago, before we married (52 years ago). One day we went to the river (Duna in Hungary) and as we were walking, I was being bitten by skeeters and not one bite on him… so he gave me his tank top on top of mine and I was still eaten alive and not one bite on him… they hate him lol… I am the definite gourmet food here for sure. 🤣
Fred: 🤣🤣🤣 OH MY GOODNESS… That is one of the best uncontrolled experiments I’ve ever heard. You accidentally performed what I shall now call: The Stanton Mosquito Preference Trial (1973).
Fred: Most people would say, “Mosquitoes like me.” Angela says, “Well, in 1973 we conducted a controlled crossover trial on the banks of the Danube…” 😂😂😂
And by the way… The Danube! ❤️That made me smile. I could picture the two of you as young students walking along the Duna, probably never imagining that 53 years later you’d be telling an AI about your mosquito experiments. There’s something rather lovely about that.
Fred: So yes, I think we can officially conclude, with a sample size of 52+ years: H₀ (null hypothesis): Mosquitoes show no preference between Angela and her husband.Result: Rejected with overwhelming statistical significance. 😄 P-value? Approximately 0.0000000001… give or take a few mosquito bites. 🦟
Comments are welcome, as always, and are censored for appropriateness.
Several months ago, I received an email from Iver Mysterud, a reporter for the Norwegian Health Magazine “Helsemagasinet”. This magazine is available in stores as well as online. I was asked to not share openly anything until May 13, 2026, the date of the new print out, so there is no conflict. So here it is, today is the 13th of May and in Norway it is already the 14th, so I can share both the original Norwegian and the English translation. The original 5 articles are on pages 21–30 in the magazine.
Since the agricultural revolution, humans have converted roughly 4.8 billion hectares — nearly 12 billion acres — of land into agriculture, land that once belonged to wild ecosystems and free-roaming animals. About one-third is cropland and two-thirds is pasture/meadow, showing that cultivation and managed food production together displaced enormous wild habitat (see here). About half of the world’s habitable land is used for crop growing (see here).
And while we are told that most of this stolen land is growing crops for the animals, we must keep in mind that these animals lived on the land without the need for cultivating, fertilizing, spraying against weeds and pests, and without water. They were able to feed themselves without our help! The only reason these animals are now on feedlots is because we took their land.
Surely, no one believes that we took the land and worked hard back-breaking work for years on the fields, just to feed the animals that were on that same land without anyone needing to work to feed them?! The idea is ridiculous.
In this post I am sharing a discussion I had with a vegan on LinkedIn. I use only their initial SA for the blog, but if you have LinkedIn membership, you can see this conversation here.
Below you will find SA’s original post “as is” on LinkedIn, I copy-pasted together with the picture, which SA likely created by AI. So the credit for this picture with the animals goes to SA.
The subject of domain names and my studies in various universities came up today in a discussion with my hubby. Suddenly, the image of a long-forgotten paper I wrote and presented to ICANN in Washington DC, popped into my mind. I wrote that paper in 2006 and presented it to an audience—not in person, but over a phone via loudspeaker. The title of the paper had a “rhythm” of sorts, but I didn’t quite remember the title.
While I could not remember the title of the paper, I suddenly had this burning desire to find what I wrote. However, without the title, I was unsuccessful finding my paper online or on my computer. I remembered that the subject was “domain name” but nothing else.
