We have been carefully analysing soil, dust, water, food, and human and animal hair for over a decade at TOXTEST in Australia. Our primary purpose is to inform the public about potential contamination or health concerns.

The main reason for conducting a human hair analysis is to reveal possible exposure to harmful toxic metals. This helps you take action to reduce exposure. We provide important exposure-route information in your results for all toxic metals tested.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) classify the heavy metals Lead, Arsenic, Cadmium and Mercury among the top ten chemicals of major public health concern. Ref: Ten chemicals of major public health concern

Why is exposure, even low-dose exposure to heavy metals, a problem? Many metals accumulate in our body over time. They interfere, mostly in negative ways, with our cellular metabolism. Left unchecked, this eventually progresses, and often in this order - accumulation of metal in body tissues - then metabolic and cellular disruption - then physical or mental signs - then physical or mental symptoms and finally - chronic or recurrent illness.

More than half of the Metals & Minerals we test are known to be toxic, dangerous, carcinogenic or have unknown effects on humans. Long red bars in your results make it imperative to investigate possible exposure routes. Evidence indicates that results with longer red bars correlate well with even low levels of consistent exposure to these metals, ranging in time from several months to a year or more.

However, interpreting hair analysis results for key body nutrients like potassium, sodium, magnesium, and calcium is different. That’s what this article is about. Mainly because sometimes clients have high levels of sodium and potassium in their results; a fully de-identified example is shown in the link below.

https://www.toxtest.com.au/results/hair/toxtest-hair-analysis-result-2122-1806.html

When Hair Sodium and Potassium Are High

What Does It Actually Mean?

One of the most common questions I receive from clients after a hair analysis concerns high sodium and potassium levels.

Unlike mercury, arsenic or lead, sodium and potassium are familiar nutrients. They are found in food, measured in blood tests, and essential for life. So when someone sees that one or both appear elevated in their hair analysis, the natural question is:

“Does this mean I have too much sodium or potassium in my body?”

The short answer is:

Not necessarily.

In fact, interpreting sodium and potassium in hair requires a very different way of thinking from interpreting most toxic elements.

This article explains why.

Hair is a Record of Exposure, Not a Blood Test

Hair analysis is fundamentally different from a blood test.

Blood provides a snapshot of what is circulating when the sample is taken.

Hair, on the other hand, grows slowly—typically around one centimetre per month—and becomes a historical record of what has been incorporated into the hair over weeks or months.

Once the hair emerges from the scalp, it is no longer living tissue. It is a strand of keratin that can no longer regulate itself.

That distinction is important because elements can become associated with hair in more than one way.

There Are Two Main Ways Minerals End Up in Hair

When people think about hair testing, they usually imagine that minerals enter the hair through the bloodstream while the hair is growing.

That certainly happens.

While the hair follicle is actively producing new hair, nutrients and other elements supplied by the local blood circulation can become incorporated into the developing hair shaft.

This is one reason hair can be useful for assessing longer-term exposure to certain environmental contaminants.

However, once hair emerges from the scalp, another process begins.

The hair is continually exposed to:

• sweat

• natural skin oils (sebum)

• shampoo and conditioners

• swimming pools

• seawater

• dust

• occupational exposure

• cosmetics

• the surrounding environment.

For some elements, particularly sodium and potassium, this second pathway may be just as important as the first.

Sweat Is Probably More Important Than Most People Realise

This is perhaps the most overlooked aspect of interpreting hair sodium and potassium.

Human sweat naturally contains both sodium and potassium.

Every time we exercise, work in the heat, spend time in a sauna or simply perspire during the day, small amounts of these electrolytes are deposited onto the scalp and hair.

Over weeks and months these repeated exposures may contribute to the amount ultimately measured in a laboratory.

Importantly, this is not laboratory contamination.

Nor is it simply “dirt”.

It is genuine biological material produced by the body itself.

However, it is surface deposition, rather than necessarily reflecting what was circulating in the bloodstream while the hair was being formed.

This distinction matters.

Why Sodium and Potassium Behave Differently

The human body regulates sodium and potassium extremely tightly.

The kidneys, adrenal hormones, thirst mechanisms and several other physiological systems work continuously to keep blood concentrations within very narrow limits.

This means that someone can consume quite different amounts of dietary sodium or potassium while maintaining completely normal blood levels.

Healthy kidneys simply adjust how much is excreted.

Therefore it would generally be incorrect to conclude:

“High hair potassium means you have too much potassium in your blood.”

or

“High hair sodium means you have excessive salt in your body.”

Current scientific evidence does not support those conclusions.

Hair Sodium Is Not the Same as Blood Sodium

Blood sodium is primarily regulated by water balance.

Hair sodium reflects something different.

It may represent a combination of:

• incorporation during hair growth

• repeated sweat exposure

• environmental deposition

• hair products

• individual physiology

• analytical variation.

The laboratory is accurately measuring how much sodium is present in the hair sample.

What it cannot determine is precisely how much arrived from each of these different pathways.

The Same Principle Applies to Potassium

Potassium is even more tightly regulated than sodium.

Around 98% of the body’s potassium is found inside cells rather than in the bloodstream.

Healthy kidneys continuously adjust potassium excretion to maintain stable blood levels.

As a result, hair potassium should not be interpreted as a substitute for a blood potassium measurement.

Individual Sweat Physiology Varies Considerably

One fascinating aspect of human physiology is that not everyone produces the same sweat.

Some people naturally lose much more sodium through sweat than others.

Several factors influence this, including:

• exercise intensity

• environmental temperature

• heat acclimatisation

• genetics

• sweat rate

• hormonal regulation, particularly aldosterone.

Two people with identical blood sodium concentrations may produce sweat containing quite different sodium concentrations.

Over months, that difference alone could potentially contribute to different hair sodium measurements.

Hair Care Also Matters

Hair is continually exposed to the external environment.

Possible contributors include:

• shampoos

• conditioners

• styling products

• hair treatments

• swimming pools

• seawater

• mineral-rich water

• occupational dust.

Laboratories use washing procedures before analysis to remove obvious external contamination.

However, no washing procedure can perfectly distinguish between:

• minerals incorporated during hair formation,

and

• minerals deposited onto the hair surface over several months.

This remains one of the recognised limitations of hair analysis.

Does This Mean Hair Analysis Is Unreliable?

No.

It means we need to ask the correct scientific question.

Hair is an excellent matrix for answering some questions.

It is much less suitable for answering others.

For example, hair analysis may provide valuable information regarding longer-term exposure to certain environmental contaminants such as mercury or arsenic.

Sodium and potassium are different.

These elements are influenced by additional physiological and environmental factors that make their interpretation more complex.

Understanding those limitations is part of using the test responsibly.

So What Should Someone Do If Their Sodium or Potassium Is Elevated?

An elevated sodium or potassium result in hair should not automatically be interpreted as evidence of disease.

Nor should it be ignored.

Instead, view it as an observation that may warrant confirmation with conventional medical testing.

If sodium and/or potassium are unexpectedly elevated in a hair analysis, it is reasonable to discuss the findings with your GP.

Depending on your individual circumstances, your doctor may consider:

• serum electrolytes (including sodium and potassium)

• kidney function (creatinine and eGFR)

• urea

• urine testing

• urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio (ACR)

• review of medications

• assessment of hydration and general health.

These tests assess how the kidneys and electrolyte-regulating systems are functioning.

They answer different questions from a hair analysis.

The two approaches complement one another rather than compete with one another.

Questions Worth Asking

When interpreting elevated hair sodium or potassium, I often consider several practical questions before jumping to medical conclusions.

For example:

• Do you exercise regularly?

• Do you sweat heavily?

• Do you use a sauna?

• Do you work outdoors or in hot environments?

• Do you swim frequently?

• Have you chemically treated your hair?

• What hair products do you regularly use?

Sometimes these factors help explain the result surprisingly well.

The Important Difference Between the Blue Section Elements and the Toxic Elements in a Hair Test Report

In our example TOXTEST report above, the minerals shown below the blue line —including calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and sulphur — should not be interpreted in exactly the same way as toxic elements such as mercury, lead or arsenic.

They are biologically different.

Their regulation within the body is different.

The pathways by which they enter hair are different.

The strength of the scientific evidence supporting their interpretation is also different.

For that reason, these minerals should be viewed as non-diagnostic observations that may provide useful context, but which should always be interpreted alongside medical history, symptoms and, where appropriate, conventional pathology testing.

The Bottom Line

An elevated sodium or potassium concentration in hair does not necessarily mean there is an abnormal sodium or potassium concentration in the blood.

Further information: see our FAQ and Important Information page on Toxtest.

Article by Hartmut Michael Günther, B.Sc. Hons. Biochemistry, Grad. Dip. Nutrition Medicine, Grad. Dip. Psychology. www.hartgood.com | www.toxtest.com.au | PH: 0439 54 7788 | hart@hartgood.com

Understanding even a little bit of how the human body works and responds can have significant beneficial impact on our long-term health.

I am very fortunate to be able to work for an organisation that provides support for other larger organisation’s employees. We do this through simple half-hour interactions with individuals in these organisations who wish to know more about their long-term health combined with meaningful actions they can take. Because of my clinical experience and expertise in health and nutrition, one of the managers asked if I could write an article that provides useful information around fatigue, nutrition, sleep, and indeed motivation. So here it is…

It is three in the afternoon. You have been up since before dawn, the morning went well enough, but somewhere after lunch a fog rolled in. Your eyes feel heavy, your thinking has slowed, and the job in front of you — whether that is a screen, a bench, a control panel or a very expensive machine on wheels — suddenly feels harder than it did at nine o’clock.

That fog has a name. It is fatigue. And it is almost never travelling alone.

This is the first in a short series written for you, the workforce. You do demanding, skilled, often safety-critical work, across a huge range of roles and backgrounds. What you have in common is a body and a brain that need looking after — not with hype or willpower lectures, but with a bit of understanding and a few small, doable habits. My aim here is simple: to help you understand four things that shape how you feel every single day, and to show you how tightly they are woven together.

Those four things are fatigue, food, sleep, and motivation.

Let’s meet them properly.

First, what do we actually mean?

Before we go any further, let’s get clear on our four words. Plain language, no jargon.

Fatigue is the feeling of running low — of not having the energy, focus or drive you need for what’s in front of you. It is a signal, not a character flaw.

Food (nutrition) is the fuel and the raw material. It is what your body pulls apart and rebuilds itself from — the energy in, and the nutrients that let your cells do their work.

Sleep is the nightly reset. It is when your body repairs, your brain files away the day, and your energy is restored for tomorrow. It is not lost time; it is the most productive thing you do all day.

Motivation is the “why” behind the “do”. It is what gets you moving — and, as we’ll see, it is far more about interest and agency than about gritting your teeth.

Four separate words. But here is the thing worth holding onto from the very start: they are not four separate things.They are four corners of one system, constantly passing messages back and forth. Poor sleep drags on your energy and your food choices. Poor food unsettles your sleep and flattens your drive. Low drive keeps you off your feet, which worsens your sleep, which deepens the fatigue. Pull one corner and the whole thing moves.

We’ll come back to that conversation at the end. For now, let’s start where most people feel it first — fatigue.

Fatigue: the body’s “pay attention” light

The first useful thing to know about fatigue is that it is partly a feeling. It is perceived. Two people can do the same shift and finish in completely different states — and even the same person can feel wrecked one day and fine the next after identical work. That doesn’t mean fatigue is “in your head” and therefore not real. It means fatigue is your nervous system’s read-out of what’s going on inside you, and like any read-out, it can be dialled up or down by many things at once.

It also helps to split fatigue into two kinds, because they feel different and they respond to different things:

• Mental (or cognitive) fatigue is the foggy-brain feeling — trouble concentrating, slower decisions, re-reading the same line, more mistakes creeping in.

• Physical fatigue is the heavy-body feeling — tired muscles, sluggishness, wanting to sit down.

Often people get one or the other. Sometimes both arrive together. And plenty of the time, honestly, we can’t quite tell them apart — we just know we’re “cooked”. All of that is normal. Naming which kind you’re feeling is a genuinely useful first step, because it points you toward what might help.

Running down is normal

Here’s something reassuring. A good chunk of daily fatigue is simply the natural cost of being awake and doing things. After a certain number of hours of thinking, moving and deciding, we run low. That’s not a fault in you — it’s biology, shaped over millions of years. The everyday, healthy answer to that kind of fatigue is quality sleep, which winds the spring back up overnight.

(And there’s our first bit of interconnection already: poor sleep is one of the single biggest causes of daytime fatigue.We’ll separate the four topics out to explain them, but you’ll notice they keep reaching across to hold hands.)

But not all fatigue is the honest, earned kind. Sometimes we’re far more tired than the day should warrant. To understand why, it helps to go from what we feel down to what’s actually happening inside our cells. And I’ll admit my bias here — I have a biochemistry degree, and I love making the connection between what we experience as human beings and what’s going on at the tiny, invisible level. It’s not just interesting; it genuinely helps things make sense.

Down to the cells: your mitochondria

Most people have heard the word mitochondria by now — usually as “the powerhouse of the cell”. That nickname is fair. Inside almost every cell of your body sit these tiny structures whose main job is to take the fuel from your food and the oxygen from your breath and turn them into ATP — the little packets of usable energy that power everything you do, from lifting a box to holding a thought.

When your mitochondria are well-supplied, well-rested and working smoothly, energy flows and you feel it. When they’re struggling — because you’re short on sleep, low on key nutrients, dehydrated, unwell, or under long-running stress — energy production dips, and you feel that too, as fatigue. The felt experience and the cellular reality are two ends of the same wire. In fact, when researchers study conditions marked by severe, unrelenting fatigue — including long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome — disrupted energy production in the mitochondria keeps turning up as a central theme.[1]

This is why fatigue is such an honest messenger. It isn’t your body being difficult. It’s your body saying: the energy system needs some attention.

The strange truth: movement can make energy

Here is one of the most useful and least understood facts about fatigue, and it deserves its own moment.

Let me tell you a story. In my twenties and thirties I worked as a chef. You’d do the lunch shift — on your feet from early morning through to mid-afternoon — and come home genuinely tired. At the time I had a mentor living with us who was teaching me tennis (I was already reasonably handy). I’d walk in the door wanting to do absolutely nothing, and he’d say, “Come out, it’ll give you energy.” I’d think, you’ve got to be joking, mate — I’m exhausted. But he’d talk me into it, we’d end up playing for two hours, and he was absolutely right. Every time. I’d come off the court feeling more alive than when I walked in the door.

I know that story is weighted towards being young. But now that I’m a lot older, it’s still true — and the science backs it up handsomely. In a controlled trial, sedentary people who reported constant tiredness were put on a regular light-exercise programme; their energy went up and their fatigue went down — and, remarkably, the improvement had nothing to do with getting fitter. That points to exercise acting on the nervous system to lift energy directly. Even more interesting: the low-intensity group did better on fatigue than the moderate-intensity group, suggesting that when you’re already worn out, a gentle option (a walk) can be exactly right where flogging yourself is too much.[2] It’s one of the most consistent findings in the whole field — across dozens of trials, regular exercise reliably reduces fatigue.[3]

At its most basic, exercise is simply walking. And walking can give you both mental and physical energy, and lift what feels like very real fatigue. The quiet irony is this: sometimes we’re tired not only because we’re short on quality sleep, but because we’re short on quality movement. Both are fuel. Both are easy to neglect.

What tends to deepen fatigue

Beyond the normal end-of-day tiredness, the usual suspects that push fatigue further than it should go are:

• Not enough good sleep — the big one.

• Dehydration — even mild fluid loss can bring on tiredness, headaches and foggy thinking.

• Low iron — a very common, very fixable cause of tiredness, especially in women. In people who are genuinely low in iron (low ferritin) but not yet anaemic, correcting it can measurably reduce fatigue — though it’s not a blanket fix, so it’s worth testing first rather than guessing.[4][5]

• The blood-sugar rollercoaster — big sugary hits followed by crashes.

• Ongoing stress and running flat-out with no real rest.

Notice how many of those live in the “food”, “sleep” and “movement” corners. Fatigue is where the whole system tends to send its bill.

What actually helps — small habits, big returns

Here’s the practical part, and I’m using fatigue as our worked example on purpose, because good habits are the quiet engine of real change. You don’t fix fatigue by deciding to be less tired. You fix it by building a few small routines that run in the background and add up. Willpower fades by mid-afternoon; a habit doesn’t need willpower once it’s set.

A handful of the most evidence-backed habits for lower daytime fatigue:

• Same bed-time, same wake-time — seven days a week. Regularity is the single most powerful sleep habit there is. Your body loves rhythm.

• Get bright light into your eyes early. Ten to thirty minutes of morning light — ideally outdoor daylight — helps set your body’s internal 24-hour clock, your circadian rhythm. A well-set clock means better alertness during the day and easier sleep at night.[6][7] Light in the morning; dim and dark as bedtime nears.

• Move during the day. As we’ve just seen, even a short walk lifts energy and improves that night’s sleep — and it’s often the very thing your tired body needs most.[2]

• Drink water steadily. Don’t wait until you’re parched — by then you’re already behind.

• Steady your fuel. Some protein early, whole foods over sugary hits, and you’ll dodge the worst of the afternoon crash.

None of these are heroic. That’s the point. Pick one, make it stick, then add another.

Food: fuelling the whole thing

If fatigue is where the system sends its bill, food is where a lot of the money comes from.

One of the honest difficulties here is that many people simply aren’t sure what “an optimal healthy diet” even isanymore. The advice is noisy, the packaging is misleading, and what counts as “food” has quietly changed. So rather than hand you a rigid diet, here are the durable principles I’ve watched work with clients over two decades.

Good eating starts with a relationship with food — learning about it, preparing it, enjoying it — not a set of rules to endure. Lean towards whole foods, mostly local, minimally processed. Read the label on anything in a packet. Get organised — cooking in bulk and freezing portions is the single most practical trick for eating well on a busy roster. And go for nutrient-dense over energy-dense: foods that make you fit, not fat. Steadier fuel means steadier energy, which means less of that afternoon fog.

Two food factors deserve a special mention because they hit fatigue directly: hydration and iron. Both are common, both are easy to miss, and both are very fixable.

Go deeper on InnerFood → Prioritising Nutrition — the core principles, in one place. Water & Hydration — how much you actually need, and why food counts too. Contributors of Low Ferritin — low iron is a leading and treatable cause of tiredness. Finding Out Which Foods Cause Me Problems — the gold-standard way to spot food intolerances that can wreck sleep and energy.

Sleep: the reset you can’t skip

If there’s one lever that moves all the others, it’s this one. Sleep is the foundation the other three rest on. Skimp on it and fatigue rises, food choices slide (a tired brain craves sugar and caffeine), and motivation quietly drains away.

Good sleep isn’t luck, and it isn’t a fixed trait you’re either born with or not. It’s mostly a set of conditions you can arrange. The heavy hitters:

• Regularity is king — same times, every day, weekends included. It matters more than most people realise: large-scale sleep tracking shows that even among people getting a reasonable number of hours, the timing is often all over the place — and that irregularity itself works against you.[8]

• Keep it cool — a bedroom around 18°C helps your body drop its temperature to fall and stay asleep.

• Keep it dark — even small amounts of light through the eyelids can lift you out of deep sleep. Ditch the LED clock; dim the screens before bed.

• Mind the chemicals — caffeine can linger in your system for many hours, and alcohol fragments sleep even when it helps you nod off.

As sleep scientist Matthew Walker puts it, quality sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity, not an optional luxury. Your body agrees with him.

Go deeper on InnerFood → Sleep — a complete, plain-English resource: the factors that wreck sleep and the strategies that fix it.

A caring word about night shift

Some of you work nights. So let me be straight and gentle about this at the same time, because it matters and it’s personal.

Almost nobody wants to do shift work. People do it to support their families, to hold down a good job, to keep an operation running around the clock — and they take what it brings. That deserves respect, not a lecture. So this isn’t me telling you to stop. It’s me making sure you know what’s going on in your body, so you can protect yourself as well as possible.

Here’s the honest picture. Working through the night asks your body to be awake exactly when its internal clock is calling for sleep, and to sleep when the clock is calling for wakefulness. That mismatch — circadian misalignment — is genuinely hard on the system. It tends to mean shorter, poorer daytime sleep, and more daytime fatigue and sleepiness. A recognised condition, shift work disorder, captures exactly this, and a substantial share of shift workers carry its symptoms.[9] It’s not weakness; it’s physiology.

There’s a safety edge to this that matters especially if you drive. When you’re short on sleep and out of sync with your clock, alertness and reaction time drop — and the research shows the drive home after a night shift is a real danger zone, with sharply increased drowsiness and near-miss events behind the wheel.[10][9] If you’re ever too sleepy to drive safely after a shift, a short nap first or a different ride home is not soft — it’s smart, and it’s the kind of decision that keeps you alive.

Over the longer term, the evidence links ongoing night and rotating shift work with higher rates of cardiovascular and metabolic problems,[11] and the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies night shift work involving circadian disruption as probably carcinogenic to humans (their Group 2A).[12] I want to frame that carefully, not to frighten you: it’s a hazard classification resting largely on animal and mechanistic evidence, with human evidence still described as limited — it does not mean night work will make you sick, and plenty of factors are within your control. But it’s honest information, and you deserve to have it so you can make informed choices and take the protective steps that help.

And here’s the balance. I’m working with someone right now in exactly this situation who, knowing it’s affecting him, has applied to move off shift work — because he can, and it’s the right call for him. Not everyone has that option, and that’s the reality we work within. So if you’re staying on nights, the game is to protect your sleep fiercely: keep as regular a sleep schedule as your roster allows, make your bedroom properly dark and cool for daytime sleep, get bright light while you’re working and wear dark glasses on the drive home so your body starts winding down, use strategic naps, keep caffeine to the first half of your shift, and talk to your GP or a sleep clinic if you’re really struggling. My full sleep resource above walks through the how of all of this.

You’re not powerless here. You’re just working a harder hand — and it’s worth playing it as well as you can.

Motivation: not willpower — interest and agency

Now for the one I want to handle a little differently.

Most “motivation” talk is noise — pep, hustle, grit-your-teeth-and-push. I’m not interested in that, because it mostly doesn’t last. Here’s what does: we are motivated when we’re genuinely interested in something and when we feel we have a say in it. Effort becomes almost effortless when we actually want to do the thing. Learning that you resisted at school becomes easy the moment it’s something you care about. That felt sense of “I’m choosing this, I’m having a crack at this” — that’s the real fuel. It has a name: agency. And it’s not just a nice idea: decades of psychology research find that motivation which actually lasts grows from a sense of choice, of getting good at something, and of genuine interest — far more than from outside pressure.[13]

Agency is about empowering yourself. At its simplest, it’s getting off the chair, acknowledging where you’re at, and making a choice — because the choice you make leads into the action you take. And here’s the honest truth about relying on grit instead:

“Willpower is overrated. Your environment will eventually overpower your willpower.” — from Nine Health Investments

That single line reframes the whole game. Don’t try to out-muscle your environment. Change it. Set up small habits and simple systems that run quietly in the background, so the good choice becomes the easy choice — the water bottle already on the desk, the meals already cooked, the phone already out of the bedroom.

And motivation grows through a simple loop: action — experience — feedback — action again. You try something small, you feel the result, that feedback nudges the next action. Do it a few times and you build self-efficacy — a quiet, earned confidence that you’ll have more wins than losses. That confidence is worth more than any burst of hype, because it’s yours and it stays.

So if this article leaves you with the urge to change one thing — good. That urge is agency. Don’t file it away for tomorrow. Have a crack today.

The four-way conversation

Now let’s put them in the same room, because this is the real point of the whole piece.

I said at the start that these four are corners of one system. Here’s how the messages flow — and notice that the arrows run both ways every time:

• Sleep ↔ Fatigue. Poor sleep is the leading cause of daytime fatigue. And fatigue makes it harder to keep the habits that produce good sleep. Round and round.

• Food ↔ Sleep. Heavy or sugary late meals, caffeine and alcohol disrupt sleep — and poor sleep drives cravings for exactly those foods the next day.

• Food ↔ Fatigue. Steady, nutrient-dense fuel (and enough water and iron) keeps energy up; the sugar rollercoaster and dehydration drag it down.

• Movement ↔ Fatigue ↔ Sleep. Movement makes energy and deepens sleep; good sleep and energy make you more likely to move. Neglect movement and both sleep and energy suffer.

• Motivation ↔ everything. When you’re rested, well-fuelled and moving, drive comes easily. When you’re exhausted and running on sugar, motivation is the first thing to go — and low motivation is what stops you protecting your sleep, food and movement in the first place.

In my nutrition writing I put it this way, and it captures the whole knot:

“Sleep quality and quantity, and perceived and actual energy levels, are intimately intertwined with each other. Additionally, the food we choose to eat can either positively complement this synergy or exacerbate fatigue and sleepless nights.” — from Prioritising Nutrition

The good news hidden in all this: because the loops run both ways, you don’t have to fix everything at once. Improve one corner and the others get a nudge in the right direction for free. Get your sleep regular, and your energy lifts, your food cravings settle, and your motivation returns — which makes the next good choice easier. That’s a virtuous circle instead of a vicious one, and it usually starts with one small habit.

Pull one corner and the whole thing moves.

What the latest research is telling us

A quick, honest snapshot of where the science sits — because I like to show my working.

On fatigue and the cells, recent reviews continue to place mitochondrial function at the centre of the energy story. In conditions marked by severe, lasting fatigue — including long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome — researchers keep finding disrupted energy production and oxidative stress.[1] That’s the extreme end of the spectrum, but it sharpens an everyday truth: how well our cellular power stations run really does shape how tired we feel. And on the flip side, the evidence that regular movement raises energy and lowers fatigue is now strong and consistent — even gentle activity, acting at least partly through the nervous system rather than through fitness gains.[2][3]

On sleep and light, the findings keep pointing the same way: getting bright light early in the day and keeping light low at night helps set the circadian clock, improving both night-time sleep and next-day alertness.[6][7] Large-scale data also shows that irregular sleep is remarkably common — so regularity is a genuine intervention, not just tidy advice.[8] For those on night shift, the research is clear that circadian disruption carries real costs to sleep, safety and long-term health,[9][10][11][12] which is exactly why protecting sleep matters so much for shift workers.

On food, the steadiest findings remain the least glamorous: whole foods, adequate hydration, and correcting genuine shortfalls like iron deliver more real-world energy than any supplement fad.[4][5]

And on motivation, decades of research support the intuition at the heart of this piece: motivation that lasts tends to come from autonomy, competence and genuine interest — a sense of choosing your actions and getting better at them — far more than from external pressure or willpower alone.[13]

A plain-English glossary

Fatigue — the feeling of running low on energy, focus or drive. A signal from the body, not a weakness.

Cognitive (mental) fatigue — the foggy-brain kind: trouble concentrating, slower thinking, more mistakes.

Physical fatigue — the heavy-body kind: tired muscles and sluggishness.

Mitochondria — tiny structures inside your cells, often called the “powerhouses”, that turn food and oxygen into usable energy.

ATP — the small packets of usable energy your mitochondria make. Think of it as your body’s energy currency, spent on everything you do.

Circadian rhythm — your internal 24-hour body clock, set mainly by light and dark, that governs when you feel awake and when you feel sleepy.

Circadian misalignment — what happens when your schedule (for example, night shift) forces you to be awake and asleep at odds with your body clock.

Shift work disorder — a recognised condition in which night or rotating shifts cause ongoing trouble sleeping and/or excessive sleepiness and fatigue.

Sleep hygiene — the everyday habits and conditions (regular times, cool, dark, quiet, no late caffeine) that make good sleep more likely.

Iron / ferritin — iron is a mineral your body needs to carry oxygen and make energy; ferritin is the blood test that shows your iron stores. Low levels are a common, treatable cause of tiredness.

Nutrient-dense vs energy-dense — nutrient-dense foods give lots of nutrients for their calories (vegetables, whole foods); energy-dense foods give lots of calories with little else (sugary, highly processed foods).

Agency — the felt sense of being in the driver’s seat: acknowledging where you are and making a choice that leads to action.

Self-efficacy — the earned confidence, built through small wins, that you’ll succeed more often than you fail.

References

Numbered references correspond to the [bracketed numbers] in the text above. Links checked and current at time of writing.

1. Syed, A. M., Karius, A. K., Ma, J., Wang, P-Y., & Hwang, P. M. (2025). Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Physiology, 40(4). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39960432/

2. Puetz, T. W., Flowers, S. S., & O’Connor, P. J. (2008). A randomized controlled trial of the effect of aerobic exercise training on feelings of energy and fatigue in sedentary young adults with persistent fatigue.Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 77(3), 167–174. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18277063/

3. Puetz, T. W., O’Connor, P. J., & Dishman, R. K. (2006). Effects of chronic exercise on feelings of energy and fatigue: a quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 866–876. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17073523/

4. Vaucher, P., Druais, P-L., Waldvogel, S., & Favrat, B. (2012). Effect of iron supplementation on fatigue in nonanemic menstruating women with low ferritin: a randomized controlled trial. CMAJ, 184(11), 1247–1254. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22777991/

5. Verdon, F., Burnand, B., Fallab Stubi, C-L., et al. (2003). Iron supplementation for unexplained fatigue in non-anaemic women: double blind randomised placebo controlled trial. BMJ, 326(7399), 1124. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12763985/

6. Kang, J., Ru, T., et al. (2022). Shine light on sleep: Morning bright light improves nocturnal sleep and next morning alertness among college students. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36058557/

7. Didikoglu, A., et al. (2023). Associations between light exposure and sleep timing and sleepiness while awake in a sample of UK adults in everyday life. PNAS, 120(42). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2301608120

8. Chan, W. S., et al. (2023). Are we getting enough sleep? Frequent irregular sleep found in an analysis of over 11 million nights of objective in-home sleep data. Sleep Health. https://www.sleephealthjournal.org/article/S2352-7218(23)00253-X/fulltext

9. Shift Work Hazards. StatPearls [Internet]. NCBI Bookshelf (updated 2024). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK589670/

10. Lee, M. L., Howard, M. E., Horrey, W. J., et al. (2016). High risk of near-crash driving events following night-shift work. PNAS, 113(1), 176–181. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1510383112

11. Hanif, A., Okafor, D. K., Katyal, G., et al. (2024). Shifting Rhythms: A Systematic Review Exploring the Multifaceted Effects of Shift Work and Circadian Disruption on Employee Cardiovascular Health. Cureus, 16(10), e71003. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11539914/

12. International Agency for Research on Cancer (2020). Night Shift Work. IARC Monographs on the Identification of Carcinogenic Hazards to Humans, Volume 124 (evaluation June 2019; Group 2A — probably carcinogenic to humans). Summary: Ward, E. M., et al. (2019), Lancet Oncology, 20(8), 1058–1059. https://publications.iarc.fr/593

13. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68

Further reading — from InnerFood (Hartmut Michael Günther): Sleep · Prioritising Nutrition · Water & Hydration · Nine Health Investments · Contributors of Low Ferritin · Finding Out Which Foods Cause Me Problems (linked throughout the article above).

This is a living document and will be updated as understanding deepens. If it prompts you to change one small thing this week — go for it. Have a crack.

Questions, disagreements or your own experience? I’d love to hear them.

— Hartmut Michael Günther, B.Sc. Hons. Biochemistry, Grad. Dip. Nutrition Medicine, Grad. Dip. Psychology. Clinical nutritionist, Tasmania. This note is grounded in evidence-based science and 25 years of clinical practice, and is educational rather than personal medical advice. PH: 0439 54 7788 | hart@salveohealth.com.au

An indispensable health tool, 25 years in the making. OFFICIAL LAUNCH : 28TH OF JUNE 2026. From the team at Hartgood Health.

This is not one of our deep dive articles on health. There’s plenty more coming, however.

Today is a special day because we are excited at the official launch of SOPHIA. And the best way to introduce Sophia is to allow you to go straight to our Sophia intro page. Either click on the “Welcome to Sophia” graphic above or follow the link.

Most importantly - Thank you to all our beta testers. Some of you really pushed it and showed us what’s truly possible. SOPHIA has gone through 77 iterations, innovations and updates over the last six months to get to this point. And we are sure there will be more rolling out over the next few years.

And we gave you a taste of what’s coming back in April 2026 with -

Well, SOPHIA has finally landed. Please check it out. We’re sure you’ll be deeply amazed and relieved that some wisdom has truly filtered through when it comes to your personal health. Visit the Sophia Intro page now.

Visit SOPHIA now

Brought to you by Hartmut Michael Günther and the team at Hartgood Health.

Questions about SOPHIA?

Contact Founder & CEO of Hartgood Health - Hartmut Michael Günther

+61 439 547 788 | hart@hartgood.com | www.hartgood.com

PO Box U71, Upper Burnie, Tasmania 7320, Australia

I’ve been crushing and using garlic in cooking my whole life. I’ve recommended fresh garlic to family members and clients therapeutically for more than 25 years because of its high antibacterial properties. When I studied nutrition medicine more than 20 years ago my professor, Dr Melvyn Smith, who was both a GP and a PhD, would occasionally speak about the benefits of aged garlic. While I dabbled in trying to make my own aged garlic over the years, I wasn’t confident in the evidence to the extent I could recommend it to clients.

However, my confidence has definitely grown recently, hence this article that focuses on garlic in general, but specifically S-allyl-cysteine (SAC), the primary, most active water-soluble compound found in Aged Garlic Extract (AGE) and aged black garlic, and its wonderful ability to reduce elevated blood pressure.

Also, as I have some elevated blood pressure and am not currently on any medications, I will be conducting a clinical trial of one (on myself) as to the efficacy of using S-allyl-cysteine (SAC) in a standardised form and dose in a well-known supplement and will publish the results here in this article in the next three months.

The Science of Squashing: Activating Allicin

Whole, undamaged garlic cloves contain virtually no allicin—the principal compound responsible for garlic’s pungent aroma and a large portion of its therapeutic value (Lawson & Hunsaker, 2018). Instead, garlic houses two distinct components in separate cellular compartments: an amino acid called alliin and an enzyme called alliinase (Lawson & Hunsaker, 2018).

When you squash, crush, or chop garlic, you physically rupture these cell walls, allowing the enzyme and the amino acid to mingle. This contact triggers a rapid chemical reaction that synthesizes allicin.

The 10-Minute Rule: The alliinase enzyme is highly sensitive to heat and is quickly deactivated by cooking. If you throw whole or immediately chopped garlic straight into a hot pan, the heat destroys the enzyme before allicin has a chance to form. To maximize the health benefits, squash your garlic and let it rest on the cutting board for 10 minutes before introducing it to any heat. This brief window allows the enzyme to complete its conversion.

Raw vs. Cooked: How Preparation Changes the Benefits

Whether you choose to eat garlic raw or cook it after squashing drastically shifts its biochemical profile:

1. Squashed and Eaten Raw (Maximum Potency)

• Peak Allicin Delivery: Raw garlic provides the highest immediate concentration of allicin, yielding potent, direct antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties (Rahman, 2007).

• Superior Cardioprotection: Freshly crushed raw garlic interacts uniquely with red blood cells to trigger the release of hydrogen sulfide (H2​S). This gas acts as a vascular signaling molecule, helping protect heart tissues during metabolic stress and optimizing blood flow (Mukherjee et al., 2009).

• Digestive Stimulation: The raw sulfur compounds strongly stimulate gastric enzymes, though they can occasionally irritate individuals with sensitive stomach linings.

2. Squashed, Rested, and Cooked (Shifted Compounds)

• Transformation into Oil-Soluble Compounds: Even if you wait 10 minutes for allicin to form, heat will eventually break it down. However, it doesn’t disappear; it decomposes into highly stable, oil-soluble organosulfur compounds like diallyl disulfide, diallyl trisulfide, and ajoene (Rahman, 2007).

• Preserved Antiplatelet Activity: Cooking whole, uncrushed garlic completely wipes out its ability to prevent blood clotting (platelet aggregation). However, if garlic is crushed and allowed to stand before moderate cooking (such as boiling or baking), it successfully retains a significant portion of its anti-clotting and cardiovascular benefits (Cavagnaro et al., 2007).

• Digestive Comfort: Cooking neutralizes the harsh, pungent defense mechanisms of the plant, making it far gentler on the gastrointestinal tract while providing deep, sweet, complex flavors.

Other Broad Nutritional and Health Benefits

Beyond vascular tension and cardiovascular health, garlic serves as a dense nutraceutical matrix offering several systemic benefits:

• Immune System Support: Clinical data indicates that regular garlic consumption modulates immune biomarkers, effectively reducing the frequency, duration, and severity of common upper respiratory tract infections like the cold and flu (Ansary et al., 2020).

• Metabolic and Lipid Management: Garlic compounds systematically aid in regulating blood glucose levels, enhancing insulin sensitivity, and moderately lowering total cholesterol and LDL levels (Ansary et al., 2020).

• Essential Micronutrients: Despite its small serving size, garlic contains highly bioavailable quantities of essential vitamins and minerals—specifically Vitamin B6 (vital for metabolism and neurotransmitter health), Vitamin C, Manganese, and Selenium (a crucial antioxidant mineral).

• Systemic Antioxidant Action: The rich presence of polyphenols and organosulfurs enables garlic to act as a free-radical scavenger, shielding healthy cells from oxidative stress and downregulating chronic inflammation pathways (Ansary et al., 2020).

Now the main event… When, where, and by whom were the benefits of aged garlic first discovered?

The development and scientific discovery of Aged Garlic Extract (AGE)—the specific form of garlic rich in S-allyl-cysteine (SAC)—is a fascinating post-World War II story of cross-cultural collaboration.

The Breakthrough: Who, When, and Where

• Who discovered it: The aging process and its medicinal benefits were co-developed by Dr. Eugene Schnell, a German physician, scientist, and former professor at Berlin University, alongside Manji Wakunaga, a Japanese banker and entrepreneur.

• When it was discovered: The partnership began in 1954, leading to the formal creation of the aging process and the founding of Wakunaga Pharmaceutical Company in 1955.

• Where it happened: Osaka, Japan.

The Story Behind the Discovery

In the decade following World War II, Japan was heavily focused on rebuilding, and much of the population suffered from physical exhaustion, poor nutrition, and a lack of baseline health resources. Manji Wakunaga wanted to create a highly effective, affordable natural supplement to help his country-men regain their physical strength and ward off disease.

He crossed paths with Dr. Eugene Schnell, who had immigrated to Japan from Germany. Dr. Schnell was a firm believer in the natural antimicrobial and cardiovascular properties of garlic, but he recognized two major roadblocks preventing people from taking it therapeutically:

1. Toxicity and Irritation: Ingesting the large amounts of raw garlic required for therapeutic benefits frequently caused severe gastrointestinal distress and irritation.

2. The Smell: The pungent odor of allicin made it socially and practically impossible for people to consume daily in high doses.

Developing the Aging Process

To solve this, Dr. Schnell developed a proprietary naturally controlled aging process. He took sliced organic garlic and harvested it in a solution of water and ethanol, letting it naturally mature without heat for up to 20 months.

This patient aging process did something unexpected: it completely eliminated the harsh, irritating, and smelly components (like allicin) by converting them into stable, highly bioavailable, and completely odorless water-soluble compounds—chiefly S-allyl-cysteine (SAC).

The resulting liquid extract was an immediate success in Japan for boosting energy and immunity. In 1972, Wakunaga brought this exact formula to the global market under the well-known brand name Kyolic, which went on to become the foundation for the hundreds of clinical trials establishing garlic’s modern reputation for lowering blood pressure and reversing arterial stiffness.

Are there no records of aged garlic throughout the centuries before this, though?

You are entirely right to question that—garlic was not suddenly invented in a lab in the 1950s! Humans have been manipulating, fermenting, and aging garlic for thousands of years.

The distinction lies between ancient culinary folklore and modern medical standardization. While the historical use of aged and fermented garlic goes back centuries, the scientific isolation and clinical proof of its active compounds (like SAC) belong to the modern era.

1. Ancient East Asia: The Roots of Black Garlic

Long before modern chemistry, civilisations in Korea, China, and Thailand practised the art of thermal ageing to preserve garlic without refrigeration.

• The Process: They would place whole garlic bulbs in clay pots and subject them to warm, humid conditions for weeks or months. This triggered a slow Maillard reaction (caramelisation), turning the cloves pitch-black, soft, and sweet.

• The Lore: In ancient Chinese and Korean traditions, this dark, aged garlic was considered a health panacea. In Taoist mythology, it was even rumoured to grant longevity or immortality. It was highly valued for warming the body, aiding digestion, and restoring energy.

2. The Ancient West: Pickling and Vinegar

In the Mediterranean and Middle East, ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and later medieval Europeans realised that raw garlic was too harsh on the stomach to eat in large quantities.

• Four Thieves Vinegar: During various European plagues, records show people steeping crushed garlic in vinegar for weeks to create a remedy. They would wash their hands and faces in it or drink it.

• Honey Fermentation: For centuries, traditional healers combined raw garlic with raw honey. Over several weeks, the natural yeasts in the honey fermented the garlic, drawing out the moisture, mellowing the harsh allicin, and creating a potent, shelf-stable medicinal syrup used for respiratory illnesses.

Why the 1954 Discovery Was a Turning Point

If ancient cultures were already aging garlic, why do medical history books point to Dr. Schnell and Manji Wakunaga in 1954?

Prior to the 1950s, aging garlic was an imprecise culinary or folk craft. The heat used to make traditional Asian black garlic could vary wildly, often destroying heat-sensitive nutrients.

The 1954 breakthrough was a pharmaceutical revolution rather than a culinary one:

• The Cold-Aging Innovation: Instead of using heat, Dr. Schnell designed a process where sliced garlic was naturally aged at room temperature in an aqueous ethanol solution for up to 20 months.

• Standardization of SAC: This specific liquid extraction method reliably maximized and stabilized S-allyl-cysteine (SAC) at an exact, measurable concentration.

• From Folk Medicine to Clinical Trial: Before this, doctors couldn’t prescribe “aged garlic” because a chef’s batch of black garlic or a jar of pickled garlic had totally unpredictable levels of active ingredients. By standardizing the extract, Wakunaga gave the scientific community a consistent, measurable substance.

Ancient civilisations absolutely knew that keeping garlic around for a long time made it gentler, sweeter, and incredibly healing. Modern science simply took that ancient intuition, put it under a microscope, and figured out how to extract the exact molecule responsible for lowering your blood pressure.

S-Allyl-Cysteine (SAC) in Aged Garlic

S-allyl-cysteine (SAC) is the primary, most active water-soluble compound found in Aged Garlic Extract (AGE) and aged black garlic.

While fresh garlic is famous for allicin (the unstable compound that gives raw garlic its sharp bite and pungent aroma), the ageing process changes things completely. When garlic is sliced and cured over several months, the unstable allicin naturally converts into highly stable, odourless, and highly bioavailable sulfur compounds—chiefly SAC.

The Evidence: How It Reduces Blood Pressure

A robust body of clinical evidence—including multiple randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials and meta-analyses—demonstrates that aged garlic extract standardised for SAC significantly lowers blood pressure in individuals with hypertension.

1. Clinical Trial Outcomes

• Comparable to Prescription Medications: A comprehensive meta-analysis of 12 clinical trials confirmed that garlic supplements lower systolic blood pressure (SBP) by an average of 8.3 mmHg and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) by 5.5 mmHg. This magnitude of reduction is remarkably similar to standard, first-line anti-hypertensive medications.

• Efficacy in Uncontrolled Hypertension: In landmark trials investigating patients whose blood pressure remained high despite taking prescription medications, adding a daily dose of aged garlic extract (standardized to 1.2 mg of SAC) reduced systolic blood pressure by an average of 11.8 mmHg over 12 weeks compared to a placebo.

• Cardiovascular Risk Reduction: These numbers are clinically significant. Large-scale epidemiological data shows that a 10 mmHg reduction in systolic blood pressure is associated with a 16% to 40% reduction in the risk of suffering from a major cardiovascular event, like a stroke or heart attack.

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2. Biological Mechanisms (How it Works)

SAC doesn’t just lower blood pressure by chance; it targets the exact biological pathways that regulate vascular tension:

• Nitric Oxide & Hydrogen Sulfide Production: SAC stimulates the production of vital gasotransmitters—specifically nitric oxide (NO) and hydrogen sulfide (H2​S). These compounds signal the smooth muscle cells surrounding your blood vessels to relax, causing the vessels to widen (vasodilation) and allowing blood to flow more freely.

• Natural ACE Inhibition: Active components in aged garlic act as mild, natural ACE (angiotensin-converting enzyme) inhibitors. This mimics the mechanism of common prescription blood pressure medications by preventing the body from creating compounds that constrict blood vessels.

• Combating Arterial Stiffness: Clinical trials tracking pulse-wave velocity have shown that aged garlic extract significantly improves arterial elasticity, meaning it helps reverse the physical “hardening” of the arteries associated with aging and high blood pressure.

Important Practical Takeaways

• Form and Dose Matter: You cannot reliably get these results simply by eating more raw or cooked garlic, as the heat destroys active enzymes and the chemical makeup is entirely different. The scientific evidence relies strictly on standardized Aged Garlic Extract or optimized aged black garlic extracts.

• An Adjunct, Not a Replacement: Clinical studies universally frame aged garlic extract as a safe adjunct (complementary) treatment to be used alongside a doctor-approved management plan, rather than a standalone replacement for prescribed blood pressure pharmaceuticals.

• High Safety Profile: Unlike raw garlic, AGE is highly tolerable, rarely causes gastrointestinal upset, eliminates “garlic breath,” and clinical trials have shown it does not increase bleeding risks when taken alongside common blood-thinning medications.

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What are the long-term outcomes? Does it maintain its effect long term, or does the body adapt and the blood pressure goes up again?

The short answer is no, the body does not develop a tolerance to S-allyl-cysteine (SAC), and the blood pressure-lowering effect does not wear off over time. Unlike certain prescription medications (such as nitrates used for chest pain, where the body quickly adapts and the drug loses its punch), Aged Garlic Extract (AGE) maintains its efficacy over the long term. In fact, the evidence suggests its benefits may actually accumulate the longer you use it.

What the Long-Term Evidence Shows

While the majority of standard clinical trials last around 12 weeks, several extended studies and comprehensive meta-analyses have tracked outcomes over 6 to 12 months.

• Sustained Blood Pressure Control: Meta-analyses evaluating longer trial durations (up to 26 weeks) show that the reduction in systolic and diastolic blood pressure remains steady. There is no evidence of a “rebound effect” or a gradual creep back up to baseline while actively taking the supplement.

• Progressive Vascular Improvement: In long-term trials extending up to a year, researchers looking at broader cardiovascular markers discovered that AGE doesn’t just artificially force blood pressure down; it actively slows down the progression of coronary artery calcification (plaque buildup) and continually reduces arterial stiffness.

Why Doesn’t the Body Adapt and Reset?

The reason your body doesn’t build a tolerance to SAC comes down to how it works. It operates as a foundational nutrient support rather than a biochemical “off-switch.”

1. It Reorients Cellular Infrastructure

Many blood pressure medications work by aggressively blocking a single pathway (like forcing blood vessels open or forcefully slowing the heart). The body often tries to fight back by upregulating other pathways to compensate. SAC, however, provides the fundamental raw materials (organosulfur compounds) your body needs to naturally produce nitric oxide and hydrogen sulfide. It restores a biological deficiency rather than hijacking a system.

2. It Physically Softens the Pipes

As we age, blood pressure rises largely because our arteries stiffen and lose elasticity. Long-term studies tracking pulse-wave velocity show that regular intake of AGE improves the physical flexibility of blood vessels. Because the “pipes” are physically more compliant, the heart doesn’t have to pump as hard—a structural benefit that doesn’t just disappear through biological adaptation.

3. The Gut Microbiome Shift

Long-term consumption of AGE has a prebiotic effect, gradually shifting the landscape of your gut microbiome by increasing beneficial bacteria (like Lactobacillus species). This gut-cardiovascular connection unfolds over months and helps sustain systemic, low-inflammation environments that naturally favor lower blood pressure.

The One Important Catch: It’s Not a Permanent Cure

While your body won’t adapt and override the effects of SAC, the effects are only maintained as long as you take it. Because SAC acts as a daily donor for nitric oxide and hydrogen sulfide production, stopping the supplement means your body loses that extra assistance. Clinical tracking shows that if a individual stops taking aged garlic extract, their blood pressure will typically drift back up to its pre-supplement baseline within a few weeks. Think of it less as a one-time structural repair and more as daily internal tuning.

While speaking about garlic, let’s bust a Myth!

There’s the notion that if you eat lots of garlic, particularly raw garlic or even cooked garlic, some people smell more than others. AND, is it possibly true that if you smell a lot after eating garlic, your liver may not be functioning as well as it can?

The connection between what goes into your liver and what comes out of your skin is a fascinating piece of human biology. While it is true that garlic undergoes an intense metabolic journey through the liver, the idea that a strong post-garlic odour means your liver is “weak” or malfunctioning is actually a biochemical misconception.

A strong garlic smell indicates that the liver is doing exactly what it is designed to do.

The Journey of Garlic: Digestion to Liver

When you eat raw or cooked garlic, your digestive system breaks down its complex organosulfur compounds (like the allicin derivatives we discussed earlier). These compounds are absorbed through the intestinal walls and travel directly via the portal vein straight to the liver—your body’s primary chemical processing plant.

The liver is highly efficient at neutralizing most of these pungent sulfur molecules. However, during this breakdown process, liver enzymes transform one of the primary components (allyl mercaptan) into a specific byproduct called Allyl Methyl Sulfide (AMS).

Here is the catch: the human liver cannot break down AMS any further. It is a highly stable, volatile, and fat-soluble gas.

Why Garlic Comes Out of the Skin and Breath

Because the liver cannot fully dismantle AMS, the compound gets dumped right back into your bloodstream. From there, it hitches a ride on your systemic circulation:

• In the Lungs: As the blood passes through your lungs to pick up oxygen, the volatile AMS gas evaporates across the thin membranes into your air sacs. This is why “garlic breath” persists for 24 to 48 hours, completely unaffected by brushing your teeth or using mouthwash—the smell is literally coming from your lungs.

• In the Skin: Because AMS is fat-soluble, it easily migrates into your lipid-rich sweat glands and pores. As you sweat or naturally shed microscopic skin oils, the gas escapes into the air, causing your skin to radiate a garlicky aroma.

Does a Strong Garlic Smell Mean Poor Liver Function?

No. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. If you smell strongly of garlic hours after eating it, it means your liver enzymes are actively and efficiently converting garlic’s raw components into AMS. Your liver isn’t failing; it is aggressively processing the meal.

Why do some people smell like a pizzeria for two days while others seem completely unaffected? It comes down to individual biological variables rather than liver health:

1. Genetic Enzyme Variations

Everyone possesses a unique genetic blueprint for liver enzymes (specifically an enzyme family called transferases). Some people have highly active enzymes that rapidly convert garlic into the smelly, volatile AMS gas. Others possess enzymes that convert garlic compounds into odorless water-soluble molecules that are quietly excreted through urine instead of the skin.

2. Gut Microbiome Composition

Before garlic even reaches your liver, your gut bacteria get first crack at it. Certain bacterial profiles are highly efficient at breaking down sulfur compounds in the large intestine before they can ever enter the bloodstream. If your gut microbiome neutralizes those compounds early, less work gets kicked up to the liver, and you smell less.

3. Sweat Rate and Body Composition

Because AMS is released via sweat, people with a higher baseline sweat rate, active sweat glands, or specific skin microbiomes (the bacteria living on your skin that interact with your sweat) will broadcast the scent much more intensely than others.

Where the “Weak Liver” Myth Comes From

The idea that a garlic smell equals liver trouble likely stems from a real, severe medical condition known as Fetor Hepaticus (historically nicknamed “breath of the dead”).

When a person is in advanced, severe liver failure (such as late-stage cirrhosis), the liver completely loses its ability to filter normal metabolic waste products from daily protein digestion. This causes sulfur compounds—specifically dimethyl sulfide—to back up into the blood. This condition gives the patient’s breath and sweat a distinct, musty, sweet, and distinctly rotten egg/garlic-like odor, completely independent of whether they have eaten garlic.

If you are generally healthy and simply smell like garlic after a heavy dose of garlic bread, your liver is working beautifully. You simply have the genetic and metabolic traits that turn you into an efficient, walking garlic diffuser for a day or two!

Basic Glossary of Terms

• ACE (Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme) Inhibition: A biological mechanism that stops the body from creating a specific hormone that constricts blood vessels. Blocking this enzyme allows blood vessels to stay widened, directly lowering blood pressure.

• Aged Garlic Extract (AGE): A specific supplemental formulation created by soaking sliced raw garlic in an aqueous ethanol solution at room temperature for up to 20 months. This slow process neutralizes garlic’s harsh odor while maximizing its water-soluble therapeutic compounds.

• Allicin: A powerful, highly volatile defense molecule created instantly when raw garlic’s cellular walls are crushed. It gives fresh garlic its pungent smell and strong antimicrobial properties but breaks down rapidly when exposed to heat.

• Alliin: An odorless, inactive sulfur-containing amino acid stored inside undisturbed raw garlic cells. It serves as the primary “raw ingredient” needed to build allicin.

• Alliinase: A heat-sensitive enzyme stored in separate compartments within fresh garlic. When garlic is chopped or squashed, this enzyme is unleashed to convert alliin into active allicin.

• Allyl Methyl Sulfide (AMS): A volatile, fat-soluble sulfur gas created when the liver processes garlic. Because the human liver cannot break it down further, it enters the bloodstream and escapes via the lungs and sweat glands, causing long-lasting garlic breath and skin odor.

• Bioavailability: A measure of how easily and effectively a nutrient or substance is absorbed by the digestive tract and successfully utilized by the body’s tissues.

• Coronary Artery Calcification: The gradual, dangerous accumulation of calcium deposits (hard plaque) inside the arteries supplying blood to the heart, causing them to stiffen and narrow.

• Fetor Hepaticus: A distinct, severe breath and body odor (often described as musty or sweet-rotten) that occurs in individuals suffering from advanced liver failure. It is caused by the body’s inability to filter routine digestive waste and is entirely unrelated to eating garlic.

• Gasotransmitters: Small, volatile gas molecules (such as nitric oxide or hydrogen sulfide) naturally produced inside the body that act as critical chemical messengers to regulate essential functions, like blood vessel relaxation.

• Hydrogen Sulfide (H2​S): A powerful gasotransmitter that signals the smooth muscles surrounding your blood vessels to relax, reducing overall vascular tension.

• Maillard Reaction: A natural chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars triggered by controlled heat or aging. It causes browning and creates complex, rich flavors—such as the turning of raw white garlic into sweet black garlic.

• Nitric Oxide (NO): A crucial gas molecule produced by the inner lining of blood vessels. It acts as a primary “relax signal,” telling blood vessels to expand and widen, which significantly drops blood pressure.

• Organosulfur Compounds: A diverse class of chemical molecules containing sulfur atoms bonded to carbon chains. Garlic is exceptionally dense in these compounds, which drive both its medicinal virtues and its strong aromatics.

• Pulse-Wave Velocity (PWV): A non-invasive diagnostic test that measures how fast a pressure wave travels down an artery. A faster wave speed indicates that the arteries are stiff and rigid, while a slower speed indicates healthy elasticity.

• S-Allyl-Cysteine (SAC): The main, highly stable, completely odorless, water-soluble compound found in Aged Garlic Extract. It is highly bioavailable and serves as the primary compound responsible for garlic’s long-term blood pressure benefits.

• Vasodilation: The widening and relaxation of blood vessels, which clears a wider path for blood flow and decreases systemic blood pressure.

Key References

Ansary, J., Forbes-Hernández, T. Y., Gil, E., Cianciosi, D., Zhang, L., Belwal, T., Devkota, H. P., Giampieri, F., & Battino, M. (2020). Potential health benefit of garlic based on human intervention studies: A brief overview. Antioxidants, 9(7), 619. https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox9070619 Cited by: 306

Cavagnaro, P. F., Camargo, A., Galmarini, C. R., & Simon, P. W. (2007). Effect of cooking on garlic (Allium sativumL.) antiplatelet activity and thiosulfinates content. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 55(4), 1280–1288. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf062587s Cited by: 188

El-Saadony, M. T., Saad, A. M., Korma, A. S., Salem, H. M., Abd El-Mageed, T. A., Alkafaas, S. S., Elsalahaty, M. I., Elkafas, S. S., Mosa, W. F. A., Ahmed, A. E., Mathew, B. T., Albastaki, N. A., Alkuwaiti, A. A., El-Tarabily, M. K., AbuQamar, S. F., El-Tarabily, K. A., & Ibrahim, S. A. (2024). Garlic bioactive substances and their therapeutic applications for improving human health: A comprehensive review. Frontiers in Immunology, 15, Article 1277074. https://doi.org/10.3390/fimmu.2024.1277074 Cited by: 128

Hiramoto, T., Kakumu, Y., Sato, S., & Sekine, Y. (2024). Deodorising garlic body odour by ingesting natural food additives containing phenolic compounds and polyphenol oxidase. Applied Sciences, 14(21), 9631. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14219631 Cited by: 2

Lawson, L. D., & Hunsaker, S. M. (2018). Allicin bioavailability and bioequivalence from garlic supplements and garlic foods. Nutrients, 10(7), 812. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu10070812 Cited by: 242

Mukherjee, S., Lekli, I., Goswami, S., & Das, D. K. (2009). Freshly crushed garlic is a superior cardioprotective agent than processed garlic. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 57(16), 7137–7144. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf901301w Cited by: 74

Rahman, M. S. (2007). Allicin and other functional active components in garlic: Health benefits and bioavailability. International Journal of Food Properties, 10(2), 245–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/10942910601113327 Cited by: 357

Scheffler, L., Sharapa, C., & Buettner, A. (2019). Quantification of volatile metabolites derived from garlic (Allium sativum) in human urine. Frontiers in Nutrition, 6, Article 43. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2019.00043 Cited by: 9

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Introduction

This is an expanding article. My name is Hartmut Michael Gunther, and I’m fortunate, grateful and lucky to still be on the planet after more than seven decades. Recently I’ve been wanting to write down and document those areas that significantly contribute to human happiness and health. Not just from my perspective, even though I’ve been a professional health practitioner for the last 25 years. You might say that the wisdom that is passed on here is based on my experience and, equally as important, the observation of the experience of my clients. As a self-confessed nerd, high-quality research and evidence have been part of my life since a teenager. And while this is a changing and evolving area, it reassuringly supports the wisdom gained through experience. We also witness wisdom coming and going and then coming back again. Often we find ourselves revisiting what our ancestors knew to be true and good for our health and happiness.

This article will be updated regularly as more depth filters in through each of the nine health investments. It’s important to realise that each of these nine areas interacts with each other through multiple mechanisms like neuroplasticity, biology, nutrients, medications, agency, behaviour, choice, and much, much more. The nine health investments form a complex interacting ecosystem that absolutely confirms the saying that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Through this acknowledgement and focus we are in effect supporting and nurturing the most complex organism in the universe, a human being. Of course it will evolve and deepen over time, but let’s make a start. Let’s have a crack at it, and that’s a good segway to introduce our first of the Nine Health Investments - Agency.

Agency

Agency is all about empowering yourself. It is responding to an impetus, a feeling, a thirst, a need that sometimes can almost palpably be felt in your gut. So at first, it’s as simple as getting off your butt, getting out of the chair, standing up, acknowledging where you’re at, and making a choice. And the choice you make leads into the action you take.

Act now. Thinking and planning about what needs to be done is not a substitute for doing what needs to be done. Don’t put off till tomorrow what can be done today. Willpower is overrated. Your environment will eventually overpower your willpower. Developing micro habits and sustainable systems is key and is facilitated by getting organised. You implement micro habits that stick leading to systems that run quietly in the background. Transformation, growth, learning and resilience are natural flowers that bloom from acting now.

When you find something good - Practice, Practice, Practice until you get good at it and even if you don’t get good at it, there’s enough flow of nourishment and goodness to keep you going with minimal resistance as you develop self-efficacy, a deep confidence in yourself that you will have more successes than failures. Perseverance furthers so get out there and get lucky.

Movement & Strength

Getting the heart rate up as well as resisting muscle movement or put another way- physical work. Exercise and strength, which fuels agility and becomes more important and rewarding as we age. Movement is integral to existence — find what you love and build from there. Functional Health - the ability to stay independent, maintain strength and balance, and keep our wits about us - is key as we get older. Lots more coming shortly

Sustenance - Nutrition, Hydration & Sunlight

We already have eight articles covering Nutrition, Hydration and soon the importance of morning sunlight, here on InnerFood

The three most important aspects of optimal Nutrition - The first one is getting assessed. This is subjective and personal and includes history and symptoms, current eating regime, and some blood tests and if needed utilising the gold standard protocol for discovering which foods we might be intolerant, sensitive or allergic to . Two, exposure to reliable information. This is objective evidence-based information, that can be personally assimilated and acted upon, often with assistance and guidance from a health practitioner or clinical nutritionist like myself. Three: Getting organised: micro habits and developing systems

Nutrition nourishes trillions of cells so they can do their work. Knowledge of food preparation and organisation is essential. Eating well is one of life’s genuine pleasures. Personalised nutritional assessments — not generic diets, but practical guidance specific to you is provided. Significant, trusted, reliable educational material is also readily available. Hydration - Lubricates, transports nutrients in and waste out. Facilitates cellular communication at every level. The quality of your water matters as much as the quantity. We go even further if needed and assess the quality of your drinking water through our lab at Toxtest that offers affordable water quality testing for your home, school, or workplace. See our thirst quenching, myth busting exploration of sweet clean drinking water and optimal hydration.

Morning sunlight and its benefits - Ancient knowledge yet having a focused research-based resurgence in the field of neuroscience and metabolism at the moment. More on this shortly.

Rest, Deep Rest & Sleep

No longer rocket science. Prioritise at least 7- 8 hours, tune into your own needs and aim to go to bed and get up at the same time each day, seven days a week. Sleep deprivation cascades through every one of the other eight health investment area — it is the foundation everything else rests on. As a start see - Sleep. Rest is simply stopping and just being - sitting in a banana chair on a cool day with the sun shining on you with zero priorities in mind. Deep rest is like sleeping while you’re awake with other perks and benefits. See Self Knowledge below.

Work, Meaning & Flow

A gift and a challenge. Work enables resources so we can create stuff, build stuff, and look after ourselves and those close to us. Of course, looking after ourselves is the work as we age gracefully. Work enables kindness and giving and often leads to meaning through the expression of our gifts, talents and passions. Meaning provides Joie de Vivre — the joy of life and a feeling of a life well lived.

Doing the right thing challenges us and facilitates growth so we don’t stagnate. Work through focused, directed effort while annexing all distractions, initiates a state of flow that many have described and research has shown to be truly exhilarating. We are completely alive, using our full cognitive resources in the moment. Often only possible for two to three hours at a time and requiring significant rest soon after to recover. Sometimes our work changes. It’s useful to talk to someone or be guided through this transition period.

Learning, Thinking, Behaviour

Invest in learning, not just what you’re told to learn, but what you want to learn. Learn how to recall what you learn. Memory and recall - practise recall, because that’s what consolidates memory, not reading the same thing over and over again or even taking notes. There’s an interconnection and overlap between thinking about something while you’re practising recall. Allow your thinking to go deep. It’s not rocket science. It’s simply effort and practice. And effort and practise is almost effortless and easier when we want to learn something.

When I went to school, yes, a long time ago, there was a subject at school called critical thinking. Basically, exercising curiosity, questioning, and going deeper. It seemed pretty natural and important back then, and it’s still necessary now.

We have been learning since our first breath. To survive, thrive and enjoy life, we need to keep learning. To adapt in a changing environment or indeed time in history, we have to learn. It’s important to learn things we are passionate about, enjoy or really need to know. It’s mostly effortless then.

Novel experiences — particularly in the form of travel — can rekindle the desire to discover something new. Travel can be as simple as going within, changing location in a wheelchair, getting off your chair, going outside, exploring the neighbourhood or travelling to another city or country, a concert or art gallery or simply into nature.

Action - experience - feedback - action again. All these build and flow into learning and self-efficacy.

Learning is intertwined with trying or wanting to change our behaviour. In order for learning to support behaviour change, we have to think. You cannot change your behaviour without changing your thinking.

Changing our behaviour requires first observing our behaviour, without judgement. Observing then flows naturally into thinking, a thinking that looks at both sides of the fence, unbiased, if you will. Our behaviour and others’ behaviour is a great teacher - especially the bad behaviour. Bad behaviour can come from unresolved issues, unconscious energies, often ignored or pushed under the carpet. Our Emotions play a huge part in learning.

Interestingly, and according to recent advances in neuroscience, our capacity to learn, no matter at what age, is far, far greater than we think.

Communication & Listening

Everything living on planet earth communicates. Bugs talk to each other. Immune cells communicate with other immune cells. Big trees growing near baby trees communicate. They communicate via a network of mycorrhizal fungi. They help each other, or they don’t, but they are communicating.

The world is a scary place, but a lot of the fear around interacting with other humans is alleviated when we communicate.

Communication opens up possibilities. So many possibilities. Stumbling through communication, being anxious, having been hurt in the past, making mistakes, worried about what people think. These are all hurdles that can be overcome simply by having a crack at it. And then keep having a crack at it.

For myself, I was forced into public speaking quite late in my life due to a certain job opportunity. I was terrified, anxious, for weeks. And of course, the first public presentation felt a little uncomfortable. At least by the second one, a lot of the fears that were surfaced because of the unknown from the first presentation had already subsided. And then the third and the fourth and what was extraordinary was that I had no idea that I could like this. In fact, after a little while, I realised I did like speaking in front of people.

Some of us struggle with one-on-one communication. The best way to get better at it and more comfortable with it is to make a bumbling start and keep going. So there’s definitely hurdles, but it’s worth it.

Of course, writing is communicating. Acting is communicating, and it helps to know when someone is acting. Painting, Sculpture, Architecture is communicating beauty.

Thanking someone for making you a really good latte, even though you don’t know them, sends neurochemicals through your body and their body that even for a brief time uplifts.

When you talk to someone, when you tell them about what you’re doing, what you’re up to, what projects you’re doing, what you’re interested in, what you’re struggling with, it opens up a plethora of possibilities and opportunities.

Kindness helps. Kindness is a superpower that genuinely changes lives for the better. Of course, kindness to yourself is first and foremost. Connection with family, friends, or other living beings is not optional — it is physiologically and psychologically essential. Often overlooked. Being open helps even if you don’t have the trait of Openness.

Integral to communication is listening. Most living creatures can hear things, often through vibration. We are bombarded with sounds and vibrations all day long, some pleasant, some unpleasant. Our awareness of these sounds, of people’s voices, of cars screeching, of children crying, passively comes and goes through our consciousness.

Yet, as humans, we have the ability to directly focus our attention and choose what to listen to. This is an extraordinary gift and relatively easy to do. What the challenge is, however, is to decide, discern what to listen to that, in turn, helps us, benefits us, enhances our relationships and fosters clarity and understanding. This, in itself, has profound flow-on effects to many of the other health investments spoken about here. Knowing what to listen to and when is integral to knowing yourself. Is non-negotiable for learning. Is a minimum requirement for work. And as music and the sound of waves on the foreshore, listening instils awe, feelings of beauty, and a calming that consistently re-invites us into our wondrous life.

And in our last section, entitled Functional Health, listening comes to the forefront as the body tries to communicate with us.

Know Thy Self

Experience and knowledge of the world that we live in becomes invaluable as time goes on. Yet often undiscovered, or unacknowledged, or simply not heard of as yet, is the experience and Knowledge of the Self. While knowing thyself obviously includes those aspects of our good and bad behaviours, learnings, what drives us, how we fit in and survive in this world - there is more to know, to experience. And the more that we are talking about here is not a created more. It is, in fact, an experience that is available to us simply because we are alive and conscious.

It is facilitated by “going within”, which in turn is facilitated through utterly simple techniques, practised during a quiet, focused time in the day. The know-how of this practice has been available throughout millennia, through the kindness of those that know. See an article I wrote recently called Inner Space.

To Know thyself requires some aspect of allowing. Interestingly, allowing, when we practise “going within”, is similar to letting go. When we let go, combined with a gentle focus inward, like a gentle awareness of the coming and going of this breath we open ourselves to the experience that flows from being close to what already exists within us. And what already exists within us, not created by us via thought or belief, has been called God, the universe, the divine, the Self. Yet a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

And you get lucky in life and love.

This definitely instils an optimism grounded in self-awareness. And as we’ve mentioned before, you seem to attract good luck that doesn’t require exceptional talent or unusual privilege. It requires only the recognition that luck is not something that happens to you; it’s something you practice.

“Quietly, daily, with more neuroscience behind it than most people realise, and with a lot more ancient wisdom pointing toward it than the scientists yet know.” from neuroscientist named Nobuko Nakano and mentioned in The Biology of Good Fortune: What ‘Lucky’ People Do Differently

Functional Health

When the body gets grumpy, angry or just plain nasty.

For those of us who have been on the planet for a while (there are a lot of us now) or those of us struggling with a handicap, or recovering from an injury, or those of us unwell or simply those of us who want to function as best as humanly possible.

Functional health is particularly important as we get older. Many of us don’t know that we’re losing the ability to function as we’re used to. Pushing through definitely has its place. Functional health is becoming aware of where our body needs some attention, some maintenance, some encouragement to stay flexible and strong. This often requires some help and some learning. Often a new learning. And of course, leading to putting into action what we have learnt.

Listening to our body becomes important and non-negotiable at different stages in our life and those times are unique to each individual

And while mostly we don’t want to listen to the body, because we’re busy doing our thing, occasionally or with growing frequency the body says: Hey Dumbo, listen up! Here are some aches and pains, discomfort, dis-ease, horrible thoughts, overwhelming emotions, or debilitating fatigue. This is not your body torturing you. It is simply your body asking you to pay attention. It’s simply a call to action.

As mentioned before, we learn from our bad behaviour, learn from being kind and generous, learn from addiction, learn from stress, learn from the pain, discomfort, and fatigue and emotional turmoil the body and mind present to us.

We then adjust and respond to the body and mind’s needs. Ignoring might work in the short term, rarely in the long term. Not an over-analysis or constant obsession, but simply a response and a moving on. Some response, even an awareness, an acknowledgement, is better than ignoring, which often leads to suffering eventually.

We are not saying be weak. Sometimes the appropriate response is to push through the pain, find your limits, let the body adjust. In effect, conduct the clinical trial of one, so to speak. Obviously, caution and heightened awareness are required with this approach. Supervision or mentoring or coaching is recommended.

Hartmut’s incredible new health tool, 25 years in the making called - SOPHIA - can really help turning this awareness, this listening, into learning and actions that really benefit us. SOPHIA is currently in beta testing and should be available to everyone in the next few weeks.

The gentleman at the table, revisited

Two years ago I wrote a piece in which a gentleman at a restaurant discovers, to his horror, that there is Mercury in his fish. The waiter, unperturbed, explains the long chain of human choices — coal power stations, artisan gold mines, disposed fluorescent bulbs, ocean deposition — that arranged for the Mercury to end up on his plate. The article was called “Excuse me waiter, there is Mercury in my fish.” If you have not yet read it, it lives on my Substack and this piece picks up where it left off.

At the time, I wrote as a clinician and researcher. I was, however, also writing as someone who occasionally enjoys fish. Tasmanian flathead in particular, and the humble canned sardine on slow Sundays.

This article is, in a way, Part 2, arriving in a form I did not fully anticipate. Previously I had tested my cat. A few weeks ago, I decided to take my own medicine, used our own world-class laboratory for human and animal hair analysis at Toxtest and tested myself for all 32 metals and minerals. And then I had to sit with the results the way any of my clients would.

What the hair told me

A scalp hair sample was analysed by ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry) — the gold standard for trace element analysis. Of all the metals scanned, only one came back elevated: Mercury. At approximately 2 milligrams per kilogram of hair, which we can also write as 2 micrograms per gram, or 2 parts per million, depending on which laboratory convention you prefer.

The standard population geometric mean for adult women of childbearing age in the United States NHANES survey sits at around 0.2 µg/g. So my result was approximately ten times the population average. I asked the question that every client in my clinic would ask: what does this actually mean? Is 2 mg/kg a quiet ticking of exposure, or should I be writing a more dramatic follow-up in six months?

ABOUT THE CAT Mercury in cat hair is not just an entertaining aside — it is circumstantial evidence. Cats reflect what they are fed. If our cat ate the same fish offcuts (I had no choice, he could smell the fish as I came in the front door) while I ate my grilled flathead and sardines, and we both came back Mercury-positive, it narrows the differential very sharply. I have not had a dental amalgam in close to twenty years. No artisan gold mining is happening in my kitchen. The fish is the usual suspect, common denominator.

What does 2 mg/kg actually mean?

Hair Mercury is — with some important caveats — a reasonable proxy for methylmercury exposure over roughly the last one to three months, depending on hair length sampled. Methylmercury in the blood finds its way into the growing hair shaft via sulphur-containing keratin, and there it sits, a quiet log of what was in your bloodstream when that particular centimetre of hair was being manufactured. Hair grows at roughly 0.5 inches (just over 1 cm) a month, so a 3 cm sample near the scalp tells the story of the last three months or so.

The most useful thing I can do here is build a ladder of context. All figures below are for total Mercury in adult scalp hair in µg/g (= mg/kg = ppm).

• 0.1 to 0.2 µg/g — geometric mean in adults who eat little to no fish; NHANES background level in the United States.

• 0.3 to 0.5 µg/g — moderate fish consumers in a typical Western diet.

• 1.0 µg/g — approximate boundary above which fish consumption becomes the clearly dominant driver. Mayo Clinic references <1 µg/g as ‘normal’.

• 1.2 µg/g — United States EPA hair reference level. Derived from the reference dose for methylmercury (0.1 µg/kg/day) and intended to protect the developing nervous system of the unborn child.

• ≈ 2.0 µg/g — my result. Also the threshold above which, in the Finnish Kuopio Ischemic Heart Disease study (Salonen et al., 1995), men in the highest tertile had approximately double the risk of acute myocardial infarction over seven years compared to the lowest two tertiles. Also a level commonly found in coastal Mediterranean populations with heavy local seafood consumption (e.g. Gulf of Trieste study: 22.9% of residents above 2 mg/kg).

• 6 to 7 µg/g — mean level in the Seychelles population in large prospective studies. Interestingly, despite this being 3 to 4 times my level, the Seychelles studies did not find clear neurodevelopmental deficits — a finding widely attributed to their high dietary selenium intake from the same fish. More on this below.

• 15 to 30 µg/g — band where subtle but measurable neurological signs start to appear in sensitive individuals.

• 120 to 600 µg/g — the range in which the Iraqi methylmercury poisoning survivors (1971–72) showed mild clinical symptoms — tremor, mild ataxia, blurred vision.

• 400 to 1600 µg/g — severe poisoning range in the Iraq disaster: coma, paralysis, loss of vision or hearing.

So where does 2 mg/kg sit? Clearly above population background. Clearly below any threshold at which a neurologist would notice you walking into the room. Within the window where chronic low-grade biological effects have been demonstrated — subtle neurobehavioural changes, measurable cardiovascular risk, small reductions in grey and white matter volume in neuroimaging studies of young adults (Communications Biology, 2022).

The honest verdict: enough to act, not enough to panic. This is a level that rewards thoughtful intervention — dietary modification, nutrient support, and retesting in a few months — rather than aggressive chelation or alarm.

A SENSIBLE REMINDER Hair Mercury is not perfectly correlated with either blood Mercury or with symptoms in any given individual. Hair is useful, but it is not oracular. In clinical practice the honest interpretation combines hair with a symptom history, ideally urine for the inorganic fraction, blood for recent exposure, and a frank look at the food diary. On all of those measures, in my case, fish is the clear suspect.

Why 72 years old makes me pay closer attention

I am 72. This changes the arithmetic, and it is worth being candid about why.

The human brain is, in terms of its chemistry, exquisitely vulnerable to oxidative insult. It is composed largely of readily oxidisable lipids, consumes around 20 percent of the body’s oxygen despite being 2 percent of the body’s mass, and has comparatively modest endogenous antioxidant defences. These features are true at any age. What changes with age is the background level of oxidative stress, the efficiency of mitochondrial electron transport, and the balance between the rate at which neurons are damaged and the rate at which they can be supported or, in the hippocampus at least, modestly replaced through adult neurogenesis.

By the age of 70 to 80 years, neurofibrillary tangles are detectable on neuropathology in approximately 90 percent of individuals. Thirty-five percent of those with the highest histological burden develop clinical Alzheimer’s disease. It is no longer a fringe hypothesis that chronic Mercury exposure contributes to this process: Mercury has been shown to stimulate the aggregation of β-amyloid, to inhibit adult neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, and to bind with high affinity to the selenocysteine in selenoenzymes that would otherwise keep oxidative stress in check. Review articles in Metabolic Brain Disease, International Journal of Molecular Sciences, and Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience all converge on a similar position: Mercury is not the only factor in late-life cognitive decline, but it is a removable one.

The often-cited case of the 91-year-old Alzheimer’s patient described by Foley and colleagues in 2020 — whose cognitive function partially recovered over months as dietary methylmercury was reduced — is not proof that Mercury causes dementia. But it is a reminder that the ageing brain is a place where removing an unnecessary burden is rarely a bad idea.

So my thinking as a 72-year-old with a hair Mercury of 2 mg/kg is less about panic and more about the simple logic of: this is a modifiable factor, I have perhaps twenty or thirty years in which I would like my hippocampus to function well, and the interventions required are gentle, nutritionally supportive, and largely delicious.

About my fish: Flathead and sardines

Tasmanian flathead

In Tasmania, flathead is the people’s fish. Easily caught, mild-flavoured, well-priced, readily available. I eat it often. What is less often appreciated — because I did not appreciate it myself until I went looking — is that the sand flathead, Platycephalus bassensis, has been used by Tasmanian researchers for decades specifically as an indicator species for Mercury pollution in our coastal waters. A statewide survey found mean total Mercury in flathead muscle tissue ranging from 0.03 to 1.06 mg/kg wet weight, depending on where the fish was caught. That is more than a thirty-fold range. Flathead are relatively sedentary, so the fish reflects the water it sits in.

The Derwent Estuary in particular — the waterway that runs through Hobart — carries the legacy of zinc smelting and heavy industry at Lutana over many decades. Mercury in Derwent flathead has historically sat near or slightly above the FSANZ food safety maximum of 0.5 mg/kg. The Tasmanian Director of Public Health currently advises that Derwent flathead be limited to no more than two meals per week for adults, one meal per week for pregnant women, women intending to become pregnant, and young children. Shellfish from the Derwent are not recommended for eating at all.

Flathead from other Tasmanian waters — Bass Strait, the east coast, the north-west — generally sit at the lower end of that range, often well below 0.3 mg/kg. If you are buying commercially, it is worth asking where the fish is from. If you are catching your own from the Derwent, it is worth thinking about it the way a Mediterranean villager thinks about water.

In the broader Australian SafeFish classification, flathead is grouped with the low-Mercury species, alongside Atlantic salmon, whiting, bream, and canned tuna. This national classification is largely right on average. The catch is that national averages hide regional detail, and Tasmania is a place where the regional detail matters.

Canned sardines

Sardines, in contrast, are about as clean a fish as it is possible to eat. Small, short-lived, and sitting at the very bottom of the piscine food chain, they accumulate very little Mercury. Testing from Safe Catch, an American testing-focused brand, finds Mercury at or below 0.1 mg/kg across their sardine line. General population data for Sardina pilchardus from unpolluted waters sits similarly low. (There are notable exceptions — the Algerian coastal study by Mehouel and Bennadja found sardines from heavily contaminated parts of the Algerian coast exceeding European limits, which is a useful reminder that geography matters for sardines too.)

Sardines are also one of the richest dietary sources of selenium. A standard tin provides approximately 75 percent of the adult recommended dietary allowance. Which means that with sardines, the Mercury is low and the selenium is high — the Mercury-to-selenium molar balance, which I will come to in a moment, is comfortably favourable. They are, in the Nicholas Ralston framework I will describe shortly, a strongly selenium-positive food.

Wild-caught sardines in olive oil, with a little lemon and some sourdough, have not disappeared from my kitchen. Nor should they disappear from yours.

What I now do in the kitchen

The question I found myself sitting with — and which a client asked me in almost the same week — was this: given that I am going to continue to eat fish, and given that the fish I eat is going to contain at least some Mercury, what can I actually cook with the fish to minimise the amount that ends up causing trouble in my body?

The short answer is: quite a lot, and almost all of it is in your pantry already. The longer answer requires a brief detour into biochemistry — which, as readers of my Substack know, I rather enjoy.

The central mechanism: selenium as Mercury’s natural foil

Mercury is not a random poison. It is a precise poison, and that precision is the key to everything that follows. Methylmercury, the form that accumulates in fish, binds with high affinity to thiol groups — the sulphur-hydrogen residues of the amino acid cysteine, which are scattered across most human proteins. This thiol binding is the basis of much of Mercury’s general protein disruption.

However — and this is the critical fact — Methylmercury binds to selenol groups, the selenium analogue of thiol, with an affinity roughly one million times higher than to thiols. Selenol groups exist in a small family of proteins called selenoenzymes. There are only around twenty-five of them in the human body, but they are disproportionately important: glutathione peroxidases (which neutralise hydrogen peroxide and lipid peroxides), thioredoxin reductases (which maintain the thioredoxin antioxidant cycle), iodothyronine deiodinases (which activate and inactivate thyroid hormones), and selenoprotein P (the body’s primary selenium transporter).

When Mercury gets into the body, it preferentially sequesters the selenium in these enzymes. Functionally, Mercury toxicity is best understood as an induced, enzyme-level selenium deficiency. This is the framework developed by Nicholas Ralston at the University of North Dakota, and it reframes the entire conversation about Mercury in fish. Ralston’s key insight, now supported by a significant body of evidence, is that what matters is not the absolute Mercury content of a food, but the molar ratio of selenium to Mercury in the food, and in the diet as a whole. If there is more selenium than Mercury on a molar basis, there is “spare” selenium to rescue or replace the selenium lost to Mercury binding. If not, the diet depletes the body’s selenium reserves.

Most ocean fish — including salmon, sardines, and the great majority of tuna species — are net selenium-positive. Only a small number of species are selenium-negative: pilot whale, some shark species, and certain freshwater pike. The Seychelles islanders, who eat a great deal of fish, sit at hair Mercury levels much higher than mine yet appear protected from the expected neurotoxicity. Their diet is simply awash in selenium.

The kitchen ingredients that do the work

What follows is not a folk remedy list. Each of these has a mechanism, and each mechanism converges on either direct Mercury binding, increased Mercury excretion, or upregulation of the body’s endogenous antioxidant and detoxification defences.

Selenium: Brazil nuts, or supplementation

A single Brazil nut provides approximately 68 to 91 micrograms of selenium, depending on the soil of origin. Two Brazil nuts with a meal give you sufficient selenium to achieve a favourable molar excess over the Mercury in almost any fish serving. Selenium in Brazil nuts is predominantly in the form of selenomethionine — the organic, highly bioavailable form in which selenium is incorporated into body protein stores.

If Brazil nuts are not available — as was the case for me on the evening I sat down to cook my flathead and write this article — a high-quality multi-mineral or selenium supplement providing 100 micrograms of L-selenomethionine is an excellent substitute. The arithmetic is straightforward: 100 µg of selenium is 1.27 µmol, which is a comfortable molar excess over the Mercury in a typical 150 g fish serving (which provides roughly 0.015 to 0.75 µmol Mercury depending on species). The bioavailability of selenomethionine from a well-formulated supplement is effectively equivalent to that from food. I would not hesitate, and did not hesitate, to rely on it.

One caveat worth stating plainly: this is the form that matters. Selenium in some cheaper supplements appears as sodium selenate or sodium selenite — the inorganic forms, which are still biologically active but somewhat less efficiently retained. Check the label. If it says selenomethionine, L-selenomethionine, or selenium-enriched yeast, you have the premium form.

Garlic: crushed, rested, then cooked

Garlic is a sulphur bomb. The active compound allicin, and its more stable breakdown products — diallyl sulphide, diallyl disulphide, and S-allyl cysteine — do four things at once. They bind Mercury directly in the gut, reducing absorption. They activate the Nrf2 transcription pathway, which upregulates the body’s master antioxidant glutathione by increasing synthesis of the rate-limiting enzyme γ-glutamylcysteine ligase. They induce metallothionein, a small cysteine-rich protein that sequesters heavy metals. And they enhance Phase II liver detoxification capacity more broadly.

A practical point that matters more than most people realise: crush or chop the garlic and let it sit for approximately 10 minutes before it hits the heat. The enzyme alliinase converts alliin into allicin only after the cell is damaged, and it needs that 10-minute window to do so before heat denatures the enzyme. This single step dramatically increases the active compound content of your finished dish.

Turmeric with black pepper and olive oil

Curcumin, the yellow polyphenol in turmeric, is one of the most potent known activators of the Nrf2 antioxidant response pathway in the human diet. It also directly scavenges reactive oxygen species and protects mitochondrial Complex I and Complex III — the two sites in the electron transport chain most vulnerable to Mercury-induced disruption.

Curcumin is poorly absorbed on its own. Two co-factors change this dramatically. Black pepper contains piperine, which inhibits the gut and liver enzymes that would otherwise break down curcumin, increasing its bioavailability by approximately twenty-fold. Fat — olive oil in this case, or the fat in the fish itself — helps dissolve the curcumin for absorption. The traditional cooking combination of turmeric, black pepper, and oil is, it turns out, near-perfect biochemical engineering. My grandmother would not have known the mechanism, but she knew the combination.

Coriander and parsley

The popular reputation of coriander as a Mercury chelator originates largely from the work of the late Dr Yoshiaki Omura, who reported increased urinary Mercury excretion after coriander consumption in humans receiving detoxification protocols. The evidence is suggestive rather than conclusive. The leading candidates for the active compounds are dodecenal, linalool, and a family of terpenoids that appear to enhance biliary transport of heavy metals. I use coriander, but I do not over-sell it. Parsley has a broadly similar terpenoid profile and is a useful companion. I use both.

Lemon and green tea

Ascorbate — vitamin C, abundant in lemon — regenerates oxidised glutathione back to its active form, directly protects cell membranes against lipid peroxidation, and modestly supports biliary excretion of metals. Green tea’s dominant catechin, EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate), directly chelates metals in the gut and, like curcumin, activates the Nrf2 pathway systemically. A cup of green tea alongside the meal gives you both effects in one glass.

Tonight’s actual dinner, assembled

A modest pan-fried fillet of Tasmanian flathead. Before cooking, rub with crushed-and-rested garlic, a generous teaspoon of ground turmeric, cracked black pepper, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, and sea salt. Squeeze half a lemon over the finished dish. Garnish heavily — and I mean heavily — with fresh chopped coriander and parsley. On the side, two Brazil nuts eaten raw (or, as was my case, one capsule of L-selenomethionine at 100 µg). A cup of green tea to drink. A slice of sourdough if you like.

The combination that matters biochemically: selenium, from Brazil nut or supplement, for direct Mercury sequestration. Sulphur donors, from garlic, for further gut-level binding and metallothionein induction. Nrf2 and glutathione support, from turmeric with pepper, lemon, and green tea, to strengthen the body’s endogenous defence systems. That is the whole protocol.

The important precautions

Selenium is a protective nutrient within a specific intake window, and a problematic one outside it. This is the classic pharmacological truth — the dose makes the poison — applied to one of the most nutritionally contradictory elements in the periodic table.

The established upper limit for selenium intake in adults is 400 µg per day. Chronic intake above this level progresses toward a condition called selenosis, with symptoms including brittle or lost hair and nails, gastrointestinal upset, garlic-like breath odour, skin rash, and — at higher levels still — neurological symptoms. These symptoms are reversible if caught early.

Two large randomised controlled trials — SELECT (Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial, approximately 35,000 men) and the earlier NPC (Nutritional Prevention of Cancer) trial — are worth knowing about. In selenium-replete populations, chronic daily selenium supplementation at 200 µg for years was associated with small but statistically significant increases in type 2 diabetes incidence in SELECT, and some signals regarding prostate outcomes. None of this is relevant to occasional meal-timed supplementation at 100 µg, which is what I am describing here. But it is highly relevant to anyone who might start swallowing 200 µg of selenium every morning for the rest of their life as a general precaution.

My own approach, and what I advise clients: use Brazil nuts or selenomethionine with fish meals specifically, at roughly 100 µg per occasion. Do not stack it on top of another 200 µg selenium supplement taken daily. Most reasonable people in Australia, on a reasonable diet, are consuming somewhere between 30 and 80 µg of selenium per day from background food — Tasmanian and broader Australian soils are notoriously selenium-poor, especially compared to the North American prairies, so the background is on the low end. Adding 100 µg with a fish meal, a few times a week, stays comfortably within the safe window.

A NOTE ON TIMING If you are using selenium specifically to protect against Mercury in a fish meal, take it with the meal. Some of the Mercury-selenium interaction happens in the gut lumen itself, before Mercury is absorbed into the bloodstream. A Brazil nut eaten alongside the fish, or a selenomethionine capsule swallowed with the first bite, is mechanistically different from the same dose taken at breakfast the next day.

What comes next for me, and for the article series

I will retest in approximately three to four months — long enough for the hair sample to reflect a new period of modified dietary practice. The specific modifications are: Derwent-caught flathead off the list entirely; commercial flathead retained but with location enquiry; sardines retained enthusiastically; Brazil nuts or selenomethionine with every fish meal; the garlic-turmeric-lemon-coriander-parsley combination as a regular culinary habit rather than an occasional flourish.

In terms of the broader Mercury series on this Substack, the upcoming pieces will cover the urine and blood testing side of the story that I flagged in the first article. Urine is particularly useful for the inorganic Mercury fraction — more relevant to dental amalgam exposure than to fish — and blood gives us a recent snapshot. Together with hair, they form a reasonable triangulation.

As always, the point of this writing is to keep an open and curious mind, to acknowledge what we do not yet fully know, and to make practical, mechanistically grounded decisions in the kitchen rather than fearful or ideological ones. Fish is good food. Tasmania is full of it. A little knowledge and a well-stocked spice rack go a very long way.

As ever, please leave comments and ask questions. Others will benefit from this, and I will use your questions to shape the next instalment. The more specific the better — what you are eating, what you are worried about, what you have had tested.

Thank you for reading.

Hartmut Michael Günther | April 2026

Glossary

Organised loosely by theme. The goal is to make the mechanistic sections above accessible to readers who are not biochemists, without stripping out the science. Readers who want to go deeper are encouraged to look up the terms in standard biochemistry references — Harper’s Illustrated Biochemistry is a reliable starting point.

Mercury and the body

Mercury (Hg) — A heavy metal; atomic number 80, atomic mass 200.59. Exists in three major biologically relevant forms: elemental (Hg⁰, liquid at room temperature, gives off vapour), inorganic (Hg²⁺, ionic salts), and organic (notably methylmercury, CH₃Hg⁺, and ethylmercury).

Methylmercury (MeHg) — The organic form of Mercury that accumulates in fish muscle. Absorbed very efficiently from the gut, crosses the blood-brain and placental barriers, and is the form most relevant to dietary exposure.

Inorganic mercury (Hg²⁺) — The form mercury takes once methylmercury has been demethylated inside cells (particularly in the brain). Less mobile than methylmercury but can persist in the nervous system for years.

ICP-MS — Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry. A highly accurate laboratory method for measuring trace elements. It measures total Mercury but does not differentiate between methyl, ethyl, inorganic or elemental forms — those require speciation techniques.

Parts per million (ppm) / mg/kg / µg/g — Three different ways of expressing the same concentration. 1 ppm = 1 mg/kg = 1 µg/g. All three are used interchangeably in the Mercury literature.

Biliary excretion — Elimination of a substance via bile produced by the liver, secreted into the small intestine, and excreted in the stool. The primary elimination route for Mercury and many other heavy metals.

Selenium and why it matters

Selenium (Se) — An essential trace element. Atomic number 34, atomic mass 78.96. Present in the body primarily as selenocysteine, the amino acid at the active site of a small family of selenoenzymes.

Selenomethionine — The most bioavailable and best-retained dietary form of selenium. Occurs naturally in Brazil nuts, selenium-enriched yeast, fish, and some whole grains. Incorporated into body proteins wherever methionine would normally sit.

Selenocysteine — The “21st amino acid” — a cysteine in which the sulphur atom has been replaced by selenium. Only found in approximately 25 human proteins, but those proteins are disproportionately important.

Selenoenzymes — Enzymes that require a selenocysteine in their active site. Include glutathione peroxidases (neutralise peroxides), thioredoxin reductases (maintain the thioredoxin antioxidant cycle), iodothyronine deiodinases (activate and inactivate thyroid hormones), and selenoprotein P (the body’s primary selenium transporter).

Thiol group (–SH) — A sulphur-hydrogen pair found in the amino acid cysteine. The reactive point on many proteins where metals, drugs, and free radicals bind. Methylmercury has a strong affinity for thiols.

Selenol group (–SeH) — The selenium equivalent of a thiol. Found in selenocysteine. Methylmercury binds selenol groups approximately one million times more tightly than thiols. This is the biochemical basis of why selenium is protective.

Se:Hg molar ratio — The ratio of selenium atoms to Mercury atoms in a food or in the overall diet. If Se is in molar excess, there is “spare” selenium after Mercury sequestration. Most ocean fish are selenium-positive on this measure.

Mercury selenide (HgSe) — The biologically inert compound formed when Mercury binds selenium. Deposited in tissue as microscopic crystals and slowly cleared via bile. The body’s natural Mercury neutralisation product.

Selenium Health Benefit Value (HBV) — A formal index developed by Nicholas Ralston that quantifies the selenium-to-Mercury balance of a given food. A positive HBV means the food protects against its own Mercury; a negative HBV means it depletes body selenium.

Selenosis — The toxicity syndrome associated with chronic excessive selenium intake, generally above 900 µg per day. Symptoms include brittle or lost hair and nails, garlic-like breath, gastrointestinal upset, skin changes, and in severe cases neurological signs. Reversible in early stages.

The antioxidant defence system

Glutathione (GSH) — The master intracellular antioxidant. A small tripeptide (glutamate-cysteine-glycine) containing a reactive thiol. Directly binds heavy metals, neutralises free radicals, and serves as a substrate for several detoxification enzymes.

Nrf2 / ARE pathway — The master regulatory switch for antioxidant and detoxification defence. Nrf2 (Nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2) is a transcription factor that, when activated, binds Antioxidant Response Elements in DNA and upregulates hundreds of protective genes. Activated by curcumin, sulforaphane (broccoli sprouts), EGCG, and garlic-derived sulphur compounds.

γ-glutamylcysteine ligase (GCL) — The rate-limiting enzyme of glutathione synthesis. When GCL activity rises, total cellular glutathione rises. Strongly upregulated by Nrf2 activation.

Metallothionein — A small, cysteine-rich protein with an unusually high capacity to bind heavy metals (zinc, copper, cadmium, Mercury). Inducible — the body makes more of it in response to metal exposure or to sulphur-rich dietary compounds.

Phase II conjugation — The second stage of liver detoxification, in which the liver attaches water-soluble “handles” (glutathione, glucuronic acid, sulphate) to fat-soluble toxins to allow their excretion.

Lipid peroxidation — Free-radical damage to the fatty acids in cell membranes. One of the primary mechanisms of Mercury toxicity. Prevented principally by the selenium-dependent enzyme glutathione peroxidase.

Mitochondrial Complex I and Complex III — Two protein assemblies within the mitochondrial electron transport chain. The main sites where Mercury disrupts ATP production and generates reactive oxygen species.

Plant compounds

Allicin — The principal bioactive compound formed from fresh garlic. Produced only after the cell is damaged, when the enzyme alliinase converts alliin to allicin. Heat-unstable — hence the importance of crushing and resting garlic before cooking.

Alliinase — The garlic enzyme that catalyses allicin formation. Denatured by heat and acid.

Diallyl sulphide, diallyl disulphide, S-allyl cysteine — Stable sulphur compounds derived from allicin. These are the forms that actually circulate after garlic consumption and deliver most of its biological effects.

Curcumin — The yellow polyphenol in turmeric (Curcuma longa). Potent Nrf2 activator, direct radical scavenger, and mitochondrial protector. Absorbed poorly unless consumed with fat and with piperine from black pepper.

Piperine — The pungent alkaloid in black pepper (Piper nigrum). Inhibits the liver and gut enzymes that would normally degrade curcumin, increasing curcumin bioavailability by approximately twenty-fold.

EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate) — The dominant catechin in green tea. A direct metal chelator and an Nrf2 activator.

Catechins — A class of polyphenols found in tea, cocoa, and apples. Notable for direct metal binding and antioxidant activity.

Dodecenal, linalool — Volatile terpenoid compounds in coriander (cilantro) proposed to be responsible for its reputed metal-mobilising effects. The evidence is suggestive rather than conclusive.

Ascorbate (Vitamin C) — A water-soluble antioxidant. Regenerates oxidised glutathione back to its active form, recycles vitamin E, and modestly supports biliary excretion of metals. Abundant in lemon, lime, and most fresh fruit and vegetables.

Clinical and epidemiological terms

Hair Mercury — The concentration of Mercury in scalp hair. A reasonable biomarker of methylmercury exposure over the preceding one to three months. Measured in µg/g, mg/kg, or ppm.

EPA Reference Dose — The United States Environmental Protection Agency’s estimated daily oral intake that is likely to be without appreciable risk of deleterious effect over a lifetime. For methylmercury, 0.1 µg per kg body weight per day. Translates to a hair Mercury reference level of approximately 1.2 µg/g.

PTWI — Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake. A WHO/FAO expert committee measure of the upper weekly intake considered safe. For methylmercury, 1.6 µg per kg body weight per week (revised downwards from earlier figures).

FSANZ — Food Standards Australia New Zealand. The Australian regulatory body that sets maximum Mercury limits in fish sold commercially (0.5 mg/kg for most fish; higher for large predators).

NHANES — The United States National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. A large population dataset used to derive reference ranges for Mercury and other biomarkers in the general population.

Neurogenesis — The formation of new neurons. In adult humans this occurs principally in the hippocampus (dentate gyrus) and is thought to contribute to cognitive reserve in ageing. Inhibited by chronic Mercury exposure.

β-amyloid (beta-amyloid) —A peptide that aggregates into plaques in Alzheimer’s disease. Mercury has been shown to stimulate β-amyloid aggregation in experimental systems, one of several lines of evidence

By Hartmut Michael Gunther | BSc Hons BioChem | Grad Dip Nutrition Medicine | Grad Dip Psychology | +61 439 547 778 | hart@hartgood.com

It’s April 2026, and I’ve just witnessed the production of a 17-page clinical health report that cross-references a client’s medications with their supplement intake, maps both against a food diary, flags the nutrient depletions caused by their prescriptions, and connects all of it to their blood test results over time.

The report took a few minutes to create and was entirely based on data supplied by the client. Obviously I can’t write that fast yet was able to direct every clinical decision behind it. And that distinction — between writing and directing — is what this article is about.

The Accidental Experiment

A few weeks ago I started building something. Not a website, not a course — a health tool. A system where individuals could speak, type, or upload their health data, and when they were ready, generate a structured clinical report that pulls it all together.

I’d been pasting client notes into Claude — Anthropic’s AI — for months, getting useful summaries back. But I kept thinking: what if the client could do this themselves? What if they could deposit their own observations, blood tests, food diaries, supplement photos, symptoms — whenever they wanted, on their own terms — and the AI could organise it using the clinical frameworks I’ve developed over 25 years?

I didn’t have a development team. I didn’t have a budget for one. What I had was clinical experience, a clear idea of what a health report should contain, and access to an AI that could write code.

So I started. And what happened over the next eleven sessions surprised me.

The Clinician Drives

Here’s what I discovered almost immediately: the AI is extraordinarily capable at building things, but it doesn’t know what to build. Not in health. Not where it matters.

In our first session, the AI built a working prototype with voice input, file uploads, and a report generator — in a single afternoon. Impressive. But when I tested it, the AI was interviewing the client. Running through symptom checklists like a medical student with a clipboard. Asking follow-up questions. Offering analysis.

That’s not what people need.

What people need is a space to deposit their health data — spoken, typed, photographed — without being interrogated. They need to feel heard, not assessed. The analysis belongs in the report, not in the conversation.

That pivot — from AI-led interview to person-led journal — happened because a clinician was in the room. Not metaphorically. I tested it on myself, felt what was wrong, and redirected. The AI executed the change beautifully. But it would never have identified the need.

This pattern repeated, session after session. The AI would build something technically excellent. I would test it against clinical reality. And the gap between what was built and what was needed always lived in the same place: the human experience of health.

What the AI Brings

I don’t want to be unfair to the other side of this collaboration. What the AI brings is genuinely extraordinary.

When I described the nine areas of health I use in my clinical practice — Agency, Movement, Nutrition, Sleep, Work, Learning, Communication, Experience, Listening — the AI built a report section that assesses each one against the client’s deposited data. Within an hour. To have a programmer build that from a specification document would take days and cost thousands.

When I explained that blood test results uploaded as photos needed to be read, structured, and tracked over time — with test names normalised, specimens tagged as fasting or random, and trends analysed across years — the AI built the entire pipeline. Image recognition, data extraction, normalisation, longitudinal comparison. In one session.

When I realised that supplement labels needed their own dedicated reading pathway — because the AI was confusing iodine with iron, folate with biotin — I described the problem, and within minutes there was a specialised prompt that reads labels character by character, with confusion-pair warnings built in.

The speed is remarkable. The breadth of capability is remarkable. But without clinical direction, all of that capability produces generic health software. The kind you can find anywhere. The kind that doesn’t actually help.

Where It Gets Interesting

The real power emerged in the iterative loop. I’ll give you a concrete example from this week.

I had a client on two antidepressant medications and a pre-workout supplement. The previous version of the tool captured all of this data but scattered it across different sections of the report — a mention of medications here, a note about the supplement there, the blood test results somewhere else.

I looked at the report and saw what was missing: the connections. In clinical practice, you look at the whole picture. What are the medications doing to nutrient levels? Is the supplement interacting with the prescriptions? Does the food diary show the client is compensating — or not — for what the medications are depleting?

So I described to the AI what I wanted: a dedicated Supplements section and a dedicated Medications section, each with structured sub-analyses that cross-reference the diet, the lab results, and each other. I specified the clinical framework — nutrient depletion profiles, polypharmacy considerations, medication-diet interactions. I described the language rules: evidence-based, never suggesting someone stop a medication, always directing back to the prescriber.

The AI built both sections in under an hour. The next report generated a polypharmacy analysis that connected the client’s fatigue to a known side effect profile across both medications, mapped the nutrient depletions, cross-referenced with the supplement intake, and noted which dietary gaps remained unaddressed.

That report would take me two to three hours to write manually. It took four minutes to generate. And — here’s the critical part — the clinical intelligence in it came from my frameworks, my experience, and my understanding of what matters. The AI provided the horsepower to synthesise it all at once.

Neither of us could have produced it alone.

What This Means for Health

I’ve been a clinician for over two decades. I’ve worked in cancer research, run nutrition clinics, founded a toxicology testing company, and designed health programmes for organisations. Throughout all of that, the consistent challenge has been the same: how do you help people organise their own health data in a way that’s actually useful?

Health systems are overwhelmed. Consultations are short. Information is fragmented across different practitioners, different labs, different years. People walk into their GP with a vague sense that something isn’t right and no structured way to articulate it.

What I’ve built — what we’ve built — is a tool that lets people deposit health data on their own terms, in their own time, and generates a report that speaks both to them and to their health practitioner. The AI brings the synthesis. The clinician brings the clinical judgement. The person brings their own data, intuitions, and experience.

It’s called SOPHIA — from the Greek for wisdom — and it’s now in beta testing.

But this article isn’t really about SOPHIA. It’s about a model. A model of collaboration between clinician and AI that I think has profound implications for health.

The Model

Here’s what I’ve learnt from this experience:

AI without clinical direction produces impressive but generic output. It can summarise, it can organise, it can analyse. But it doesn’t know what matters clinically. It doesn’t know that a client reading their own report needs warmth alongside honesty. It doesn’t know that “your depression is undertreated” is a sentence that could cause harm, while “current support may benefit from being expanded” says the same thing with care.

Clinical experience without AI is limited by time and bandwidth. I can produce a brilliant clinical report for one client in three hours. With AI, I can produce that same quality — directed by my frameworks, my language, my clinical thinking — in four minutes. That’s not replacing me. That’s multiplying me.

The iterative loop is where the magic lives. Build, test against reality, redirect, rebuild. Every session I discover something the AI didn’t anticipate because it requires clinical experience to see. Every session the AI builds something I couldn’t have coded in a month. The tool gets better because both intelligences are at the table.

This is not AI replacing clinicians. This is not clinicians ignoring AI. This is something else — a genuine collaboration where each party contributes what the other cannot.

What’s Next

I’m writing more about each dimension of this as it develops — the clinical frameworks, the privacy architecture, the experience of real clients using the tool, and the broader question of how AI and human expertise can work together in health.

If you’re a health professional curious about what AI can do when it’s directed by clinical experience rather than left to its own devices — or if you’re someone interested in taking a more active, organised role in your own health — I’d love to hear from you.

The technology is here. The clinical wisdom has always been here. Putting them together, deliberately and carefully, is the work.

Introducing SOPHIA

SOPHIA is a personal health data journaling system designed to help you capture, organise, and make sense of your health information over time. Whether you’re tracking blood pressure readings, uploading lab and imaging results, checking nutrient sufficiency from a meal or a diet, integrating supplements and medications, recording symptoms, or noting how you’re feeling day to day — SOPHIA listens, captures it all, and waits until you’re ready to do something meaningful with it. No unsolicited advice, no interruptions. Just a calm, intelligent space to build your health picture.

When you’re ready, SOPHIA generates a comprehensive, structured health report — drawing on everything you’ve shared, including your full de-identified lab and imaging history, lifestyle data, your own insights and intuitions, symptoms, and patterns over time. This is where the depth lives: trends are analysed, connections are made, and clinically relevant insights are presented in a way that’s both honest and genuinely useful — whether for your own understanding or to share with your health practitioner.

Privacy and security are central to how SOPHIA is built, not an afterthought. Every user is assigned a unique code name, and all personal identifying information — especially details from lab results or uploaded documents — is stripped from the system. This is a unique innovation of this tool. Nothing that’s stored on the server that holds your data identifies you in any way whatsoever. You can share openly, knowing your information is 100% de-identified

The name SOPHIA is no accident. Rooted in the Greek word for wisdom, Sophia reflects the heart of what this system is designed to do — in collaboration with a human health professional, transform mostly fragmented personal health data into interconnected insights and actions for yourself and into a concise, clear, evidence-based language that health professionals understand and expect.

To do that at the level this work demands, SOPHIA is powered by the latest extremely advanced health AI from Anthropic, makers of Claude and one of the few big companies in the new AI space showing integrity and ethical behaviour. This brings the horsepower, speed, and accuracy needed to analyse complex, longitudinal yet interconnected health data and surface what truly matters for your health.

SOPHIA is designed, built and maintained by Hartmut Michael Gunther — clinical nutritionist, biochemist, health practitioner, consultant, programmer and founder of Hartgood Health — with the understanding that people can really benefit from a thoughtful, unhurried way to engage with their own health data. Because you know more about your own body than anyone else. We just need help in organising and appropriately responding to the messages we’re getting from our own body and mind over time. It’s your health journal, made intelligent, that when needed, serves to dramatically enrich the collaboration you have with health professionals, and indeed your own health while gently reminding us of those non-negotiable micro habits that colour our life with joy.

Today we are going into beta testing.

You are invited.

Beta testing simply means that the tool is ready. It has been pushed as hard as I can push it, and it does everything it’s meant to do, but we need to release it out into the wild. This means a person like yourself will use it, push it how you want to push it , think of other ways to use it, and any feedback you give as a result of that helps to iterate further development and refine an already incredible working tool

I will 100% guarantee you’ll be blown away. There’s no cost involved. Contact me directly on hart@hartgood.com to request your code, the website address, and a few extra instructions so you can use it both on your phone and on a computer with absolute ease

Hartmut writes about health, nutrition, and the intersection of clinical practice and technology at Innerfood and is head clinician and founder at Hartgood Health

Contact: hart@hartgood.com

A long, long time ago, with family and tribe safe and fed in the back of a cave with a warm fire, you stood and looked out upon the beauty and stillness of a moonlight un-rippled lake. Or perhaps it was the embers of the fire at night or the billions of stars in the vast space of the night sky that captured your attention.

The calmness you witnessed was reflected fleetingly back to you and, for a moment, your focus of interest shifted from thoughts of survival to a feeling that emanated from somewhere within you, some restful inner space and you found yourself becoming aware of the simple act of breathing.

Perhaps, almost intuitively, you stayed with this simple attention on the breath for a little while and your perception seemed to transform, so that more and more of the beauty, always there yet often un-noticed in the world around you, flooded in. Simultaneously, subtleties of new and exquisite feelings danced ever so ephemerally within you.

Questions of “who am I” or “what am I doing here” receded momentarily into the background and you where forever transformed with the knowledge that you had an inner life, a comforting inner space that truly felt like home. And that this inner space might be the source of exquisite goodness. But you didn’t really know how to recreate this experience and at the risk of forgetting, you communicated and openly shared with others around you.

You found they too had transcendent experiences to share. One of your companions found herself deep in a cave in utter darkness, yet when she let go and even shut her eyes, she found a hint of some inner light that bought solace and comfort. Another tribe member was alone in a quiet breezeless valley, and he recounts sensing a soothing sound that had no source outside, almost as if hearing the silence.

Stories of other’s encounters with a font of sublime yet inherently human experience originating from a space, a source within, began to come together over generations and generations. Often someone in the tribe or village had the gift to hold and embody these stories and experiences and share them with others and pass the knowledge on through the spoken word and simple know-how to the next generation.

Over thousands and thousands of years this fascination with self-emanating feelings of joy, tranquillity, kindness and aliveness began to awaken and transform human consciousness. Masters, mystics, wise men and wise women of a time made themselves available. For all of us who had convinced ourselves we had it all, knew it all, yet carried a hungry heart.

And those that thirsted for greater understanding in making a conscious connection to their inner life space whenever they needed, sought out one who could assist.

Inspired by the work and teachings of Prem Rawat, master storyteller and author of Hear Yourself, How to find peace in a noisy world.

Dies ist ein Aufsatz, den ich im November letzten Jahres, 2025, verfasst und bei einem Schreibwettbewerb eingereicht habe, kurz nachdem wir von einer zweimonatigen Reise durch Europa zurückgekehrt waren. Die Aufgabenstellung des Wettbewerbs war einfach: Schreibe über deine Erfahrungen, die einen Bezug zum Zeitgeist des Jahres 2025 haben. Ich entschied mich für Reisen, Technologie und Schönheit. Das Verfassen dieses Essays würde mir auch dabei helfen, den ständigen Strom neuartiger und doch historischer, von Menschenhand geschaffener künstlerischer und architektonischer Werke zu verarbeiten, während ich 2025 durch Europa reiste

Reisen, ein Fest, eine Degustation, wenn man so will, nicht so sehr in Bezug auf Essen, sondern vielmehr eine Parade neuartiger Sehenswürdigkeiten, durchdrungen von Schönheit und Ehrfurcht, meist unverständlich, doch die Türen, durch die man auf dem Weg hindurchgeht, rufen oft neue, lebenslange Erinnerungen hervor und wecken das Interesse an der lokalen Kultur und so vielem mehr. Mein Name ist Hartmut, während mich einige meiner Freunde und Familienmitglieder Hart nennen. Der Mann, von dem in diesem Essay die Rede ist, bin natürlich ich. Ich hoffe, der Essay gefällt Ihnen.

Dies ist die Geschichte eines jungen Mannes von 72 Jahren, der sich im August 2025 entschloss, durch eine Tür zu treten, die zu einem einmaligen Ereignis führte. Das Ereignis dauerte zwei Monate und wurde durch eine Reise in seine Heimatländer beflügelt, die er nicht mehr besucht hatte, seit er als Dreijähriger von Europa nach Australien gekommen war.

Alles begann an einem frühen Morgen, als die erste Türschwelle überschritten wurde – eine kurze Reise nach innen, die schon oft zuvor unternommen worden war und in vielerlei Hinsicht das Bewusstsein klärte und den Mann von unerwünschtem kognitivem Ballast befreite, um ihn auf den bevorstehenden Tag und die Reise vorzubereiten. Dies führte dann dazu, dass er durch die nächste Türschwelle trat, die Haustür seines Hauses, während draußen ein Taxi wartete, um ihn und seinen Freund zum Flughafen zu bringen.

Als er sich der 80 Jahre alten Eingangstür im Art-déco-Stil näherte, spendete ihm ein exquisiter Lichttanz, der durch die 12 Paneele aus gemustertem und gewelltem Glas ermöglicht wurde, Trost. Das Verlassen der Vertrautheit von Zuhause, Arbeit, Freunden und Familie, während er sich ins Unbekannte stürzte, beschäftigte ihn jedoch, als er den ersten Abschnitt seines Fluges nach Barcelona antrat. Er fühlte sich wohl damit, keine Erwartungen zu haben, während er sich dank der akribischen Planung der vergangenen 18 Monate, die sein Freund und Reisebegleiter meisterhaft orchestriert hatte, sicher und geborgen fühlte. Der Start mit dem großen doppelstöckigen Airbus A380 verlief überraschend sanft und war für Hartmut kaum spürbar – ganz im Gegensatz zu seinem ersten Überseeflug in den 70er Jahren, als er mit einer G-Kraft von beträchtlicher Stärke gegen seinen Sitz gedrückt wurde. So begann es.

Was Hart erwartete, war ein Festmahl, eine Degustation, wenn man so will, weniger in Bezug auf das Essen, sondern vielmehr in Form einer Parade neuartiger Anblicke, durchdrungen von Schönheit und Ehrfurcht, meist unverständlich, doch schnell fotografiert und in die Cloud verschoben, um später daran zurückzudenken, sie zu verarbeiten und zu verstehen. Man täusche sich nicht: Eine Reise durch acht Länder mit Flugzeugen, Zügen, Schiffen, Reisebussen und Taxis stellt Körper und Geist auf eine harte Probe, doch die auf dem Weg durchschrittenen Türen weckten neue, lebenslange Erinnerungen und weckten das Interesse an der lokalen Kultur und Sprache, der Architektur, historischen Ruinen, Gemälden und Skulpturen sowie den Genies der Geschichte, die sie geschaffen hatten. Die antike Geschichte wurde buchstäblich lebendig, als der Boden, auf dem man ging, die Luft, die man atmete, und die Geräusche, die man hörte, ein greifbares Erlebnis boten. Jeder Tag war geplant, doch die Neugierde wies den Weg durch jede Tür.

Ein kurzer Zwischenstopp in einer Kunstgalerie und einem Museum in Melbourne weckte die Neugier und führte durch eine altägyptische Tür, wo Hieroglyphentexte das Bild einer geflügelten Sonnenscheibe enthüllten – Symbol des Schutzes durch den Himmelsgott Horus –, zusammen mit anderen Bildern in erkennbarer Reihenfolge, die die ägyptische Liebe zu Ordnung und Hierarchie unterstrichen. Dies war ein gutes Omen für Harts bevorstehenden fast 24-stündigen Flug, auch wenn die Tafel, auf der diese Hieroglyphen zu sehen waren, als Teil einer aufrecht stehenden Steinplatte diente, um den Verstorbenen zu ehren, und den Glauben dieser Kultur vor etwa 3750 Jahren widerspiegelte, dass der Tod ein Tor und kein Ende sei. Als unser unerschrockener Reisender dies erfuhr, wurde ihm bewusst, dass Geburt und Tod tatsächlich die Rahmenbedingungen eines Durchgangs bilden, der das Leben einleitet – ein Leben, das endlich ist und doch voller unvorstellbarer Möglichkeiten steckt.

Dann kam Barcelona. Reisen kann ein Fest für die Augen sein. Wahrnehmung ist eine allgemeine menschliche Eigenschaft, und die Prozesse dahinter laufen bei uns allen ähnlich ab. Die Ankunft in Barcelona und der fast einwöchige Aufenthalt dort ermöglichten es Hart, einen Vorgeschmack auf ästhetische Wahrnehmung zu bekommen, wobei das Gehirn von passivem Betrachten auf aktive Auseinandersetzung umschalten musste. Und es fühlte sich gut an, und es sollte noch viel mehr kommen. Selbst das Einkaufszentrum gegenüber dem Hotel war ein architektonisches Meisterwerk in Rundbauform, das in dem Land, in dem Hartmut lebt, seinesgleichen suchte. In Laufnähe und vom Fenster des Hotels unseres Reisenden aus gut sichtbar lag das Nationale Kunstmuseum von Katalonien. Der Schritt durch den Haupteingang des Museums führte in ein kognitives Wunderland, für das viele Menschen im Jahr 2025 reisen und viel Geld bezahlen. Hart war keine Ausnahme.

Im Inneren öffnete sich eine riesige, kathedralenartige Haupthalle, die ein Kuppeldach mit zahlreichen Torbögen enthüllte, in denen quadratische Paneele eingelassen waren und die in exquisiten katalanischen Farben wie Orange, rustikalem Hellbraun und Creme gehalten waren. Licht strömt durch hoch gelegene Bogenfenster herein, während riesige, kunstvoll verzierte Säulen die himmlische Kuppel tragen. Es war unmöglich, alles auf einmal zu erfassen, und Hartmut ging langsam mehrmals am Rand des großen Raumes entlang, wobei er häufig nach oben blickte, ohne sich seiner selbst bewusst zu sein, und den Mund weit offen hielt. Die Halle mündete in zahlreiche Kunstausstellungen, die das künstlerische Erbe Kataloniens aus 1.000 Jahren präsentierten. Nachdem sie sich an der Architektur sattgesehen hatten, beschlossen unsere beiden Reisenden, die weltberühmte Sammlung mittelalterlicher Kunst im romanischen und gotischen Stil zu erkunden. Der Übergang durch diese Tür weckte unerwartet das Interesse an den Mechanismen von Macht und Religion, die historisch von einem fast ununterbrochenen Strom sehr schlechten menschlichen Verhaltens begleitet waren. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt konnte Hart jedoch die unverhüllte Fremdartigkeit dessen, was er sah, nicht begreifen.

Stellen Sie sich Folgendes vor. Es ist ein Gemälde. Auf der linken Seite des Gemäldes sitzt ein Mann, bekleidet mit einem spitzen Turban und einer hochwertigen, langen, wunderschön geschnittenen schwarzen Robe mit großen, flauschigen Manschetten. Diese Kleidung bedeckt seinen gesamten Körper bis auf seine Hände und sein Gesicht. Er sitzt auf einer leicht erhöhten Holzplattform in einem Gebäude mit kunstvoll verzierten Wandpaneelen und geometrisch gestalteten Bodenfliesen. Sein Hals ist mit einem roten Schal bedeckt, während er lässig ein langes, in einer Scheide steckendes rotes Schwert in der linken Hand hält. Seine rechte Hand, leicht erhoben, lenkt das Geschehen vor ihm wie ein Dirigent in einem Orchester. Sein Gesichtsausdruck zeugt zugleich von Verachtung und Vergnügen, während eine Gruppe wohlhabender, gelehrter, bärtiger Männer, die alle nach unten blicken – einige davon möglicherweise Geistliche –, ebenfalls in langen, wallenden Gewändern und Kopfbedeckungen unterschiedlicher Farben, offenbar versuchen, ihn zu beraten, doch er zeigt kein Interesse.

Rechts in der Mitte dieser Szene spielt sich das Hauptgeschehen ab. Zwei weniger prunkvoll gekleidete Männer mit langen, spitzen Bärten und Augen, die intensiv auf den Dirigenten gerichtet sind, warten auf seine Befehle. Jeder hält einen langen Stab mit einem scharfen, dreizackigen Metallende, das in das Brustfleisch eines jungen Mannes gestoßen wurde, der an ein hölzernes X – kein Kreuz – gefesselt ist. Er stellt offensichtlich eine Art Heiligen dar, da er nur mit Unterwäsche bekleidet ist und einen kunstvollen Heiligenschein um den Kopf trägt, während er traurig nach unten blickt, aber versucht, gefasst zu bleiben. Dieses Gemälde ist offensichtlich ein Tor zu einer anderen Zeit, da es eine Geschichte erzählt, die Hartmut auf den ersten Blick unverständlich und schockierend erschien. Die Fähigkeit des Künstlers, das Werk zu etwas Fantastischem zu machen, ist unbestreitbar und ermöglicht es vielen Seelen und Geistern, Fragen zu stellen und tiefer zu blicken. Genau das tat Hart und trat dabei, ohne einen Moment zu zögern, durch zwei weitere Türen, nur um völlig überwältigt zu werden. Was eine andere Art ist zu sagen, dass sein Bewusstsein von Erkenntnissen durchdrungen wurde – ungebeten, doch angenommen –, was seinen Stand auf dieser Erde in dieser Zeit festigte.

Hartmut hatte auf dieser Europareise Tausende von Fotos geschossen, während er stets versuchte, eine Szene, eine Skulptur, Architektur, eine lebende Pflanze oder eben ein Gemälde einzufangen, das ihn anzog – ein bisschen wie ein Eichhörnchen, das Nüsse sammelt und hortet, nicht um sie sofort zu essen, sondern um sie für spätere Nahrung aufzubewahren. Um die oben beschriebene Szene zu verarbeiten und zu verstehen, fragte Hart, wie Milliarden von Menschen auf dem Planeten Erde im Jahr 2025, Ai. Es gibt mittlerweile mehrere ausgereifte Formen von KI, die dazu angeregt werden können, uns Antworten zu geben. Sie alle haben Stärken und Schwächen. Zunächst wurde die Szene als das Martyrium des Heiligen Sebastian beschrieben, gemalt um 1400, um die Geschichte eines römischen Soldaten aus dem 3. Jahrhundert zu erzählen, der heimlich zum Christentum konvertierte und von den damaligen Machthabern – dem Mann mit dem roten Schwert – zum Tod durch Pfeile verurteilt wurde.

Alles gut und schön, nur dass Hart keine Pfeilspuren an dem unglücklichen jungen Mann erkennen konnte. Bei der Befragung einer konkurrierenden KI stellte sich heraus, dass das Kunstwerk Teil eines Flügels eines Altarbildes war: Das Martyrium des Heiligen Vinzenz auf der Folterbank, das ebenfalls eine Szene um 304 n. Chr. darstellt und um 1350–1370 vom Meister von Estopany, einem anonymen spanischen Maler, gemalt wurde. Faszinierenderweise verteidigte dieser spätere KI das vorherige KI-Modell mit den Worten: „Die Verwirrung von ChatGPT ist verständlich, da das Gemälde viele Themen mit dem Martyrium des Heiligen Sebastian gemeinsam hat“. Von letzterem KI exquisit präsentierte Beweise bestätigten die Identität des Gemäldes und seine fesselnde Erzählung.

Als Hart auf der Suche nach Sinn und Wahrheit die Türöffnung dieses Gemäldes betrat, geschah etwas, das häufig vorkommt, wenn sich die Psyche eines Menschen fokussiert und engagiert. Es ist fast so, als ob das Universum Hilfe und mehr Tiefe in Form von kongruenten Informationen bereitstellt, die sich wie ein Zufall oder eine Synchronizität anfühlen, und für Hart kam dies in Form einer weiteren Türöffnung, die die meisten Menschen auf der Erde im Jahr 2025 täglich durchschreiten. Die Kunst und die Tür des Films. Wiederum zufällig wurde das Filmemachen im November 2025 vom Papst der römisch-katholischen Kirche bei einem weltweit ersten Treffen im Vatikan mit Vertretern von Hollywoods Filmemachern und Produzenten gefördert und ermutigt.

Die Synchronizität: Wenige Wochen nach seiner Rückkehr von der Europareise sah sich Hartmut auf Apple TV eine fünfteilige Dokumentation aus dem Jahr 2025 über das Leben und Werk des italienisch-amerikanischen Filmemachers Martin Scorsese an. Die letzte Folge beleuchtete einen Film namens Silence, der intensive Glaubensfragen aufwirft und von Jesuitenpriestern handelt, die im 17. Jahrhundert von europäischen Geistlichen nach Japan entsandt wurden, um die Einheimischen zum Christentum zu bekehren. Ähnlich wie die Römer im 3. Jahrhundert n. Chr. wollten die Japaner davon nichts wissen und schotteten das ganze Land für mehrere Jahrhunderte ab; sie begannen, Christen zu vertreiben, zu foltern und zu töten, da diese als Bedrohung für die Machtstruktur und die bestehenden weltlichen und religiösen Glaubenssysteme des Status quo angesehen wurden. Der verbindende Faktor zwischen unserem Gemälde und dem Film ist der Glaubensabfall.

Apostasie bedeutet, seiner Religion oder einer tief verwurzelten Überzeugung oder Sache abzuschwören oder sie aufzugeben, und zwar meist öffentlich. Sowohl der Film als auch das Gemälde zeigen die Folterung einer prominenten Persönlichkeit einer Religion oder Bewegung mit dem Ziel, den Einzelnen zu brechen, damit er öffentlich seinem Glauben abschwört, apostatisiert und dadurch als Abschreckung für andere Gläubige dient. Grausamerweise bestand das Ziel nicht darin, sie zu töten, da dies sie zu Märtyrern gemacht und den gegenteiligen Effekt gehabt hätte. Indem der heilige Vinzenz an das hölzerne X gebunden wurde und nicht an ein Kreuz, das zur Hinrichtung und Tötung bestimmt ist, wird die Darstellung des übermenschlichen Glaubens und der Ausdauer des Heiligen noch verstärkt. Der Künstler malt keine historische Nachstellung, sondern die dramatische und berühmte Legende des Heiligen Vinzenz, wie sie erzählt und weitergegeben wurde, um den Glauben zu inspirieren. Hartmut fragte sich, inwieweit diese dramatische Aufforderung zum Glauben im Jahr 2025 noch stattfand.

Bemerkenswerterweise war dies erst der dritte Tag einer siebenwöchigen Europatournee, auf der noch viele weitere Türen auf Neugierde warteten. Eine solche Tür wurde bereits erwähnt und betraf eine Praxis, die noch älter war als jede der physischen Türen in Europa, die im Jahr 2025 in verschiedenen Formen weithin bekannt, aber kaum verstanden war. Das Betreten einer Tür ist bedeutungslos, wenn das, was sich darin befindet, nicht erkannt werden kann und wie es uns und unseren Mitmenschen nützen könnte. Das Schlüsselwort hier ist wiedererkannt, und sobald dies durch Übung konsequent geschieht, ändern sich die Dinge tiefgreifend zum Besseren.

Unser Bewusstsein ist der Ort, an dem wir leben, in jedem wachen Moment, jeden Tag, unser ganzes Leben lang. Es verkörpert alles, was wir wahrnehmen, worüber wir nachdenken, woran wir uns erinnern und was wir fühlen, und es ist empfänglich und offen für Veränderungen, je nachdem, worauf wir unsere Aufmerksamkeit richten, selbst wenn es nur für kurze Zeit ist.

Das Durchschreiten dieser Tür ist so einfach, dass sogar ein Baby es tun kann. Wenn wir jedoch erwachsen sind, haben wir im Grunde vergessen, dass das, wonach wir suchen oder was wir fühlen müssen, aus unserem Inneren kommt. Während er in Europa von Hotel zu Hotel reiste, konnte Hartmut jeden Morgen etwa eine Stunde für eine solche Praxis aufwenden, indem er still saß und sich nach innen konzentrierte, wobei er einfache Techniken anwendete, die ihm 1981 gezeigt worden waren und die, vereinfacht gesagt, die Sinne auf das richten, was bereits in uns existiert.

Die Praxis, durch diese Tür zu gehen, erfordert keine Religion oder Weltanschauung, doch viele unterschiedliche Kulturen mit ihren einheimischen Religionen und alten Texten, die bis ins Jahr 1500 v. Chr. zurückreichen, sprachen davon und verstanden, wie wichtig es ist, sich Zeit zu nehmen, um „sich selbst“ tief zu erkennen. Im Jahr 2025 profitieren Menschen auf der ganzen Welt von einfachen Praktiken des „In-sich-Gehens“, des Loslassens, ohne etwas erschaffen zu müssen, einfach nur fühlend und gestärkt in dem Wissen – nicht dem Glauben –, dass das, wonach sie suchen, in ihnen selbst liegt.

Doch das Spüren dieser unprovozierten inneren Schönheit trug oft dazu bei, die Wertschätzung und Dankbarkeit zu verstärken, die Hartmut empfand, während er die Sehenswürdigkeiten um sich herum in sich aufnahm.

An einem Morgen, nach einem anstrengenden Vortag mit einer 10-stündigen Führung durch Ruinen auf Kopfsteinpflaster, beschlossen unsere beiden Reisenden widerwillig, die Tour nach Florenz aufgrund von Erschöpfung abzusagen. Florenz war die Heimat von Michelangelo, dem hochbegabten Bildhauer des David und Maler der Sixtinischen Kapelle in Rom. Ohne dass es einer von beiden ahnte, würde die Reise nach Florenz sie durch mehrere Türen führen, die beide bis zum Rand mit bleibenden, liebenswerten Erinnerungen füllen würden. Als Hart am Fenster ihres Zimmers stand und hinausblickte, bemerkte er unten eine lange Reihe von Bussen, die darauf warteten, sie und andere Besucher für den Tag nach Florenz zu bringen, und da nur noch 15 Minuten bis zur Abfahrt blieben, verspürte Hart einen Anflug von Entschlossenheit und deutete an, dass sie vielleicht doch fahren sollten. Und das taten sie.

Um es klar zu sagen: Diese Europareise im Jahr 2025 war eine Touristenreise, und unsere Reisenden sahen Sehenswürdigkeiten wie Gaudís Architektur in Barcelona, Leonardos Gemälde im Louvre und Michelangelos Skulpturen und Gemälde in Florenz und im Vatikan. Und als Tourist achtete Hartmut genau darauf. An vielen prächtigen Gebäuden in ganz Europa sah Hart eine ungewöhnlich große Anzahl sehr großer Türen aus Holz, Eisen und Bronze, die so gestaltet waren, dass sie nicht nur Menschen, sondern auch Pferde durchlassen konnten, und gleichzeitig das Ansehen und die Macht der Besitzer direkt an ihrer Haustür visuell zur Schau stellten. Architektonische und künstlerische Meisterwerke in Europa fungieren als Tore zur Geschichte mit wiederkehrenden Themen des Christentums, insbesondere in Italien.

In Florenz sahen unsere Reisenden die berühmten, fünf Meter hohen, drei Tonnen schweren vergoldeten Bronzetüren, die zwischen 1425 und 1452 von Lorenzo Ghiberti geschaffen wurden, der 27 Jahre lang an dem Werk arbeitete, das Michelangelo selbst wegen seiner schieren Erhabenheit und Schönheit als „Paradestore“ bezeichnete. Wichtig ist, dass man einen Einblick in den Geist und die Seele des Künstlers erhält, da dessen Kreativität versucht, etwas Göttliches auszudrücken, anstatt nur den Anweisungen seines Auftraggebers zu folgen – sei es ein mächtiger Beamter, Herrscher, Staatsmann oder, wie so oft, der Papst. Im Jahr 2025 werden wahrscheinlich über 16 Millionen Menschen Florenz besuchen, und Rom wird weitere Millionen anziehen, da es sich um die religiöse Feier zum 25-jährigen Jubiläum handelt.

Es gäbe noch so viel mehr zu sagen, aber lassen Sie uns mit dem Vatikan abschließen. Unser Paar war zweimal dort, einmal wegen der Architektur von außen und ein weiteres Mal wegen der Kunst im Inneren, wobei beide Besuche – sowohl im übertragenen als auch im wörtlichen Sinne – einen anderen Eingang hatten. Teilweise aufgrund seiner schieren Größe wird er auch Vatikanstadt genannt. Hartmut kam gerade gegen Ende der wiederkehrenden Feierlichkeiten zum 25-jährigen Jubiläum im Vatikan an, die in diesem Jahr, 2025, mit der Wahl eines neuen Papstes zusammenfielen und im aktuellen Film Conclave recht treffend dargestellt wurden. Einmal drinnen, wirken die Größe des Raumes und die Fülle der ausgestellten Kunstwerke sowohl überwältigend als auch aufregend. Wie die meisten Menschen hatte er von der Sixtinischen Kapelle gehört und Bilder davon gesehen, ebenso wie von ihrer jüngsten Rolle als Ort des päpstlichen Konklaves.

Europa bietet zahlreiche Orte christlicher Andacht in Form von Basiliken, Kirchen, Kathedralen und Kapellen, wobei sich diese in erster Linie durch ihren kirchlichen Status, ihren Zweck und ihre Beziehung zur kirchlichen Hierarchie unterscheiden und weniger durch ihren architektonischen Stil oder ihre Größe. Natürlich stehen in Europa auch Moscheen, Synagogen und Tempel für Gottesdienste und Versammlungen zur Verfügung, wenn auch in geringerer Zahl. Jeder dieser Orte bietet müden Reisenden Trost und Ruhe, oft begleitet von einer Bewusstseinserweiterung und Gefühlen der Demut und tieferer Besinnung, was zum Teil durch die sehr hohen Türme, verzierten Decken und das gefilterte Licht ermöglicht wird, das von oben durch Buntglasfenster hereinstrahlt.

Doch im Jahr 2025 ändern sich die Dinge, und als eine sich weltweit und auch in seiner Heimat Tasmanien, Australien, verbreitende Praxis nimmt Hartmut oft seinen Morgenkaffee und sein Frühstück in einer umgebauten Kapelle ein, die die hohen Decken und verzierten Fenster bewahrt hat und schlicht „The Chapel“ genannt wird; vor dem Eingang steht jeden Morgen ein A-förmiges Schild mit einer anderen Botschaft, die deutlich macht, dass Kaffee tatsächlich fest in der modernen westlichen Kultur verankert ist und auch eine wohltuende Wirkung auf unser Bewusstsein hat.

Zurück zum Vatikan: Es schien, als sei jeder Quadratzentimeter der Wände und Decken mit irgendeiner Art von Kunst bedeckt. Unsere tapferen Touristen bahnten sich ihren Weg durch lange Korridore und Türen zu den prächtigsten Räumen des Vatikanmuseums, wohl wissend, dass Zeit und Energie in dieser unendlichen Parade der Kunst begrenzt waren und dass der Abschluss dieses Spaziergangs unbekannter Länge in der Sixtinischen Kapelle gipfeln würde. Im Laufe der Stunden fragte Hart hin und wieder einen der Sicherheitsbegleiter, wie weit es noch bis zur Sixtinischen Kapelle sei. „Oh, gleich dort vorne und dann links abbiegen“, lautete die Standardantwort, die nach einigen weiteren Malen und vergangenen Stunden fast schon komisch wirkte, da eine endlose Parade unbekannter und kontextloser Kunstwerke unsere beiden Reisenden zu überfordern begann und zu einer Art alkoholfreier, trunkener Erschöpfung führte.

Schließlich durchschreitet Hart eine Tür und gelangt in den recht großen Saal der Sixtinischen Kapelle, deren Decke und eine ganze Wand mit Michelangelos Kunstwerken geschmückt sind, die interpretierte Bilder aus dem biblischen Buch Genesis darstellen und 1508 von Papst Julius II. in Auftrag gegeben wurden. Da er zuvor in Florenz die 5 Meter hohe, perfekte Skulptur des David gesehen hatte, die aus einem einzigen Marmorblock ohne einen einzigen Fehler gemeißelt worden war, bot sich diesmal ein gewisser Kontext an. Dieser Kontext weckte eine tiefere Neugier, und Hart fragte sich, als er direkt nach oben blickte, warum Michelangelo auf einer der Tafeln einen fast nackten Mann darstellte, dessen Hintern dem Betrachter entgegenragt, als würde er einer Autorität den Stinkefinger zeigen.

Auch wenn diese „Hinterteile Gott gehören“, ist dies in der Tat nur eine von mehreren Interpretationen dieser gemalten Tafel, wobei eine andere, wenn man so will, auf eine Rebellion gegen die Autorität seines Auftraggebers, Papst Julius II., hindeutet. Das geschieht, wenn man die Schwelle zum Betrachten eines Gemäldes überschreitet. Was man sieht, ist zum Teil das, was der Künstler beabsichtigt und bewusst im Sinn hatte, aber es stellt, wie alle Kunst, auch eine Sehnsucht, ein Hinterfragen, einen unbewussten Ausbruch einer Wahrheit dar und wird daher von jedem Betrachter auf einzigartige Weise interpretiert. Das führt uns zu einem weiteren Feld in der Mitte der Kapellendecke, einem Tor zum Zeitgeist von Michelangelos Zeit, das jedoch gerade im Jahr 2025 besonders relevant ist.

Stellen Sie sich Folgendes vor: Ein großes Feld an der Decke der Sixtinischen Kapelle nahe der Mitte. Links sitzt ein junger nackter Mann mit gut definierten Muskeln und stattlicher Statur und ruht sich draußen auf einem grasbewachsenen Vorsprung aus, in der Nähe fließt ein Fluss; er stützt sich auf seinen angewinkelten rechten Arm, während sein linker Arm lässig ausgestreckt ist und teilweise auf dem linken Knie seines angehobenen linken Beins ruht. Sein Blick ist etwas auf seine linke Hand gerichtet, deren entspannte Finger größtenteils nach unten zeigen, vielleicht bewundert er diesen Teil seiner prächtig geformten Anatomie. Möglicherweise blickt er gleichzeitig auch in die Ferne, mit einem Hauch von unterschwelliger Intensität.

Rechts von demselben Bildfeld befindet sich ein älterer Mann mit ausgeprägter Muskulatur und markantem, langem, wallendem grauen Haar, der ein fließendes rosa Seidengewand trägt. Er scheint von einem dunkelroten Tuch gestützt zu werden, das als eine Art schwimmendes Objekt in der Luft schwebt. Der Mann hat seinen rechten Arm ausgestreckt, wobei sein Zeigefinger gerade nach vorne gerichtet ist und auf den leicht angehobenen Finger der linken Hand des zuvor erwähnten entspannten jungen Mannes zeigt. Zwischen seinem Finger und dem des jungen Mannes liegen nur wenige Zentimeter. Der ältere Mann blickt intensiv auf seinen oder beide Finger hinab.

Auf dem dunkelroten, wallenden Gewand, das den älteren Mann umgibt, ist etwas zu sehen, das wie eine junge nackte Frau oder ein Mann aussieht, den der ältere, bärtige Mann stützt und mit seinem linken Arm umarmt. Außerdem sind dort 11 junge nackte Kinder zu sehen, von denen die meisten entweder den jungen Mann oder den Raum zwischen den sich fast berührenden Fingern der beiden Männer intensiv anstarren. Einer der Jugendlichen sieht aus wie ein junger Mann in Qual, während ein anderer benommen und verwirrt wirkt. Ein grünes, wallendes Seidentuch schwebt in der Luft und geht von der schwebenden Gruppe aus.

Ohne uns direkt auf die offensichtlichen vielfältigen Interpretationen von Michelangelos Gemälde zu stürzen, wollen wir, wenn Sie gestatten, über andere mögliche Deutungen dieses Werks nachdenken und dadurch neue Perspektiven eröffnen.

Der junge Mann betrachtet seinen eigenen prächtigen Körper und fragt sich, wer er ist und wie er hierhergekommen ist. Ob kulturell, instinktiv oder durch psychologische Projektion – er stellt sich seinen Schöpfer so vor wie sich selbst, wenn auch älter und weiser, und fragt sich, wie er mit ihm in Verbindung treten kann. Er weiß bereits, dass sein Körper altern wird und sein Leben auf Erden endlich ist. Unterdessen ist das Bild des älteren Mannes, den er geschaffen hat – der in der Luft schwebt und sich mitfühlend um den jungen, unschuldigen und leidenden Menschen kümmert –, realistisch gesehen nur durch den Glauben erreichbar.

Doch im Raum zwischen ihnen liegt eine reale Möglichkeit, mit dem in Verbindung zu treten, wonach der junge Mann sucht, auch wenn dies nicht auf Glauben oder Projektion beruht. Dies ist der Raum, der nicht mit Vorstellungskraft gefüllt werden kann, sondern nur erlebt werden kann.

Leider gab das Jahr 2025 den Menschen auf der ganzen Erde – wie schon so oft zuvor, in einem sich wiederholenden Muster – erneut einen Vorgeschmack auf sehr schlechtes menschliches Verhalten, da sich Kriege sowie politische und religiöse Polarisierung an vielen Orten verschärften. Und die Medien trugen nur dazu bei, das Geschehen noch zu verstärken, sodass viele von uns durch den unerbittlichen Strom von Bildern und Nachrichten fast betäubt waren – was erneut zeigt, dass wir einfach nicht aus der Geschichte lernen. Doch tief im Inneren wollen wir gedeihen, in Frieden leben, und Hartmut schätzt, wie viele von uns auf dem Planeten Erde im Jahr 2025, eine harmonische Verbindung zu anderen Menschen.

Zum positiven Abschluss bot die Europareise Hart die Gelegenheit, eine wundervolle Zeit mit seiner Tante in Deutschland zu verbringen, die er noch nie getroffen hatte und von deren Existenz er erst kürzlich dank ihrer Beharrlichkeit und Liebe erfahren hatte. Das Treffen in ihrem Haus, in der Nähe des Ortes, an dem Hartmut geboren wurde und die ersten drei Jahre seines Lebens verbrachte, öffnete eine Tür zu einer alten Sprache, die Hart seit mehr als 65 Jahren nicht mehr gesprochen hatte. Im Jahr 2025 kann Google eine Unterhaltung zwischen zwei Sprachen in Echtzeit übersetzen, und Hartmut war mit einem kleinen Lautsprecher ausgestattet, bereit zum Einsatz, da seine Tante nur Deutsch sprach. Doch als er an ihrem Küchentisch saß und versuchte, sich zu unterhalten, während er an der Technik herumfummelte, fand sich Hartmut plötzlich dabei wieder, seinem englischsprachigen Freund zu übersetzen, was seine Tante auf Deutsch sagte. Was für eine Offenbarung und ein wunderbares Tor zur Wiederentdeckung!

Vielen Dank für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit und mögen sich Ihnen freudige Türen öffnen.

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Warum Reisen für die Gesundheit

Eine Karriere im Gesundheitswesen macht es leicht, die symbiotische Verflechtung von Reisen und Gesundheit zu erkennen.

Es scheint eine natürliche Erweiterung und Weiterentwicklung einer Karriere im Gesundheitswesen zu sein, auch das Reisen einzubeziehen. Das Einbeziehen von Reiseliteratur und Fotografie in meine Karriere im Gesundheitswesen hat sich erst in den letzten Jahren herauskristallisiert, was ungewöhnlich ist, da ich vor Jahrzehnten einen professionellen Fotokurs absolviert habe und das Schreiben seit langem eine schwelende Leidenschaft ist. Doch Reisen und Gesundheit sind wie füreinander geschaffen.

Natürlich beginnt das Reisen zu Hause. Aufstehen vom Stuhl und nach draußen gehen, wo kein Tag dem anderen gleicht und Pflanzen, Insekten und Vögel dich dazu einladen, ihre einzigartigen täglichen Interaktionen wahrzunehmen. Reisen ist im Wesentlichen gerichtete Aufmerksamkeit und Bewegung.

Forschungsergebnisse zeigen durchweg, dass Reisen messbare Verbesserungen in verschiedenen Bereichen der Gesundheit und des Wohlbefindens bewirkt. Studien, die die psychologischen Auswirkungen des Reisens untersuchen, haben eine signifikante Verringerung von Stressbiomarkern, einschließlich des Cortisolspiegels, sowie Verbesserungen der Stimmung und der kognitiven Flexibilität festgestellt. Der Kontakt mit neuen Umgebungen – insbesondere mit Naturlandschaften und kulturell reichen städtischen Landschaften – fördert kreative Problemlösungsfähigkeiten und reduziert Grübeleien, die mit Angstzuständen und Depressionen verbunden sind.

Die Vorteile des Reisens für die körperliche Gesundheit gehen über die offensichtliche Zunahme an Bewegung und körperlicher Aktivität hinaus. Langzeitstudien, darunter die bahnbrechende Framingham-Herzstudie, haben ergeben, dass Menschen, die regelmäßig reisen, ein geringeres Risiko für Herz-Kreislauf-Erkrankungen und niedrigere Gesamtsterblichkeitsraten aufweisen. Reisen fördert zudem die Immunfunktion durch kontrollierte Exposition gegenüber neuen Mikrobiomen und Umweltherausforderungen – ein Phänomen, das manchmal als „adaptiver Stress“ bezeichnet wird und die physiologischen Resilienzsysteme stärkt.

Am tiefgreifendsten ist vielleicht, dass Begegnungen mit verschiedenen Kulturen, Landschaften und historischen Stätten das ermöglichen, was Forscher als „selbsttranszendente Erfahrungen“ bezeichnen – Momente, die das Gefühl der Verbundenheit mit etwas Größerem als dem individuellen Selbst erweitern. Reisen schafft Möglichkeiten zur Erforschung und Transformation der Identität, indem es die alltäglichen Rollen und Routinen vorübergehend aussetzt und so eine tiefere Selbstreflexion sowie die Integration neuer Perspektiven in die eigene Weltanschauung und Lebensgeschichte ermöglicht.

Besuchen Sie unsere sich ständig weiterentwickelnde und wachsende Website Travel for Health für eine Fülle an Schönheit und Inspiration, die Reisen im In- und Ausland von Burnie bis Berlin präsentiert.

This is an essay I wrote and entered in a writers’ competition in November last year, 2025, not long after we got back from a two-month trip around Europe. The brief for the competition was simple - write about your experience that relates to the zeitgeist of 2025. I chose travel, technology and beauty. Writing this essay would also help me integrate a constant flow of novel yet historical man-made artistic and architectural creations while travelling through Europe in 2025

Travel, a feast, a degustation if you like, not so much of food but rather a parade of novel sights imbued with beauty and awe, mostly incomprehensible yet the doorways passed through on the way often evoke new lifetime memories and awaken interests in local culture and so much more. My name is Hartmut, while some of my friends and family call me Hart. The man mentioned in this essay is, of course, me. I hope you enjoy the essay.

This is a story of a young man of 72, who, in August of 2025, decided to step though a doorway that led to a once in a lifetime event. The event lasted two months and was fuelled by travel to lands of his birth, not visited since he came to Australia from Europe when he was only three.

It all began early one morning when the first doorway was transitioned, a brief journey inward, that had been taken many times before and, in many ways, defogged consciousness and freed the man of cognitive unwanted clutter and baggage in preparation for the day and journey ahead. This then led to stepping through the next doorway, the front door of his house as a taxi was waiting outside to take him and his friend to the airport.

Approaching the 80-year-old art deco style front door an exquisite dance of light facilitated by the 12 panels of patterned and rippled glass gave Hart comfort. Leaving the familiarity of home, work, friends and family while jumping into the unknown, was however on his mind as he boarded the first leg of a flight to Barcelona. He felt good about having no expectations while safe and secure due to the meticulous planning over the previous 18 months masterfully orchestrated by his friend and travel companion. Take off on the large double-decker Airbus A380 aircraft was surprisingly smooth and hardly noticeable to Hartmut, in contrast to his first flight overseas in the 70’s when he was thrust against his seat with what felt like a G-force of significant size. So, it began.

What was waiting for Hart was a feast, a degustation if you like, not so much of food but rather what seemed like a parade of novel sights imbued with beauty and awe, mostly incomprehensible yet quickly snapped and shuffled into the cloud for future reminders, debriefing and understanding. Make no mistake, travelling through eight countries via planes, trains, ships, tour buses and taxis places challenges on the human body and mind yet the doorways passed through on the way evoked new lifetime memories and awakened interests in local culture and language, architecture, historical ruins, paintings and sculptures and the geniuses of history who created them. Ancient history literally came to life as the ground walked upon, the air breathed and the sounds heard offered a palpable experience. Every day was planned yet curiosity lead the way through each doorway.

A brief stopover at an art gallery and museum in Melbourne peaked curiosity and lead through an ancient Egyptian doorway where hieroglyphic texts revealed an image of a winged sun disk - symbol of protection by the sky god Horus with other images in discernible order reenforcing Egyptian love of order and hierarchy. This was a good omen for Hart’s almost 24 hr flight ahead even though the tablet that contained these hieroglyphs was used as part of an upright slab of stone to honour the deceased and marked this culture’s belief around 3750 years ago that death was a doorway, not an end. Upon learning this our intrepid traveller was reminded that indeed birth and death form the surrounds of a doorway that ushers in life, a life that is finite yet filled with unimaginable potential.

Then came Barcelona. Travel can be a festival for the eyes. Perception is a common human attribute and the processes behind it play out similarly in us all. Landing in Barcelona and spending nearly a week there allowed Hart to have a taste of aesthetic cognition, with the brain having to switch gears from passive viewing to active engagement. And it felt good, with a lot more to come. Even the shopping mall across from the hotel was a circular architectural masterpiece that had no comparison in the country where Hartmut resides. Walking distance and beckoning in plain view from our traveller’s hotel window was the National Art Museum of Catalonia. Stepping through the Museum’s front doorway accentuated a cognitive wonderland that many humans in 2025 travel and pay good money for. Hart was no exception.

Once inside, a massive cathedral type main hall opens revealing a domed roof with multiple archways containing recessed square panels and exquisite Catalonian colours of orange and rustic pale browns and creams. Light streams in through arched windows positioned on high while huge artistically adorned columns support the heavenly dome. It was impossible to take it all in and Hartmut slowly walked around the periphery of the large space several times, frequently looking up with no awareness of his body and mouth wide open. The hall opened into numerous art exhibitions showcasing Catalunya’s artistic heritage spanning 1,000 years. After architectural satiation our pair of travellers chose to explore the world-renowned Romanesque and Gothic collection of medieval art. Transitioning this doorway unexpectedly ignited interest in the workings of power and religion accompanied historically by an almost uninterrupted stream of very bad human behaviour. At the time however, Hart couldn’t comprehend the unmasked strangeness of what he was seeing.

Picture this. It is a painting. On the left of the painting sits a man dressed in a pointed turban and wearing a high quality long beautifully styled black robe with large fluffy cuffs. This attire covered his whole body except for his hands and face. He is seated on a slightly raised wooden platform inside a building with artistically decorated wall panels and geometrical designed floor tiles. His neck is covered in a red scarf while casually holding a long sheathed red sword in his left hand. His right hand, slightly raised, is controlling the ongoings in front of him like a conductor in an orchestra. He has the look of simultaneous disdain and enjoyment on his face as a group of well to do learned bearded men, all looking down, some possibly clergy, also in long flowing robes and head gear of different colours, seem to be trying to advise him, but he is not interested.

To the right and middle of this scene, the main event is unfolding. Two less ornately dressed men with long sharp beards and eyes intensely pointed at the conductor wait for his commands. Each holds a long stick with a sharp metal three-pronged end that has been inserted into the chest flesh of a young man tied to a wooded X, not a cross. He obviously represents a saint of sorts as he is only dressed in an under garment and has an ornate halo around his head while looking down, sad, but trying to remain composed. This painting is obviously a doorway to another time as it tells a story that at first glance by Hartmut, was incomprehensible and shocking. The skill of the artist to fantasticate the work is indisputable, allowing many souls and minds to question and look deeper. Which is exactly what Hart did and in so doing, without giving it a second thought, stepped through another two doorways, only to have his mind blown. Which is another way of saying his consciousness was imbued with learnings, uninvited, yet embraced, strengthening his footing on this earth at this time.

Hartmut had snapped thousands of photos on this European tour all the while trying to capture a scene, sculptor, architecture, living plant or indeed painting that he was drawn to, a bit like a squirrel collecting and hoarding nuts, not to be eaten immediately but stored away for later sustenance. To help digest and understand the above scene, Hart, like billions of people on planet earth in 2025, asked Ai. There are now several well-developed forms of Ai that can be prompted to give us answers. They all have strengths and weaknesses. At first the scene was described as the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, painted around 1400 to tell the story of a 3rd-century Roman soldier who secretly converted to Christianity and was sentenced to death using arrows by the prevailing authorities of the time – the man with the red sword.

All good, except that Hart couldn’t see any arrow marks in the unfortunate young man. Upon questioning a competing Ai, it was revealed that the artwork was part of a panel from an altarpiece: The Martyrdom of Saint Vincent on the Rack, also depicting a scene around 304 AD and painted around 1350-1370 by the Master of Estopany, an anonymous Spanish painter. Fascinatingly, this later Ai defended the previous Ai model by saying that “ChatGPT’s confusion is understandable because the painting shares a lot of themes with the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian”. Exquisitely presented evidence by the latter Ai confirmed the painting’s identity and its captivating narrative.

In Hart’s search for meaning and truth upon entering the doorway of this painting, something happened that is common when a person’s psyche becomes focused and committed. It’s almost like the universe provides help and more depth in the form of congruent information that feels like a coincidence or synchronicity and for Hart it came in the form of another doorway that most humans on earth traverse daily in 2025. The art and doorway of Film. Again, coincidently, the making of films was promoted and encouraged in November 2025 by the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church in a world-first meeting at the Vatican with representatives of Hollywood’s artisans and producers.

So the synchronicity – a few weeks after returning from the European trip, Hartmut was watching a five-part 2025 documentary on Apple TV about the life and work of Italian/American film maker Martin Scorsese. The last episode highlighted an intense faith questioning film he made called Silence, depicting Jesuit priests sent to 17th century Japan by European clergy to convert the locals to Christianity. Like the Romans in 3rd century AD, the Japanese weren’t having a bar of it and proceeded to shut down the whole country for several centuries and began expelling, torturing and killing Christians, who were perceived a threat to the power structure and existing popular secular and religious belief systems of the status quo. The linking factor between our painting and the film is apostasy.

To apostatise is to renounce or abandon one’s religion or a deeply held belief or cause, and usually in public. Both the film and the painting used torture of a prominent figure of a religion or movement with the aim to break the individual, so they would renounce their faith in public, apostatise, and as a result act as a deterrent to other believers. Cruelly, the aim was not to kill them, as this would make them a martyr and have the opposite effect. By tying St Vincent to the wooden X, and not a cross, which is designed to execute and kill, intensifies the display of the saint’s superhuman faith and endurance. The artist is not painting a historical reenactment, rather the dramatic and famous legend of Saint Vincent, as it was told and retold to inspire faith. Hartmut wondered how much of this dramatic incitement to have faith was still happening in 2025.

Remarkably, this was only day three of a seven-week European tour with many more doorways arousing curiosity to come. One such doorway was mentioned earlier and involved a practice even older than any of the physical doorways in Europe, widely known about in various forms in 2025 yet poorly understood. Entering a doorway is meaningless if what is inside can’t be recognised and how it might benefit us and our fellow humans. The key word here is re-cognised and once this happens consistently with practice, things change profoundly for the better.

Our consciousness is where we live, every waking moment, every day, our whole life. It embodies everything we perceive, think about, remember, and feel and is amiable and sensitive to transformation based on where we place our attention, even for a short time.

Passing through this doorway is utterly simple to such an extent a baby can do it. However, by the time we’re adults, we’ve basically forgotten that what we’re looking for or needing to feel comes from within us. While travelling from hotel to hotel in Europe Hartmut was able to allocate about an hour each morning to such a practice, sitting quietly and focusing within, using simple techniques shown to him in 1981, that, put simply, focuses one’s senses onto what already exists within us.

The practice of passing through this doorway requires no religion or belief yet many differing cultures with their endemic religions and ancient texts dating back to pre 1500 BCE spoke of this and understood the importance of spending quality time getting to deeply “Know Thy Self”. In 2025 humans all over the globe benefit from simple practices of “going within”, letting go, no need to create, just feeling and standing stronger in the knowing, not belief, that what they are looking for is within them.

Yet feeling this unprovoked inner beauty often served to heighten the appreciation and gratitude Hartmut felt while taking in the sights on offer around him.

On one morning, after a gruelling previous day of a 10-hour guided tour through cobble stoned ruins, our pair of travellers decided reluctantly to cancel the tour trip to Florence due to fatigue. Florence was the home of Michelangelo, highly gifted sculpturer of David and painter of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Unbeknownst to either of them, the trip to Florence would lead them through several doorways that would leave both full to the brim with lasting endearing memories. As Hart was standing looking out of their room window, he noticed a long line of buses below waiting to take them and other visitors to Florence for the day and with just 15minutes to go before departure Hart felt an upwelling of agency and gestured that maybe they should go. And they did.

To be clear this European tour in 2025 was as a tourist and our travellers saw attractions like Gaudi’s architecture in Barcelona, Leonardo’s paintings at the louvre and Michelangelo’s sculptures and paintings in Florence and the Vatican. And as a tourist, Hartmut paid attention. Installed on many marvellous buildings all throughout Europe Hart saw an unusual amount of very large doorways made of wood, iron and bronze designed to let through horses, not just people, while visually revealing prestige and power of the owners, literally at their front door. Architectural and artistic masterpieces in Europe act as doorways into history with recurring themes of Christianity, particularly in Italy.

In Florence our travellers saw the famous seventeen-foot-tall, three-ton gilded bronze doors created between 1425 and 1452 by Lorenzo Ghiberti, working for 27 years on what Michelangelo himself called the “Gates of Paradise” because of their shear majesty and beauty. Importantly you get a glimpse into the mind and soul of the artist as their creativity tries to express something divine rather than just follow directions from their commissioner like a powerful official, ruler, statesman or indeed oftentimes, the Pope. In 2025 over 16 million people will probably visit Florence and Rome will attract more millions as it is the 25-year jubilee religious celebration.

So much more to say but let’s finish with The Vatican. Our pair went twice, once for the architecture as viewed from the outside and another for the art on the inside, with each, both metaphorically and literally, having a different doorway to enter through. Due in part to its sheer size, it’s also called Vatican City. Hartmut arrived just near the end of the recurring 25-year jubilee celebrations at the Vatican that coincided this year, 2025, with the election of a new Pope and portrayed rather accurately via the recent film Conclave. Once inside, the size of the space and the amount of artistry on display becomes both overwhelming and exciting. Like most people he heard and seen pictures of the Sistine Chapel and its recent functional role as the site of the Papal Conclave.

Europe provides numerous places of Christian based worship in the form of Basilicas, Churches, Cathedrals and Chapels with the difference between these primarily relating to their ecclesiastical status, purpose, and relationship to the clergy hierarchy, rather than strictly their architectural style or size. Off course Mosques, Synagogues and Temples are also available for worship and gatherings in Europe albeit in lesser numbers. Each one offers solace and quiet for weary travellers often accompanied by a consciousness expansion and feelings of humility and deeper reflection, in part facilitated by the very high spires, decorated ceilings and filtered light beaming in from above through stained glass windows.

Yet things are changing in 2025 as an emerging practice throughout the world and back home in Tasmania, Australia, Hartmut often has a morning coffee and breakfast at a converted chapel that retains the high ceilings and ornate windows and called simply, The Chapel, with an A-frame sign out the front each morning with a different message clearly articulating daily reminders that coffee is indeed well integrated into modern Western culture and also has some pleasing effect on our consciousness.

Back to the Vatican and it seemed like every square inch of the walls and ceilings was covered in art of some kind. Our valiant tourists made their way through long corridors and doorways to the most ornate rooms of the Vatican museum, all the while aware that time and energy was finite in this infinite parade of art and that the end of this walk of unknown length would culminate at the Sistine Chapel. Every now and then as the hours rolled by, Hart would ask one of the security guides how much further to the Sistine Chapel. “Oh, just ahead and turn left” was the standard reply, that after another few times and hours past, became almost humorous as a continuous parade of unidentified and contextually void art began to overload and lead to a kind of non-alcoholic drunken fatigue in our two travellers.

Finally, Hart passes through a doorway and arrives in the largish hall of the Sistine Chapel with Michelangelo’s art on the roof and one whole wall, portraying interpreted images from the bible’s Book of Genesis commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1508. Having witnessed the 17-foot perfect sculpture of David, carved out of a single piece of marble without a single mistake earlier in Florence, some context this time was at hand. This context helped ignite deeper curiosity and Hart wondered when looking straight up why Michelangelo portrayed one of the panels with a mostly nude man with his arse pointing out at the viewer as if giving the finger up gesture to some authority.

Indeed, even though these “back parts belong to God”, this is just one of the several interpretations of this painted panel, with another hinting at a rebellion if you will, against the authority of his commissioner, Pope Julius II. This is what happens when you pass through the doorway of viewing a painting. What is seen is in part what was intended and conscious in the mind of the artist but also, like all art, portraying a yearning, a questioning, an unconscious eruption of a truth and as a result interpreted uniquely by each viewer. Which leads us to one other panel at the centre of the Chapel’s ceiling, a doorway into the Zeitgeist of Michelangelo’s time yet particularly relevant in 2025.

Picture this. A large panel on the Sistine Chapel ceiling near the centre. On the left a young naked man, with well-defined muscles and handsome physique sits and rests outside against a grassy ledge with a flowing river nearby, supported by his bent right arm while his left arm is casually outstretched and partially resting on the left knee of his raised left leg. His gaze is somewhat focused on his left hand with its relaxed fingers pointing mostly downward, perhaps admiring this part of his magnificently crafted anatomy. He may also be gazing into the distance at the same time with a hint of underlying intensity.

To the right of the same panel is an older man with defined musculature and distinguished long flowing grey hair, wearing a pink silk flowing gown. He seems to be supported by a dark reddish cloth acting as a type of buoyant object floating in the air. The man has his right arm outstretched with index finger raised straight ahead and pointing at the slightly raised finger on the left hand of the relaxed young man mentioned earlier. There are only several inches between his and the young man’s finger. The older man is looking intensely down at his or both the two fingers.

On the dark red flowing robe accompanying the older man are what looks like a young naked woman or man that the older bearded man is supporting and has his left arm around. Additionally, 11 young naked children, most of whom are staring intensely either at the young man or the space between the nearly touching fingers of the two men. One of the young people looks like a young man in suffering while another looks dazed and confused. A green flowing silk cloth trails in the air emanating from the floating group.

Without jumping straight into the obvious manifold interpretations of Michelangelo’s painting, let us ponder, if you will, other possible renderings of this work and in so doing allow other doorways to open.

The young man looks at his own magnificent body and wonders who he is and how he got here. Either culturally, instinctually or through psychological projection, he imagines his creator like him albeit older and wiser and wonders how to connect with him. He already knows his body will age and his life on earth is finite. Meanwhile the image of the older man he has created floating in air and compassionately taken care of the young and innocent and suffering, can’t realistically be reached except through belief.

Yet in the space between them lies a real possibility of connecting with what the young man is looking for although it doesn’t rely on belief or projection. This is the space that can’t be filled with imagination, it can only be experienced.

Unfortunately, like many times before, a repeating pattern, 2025 gave people all over earth another taste of very bad human behaviour as wars and political and religious polarization intensified in many places. And media only severed to amplify what was happening, leaving many of us almost numbed by the relentless stream of images and news, reinforcing that we just don’t learn from history. Yet deep down we want to prosper, be at peace and Hartmut, like many of us on planet earth in 2025, values a harmonious connection to other human beings.

Finishing a on a good note, the European tour gave Hart the opportunity to spend wonderful time with his aunty in Germany whom he had never met and only recently discovered existed thanks to her persistence and love. The meeting at her home, near where Hartmut was born and spent the first three years of life, opened a doorway to an old language that Hart had not spoken for more than 65 years. In 2025 google can translate a conversion in real time between two languages and Hartmut came equipped with a little speaker all set to go as his aunty only spoke German. Yet sitting at her kitchen table and trying to converse while fiddling and fumbling with technology, Hartmut suddenly found himself translating for his English-speaking friend what his aunty was saying in German. What a revelation and a wunderbar doorway to rediscover!

Thank you for your attention and may joyous doorways open for you.

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Why Travel for Health

Having a career in human health makes it easy to spot the symbiotic intertwining of travel and health.

It seems a natural extension and progression from a career in health to also include travel. Incorporating travel writing and photography into my health career has only emerged in the last few years, unusual as I completed a professional photography course decades ago and writing has long been a smouldering passion. Yet travel and health are made for each other.

Of course travel begins at home. Getting up out of the chair and going outside where no two days are the same and plants, insects and birds beckon you to notice their unique daily interactions. Travel is essentially directed attention and movement.

Research consistently demonstrates that travel produces measurable improvements across multiple dimensions of health and well-being. Studies examining the psychological impacts of travel have found significant reductions in stress biomarkers, including cortisol levels, alongside improvements in mood states and cognitive flexibility. Exposure to novel environments — particularly natural settings and culturally rich urban landscapes — enhances creative problem-solving abilities and reduces rumination patterns associated with anxiety and depression.

The physical health benefits of travel extend beyond the obvious increases in walking and physical activity. Longitudinal studies, including the landmark Framingham Heart Study extension research, have found that individuals who travel regularly show reduced cardiovascular disease risk and lower all-cause mortality rates. Travel also promotes immune function through controlled exposure to novel microbiomes and environmental challenges — a phenomenon sometimes referred to as “adaptive stress” that strengthens physiological resilience systems.

Perhaps most profoundly, encounters with different cultures, landscapes, and historical sites facilitate what researchers term “self-transcendent experiences” — moments that expand one’s sense of connection to something larger than the individual self. Travel creates opportunities for identity exploration and transformation by temporarily suspending daily roles and routines, allowing for deeper self-reflection and the integration of new perspectives into one’s worldview and life narrative.

See our evolving & growing Travel for Health website for a parade of beauty and inspiration, showcasing travel both locally and abroad from Burnie to Berlin.

This article is in response to clients sincerely asking me about and trying to understand, the vast amounts of information on the internet about protein, collagen, and creatine. Here then we have a presentation that clearly and extensively articulates the health and nutrition knowledge and evidence around consuming protein, collagen, and creatine for optimal health. I chose Kandinsky’s painting above, in part, because it reflects a line/path of clarity rising out of potential chaos.

By Hartmut Michael Günther
B.Sc. Hons. Biochemistry (La Trobe) | Grad. Dip. Nutrition Medicine with Distinction (RMIT) | Grad. Dip. Psychology (Monash)
Biochemist, Clinical Nutritionist, Founder & CEO at Toxtest, Writer & Educator at InnerFood
E: hart@hartgood.com | Mob: 0439 54 7788
© Hartmut Michael Günther 2026 | Last update: March 2026

The Protein Zeitgeist

Something curious has happened in the world of nutrition. Protein — a nutrient that most people in developed countries were already consuming in adequate amounts — has become the centre of a multi-billion-dollar anxiety. Walk through any supermarket and you’ll see it everywhere: protein-enriched yoghurt, protein water, protein cereal, protein ice cream. Your gym bag likely contains a shaker bottle. Your social media feed almost certainly features someone telling you that you’re not eating enough.

Within this broader protein preoccupation, two supplemental products have risen to remarkable prominence: collagenand creatine. (A quick but important note: creatine is not to be confused with creatinine, a different compound entirely. Creatinine is a waste product formed from the natural breakdown of creatine in muscle. It is filtered out by the kidneys and excreted in urine, which is why creatinine levels in blood tests are used as a standard marker of kidney function. They share a name root, but they are not the same thing.) Collagen, once a niche ingredient found mainly in clinical wound-care products, is now marketed as a beauty and anti-ageing essential. Creatine, long a staple of bodybuilding culture, has broken into the mainstream and is increasingly promoted to women, older adults, and people interested in cognitive health.

The numbers are staggering. The global protein supplement market was valued at approximately US$30 billion in 2025 and is projected to more than double by the early 2030s [1]. The creatine supplement market, valued at around US$1 billion in 2024, is growing at nearly 18% per year [2]. The broader US supplement market is approaching US$70 billion [3]. This is not a cottage industry. This is a marketing machine, and it is very good at what it does.

None of which means these products are worthless. Some of them, for some people, in some circumstances, are genuinely useful. But the gap between what the science shows and what the marketing implies is often vast. This article is intended to close that gap. By the time you’ve finished reading, you should have a clear, evidence-based understanding of what protein, collagen, and creatine actually are, what they do in your body, where the supplements come from, and whether you personally are likely to benefit from taking them.

What Is Protein, and What Does Your Body Actually Do With It?

Proteins are large, complex molecules that do most of the work in your body. They provide structural support (think muscles, tendons, skin, and hair), catalyse chemical reactions as enzymes, carry oxygen through your blood as haemoglobin, defend against infection as antibodies, and regulate processes as hormones. You are, in a very real sense, made of protein.

Every protein in your body is built from a combination of twenty amino acids, linked together in specific sequences. Think of amino acids as letters in an alphabet. Just as twenty-six letters can produce every word in the English language, twenty amino acids can produce tens of thousands of different proteins, each with a unique shape and function.

Of those twenty amino acids, your body can manufacture eleven internally. These are the non-essential amino acids — not because they’re unimportant, but because you don’t need to obtain them from food. The remaining nine are called essential amino acids. Your body cannot make them, so they must come from your diet.

Here is the key point that underpins much of what follows: your body does not absorb proteins. It absorbs amino acids. When you eat a steak, a piece of tofu, or a scoop of protein powder, your digestive system breaks that protein down into individual amino acids and small peptides (short chains of just two or three amino acids linked together — too small to have the complex three-dimensional structure of a functional protein). These are absorbed through the gut wall into the bloodstream and delivered to your liver, which monitors and distributes them according to your body’s needs. Your body then reassembles those amino acids into whatever proteins it requires — muscle proteins, enzymes, collagen, antibodies, or anything else.

This means your body doesn’t particularly care whether the amino acids came from chicken, lentils, or a supplement. What matters is that you provide an adequate supply of all nine essential amino acids, along with enough total protein to meet your body’s overall nitrogen needs. This is worth understanding: of the three macronutrients, only protein contains nitrogen. Fats and carbohydrates provide energy but no nitrogen whatsoever. Since nitrogen is essential for building amino acids, DNA, and many other vital molecules, protein is your body’s sole dietary nitrogen source.

DEEP DIVE: Your Body’s Protein Recycling Plant

Perhaps the most important — and least discussed — aspect of protein metabolism is the sheer scale of your body’s internal recycling system. Your body turns over approximately 300 to 400 grams of protein every single day through a continuous cycle of breakdown and resynthesis [4]. Yet the average person’s dietary protein intake is only around 50 to 80 grams per day.

Read those numbers again. Your body is processing and rebuilding four to six times more protein internally than you eat. The amino acids released when old or damaged proteins are broken down are recaptured and recycled back into the free amino acid pool, where they become available for building new proteins. This reutilisation is, in the words of the FAO/WHO, a major contributory factor to the economy of protein metabolism [5].

This recycling system is adaptive. When protein intake is lower, the body becomes more efficient at conserving and reusing amino acids, reducing obligatory losses. The amino acid pool within your body is maintained within remarkably narrow limits, regardless of whether your last meal was high or low in protein.

There are three sources that feed this amino acid pool: (1) dietary protein from food, (2) amino acids released from the breakdown of your own body proteins during normal turnover, and (3) de novo synthesis — meaning “made from scratch” — where the body manufactures non-essential amino acids from simpler precursors, including small contributions from urea salvage in the gut, where microflora can recover some nitrogen [4].

This recycling mechanism helps explain an observation that puzzles many people: how can someone thrive on a relatively modest protein intake? A vegan rock climber, for example, who consumes perhaps 1.0 g of protein per kilogram of body weight from plant sources, is not running on those 60–70 grams alone. She is running on those grams plusthe 300+ grams her body is continuously recycling. Her system has adapted to use dietary protein efficiently, minimise losses, and rebuild what it needs.

This doesn’t mean very low protein intakes are ideal for everyone — particularly not for older adults or those recovering from illness — but it does mean that the body is far more resourceful than the supplement industry would have you believe.

How Much Protein Do You Actually Need?

This is the question at the heart of much of the confusion, and the answer depends on who you are, how old you are, and what you’re doing with your body.

The Recommended Dietary Intake (RDI) set by most government health authorities is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. For a 70 kg person, that’s 56 grams. This figure represents the amount needed to prevent deficiency in the vast majority of healthy, sedentary adults. It is a minimum to avoid clinical insufficiency, not an optimum for peak function [6].

Sports nutrition bodies, including the American College of Sports Medicine and the International Society of Sports Nutrition, recommend higher intakes for active individuals: typically 1.2 to 2.0 grams per kilogram per day, depending on type and intensity of training. The higher end (1.6–2.0 g/kg) is generally recommended for those engaged in regular resistance training or high-intensity sport [7].

For older adults (roughly 65 and above), there is increasingly strong evidence that 0.8 g/kg is insufficient. Age-related anabolic resistance — where muscle becomes less responsive to the protein you eat — means older people typically need more protein per meal to stimulate the same degree of muscle protein synthesis. Many geriatric nutrition experts now recommend 1.0 to 1.2 g/kg per day for healthy older adults, and higher still for those who are unwell, injured, or physically active.

Here’s the critical context: most Australians already consume well above 0.8 g/kg. Population surveys consistently show average protein intakes of 1.0 to 1.3 g/kg per day, with many men consuming considerably more. The anxiety about protein deficiency in the general population is, for the most part, a manufactured concern. True protein deficiency exists — but it is typically seen in contexts of poverty, severe illness, or eating disorders, not in people with access to a varied food supply.

A note on vegan and vegetarian athletes: Current evidence shows that when total protein intake is matched and diet is well-planned, plant-based athletes can build muscle and perform at levels comparable to omnivorous counterparts [8]. Multiple clinical trials have found no significant differences in muscle size or strength gains between vegan and omnivorous groups during resistance training. The key requirements are consuming sufficient total protein from a variety of plant sources, paying attention to leucine-rich foods (soy, lentils, tempeh), and addressing potential micronutrient gaps (B12, iron, zinc, vitamin D).

Protein Powders: Useful Tool or Unnecessary Expense?

Protein powders are concentrated sources of protein derived from animal or plant foods. The most common types include:

Whey protein — a byproduct of cheese manufacturing, derived from cow’s milk. Whey is a complete protein (contains all nine essential amino acids) and is rapidly absorbed. It comes in three main forms: concentrate (minimally processed, retains some fat and lactose, typically 70–80% protein), isolate (further filtered to remove most fat and lactose, yielding 90%+ protein), and hydrolysate (pre-digested with enzymes into smaller peptides for faster absorption). Products like organic whey from New Zealand represent the higher end of the quality spectrum.

Casein protein — also from cow’s milk, but digested more slowly than whey, providing a more sustained release of amino acids.

Plant-based proteins — derived from soy, pea, rice, hemp, or blends thereof. Individually, some plant proteins are lower in certain essential amino acids (particularly leucine and lysine), but blending compensates for this. Soy protein is a complete protein and has been shown in meta-analyses to support muscle gains comparably to animal sources.

Collagen protein — which we’ll address in detail shortly. Worth noting here that collagen is technically an incomplete protein — it completely lacks tryptophan, an essential amino acid that serves as the precursor for serotonin (a neurotransmitter critical for mood regulation and sleep) and melatonin (the hormone governing your circadian rhythm). A protein source missing tryptophan is a poor choice as your primary protein.

When might a protein powder be genuinely useful? For people who struggle to meet their protein needs through whole food — older adults with reduced appetite, people recovering from surgery or illness, athletes with very high training loads, or those in circumstances where preparing protein-rich meals is impractical. A protein powder is a convenient, portable, and efficient way to bridge a specific gap.

When is it unnecessary? For the vast majority of people eating a varied diet with adequate total calories. If your meals regularly include eggs, dairy, meat, fish, legumes, nuts, seeds, or soy products, you are almost certainly getting enough protein without a supplement. Adding a protein shake on top of an already adequate diet does not confer additional health benefits — the surplus amino acids are simply oxidised for energy or converted to glucose.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Protein powder is a food product, not a magic formula. It’s a convenient way to deliver amino acids, but it offers no advantage over whole food sources of equivalent protein. The decision to use one should be based on a genuine gap in your intake, not on marketing-driven anxiety about “not getting enough.”

What Is Collagen?

What Collagen Does in Your Body

Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body, accounting for roughly 30% of total body protein. It is the primary structural protein of your connective tissues — the scaffolding that holds you together. It forms the framework of your skin, providing firmness and elasticity. It is the main component of tendons and ligaments. It provides structure to your bones (essentially collagen frameworks mineralised with calcium and phosphorus). It lines your blood vessels, your gut, and your corneas.

There are at least 28 identified types of collagen, but the vast majority falls into three types. Type I (about 90% of body collagen) is found in skin, tendons, bones, and organs. Type II is found primarily in cartilage. Type III is found in skin, muscles, and blood vessels.

Structurally, collagen has a distinctive triple-helix shape — three polypeptide chains wound around each other like a braided rope. This gives collagen its remarkable tensile strength. The amino acid composition is also distinctive: unusually rich in glycine (about one-third of its amino acids), proline, and hydroxyproline, and it completely lacks tryptophan, making it an incomplete protein.

Your body manufactures its own collagen. It does this by assembling glycine, proline, and other amino acids into procollagen molecules, which are then processed and cross-linked into mature collagen fibres. This synthesis requires several essential cofactors: vitamin C (critical — scurvy is essentially a collagen synthesis failure), zinc, copper, and manganese. As we age, collagen production naturally slows and existing collagen degrades faster. This is visible in the wrinkles, joint stiffness, and loss of skin elasticity that come with ageing. UV exposure, smoking, excessive sugar intake, and chronic stress accelerate collagen breakdown.

Where Do Collagen Supplements Actually Come From?

Unlike creatine, collagen supplements are not synthesised in a laboratory. They are extracted from animal tissues — specifically from parts of animals that are typically discarded as waste products by the meat and fishing industries.

Bovine collagen (the most common) is derived from cow hides, bones, and tendons. After cattle have been processed for meat, the remaining connective tissues are boiled, the collagen extracted, and then hydrolysed (broken down into smaller peptides) using enzymes or acid/alkaline treatment. The resulting hydrolysed collagen — also called collagen peptides — is dried and milled into a powder [9].

Marine collagen is extracted from fish skin, scales, and bones — again, waste products from the fishing industry. Marine collagen consists predominantly of Type I collagen and has a naturally smaller molecular structure.

Porcine collagen comes from pig skin, bones, and rinds. Chicken collagen is derived from sternal cartilage and eggshell membranes, providing mainly Type II collagen.

There is no true vegan collagen. Products marketed as “vegan collagen” are typically blends of amino acids, vitamins, and minerals intended to support the body’s own collagen production — they do not contain actual collagen.

The Digestion Problem

Here is the fundamental challenge with collagen supplementation: your body cannot absorb collagen as collagen.Whether you swallow a collagen supplement or eat a piece of chicken skin, your digestive system breaks the collagen down into its constituent amino acids and small peptides. These are absorbed into your bloodstream and enter the general amino acid pool.

Once there, your body decides where those amino acids go — not you, and not the supplement manufacturer. If your body’s priority is wound healing, those amino acids may go there. If it needs enzymes or antibodies, they may go there. The idea that eating collagen translates directly into more collagen in your skin or joints is not supported by the basic biology of digestion and protein metabolism [10].

Furthermore, because collagen is an incomplete protein (lacking tryptophan and low in several other essential amino acids), the amino acids it provides are not especially useful for general protein synthesis. You could obtain the same glycine and proline from a well-balanced diet.

DEEP DIVE: The Collagen Evidence Problem

A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis published in The American Journal of Medicine examined 23 randomised controlled trials involving 1,474 participants. When all studies were pooled, collagen supplements appeared to improve skin hydration, elasticity, and wrinkles [11].

However, when the researchers stratified results by funding source and study quality, the picture changed dramatically. Studies not funded by pharmaceutical companies showed no significant benefit for skin hydration, elasticity, or wrinkle reduction. Similarly, high-quality studies showed no significant effect. Only low-quality, industry-funded studies showed positive results.

The researchers concluded that there is currently no clinical evidence to support the use of collagen supplements to prevent or treat skin ageing.

This pattern — industry-funded research showing positive results while independent research does not — is well-documented in the collagen field. A 2024 systematic review of collagen and musculoskeletal performance noted that financial support from supplement companies, contributions to study design, and assistance with manuscript preparation were common across the positive studies.

For joint health (particularly osteoarthritis), the evidence is somewhat more promising but still mixed, with some trials showing modest reductions in pain. Quality of evidence remains limited by small sample sizes, short durations, and industry involvement [12].

The practical implication: if you are eating a diet that provides adequate protein and vitamin C, your body already has the raw materials to manufacture its own collagen. There is no strong independent evidence that a collagen supplement provides benefits that a balanced diet cannot.

What Is Creatine?

What Creatine Does in Your Body

Creatine is a nitrogen-containing organic compound — in plain terms, a small molecule built from carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen that plays a central role in rapid energy production. It is particularly important in tissues with high and fluctuating energy demands: skeletal muscle, the brain, and the heart. The heart, as a muscle that contracts continuously and never rests, relies on the phosphocreatine energy system to buffer its enormous ATP requirements, especially during physical exertion [13].

Your body makes its own creatine — synthesised internally (the technical term is endogenously, meaning “produced within the body”), primarily in the liver, with contributions from the kidneys and pancreas. The body produces approximately 1 gram of creatine per day from three amino acids: arginine, glycine, and methionine. An important distinction: while arginine and glycine are directly incorporated into the creatine molecule, methionine acts as a methyl donor — it donates a single carbon-hydrogen group (a methyl group) to the reaction but is not itself built into the final creatine structure. An additional 1 to 2 grams comes from dietary sources, predominantly red meat and fish (a 500 g steak contains roughly 2 to 2.5 grams of creatine). Vegetarians and vegans, who don’t consume these dietary sources, typically have lower muscle creatine stores [14].

About 95% of the body’s creatine is stored in skeletal muscle, with the remainder in the brain, heart, kidneys, and liver.

DEEP DIVE: The Phosphocreatine Energy System

To understand what creatine does, you need to understand how your muscles produce energy for short, intense bursts of activity.

The energy currency of your cells is a molecule called ATP (adenosine triphosphate). When your muscles contract — sprinting, lifting, jumping — they use ATP by breaking off one of its phosphate groups, releasing energy and leaving behind ADP. The problem: your muscles only store enough ATP for about 2 to 3 seconds of maximal effort.

This is where creatine comes in. In your muscles, creatine exists primarily as phosphocreatine (PCr) — creatine with a phosphate group attached. When ATP runs low during intense effort, the enzyme creatine kinase rapidly transfers phosphocreatine’s phosphate group to ADP, regenerating ATP almost instantaneously. This is the fastest way your body can replenish ATP, but phosphocreatine stores are also limited — lasting roughly 8 to 12 seconds of maximal effort.

What happens after those 8 to 12 seconds? Once phosphocreatine is depleted, your body shifts to anaerobic glycolysis — breaking down glucose without oxygen. This system is slower and produces lactate as a byproduct, which accumulates in the muscle and contributes to that familiar burning sensation during sustained intense effort. Beyond about 60–90 seconds, your body increasingly relies on aerobic metabolism — using oxygen to burn carbohydrate and fat for a much more sustained (but lower-intensity) energy supply. These energy systems work on a continuum, not as a simple switch.

This is why creatine is particularly relevant for short, explosive bursts: sprints, heavy lifts, jumps, and rapid direction changes. It is less relevant for sustained aerobic activities like long-distance running, where the body relies on aerobic energy systems fuelled by carbohydrate and fat.

Beyond energy production, creatine draws water into muscle cells (cell volumisation), plays roles in cell signalling, and has demonstrated neuroprotective properties in both animal and human studies. The brain uses the phosphocreatine system for energy, which is why there is growing research interest in creatine’s effects on cognitive function [15].

Where Do Creatine Supplements Actually Come From?

This surprises many people: creatine monohydrate is entirely synthetically manufactured. It is not derived from animal products, making it suitable for vegans and vegetarians.

The manufacturing process involves reacting two industrial chemicals: sarcosine (an amino acid derivative, also known as N-methylglycine) and cyanamide (an organic compound used in agriculture). These are combined in a reactor under controlled heat and pressure to produce a liquid that, when cooled, forms crystalline creatine. The crystals are purified by centrifuge, vacuum-dried, and milled into a fine powder [16].

Quality varies by manufacturer. The best-known premium producer is AlzChem in Germany (makers of Creapure®), operating under pharmaceutical-grade standards. Less expensive products, particularly from manufacturers with less rigorous quality control, may contain higher levels of impurities. Third-party testing (NSF or Informed Sport certification) provides additional assurance.

The most common and best-researched form is creatine monohydrate. Despite marketing of alternative forms (creatine ethyl ester, creatine hydrochloride, buffered creatine), none has been shown to be superior in clinical research [7].

What Happens When You Consume Creatine?

Unlike collagen, creatine monohydrate is not broken down into its constituent amino acids during digestion. It is absorbed intact through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream, and from there it is taken up into muscle cells (and other tissues) via a specific sodium-dependent creatine transporter. This is a critical distinction: when you take a creatine supplement, the creatine molecule itself reaches your muscles whole [13].

This raises a natural question: could you get the same benefit by simply eating foods rich in the precursor amino acids (arginine, glycine, methionine) and letting your body synthesise more creatine? The short answer is no — not to the same degree. Your body’s endogenous creatine synthesis is limited to approximately 1 gram per day, and this rate does not increase substantially with higher amino acid intake. Supplementing with preformed creatine bypasses this bottleneck and allows muscle stores to reach levels that diet and endogenous synthesis alone cannot achieve. This is one of the reasons creatine stands apart from most other supplements: it genuinely provides something that food, even an excellent diet, cannot fully replicate.

DEEP DIVE: Creatine — The One With Genuine Evidence

Of the three supplements discussed in this article, creatine has by far the strongest and most consistent evidence base. It is one of the most extensively studied sports supplements in history.

A brief history: Creatine was first identified in 1832 by French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul, who isolated it from meat. Serious clinical research began in the early 1990s. The first commercial creatine supplement (Phosphagen, by EAS) appeared on the market in 1993, shortly after Olympic athletes at the 1992 Barcelona Games publicly credited creatine with enhancing their performance. It has now been commercially available and widely studied for over 30 years [17].

Athletic performance: Creatine supplementation consistently increases high-intensity exercise capacity, power output, and lean body mass when combined with resistance training. This is supported by position stands from the International Society of Sports Nutrition and other authoritative bodies [7].

Older adults and sarcopenia: A 2025 meta-analysis of 20 studies involving over 1,000 older participants found that creatine plus exercise training significantly improved maximal strength compared to exercise alone. Important implications for combating age-related muscle loss [18].

Cognitive function: Evidence indicates creatine can enhance certain aspects of cognitive performance, particularly under conditions of stress, sleep deprivation, or ageing. Supplementation appears to support cognitive function in populations with lower baseline creatine — including vegetarians, older adults, and those under mental fatigue [15].

Safety (short-to-medium term): A comprehensive 2025 review of 685 clinical trials found creatine supplementation is generally well-tolerated with no clinically significant side effects in healthy individuals. The concern about kidney damage is not supported by evidence in people with healthy kidneys [19]. Those with pre-existing kidney disease should consult their doctor. Creatine causes modest water retention (1–2 kg) in the first week — this is not fat gain.

Long-term evidence and the precautionary principle: It is important to be transparent about what we do and do not know. The longest controlled safety studies extend to approximately 5 years (at doses up to 30 g/day in clinical populations), and the longest monitoring of athletes extends to about 21 months [20, 21]. The ISSN states that long-term use (up to 5 years) appears safe. However, there are no published randomised controlled trials tracking the effects of daily creatine use over 10, 20, or 30 years. Creatine has only been widely commercially available since 1993, and the current surge in mainstream popularity is even more recent. This does not mean long-term use is harmful — there is no evidence that it is — but it does mean the very-long-term picture remains incomplete. As with any supplement taken daily over decades, the precautionary principle suggests ongoing awareness, periodic reassessment, and consultation with a health professional, particularly for those with kidney concerns, taking medications, or with complex health histories.

Dosing: 3 to 5 grams per day. “Loading” protocols (20 g/day for 5–7 days) saturate stores faster but are not necessary — consistent daily use at 3–5 g achieves the same saturation within 3 to 4 weeks [7].

Who might genuinely benefit? People engaged in regular high-intensity or resistance training; older adults maintaining muscle mass and strength; vegetarians and vegans (lower baseline stores); and potentially individuals seeking cognitive support under stress. Creatine is inexpensive, safe, and one of the few supplements where the evidence genuinely supports the claims.

The Bigger Picture: Food First

Your body is an extraordinary biochemical factory. Given adequate raw materials, it can manufacture collagen, creatine, and the vast majority of proteins it needs. The question is not whether these substances are important — they clearly are — but whether you need to consume them in supplemental form.

For collagen production, your body needs: adequate protein from any source (to provide glycine, proline, and other amino acids), vitamin C (citrus fruits, capsicum, broccoli, strawberries), zinc (meat, shellfish, legumes, nuts, seeds), copper (liver, nuts, seeds, dark chocolate), and manganese (whole grains, nuts, leafy greens). If your diet includes these nutrients, your body has what it needs to make collagen. Of course, there is an important caveat here that applies to all nutrient intake: this assumes your digestion is working properly. From the mouth (chewing and salivary enzymes), through the stomach (adequate hydrochloric acid and pepsin), the small intestine (pancreatic enzymes, bile salts, and a healthy gut lining for absorption), to the large intestine (a well-functioning microbiome) — every stage matters. Compromised digestion at any point can reduce your body’s ability to extract and absorb the nutrients your food provides, regardless of how well you eat.

For creatine synthesis, your body needs arginine, glycine, and methionine — readily available in both animal and plant foods. However, endogenous synthesis produces only about 1 gram per day, and muscle creatine stores can be meaningfully increased by supplementation. Creatine is one area where supplementation provides something genuinely difficult to obtain from diet alone — particularly for vegetarians and vegans.

For overall protein needs, the evidence overwhelmingly supports a food-first approach. Whole foods provide protein in the context of other essential nutrients — iron, zinc, B vitamins, fibre, healthy fats — that supplements do not. A protein powder provides amino acids and little else. A meal provides amino acids alongside the cofactors and micronutrients that support their utilisation.

A Note on the Supplement Industry

This article is not intended to demonise any product or company. Many people in the supplement industry are genuinely motivated by a desire to improve health. And some supplements, in certain contexts, provide real value.

But the structural incentives of a US$70 billion industry are worth understanding. In most countries, dietary supplements are regulated far less stringently than pharmaceutical drugs. Manufacturers do not need to prove a product works before selling it. Claims can be vague enough to comply with regulations while strongly implying benefits that have not been proven.

The funding bias in supplement research is well documented [11]. Studies funded by companies with a financial interest in positive results are more likely to produce positive results than independent studies. The 2025 collagen meta-analysis is a stark illustration: industry-funded studies found benefits; independent studies did not.

This doesn’t mean all industry-funded research is unreliable. It means you should look for independent replication before accepting claims at face value. The most powerful tool you have is not a supplement — it’s knowledge.

Bringing It All Together

Rather than a side-by-side comparison that’s hard to read on a phone, here’s a snapshot of each product:

PROTEIN POWDER

What is it: Concentrated protein from milk (whey, casein), soy, pea, rice, hemp, or blends

Does your body make it: Yes — your body manufactures all necessary proteins from dietary amino acids

Evidence for supplementation: Useful when dietary protein is genuinely insufficient — but most people eating a varied diet already get enough

Who may benefit most: Older adults with poor appetite; athletes with very high needs; clinical recovery situations; convenience when whole food is impractical

Can food do the job: Yes, for the majority of people eating a varied diet

COLLAGEN

What is it: Hydrolysed protein extracted from animal connective tissues — cow hides, fish scales, pig skin, chicken cartilage

Does your body make it: Yes — from amino acids (any protein source) plus vitamin C, zinc, copper, and manganese

Evidence for supplementation: Weak for skin. Independent, high-quality studies show little to no benefit. Mixed evidence for joints. Significant funding bias in the research

Who may benefit most: The evidence does not strongly support any particular group at present

Can food do the job: Yes — your body makes its own collagen from adequate protein plus cofactors. A balanced diet with vitamin C-rich foods provides the raw materials

CREATINE

What is it: Synthetically manufactured compound (not from animals) that supports rapid energy production in muscle, brain, and heart

Does your body make it: Yes — approximately 1 g/day from arginine, glycine, and methionine. Diet adds 1–2 g from meat and fish

Evidence for supplementation: Strong and consistent. 30+ years of research. Well-supported for strength, power, lean mass in active individuals. Emerging evidence for cognitive function and sarcopenia in older adults

Who may benefit most: Active individuals doing resistance or high-intensity training; older adults concerned about muscle mass; vegetarians and vegans (lower baseline stores); possibly cognitive support under stress

Can food do the job: Partially. Diet provides 1–2 g/day; supplementation raises stores meaningfully above what food alone can achieve. One of the few supplements where this gap genuinely matters

The question is not whether protein, collagen, and creatine are important — they obviously are. The question is whether you need to buy them in a tub. For most people, most of the time, the answer for protein and collagen is: probably not, if you’re eating well. For creatine, particularly if you’re physically active, older, or following a plant-based diet, the evidence is more supportive.

The most valuable investment you can make in your health is not in a supplement. It is in the quality and variety of what you eat every day. A diet built on whole foods — vegetables, fruits, quality proteins (animal or plant), whole grains, nuts, seeds, and adequate hydration — provides the raw materials your body needs to manufacture its own collagen, maintain its own creatine stores, and recycle its own amino acids with remarkable efficiency.

Your body is not broken. It does not need rescuing by a powder. But it does need to be fed well, moved regularly, and allowed to rest. The fundamentals have not changed, even if the marketing has.

References

[1] Grand View Research. Protein Supplements Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report, 2025–2033.

[2] Grand View Research. Creatine Supplements Market Size & Trends, 2024–2030.

[3] Nutrition Business Journal / Nutraceuticals World, “The State of Supplements: U.S. Market Approaches $70 Billion,” April 2025.

[4] Schutz Y. Protein turnover, ureagenesis and gluconeogenesis. Int J Vitam Nutr Res. 2011;81(2–3):101–107.

[5] FAO/WHO/UNU. Energy and protein requirements. WHO Technical Report Series No. 724, 1985.

[6] NHMRC (Australia). Nutrient Reference Values for Australia and New Zealand. 2006 (updated 2017).

[7] Kreider RB et al. ISSN position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2017;14:18.

[8] Hevia-Larraín V et al. High-protein plant-based diet versus protein-matched omnivorous diet to support resistance training. Sports Med. 2021;51(6):1317–1330.

[9] Shoulders MD, Raines RT. Collagen structure and stability. Annu Rev Biochem. 2009;78:929–958.

[10] Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The Nutrition Source: Collagen. 2024.

[11] Kim M, Shin S et al. Effects of collagen supplements on skin aging: systematic review and meta-analysis. Am J Med. 2025;138(9):1264–1277.

[12] Simental-Mendía M et al. Effect of collagen supplementation on knee osteoarthritis. Clin Exp Rheumatol. 2024.

[13] Wallimann T et al. The creatine kinase system and pleiotropic effects of creatine. Amino Acids. 2011;40(5):1271–1296.

[14] Burke DG et al. Effect of creatine and weight training on muscle creatine and performance in vegetarians. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2003;35(11):1946–1955.

[15] Xu H et al. Effects of creatine supplementation on cognitive function in adults: systematic review and meta-analysis. Front Nutr. 2024;11:1424972.

[16] AlzChem Trostberg GmbH. “How is creatine produced?” Creapure. creapure.com

[17] Harris RC et al. Elevation of creatine in resting and exercised muscle by creatine supplementation. Clin Sci. 1992;83(3):367–374.

[18] Candow DG et al. Impact of creatine supplementation and exercise training in older adults: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Sports Sci Med Rehabil. 2025.

[19] Kreider RB et al. Safety of creatine supplementation: analysis of reported side effects in 685 clinical trials. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2025;22(1):2488937.

[20] Kreider RB et al. Long-term creatine supplementation does not significantly affect clinical markers of health in athletes. Mol Cell Biochem. 2003;244(1–2):95–104.

[21] Groeneveld GJ et al. Few adverse effects of long-term creatine supplementation in a placebo-controlled trial. Int J Sports Med. 2005;26(4):307–313.

About the Author

Hartmut Michael Günther is a clinical nutritionist and biochemist with over 25 years of experience at the intersection of nutritional medicine, environmental science, and human psychology. He holds a B.Sc. Hons. in Biochemistry (La Trobe), Grad. Dip. in Nutrition Medicine with Distinction (RMIT), and Grad. Dip. in Psychology (Monash). He is the founder and CEO of Toxtest and writes for InnerFood on Substack. Based in Tasmania, Australia.

Hartmut offers telehealth and in-person clinical consultations covering nutrition, blood test interpretation, nutrient analysis, and personalised health guidance. An initial 5-minute inquiry is free and without obligation. Visit hartmutgunther.com to learn more or get in touch.

The information in this article is grounded in evidence-based science and over two decades of clinical practice. While written for a general audience, much of what is discussed — protein requirements, supplement decisions, digestive function, age-related changes — has direct relevance to individuals. If anything here has raised questions about your own health, nutrition, or supplement use, that is precisely the kind of conversation worth having with a qualified practitioner who can look at your specific situation.

MORE Nutrition based Articles

This is part of a series of de-identified reports supplied to my clients that showcases the concept and methodology of a transformative Clinical Trial of One. For a full description of this and other parts of this series, please see Hartmut’s clinical website at www.HartmutGunther.com and the details below. This report is supplied to the client usually as a PDF. If you’re interested in engaging in this process, contact Hartmut directly. In this report, the client simply asked or expressed that he was interested in understanding his cholesterol levels and whether he needs to stay on the statin medication. The report is prepared for him with some significant detail, so that he could have an informed and meaningful conversation with his GP regarding the cholesterol levels and the use or discontinuation of the statin. He found it extremely helpful.

Part A: Consultation Summary

The following is a synthesis of two consultations conducted with this client. All identifying details have been removed. The summary is addressed to the client directly.

Consultation 1

You presented with two main concerns during our first session together.

Left knee discomfort. You described pain just below the left kneecap, in the infrapatellar region. The pain appeared to be gradually subsiding at the time of our consultation. The precise structure involved — whether tendon, muscle, or ligament — was unclear, and you were unable to identify a specific trigger or cause. Our recommendation was to monitor the knee over the following one to two weeks. If the pain continued to improve, no further action would be needed immediately. If it plateaued or worsened, referral to an exercise physiologist or a GP with musculoskeletal expertise was advised. It was also suggested that a colleague who sees you regularly could perform a brief assessment at your next appointment.

Cholesterol and statin use. You raised concerns about your cholesterol levels and expressed interest in exploring whether you could safely discontinue your statin medication. A Clinical Trial of One approach was proposed, to be conducted in conjunction with your GP. The proposed protocol involved three steps: first, obtaining a comprehensive lipid panel including all cholesterol sub-fractions (not just total cholesterol); second, with GP approval, trialling a period off the statin; and third, repeating the full sub-fraction blood work after one to two months to compare results.

Nutritional labels. We also reviewed printed nutritional label information provided by a colleague. We discussed how to read and interpret food labels, and you took a copy away for reference.

Consultation 2

This was a shorter, maintenance-style session. You reported feeling well overall and were in good spirits.

Background context. You mentioned having been employed at the same dairy industry workplace for over 40 years. This speaks to stability, routine, and a long working life — relevant context when considering lifestyle factors, occupational exposures, and the role of routine in health management.

Cholesterol — continued discussion. Our conversation centred again on cholesterol management. We discussed the distinction between the total cholesterol measurement taken on-site during your consultations versus the full lipid panel with sub-fractions available through GP pathology. You have been on a low-dose statin (approximately 10 mg) for many years. Your GP has recommended you continue the medication. Importantly, you mentioned that you have trialled discontinuing the statin on several occasions in the past, and each time your cholesterol levels rose — though they remained within the normal reference range even off the medication. This is a clinically significant observation.

You expressed that you do not particularly enjoy visiting your GP but you value having your total cholesterol measured by the on-site colleague during regular appointments, as this provides you with reassurance and a sense of continuity between GP visits.

Part B: The Clinical Trial of One — What It Is and Why It Matters Here

A Clinical Trial of One is a structured, self-directed health experiment conducted on yourself, using objective measurements to guide decisions about your own care. It borrows the rigour of clinical trial methodology — baseline measurements, a defined intervention, and follow-up testing — but applies it to an individual rather than a population.

The concept is simple: rather than relying on general population guidelines to make a personal health decision, you gather your own data, make one deliberate change, and measure what happens. This is particularly valuable in situations where the evidence is nuanced, where individual variation matters, and where the decision involves weighing benefits against side effects — exactly the situation you find yourself in with your statin.

Why This Matters for Your Statin Decision

You have already, intuitively, conducted informal trials on yourself. You have stopped the statin on several occasions and observed that your cholesterol rose but remained within the normal reference range. That is valuable preliminary data. The problem is that these previous attempts lacked structure: you were likely only looking at total cholesterol, and the decision to restart may have been based on a single number rather than a comprehensive picture.

A properly structured Clinical Trial of One changes this. Instead of a single total cholesterol reading, you obtain a full lipid panel with sub-fractions before, during, and after the intervention. This gives you — and your GP — the data needed to make an informed, evidence-based decision about whether the statin is providing meaningful benefit in your specific case.

This approach also respects the therapeutic relationship with your GP. This is not about going rogue or dismissing medical advice. It is about bringing your doctor better data so that the conversation moves from “you should stay on the statin” to “let’s look at what the numbers actually show for you.”

Part C: Total Cholesterol vs. the Full Lipid Picture

When your cholesterol is measured on-site during a routine check, what is typically being assessed is total cholesterol — a single number that represents the sum of all cholesterol carried in your blood. While this is a useful screening tool, it is a blunt instrument. Relying on total cholesterol alone to make decisions about medication is like judging a book by the number of pages — it tells you something, but not nearly enough.

What Total Cholesterol Tells You

Total cholesterol is the combined measurement of cholesterol carried in all lipoprotein particles: LDL, HDL, VLDL, and others. A “normal” total cholesterol is generally considered to be below 5.5 mmol/L in Australia. However, a person could have a total cholesterol of 5.0 with an excellent HDL-to-LDL ratio and low inflammatory markers, while another person with the same number could have a dangerous profile with high small dense LDL, low HDL, and elevated triglycerides.

What the Full Lipid Panel Reveals

A comprehensive lipid panel breaks the total cholesterol number into its component parts. Each tells a different part of the story.

LDL-C

Cholesterol carried inside LDL particles

Often called “bad” cholesterol. Elevated levels are associated with increased cardiovascular risk. However, LDL-C alone does not tell you how many LDL particles you have or their size.

HDL-C

Cholesterol carried inside HDL particles

Often called “good” cholesterol. HDL particles help transport cholesterol away from artery walls. Higher levels are generally considered protective.

Triglycerides

Fat circulating in the blood, largely from diet

Elevated triglycerides are an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease and are closely linked to insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.

VLDL

Very low-density lipoprotein cholesterol

Carries triglycerides from the liver. Elevated VLDL is associated with increased atherogenic risk.

Non-HDL-C

Total cholesterol minus HDL-C

Captures all atherogenic cholesterol. Some evidence suggests this is a more robust predictor of cardiovascular risk than LDL-C alone.

Advanced Markers: The Next Level

Beyond the standard lipid panel, additional markers provide even deeper insight. These can be requested through your GP or a specialist.

Apolipoprotein B (apoB)

The number of atherogenic lipoprotein particles. Each LDL, VLDL, and IDL particle carries exactly one apoB molecule.

Many researchers consider apoB a superior predictor of cardiovascular risk compared to LDL-C, because it directly counts particles that can penetrate artery walls.

Lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)]

A genetically determined LDL-like particle with an additional protein attached.

Elevated Lp(a) is an independent, genetically inherited risk factor for CVD. It does not respond to statins or lifestyle changes. Testing at least once in a lifetime is now recommended.

LDL Particle Number (LDL-P)

Total count of LDL particles per litre, measured by NMR spectroscopy.

More particles mean more opportunities for arterial wall penetration. Particularly relevant in metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance.

hs-CRP

High-sensitivity C-reactive protein, a marker of systemic inflammation.

Inflammation plays a central role in atherosclerosis. Elevated hs-CRP, even with normal cholesterol, may indicate increased cardiovascular risk.

The Key Takeaway

Total cholesterol is a starting point, not a destination. For a meaningful assessment of cardiovascular risk — and certainly for making an informed decision about whether to continue or discontinue a statin — you need the full picture. This means, at minimum, a standard lipid panel. Ideally, it also includes apoB, Lp(a), and hs-CRP. This is exactly what we are proposing as the foundation of your Clinical Trial of One.

Part D: Proposed Clinical Trial of One Protocol

The following protocol is designed to be conducted in partnership with your GP. It is not a recommendation to stop medication without medical supervision.

Phase 1: Baseline (Week 0)

1. Comprehensive blood work. Request a full lipid panel including: LDL-C, HDL-C, triglycerides, VLDL, non-HDL-C, total cholesterol, and TC/HDL ratio. If possible, also request apoB and Lp(a). An hs-CRP measurement adds valuable inflammatory context.

2. Record current statin details. Document the specific statin, the dose (approximately 10 mg), and how long you have been on it.

3. Baseline health snapshot. Note your current weight, blood pressure, general energy levels, any muscle aches or fatigue, sleep quality, and exercise habits.

Phase 2: Statin Withdrawal (Weeks 1–10)

1. GP consultation. Discuss the protocol with your GP. Explain that you would like to trial a supervised period off the statin with comprehensive blood work before and after.

2. Discontinue statin. With GP approval, stop taking the statin. Continue all other aspects of your normal routine.

3. Monitor for changes. Over the 8–10 week period, note any changes in energy, muscle comfort, mood, sleep. Both improvements and no change are valid data.

Phase 3: Follow-Up Testing (Weeks 8–10)

1. Repeat comprehensive blood work. Request exactly the same panel as Phase 1. Aim for at least 8 weeks off the statin to allow lipid levels to stabilise.

2. Compare results. Key questions to evaluate:

• How much did LDL-C rise off the statin? Was the rise modest or substantial?

• Did LDL-C remain within the reference range (as in your previous informal trials)?

• What do the ratios look like? TC/HDL ratio, triglyceride/HDL ratio, and non-HDL-C are often more informative than any single number.

• If apoB was measured, what does particle number look like off the statin?

• Did inflammatory markers (hs-CRP) change?

• How did you feel during the trial period?

Phase 4: Decision

Armed with comprehensive before-and-after data, you and your GP can make a genuinely informed decision. The options include:

• Resuming the statin if the data shows meaningful benefit.

• Trialling a lower dose or an alternative approach and retesting.

• Remaining off the statin if the data shows your lipid profile is acceptable without it, with ongoing periodic monitoring.

• Discussing additional markers (e.g., a coronary artery calcium score) for further risk assessment.

The point is not to prove that statins are unnecessary. It is to determine whether this statin, at this dose, is providing meaningful benefit for you specifically.

Part E: Next Steps and Recommendations

Knee

• Continue monitoring. If the infrapatellar pain has resolved, no further action needed.

• If it persists or worsens, seek assessment from an exercise physiologist or GP with musculoskeletal expertise.

Cholesterol Clinical Trial of One

1. Book a GP appointment to discuss the protocol and request comprehensive baseline blood work (Phase 1).

2. Proceed with supervised statin withdrawal (Phase 2) if your GP agrees.

3. Repeat blood work at 8–10 weeks and review results together (Phase 3).

4. Make a data-informed decision about ongoing management (Phase 4).

Ongoing Monitoring

• Continue your regular on-site total cholesterol checks for trend data and reassurance.

• Keep a simple log of any changes in energy, muscle comfort, sleep, or general wellbeing during the trial.

A Note on Mindset and Autonomy

Your interest in understanding your own health data and making informed decisions about your medication is to be encouraged. You have worked at the same workplace for over four decades, which speaks to consistency, reliability, and the ability to sustain effort over time. These are the same qualities that make a Clinical Trial of One successful.

The relationship between you and your GP is a partnership. The Clinical Trial of One framework is designed to strengthen that partnership by bringing better data to the conversation, not to replace medical advice. Your GP’s clinical experience and your own lived experience are both essential inputs.

There is real value in your preference for regular on-site cholesterol monitoring. The reassurance and sense of continuity this provides is not trivial — it is part of how you stay engaged with your health. Continue doing it.

Appendix A: The Cholesterol Question — A Brief Overview

This section provides a concise, accessible summary of the current state of the cholesterol and statin debate.

The Standard View

The prevailing medical consensus holds that elevated LDL cholesterol is a causal factor in atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). This position is based on large epidemiological studies, randomised controlled trials of statin therapy, genetic (Mendelian randomisation) studies, and imaging studies demonstrating plaque regression with intensive LDL lowering.

Statins lower LDL cholesterol by inhibiting HMG-CoA reductase and have become one of the most widely prescribed drug classes globally. The evidence for benefit is strongest in secondary prevention (people who have already had a cardiovascular event) and in high-risk primary prevention.

The Critique

A number of researchers have challenged the widespread use of statins, particularly in primary prevention:

Absolute vs. relative risk reduction. Statin trials often report relative risk reductions of 30–40%, but absolute risk reductions in primary prevention are typically 1–2%. The number needed to treat (NNT) can range from approximately 40 to over 400, depending on baseline risk.

Primary vs. secondary prevention. In secondary prevention, statins show clearer benefits. In primary prevention for low-risk individuals, the benefits may not clearly outweigh the risks of long-term medication.

Side effects. Reported effects include muscle symptoms (myalgia), increased risk of new-onset type 2 diabetes (approximately one additional case per thousand patient-years), and liver enzyme elevations. The true prevalence of muscle symptoms is debated.

Cholesterol as cause vs. marker. Some researchers argue that elevated LDL may be a marker of underlying metabolic dysfunction rather than the primary cause of atherosclerosis, pointing to the central role of inflammation in plaque formation.

Industry influence. Statins are among the highest-grossing pharmaceutical products in history. Critics argue that industry funding has contributed to over-prescribing in low-risk populations.

Where Does This Leave You?

Both sides have legitimate points. Cardiovascular disease is multifactorial. LDL cholesterol is one risk factor among many. A single total cholesterol number is insufficient to assess personal risk. What matters is the complete picture: the number and size of LDL particles, inflammatory status, metabolic health, and overall cardiovascular risk profile.

This is precisely why the Clinical Trial of One approach is so valuable. Rather than relying on population-level guidelines, you gather your own comprehensive data and make decisions based on what the numbers show for you.

Appendix B: The Cholesterol Controversy — An Extended Review

This appendix provides a more detailed exploration of the cholesterol and statin debate for the motivated reader. It can serve as a standalone reference article.

1. A Brief History of the Lipid Hypothesis

The idea that cholesterol causes heart disease has its roots in the early 20th century. In 1913, Russian pathologist Nikolay Anichkov demonstrated that feeding cholesterol to rabbits produced arterial lesions resembling atherosclerosis. While groundbreaking, critics note that rabbits are herbivores with no evolutionary adaptation to dietary cholesterol.

The hypothesis gained momentum through the work of Ancel Keys in the 1950s–60s. His Seven Countries Study appeared to show a correlation between dietary fat intake and heart disease. However, Keys has been criticised for selecting countries that supported his hypothesis while excluding others that did not — such as France, where high saturated fat coexists with relatively low heart disease rates (the “French Paradox”).

The Framingham Heart Study provided early population-level evidence linking blood cholesterol to cardiovascular events. However, its own 30-year follow-up noted that for each 1 mg/dL annual drop in total cholesterol, there was an 11% increase in coronary and total mortality.

By the 1980s–90s, the lipid hypothesis had become mainstream, reinforced by statin development. The first statin was approved in 1987. Today, statins represent one of the most prescribed drug classes worldwide.

2. The Evidence For: LDL as a Causal Factor

Epidemiological evidence

Large-scale studies including Framingham, INTERHEART, and MESA have shown a statistical association between elevated LDL cholesterol and increased cardiovascular events. A 2018 review described evidence from over 200 studies with more than 2 million participants.

Randomised controlled trials

Landmark statin trials — 4S, WOSCOPS, JUPITER, PROVE-IT — demonstrated that lowering LDL with statins reduces cardiovascular events. The CTT Collaboration meta-analyses report approximately a 22% reduction in major cardiovascular events per 1 mmol/L reduction in LDL-C.

Genetic evidence (Mendelian randomisation)

People with genetic variants resulting in lifelong lower LDL have significantly reduced cardiovascular disease rates. Those with familial hypercholesterolaemia develop premature atherosclerosis. This genetic evidence is considered among the strongest arguments for LDL causality.

Imaging evidence

Intravascular ultrasound studies (ASTEROID, REVERSAL) have demonstrated plaque regression with intensive LDL lowering, particularly below approximately 1.8 mmol/L.

3. The Evidence Against: Challenges to the Lipid Hypothesis

The exposure-response problem

Reviews of angiographic cholesterol-lowering trials found that the expected dose-response relationship is largely absent. Of 16 trials reviewed, only one showed significant correlation — and the only intervention was exercise.

Failed predictions

CETP inhibitors, which dramatically raise HDL and lower LDL, failed in major trials (ILLUMINATE, dal-OUTCOMES, ACCELERATE). Evacetrapib raised HDL by 128% and lowered LDL by 35% with no reduction in cardiovascular events.

Weak attributable risk

Framingham data show hypercholesterolaemia accounts for only 27% of attributable risk in men and 34% in women. In the Copenhagen Heart Study, it was the sixth strongest variable. Asia Pacific data found 0–14% attributable risk across 16 countries.

The inflammation alternative

Growing evidence points to chronic inflammation as the primary driver of plaque formation. Smoking, diabetes, insulin resistance, and chronic stress increase cardiovascular risk independently of cholesterol. Recent research on metabolically healthy individuals on ketogenic diets found very high LDL and apoB levels were not associated with plaque progression when other metabolic markers were favourable.

Pleiotropic effects of statins

Statins have anti-inflammatory and plaque-stabilising effects independent of cholesterol lowering. Some researchers argue that whatever benefit statins provide may be more attributable to these effects than to LDL reduction, undermining the argument that lowering cholesterol per se is the mechanism.

4. Statins: Benefits, Risks, and the Numbers

Secondary prevention

Evidence for statins in secondary prevention is relatively robust. NNT is generally 15–30 over 5 years. Most clinicians agree statins have a meaningful role in secondary prevention.

Primary prevention

This is where debate intensifies. Absolute benefits are smaller and NNT is higher. Recent reappraisals report 10-year NNTs of 15–51 depending on baseline risk. For low-risk individuals, 5-year NNTs can exceed 400. The US Preventive Services Task Force found that statins in primary prevention have not been conclusively shown to reduce serious illness overall in lower-risk populations.

Side effects

The most recent Lancet meta-analysis (2025) confirmed statins are associated with small absolute increases in muscle-related outcomes and new-onset diabetes. No significant excess risk was found for cognitive impairment, depression, sleep disturbance, erectile dysfunction, peripheral neuropathy, or cancer.

The diabetes risk is real but modest: approximately one additional case per thousand patient-years for low-to-moderate intensity regimens, with a 36% relative increase for high-intensity regimens.

Muscle symptoms remain contentious. Randomised trials report no significant difference between statin and placebo groups, suggesting a nocebo component. However, clinical experience suggests genuine statin-related myalgia in some patients.

5. Cardiovascular Risk is Multifactorial

The most important takeaway is that cardiovascular disease is not caused by a single number. Risk is determined by multiple interacting factors:

• Blood lipids (LDL-C, HDL-C, triglycerides, apoB, Lp(a), LDL particle number and size)

• Inflammation (hs-CRP, oxidative stress, immune activation)

• Metabolic health (insulin resistance, blood glucose, metabolic syndrome, visceral adiposity)

• Blood pressure

• Smoking status

• Family history and genetics

• Lifestyle (diet quality, physical activity, sleep, stress management)

• Age and sex

Focusing exclusively on LDL or total cholesterol risks missing the forest for the trees.

6. Absolute vs. Relative Risk: Why It Matters

Suppose a trial finds 3 out of 100 people on placebo had a heart attack over 5 years, compared to 2 out of 100 on a statin. The relative risk reduction is 33%. The absolute risk reduction is 1%. The NNT is 100 — meaning 100 people take the statin for 5 years for one to benefit.

Pharmaceutical marketing tends to emphasise relative risk reduction. Patient decision-making is better served by absolute risk reduction and NNT, because these make the individual trade-off transparent.

For your situation — low-dose statin for many years, cholesterol in range even off medication — understanding these numbers is essential.

7. Where Does the Evidence Land?

• LDL cholesterol is a contributor to atherosclerosis, but not the sole or necessarily primary cause. Inflammation and metabolic dysfunction play critical roles.

• Statins reduce cardiovascular events, particularly in secondary prevention and high-risk primary prevention. Benefit in low-risk primary prevention is less clear.

• Statin benefits are not purely due to cholesterol lowering. Anti-inflammatory and plaque-stabilising effects likely contribute significantly.

• Side effects are real but generally modest.

• The cholesterol debate is not settled science. Claims from either side that the question is closed should be treated with scepticism.

• Individual variation matters enormously. This is why personalised, data-driven approaches like the Clinical Trial of One are so valuable.

8. Practical Implications

1. A low-dose statin (10 mg) is a modest intervention. Benefits are real but smaller than high-dose regimens, and side effects are generally lower.

2. Your previous observations are important. Cholesterol remaining in range off the statin suggests your baseline lipid metabolism may manage adequately without pharmacological support.

3. A comprehensive lipid panel will reveal much more. Sub-fraction data — particularly apoB, Lp(a), triglycerides, and HDL-to-triglyceride ratio — tells far more than a single number.

4. The Clinical Trial of One moves you from speculation to data. Instead of debating whether statins work in general, you determine what happens in your specific case.

5. Your GP remains an essential partner. This framework improves the conversation, not replaces it.

References and Further Reading

A guide to key sources for the interested reader.

• Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ (CTT) Collaboration. Efficacy and safety of LDL-lowering therapy. Multiple publications in The Lancet, 2005–2025.

• Ravnskov U, et al. LDL-C does not cause cardiovascular disease: a comprehensive review. Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, 2018.

• Mancini GBJ, et al. Reappraisal of statin primary prevention trials. European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, 2025.

• Ference BA, et al. Low-density lipoproteins cause atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. European Heart Journal, 2017.

• Demasi M, Lustig RH, Malhotra A. The cholesterol and calorie hypotheses are both dead — it is time to focus on the real culprit: insulin resistance. The Pharmaceutical Journal, 2017.

• AHA Scientific Statement: Statin Safety and Associated Adverse Events. ATVB, 2019.

• The Lancet. Assessment of adverse effects attributed to statin therapy: meta-analysis of double-blind RCTs, 2025.

• US Preventive Services Task Force. Statin Use for Primary Prevention: Updated Evidence Report. JAMA, 2022.

• Razavi AC, et al. Progress in risk assessment and management: Forecasting updates across international cholesterol guidelines. American Journal of Preventive Cardiology, 2026.

• Soffer DE, et al. Role of apolipoprotein B in the clinical management of cardiovascular risk in adults: expert clinical consensus. National Lipid Association, Journal of Clinical Lipidology, 2024.

• Major Global Coronary Artery Calcium Guidelines. JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging, 2022. With updated staging proposal: Coronary Artery Calcium Staging to Guide Preventive Interventions, JACC, 2024.

About Hartmut

Qualifications

B.Sc. Hons. Biochemistry (La Trobe University), Graduate Diploma in Nutrition Medicine with Distinction (RMIT Melbourne), Graduate Diploma Psychology (Monash University)

See Hartmut’s clinical website at www.HartmutGunther.com

How Can We Help?

Four areas of expertise revolving around health are offered by Hartmut:

1. The Stuff That’s Non-Negotiable. The stuff that facilitates joy, meaning and prosperity. Nine non-negotiables including Sleep, Nutrition, Movement, Agency/Action and others. Micro habits leading to sustainable systems. Reach out for a consult. Some of these are covered in the articles here on Innerfood.

2. The Stuff We Need to Avoid. Hartmut is CEO and founder of Toxtest for testing toxic substances. Biochemistry forms the basis of toxicology. Visit www.toxtest.com.au.

3. When Unwanted Stuff Happens to Our Body. Two decades of clinical experience helping clients who wish to leave medication and/or surgery as a last resort. Integrates with evidence-based medical practice. Book a 15-minute introductory consult.

4. The Stuff We Need to Know. Making complicated health stuff simple to understand. Book a consult or inquire.

Cost: Hartmut charges $62.50 AU per 15-minute blocks. No charge for inquiries or a 5-minute Zoom meet-up.

Disclaimer

This document is intended for educational and informational purposes. It does not constitute formal medical advice. The information presented regarding cholesterol, statins, and cardiovascular risk reflects the current state of published evidence and includes perspectives from both mainstream and critical viewpoints.

Any decisions about medication, including starting, stopping, or modifying statin therapy, should be made in consultation with a qualified medical practitioner who has access to your complete medical history. The Clinical Trial of One protocol described in this document is designed to be conducted under initial supervision by Hartmut, or in collaboration with another health professional.

Hartmut Michael Gunther is a clinical nutritionist and health practitioner, not a medical doctor. The recommendations in this document complement, but do not replace, the advice of your treating physician.

We consume menthol in cough lozenges, toothpaste, chewing gum, and dozens of other products every day. It feels harmless — it’s just a cooling sensation, right? But what happens when you consume a lot of it, day after day? And why does your liver care?

The message here is not “avoid menthol at all costs” The message is: understand what you’re consuming, know what it does in your body, and be mindful of dose and duration. This is the same principle that runs through every article in our Stuff to Avoid series — from mercury in fish to cadmium to arsenic to boron. The dose makes the poison. Context matters. And a little knowledge goes a long way.

This article forms part of our ongoing series called “Stuff to Avoid.”

More recently, some of the articles I write are in response to questions clients or readers ask me. Often, I answer the questions there and then but occasionally either I don’t know the answer or the question is so universal and unique that I feel a desire to research, write and publish it, mostly so I can learn but also with the intention that others may also benefit. The previous article on Boron and this one on Menthol are prime examples.

Part 1: A Clinical Trial of One

A client came to see me recently with a question that, on the surface, seemed straightforward. For several weeks while travelling, they’d been consuming large quantities of menthol cough lozenges — the kind you can buy at any pharmacy or supermarket. During that same period, they developed an intermittent pain in the area of the gallbladder and liver. The pain wasn’t severe, but it was persistent enough to notice and unusual enough to be concerning.

Then the lozenges ran out. And the pain stopped. And the client hasn’t resumed and is monitoring the progress.

No imaging was done. No blood tests. No formal diagnosis. What we had was what I’d call a “clinical trial of one” — an observation from a single person, with a clear temporal relationship between exposure and symptoms, and resolution when the exposure ceased. This is not proof of causation. But as we’ll see, the biology makes the connection entirely plausible. (By the way, I will be communicating a lot more about this notion of a “clinical trial of one”)

This article digs into what menthol actually is, what it does inside your body, how much of it we’re consuming without realising, and why the liver and gallbladder bear the brunt of the metabolic load. It’s a story about a substance that’s so ubiquitous we barely think about it — until perhaps we should.

Part 2: What Is Menthol?

Menthol is a monoterpenoid — a naturally occurring organic compound found primarily in the essential oils of plants in the Mentha (mint) family. Peppermint oil typically contains 30–50% menthol by weight. Chemically, it’s a cyclic alcohol with the molecular formula C₁₀H₂₀O. It exists in several stereoisomeric forms, but the naturally occurring and most biologically active form is (−)-menthol, also called L-menthol.

What makes menthol remarkable — and what accounts for its extraordinary commercial success — is its interaction with a specific receptor in the human body: TRPM8, a cold-sensitive ion channel found in sensory nerve endings. When menthol binds to TRPM8, it triggers the same signalling cascade as a drop in temperature. Your body perceives cold where there is none. That cooling sensation in your throat when you suck a lozenge, the tingling on your skin from a muscle rub, the freshness of your toothpaste — all of it is menthol activating TRPM8 receptors.

This receptor activation also produces several pharmacological effects that make menthol genuinely useful: it acts as a mild local anaesthetic (numbing sore throats), a cough suppressant (reducing the urge to cough by desensitising irritant receptors), and a smooth muscle relaxant (which is why peppermint oil helps with irritable bowel syndrome). These are real, documented therapeutic effects — not marketing claims.

But here’s the thing about menthol that most people don’t consider: it is lipophilic. It dissolves readily in fats and crosses biological membranes with ease. When you swallow it, it doesn’t just pass through. It gets absorbed, it enters your bloodstream, and your body has to process it. That processing happens primarily in one organ: the liver.

Part 3: Where Does Menthol Come From?

Scale of Production

The global menthol market produces approximately 34,000 tonnes per year, valued at around $1.2 billion and growing at 4–7% annually. This makes it one of the most widely produced flavouring and pharmaceutical compounds on Earth.

Roughly 40% of global menthol is still extracted from natural sources — primarily cornmint (Mentha arvensis), grown commercially in India and China. The process involves steam distillation of mint leaves followed by fractional crystallisation. India alone produces an estimated 40,000–45,000 tonnes of mint oil annually, with China as the second-largest producer.

The remaining 60% is now synthetic — a dramatic shift from 1998, when synthetics accounted for only about 20% of the market. The major synthetic routes include production from m-cresol (Symrise), from citral (BASF), and from myrcene via asymmetric synthesis — a process developed by Takasago that earned Ryoji Noyori a share of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Synthetic menthol is chemically identical to the natural form and has become dominant due to cost efficiency, higher purity, and supply consistency.

Where You Encounter It

Menthol is in far more products than most people realise. The major categories include:

• Cough lozenges and throat medications — this is the exposure route most relevant to our client’s case. Popular Australian products like Soothers and Butter-Menthol lozenges contain 2–3.8 mg of menthol per lozenge. Stronger medicinal lozenges can contain 8–10 mg each.

• Oral care products — toothpaste (0.2–1% menthol), mouthwash, dental floss, breath strips.

• Topical preparations — muscle rubs (Vicks VapoRub, Tiger Balm, Deep Heat), lip balms, aftershave, cooling gels. These typically contain 1–16% menthol.

• Confectionery and food — chewing gum, mints, some chocolates, ice cream. Peppermint tea contains naturally occurring menthol.

• Cosmetics and personal care — shampoos, shower gels, face masks marketed with “cooling” or “freshness” claims.

• Cigarettes — menthol cigarettes remain a significant exposure route globally, though increasingly banned or restricted in many jurisdictions. Australia banned menthol cigarettes in stages, with the final prohibition on menthol capsule cigarettes taking effect in 2020.

The cumulative effect is important. On any given day, a person might brush their teeth with menthol toothpaste, chew menthol gum, apply a menthol lip balm, and then consume multiple cough lozenges when they have a cold. Each individual product is well within safe limits. But the sum of all exposures in a day — particularly during illness when lozenge consumption spikes — can add up to something worth paying attention to.

Part 4: What Menthol Does Inside Your Body

This is the key section of this article. Understanding menthol’s metabolic pathway explains both why it’s generally safe and why, under specific circumstances, it can stress the hepatobiliary system — the liver and gallbladder.

Absorption and First-Pass Metabolism

When you swallow menthol — whether from a lozenge, a capsule, or food — it is rapidly absorbed in the small intestine. Because it’s lipophilic, it crosses the intestinal wall easily and enters the portal vein, which carries it directly to the liver. This is called first-pass metabolism: the liver gets first crack at processing everything you absorb from the gut, before it reaches the general circulation.

In the liver, menthol undergoes two phases of biotransformation:

• Phase I (oxidation): The cytochrome P450 enzyme CYP2A6 hydroxylates menthol at various positions on the molecule — primarily at C-7, C-8, and C-9 — producing mono- and dihydroxy-menthols and eventually carboxylic acid derivatives. This makes the molecule more polar and easier to excrete.

• Phase II (conjugation): This is the dominant pathway. The enzyme UDP-glucuronosyltransferase 2B7 (UGT2B7) attaches a glucuronic acid molecule to menthol, creating menthol glucuronide. This conjugate is water-soluble and can be excreted. This is the body’s primary mechanism for clearing menthol.

Human studies show that 78–82% of ingested menthol is excreted as glucuronide conjugates within 6–17 hours. Menthol itself is maintained at low or undetectable levels in venous blood, while menthol glucuronide levels are consistently high. This tells us the liver is working efficiently to conjugate and clear it.

The Biliary Route and Enterohepatic Circulation

This is where the story gets particularly interesting for our client’s case.

Once the liver produces menthol glucuronide, a large proportion of it is excreted into bile — the fluid produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder. Animal studies using bile duct-cannulated rats found that 67% of an ingested menthol dose was recovered in bile, compared to only 7% in urine (Yamaguchi et al., 1994). The biliary route is the primary excretion pathway — not the kidneys.

But it doesn’t end there. Menthol glucuronide, once excreted in bile, enters the small intestine where bacterial enzymes can cleave the glucuronide bond, liberating free menthol again. This free menthol is then reabsorbed through the intestinal wall, returned to the liver via the portal vein, and conjugated again. This recycling process is called enterohepatic circulation, and it means that a single dose of menthol passes through the liver not once but multiple times.

In practical terms, this means the liver’s workload for menthol is higher than you might expect from a single dose. Each cycle requires glucuronidation, each cycle flows through the biliary system, and each cycle taxes the same enzymatic machinery. For a single lozenge, this is trivial. For 15–20 lozenges a day over several weeks, the cumulative hepatobiliary throughput becomes substantial.

The Choleretic Effect

Adding another layer to this picture, menthol is a documented choleretic — it stimulates the liver to produce more bile. Rat studies have demonstrated 1.3- to 2.4-fold increases in bile production after oral menthol doses (Mans and Pentz, 1987). Research on peppermint oil — which is approximately 30–48% menthol — has shown that it upregulates the expression of CYP7A1 and FXR, genes directly involved in bile acid synthesis (Zong et al., 2011).

This choleretic property is actually considered therapeutic in some contexts. The pharmaceutical product Rowachol, which contains 32% menthol along with other terpenes, has been used clinically for gallstone dissolution in over 70 countries. The German Commission E has approved peppermint oil for “spastic complaints of the gallbladder and bile ducts.” Menthol decreases cholesterol saturation in bile and increases bile acid levels — both of which help prevent and dissolve cholesterol gallstones.

But here’s the paradox: the same properties that can dissolve gallstones can stress a gallbladder or liver that is already compromised. If someone has subclinical gallbladder inflammation, early-stage gallstones, bile duct narrowing, or any degree of hepatic dysfunction, increasing bile production and bile flow can provoke symptoms — particularly pain in the right upper quadrant where the gallbladder and liver sit.

This is explicitly recognised in medical literature. Peppermint oil is contraindicated in patients with obstruction of the gallbladder passages, cholecystitis (gallbladder inflammation), and severe liver disease. Choleretics as a class are contraindicated when bile flow is severely obstructed.

Part 5: How Much Is Too Much?

The JECFA Acceptable Daily Intake

The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) has evaluated menthol’s safety multiple times. The current Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) is 0–4 mg per kilogram of body weight per day, established at JECFA’s 51st meeting in 1999. This was a significant upward revision from the earlier ADI of 0–0.2 mg/kg/day, reflecting accumulated human evidence that menthol is well tolerated at moderate doses.

The ADI of 4 mg/kg/day was derived from human studies where adverse effects (primarily gastrointestinal) were observed at approximately 2 mg/kg/day, with a safety margin applied. For reference:

• A 70 kg adult: ADI ceiling of 280 mg/day

• A 30 kg child: ADI ceiling of 120 mg/day

• A 20 kg child: ADI ceiling of 80 mg/day

The acute toxicity of menthol is actually quite low. The oral LD50 in rats is 2,900–3,300 mg/kg — making it less acutely toxic than table salt on a weight-for-weight basis. The estimated probable lethal dose for humans is 50–500 mg/kg body weight, which for a 70 kg adult would be 3.5–35 grams — an amount no one would reach through lozenges or food.

The concern is not acute toxicity. It’s chronic, sustained exposure at levels that, while well below the lethal range, may be high enough to tax the liver’s glucuronidation capacity and stimulate bile production continuously. Chronic toxicity studies in rats have shown hepatocyte vacuolisation — essentially fatty changes in liver cells — at doses of 200 mg/kg/day and above in 28-day feeding studies.

Putting It in Lozenge Terms

This is where the numbers get practical. Let’s look at some real products available in Australian pharmacies and supermarkets:

• Soothers Butter-Menthol: 2.5 mg menthol per lozenge. Maximum recommended: 30 per day (adults), 20 per day (children under 12).

• Soothers Blackcurrant: 3.8 mg menthol + 700 µg eucalyptus oil per lozenge. Maximum recommended: 20 per day.

• Soothers Eucalyptus (green): 2.0 mg menthol + 200 µg eucalyptus oil per lozenge. Maximum recommended: 20 per day.

• Stronger medicinal lozenges: some products contain 8–10 mg of menthol per lozenge.

All three Soothers products carry the label: “Not suitable for children under 5 years of age without medical advice.”

Now let’s calculate. A person consuming 20 Soothers Blackcurrant lozenges in a day — which is the stated maximum on the pack — takes in 76 mg of menthol. For a 70 kg adult, that’s about 1.1 mg/kg, well within the ADI of 4 mg/kg. For a 30 kg child, the same 20 lozenges would deliver 2.5 mg/kg — still within the ADI, but now consuming over 60% of the safety ceiling from a single product.

If the same person is also using menthol toothpaste, applying Vicks VapoRub to their chest (which contains 2.6% menthol and is absorbed through the skin), and drinking peppermint tea, the total daily menthol load from all sources combined edges closer to the limit — particularly for children, whose smaller body mass means each milligram hits harder.

Our client’s scenario — heavy lozenge consumption during illness over several weeks — represents a sustained period of elevated menthol intake, likely in the range of 50–150 mg/day depending on how many lozenges were consumed. While this doesn’t approach acute toxicity, it does represent a meaningful and sustained load on the hepatobiliary system.

Part 6: Where to Exercise Caution

Menthol is safe for most people at typical doses. But there are specific groups and circumstances where extra care is warranted:

Children

Children under 2 years: Menthol-containing products — particularly topical chest rubs and nasal preparations — are contraindicated. Terpenic compounds including menthol can cause reflex apnoea and convulsions in very young children due to their immature nervous systems. Cases of seizures and breathing difficulties have been reported following topical application of menthol products to infants.

Children generally: The fundamental issue is body weight. A 20 kg child consuming the same number of lozenges as a 70 kg adult receives 3.5 times the dose per kilogram. Products that are well within safe limits for adults can approach the ADI ceiling for children with surprising speed. The “not suitable under 5 without medical advice” label on Soothers products reflects both choking risk and this dose-per-kilogram concern.

People with Gallbladder or Liver Conditions

As we’ve covered in detail, menthol is a choleretic that stimulates bile production and flow. For anyone with existing gallstones, gallbladder inflammation, bile duct obstruction, or significant liver disease, high-dose menthol can provoke or worsen symptoms. The German Commission E’s approval of peppermint oil for gallbladder complaints explicitly lists these conditions as contraindications.

This doesn’t mean a single peppermint tea will cause a gallbladder attack. It means that sustained, high-dose menthol consumption — the kind of intake that occurs during heavy cough lozenge use — warrants attention in people with known hepatobiliary conditions.

People with Gastro-Oesophageal Reflux (GORD)

Menthol relaxes smooth muscle, including the lower oesophageal sphincter — the valve that prevents stomach acid from flowing back into the oesophagus. This is why peppermint is on the “avoid” list for people with reflux, and why enteric-coated peppermint oil capsules (which bypass the oesophagus and dissolve in the intestine) were developed for IBS treatment.

Chronic Heavy Users

There are documented case reports in the medical literature of harm from chronic excessive menthol intake. One widely cited case (published in Emergency Medicine Journal) described a man who consumed two bags of menthol drops daily for 20 years and developed skin damage, gastrointestinal disturbance, neurological symptoms, and kidney failure. A case of liver cirrhosis attributed to chronic excessive menthol intake has also been reported.

These are extreme cases. But they illustrate an important principle from toxicology: dose and duration matter. A substance that is perfectly safe at normal levels of consumption can cause real harm when consumed in excess over long periods. This is the same principle we explored in our boron article — Paracelsus’s foundational insight that the dose makes the poison.

Part 7: Back to Our Client

Let’s return to the clinical trial of one. Our client consumed large quantities of menthol cough lozenges over several weeks while travelling and developed intermittent pain in the gallbladder/liver area. The pain resolved when the lozenges ran out.

Is there a biologically plausible mechanism? Yes, clearly. Multiple mechanisms, in fact:

1. Each lozenge delivers menthol that is absorbed, taken to the liver, and conjugated via glucuronidation.

2. The primary excretion route is biliary — 67% of the dose passes through the bile system.

3. Enterohepatic circulation means each dose is recycled through the liver multiple times.

4. Menthol stimulates bile production (choleretic effect) by 1.3–2.4 fold.

5. Sustained high intake over weeks means sustained biliary throughput and sustained choleretic stimulation.

6. This combination can provoke symptoms in the gallbladder/liver area, particularly if there is any pre-existing subclinical vulnerability.

Does this prove that the lozenges caused the pain? No. A clinical trial of one is an observation, not a controlled experiment. The pain could have been coincidental. But the temporal relationship (exposure → symptoms → cessation of exposure → resolution of symptoms) combined with a clear biological mechanism makes it a reasonable working hypothesis.

What it should do is prompt two things: awareness that cough lozenges are not inert, and consideration of further investigation if the symptoms recur.

Part 8: Practical Recommendations

Based on the evidence, here is what we recommend:

1. Be aware of cumulative dose. No single menthol product is likely to cause harm in a healthy adult. But if you’re consuming multiple menthol-containing products daily — lozenges plus toothpaste plus chest rub plus tea — the total intake adds up. During periods of illness when lozenge use is heavy, this is especially worth keeping in mind.

2. Respect the recommended maximums on packaging. Those numbers exist for a reason. For Soothers Blackcurrant, the limit is 20 per day. For Butter-Menthol, it’s 30. Don’t treat them as sweets.

3. Exercise particular caution with children. Children under 2 should not be given menthol products. Children under 5 should only use them with medical advice (as the labels state). For older children, remember that the same number of lozenges delivers a proportionally higher dose per kilogram of body weight.

4. If you have gallbladder or liver conditions, consider your menthol intake. This includes gallstones, cholecystitis, bile duct issues, or any form of hepatic compromise. Sustained high-dose menthol use may provoke or worsen symptoms through its choleretic and biliary effects.

5. If you experience unexplained right upper quadrant pain during heavy menthol use, make the connection. Most people — and indeed many practitioners — would not think to link cough lozenges with gallbladder or liver symptoms. Being aware of this possibility is the first step.

6. Consult a healthcare professional if you have specific concerns about your gallbladder, liver function, or menthol exposure. Imaging, liver function tests, and a review of your medication and supplement intake can provide clarity. Or book a consult at our online clinic at Hartgood with Hartmut.

The Bigger Picture

This article has traced the journey of a single compound — from a mint leaf in India to a factory in Germany to a lozenge wrapper in an Australian supermarket to the inside of a human liver. Along the way, we’ve seen that menthol is:

• Genuinely useful — its anaesthetic, antitussive, and antispasmodic properties are well documented and clinically applied.

• Generally safe — the ADI of 4 mg/kg/day provides a generous margin for typical consumption, and acute toxicity is very low.

• Not inert — it undergoes extensive hepatic metabolism, is primarily excreted through the biliary system, undergoes enterohepatic recycling, and has documented choleretic properties that can be clinically relevant.

The message is not “avoid menthol.” The message is: understand what you’re consuming, know what it does in your body, and be mindful of dose and duration. This is the same principle that runs through every article in our Stuff to Avoid series — from mercury in fish to cadmium to arsenic to boron. The dose makes the poison. Context matters. And a little knowledge goes a long way.

Stay informed, stay curious, and if something doesn’t feel right — whether it’s a pain that appears when you start something new or disappears when you stop — pay attention. Your body is running its own clinical trial, and it’s worth listening to the results.

This article forms part of our ongoing series called “Stuff to Avoid” on InnerFood.

For testing services: www.toxtest.com.au

For substance profiles: www.toxno.com.au

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Glossary

Chemical and pharmacological terms used in this article, explained in plain language.

Chemical and Pharmacological Terms

Monoterpenoid

A class of naturally occurring organic compounds derived from two isoprene units (10 carbon atoms). Menthol is a cyclic monoterpenoid alcohol. Other common monoterpenoids include camphor, eucalyptol, and limonene.

Lipophilic

“Fat-loving” — a substance that dissolves readily in fats and lipids rather than water. Lipophilic compounds cross biological membranes easily, which is why menthol is rapidly absorbed from the gut and readily penetrates skin.

Stereoisomer

Molecules with the same chemical formula and bonding but different three-dimensional arrangement. (−)-Menthol (L-menthol) is the naturally occurring form with the strongest cooling effect. Other stereoisomers have weaker or different biological activity.

TRPM8

Transient Receptor Potential Melastatin 8. A cold-sensitive ion channel found in sensory neurons. When activated by cold temperatures (below ~26°C) or by menthol, it sends a “cold” signal to the brain. This is the molecular basis of menthol’s cooling sensation.

Choleretic

A substance that stimulates the liver to produce more bile. Menthol, menthone, and limonene are all choleretics. Useful therapeutically for gallstone dissolution but contraindicated in gallbladder obstruction or severe liver disease.

Cholagogue

A substance that stimulates gallbladder contraction to promote bile flow into the intestine. Related to but distinct from choleretics (which increase bile production by the liver). Some substances, including peppermint oil components, have both effects.

Enterohepatic Circulation

The recycling of substances between the liver and the intestine. A compound is excreted in bile, travels to the intestine, is reabsorbed, and returns to the liver via the portal vein for further processing. This effectively increases the liver’s exposure to a substance beyond what a single pass would deliver.

Local Anaesthetic

A substance that reversibly blocks nerve signal transmission in a specific area, producing numbness. Menthol’s mild local anaesthetic effect is why it helps soothe sore throats.

Antitussive

A substance that suppresses the cough reflex. Menthol acts as an antitussive by desensitising irritant receptors in the airways via TRPM8 activation.

Antispasmodic

A substance that relaxes smooth muscle, reducing spasms. Menthol’s antispasmodic effect on intestinal smooth muscle is the basis for peppermint oil capsules used in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) treatment.

Metabolic and Biochemical Terms

First-Pass Metabolism

The process by which a substance absorbed from the gut is metabolised by the liver before reaching the general circulation. Blood from the intestines flows directly to the liver via the portal vein, giving the liver “first pass” at processing ingested compounds.

Glucuronidation

A Phase II metabolic reaction in which a glucuronic acid molecule is attached to a substance, making it more water-soluble and easier to excrete. This is the primary way the liver processes menthol. The enzyme responsible is UGT2B7.

CYP2A6

A cytochrome P450 enzyme in the liver that oxidises menthol (Phase I metabolism). Part of a large family of enzymes responsible for metabolising drugs, toxins, and endogenous compounds.

UGT2B7

UDP-glucuronosyltransferase 2B7. The specific liver enzyme that conjugates menthol with glucuronic acid (Phase II metabolism). The dominant pathway for menthol clearance.

Menthol Glucuronide

The water-soluble conjugate formed when the liver attaches glucuronic acid to menthol. This is the primary metabolite found in bile and urine after menthol ingestion.

Hepatobiliary

Relating to the liver (hepato-) and the bile system (biliary), including the gallbladder and bile ducts. The hepatobiliary system is the primary route for menthol metabolism and excretion.

CYP7A1

Cholesterol 7α-hydroxylase. A liver enzyme that is the rate-limiting step in bile acid synthesis. Peppermint oil has been shown to upregulate CYP7A1 expression, which is part of its choleretic mechanism.

FXR

Farnesoid X Receptor. A nuclear receptor in the liver involved in bile acid homeostasis. Peppermint oil upregulates FXR expression, contributing to increased bile acid production.

Hepatocyte Vacuolisation

The formation of small vacuoles (fluid-filled spaces) within liver cells, often representing fatty changes. Observed in chronic toxicity studies of menthol at high doses (200+ mg/kg/day in rats). An indicator of hepatic stress.

Regulatory and Safety Terms

ADI

Acceptable Daily Intake. The amount of a substance that can be consumed daily over a lifetime without appreciable health risk. Set by JECFA. Menthol’s ADI is 0–4 mg/kg body weight per day.

JECFA

Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives. The international scientific body that evaluates the safety of food additives, contaminants, and naturally occurring toxicants, and sets ADI values.

LD50

Lethal Dose 50%. The single dose that would kill 50% of a test population. Menthol’s oral LD50 in rats is 2,900–3,300 mg/kg — indicating low acute toxicity.

Contraindication

A condition or factor that makes a particular treatment or procedure inadvisable. Menthol/peppermint oil is contraindicated in gallbladder obstruction, cholecystitis, and severe liver disease.

German Commission E

An expert committee of the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices that evaluated the safety and efficacy of herbal medicines. Its monographs remain influential reference documents for herbal therapeutics, including peppermint oil.

Medical Terms

Cholecystitis

Inflammation of the gallbladder, usually caused by gallstones blocking the cystic duct. Symptoms include severe right upper quadrant pain, nausea, and fever. Choleretics including menthol are contraindicated.

Cholestasis

A condition in which the flow of bile from the liver is reduced or blocked. Can be caused by gallstones, tumours, or liver disease. Choleretics should not be used when bile flow is severely obstructed.

Lower Oesophageal Sphincter

The muscular valve between the oesophagus and the stomach that prevents acid reflux. Menthol relaxes this sphincter, which is why peppermint products can worsen gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD).

GORD

Gastro-Oesophageal Reflux Disease (also GERD in American English). A chronic condition where stomach acid flows back into the oesophagus, causing heartburn and potential damage. Menthol can exacerbate GORD symptoms.

Reflex Apnoea

A temporary cessation of breathing triggered by stimulation of sensory receptors in the airways. In infants, strong terpenic compounds like menthol can trigger this reflex, which is why menthol products are contraindicated in children under 2.

Right Upper Quadrant

The area of the abdomen beneath the right rib cage, where the liver and gallbladder are located. Pain in this area was the presenting symptom in our client’s case.

Also see previous article…

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The anthology of photos presented in this series of articles showcases the author’s journey through Europe’s galleries, architecture, ruins, history and culture in 2025. These images capture moments of wonder, unfettered curiosity, and learning for our travellers, yet of course each person who travels will have their own curiosities and unique experience. We hope that these photos and the educational commentaries and observations connected to them, inspire you to travel some time and enhance your joie de vivre.

Also please note that we have just launched our NEW Travel for Health website. It is absolutely the most gorgeous parade of images, countries, architecture and beauty.

The whole presentation drips with gorgeousness to reflect the content.

So far, all the articles here on Substack are also there, albeit, more delicious & more coming shortly. Check it out! You won’t be disappointed.

Travel for Health

TRAVEL FOR HEALTH — SERIES 2

Kuşadası, Ephesus &
the Magic Carpets of Türkiye

Where ancient ruins meet living traditions on the Aegean coast

Kuşadası & Ephesus, Aegean Türkiye

I had never been to Türkiye before. Travelling from Mykonos to the port of Kuşadası in Türkiye by boat was wonderful, and as we only had the day there, a bus took us early in the morning to explore the surrounds and the archaeological ruins of Ephesus.

Some of the images are a little on the blue side, and that is because they were taken from the bus that had a blue filtering tinge to the windows. This stays true to the intent of this whole photojournalistic exploration — to leave all images unedited and unchanged, taken with an iPhone 13 Pro camera spontaneously, as any traveller or tourist would see the view and perspective in front of them. As it’s impossible to choreograph the progression of all these images on this journey, having a simple smartphone camera always on hand works exceptionally well.

Near the end of this day, we visited a Turkish carpet manufacturing, sales, and exhibition facility that was jaw-dropping — see some of the images at the end of the article. And right at the end, because Turkey is a substantial exporter of figs, and as my career path is in nutrition and health, we show how these figs are actually made available in Australia and provide some nutrition information. Enjoy! Comments are welcome.

Five Millennia of Knotted History

From the frozen tombs of Siberia to the silk looms of Anatolia — the extraordinary lineage of the Turkish carpet

The art of carpet weaving is among the oldest continuous craft traditions on Earth. The earliest surviving hand-knotted pile carpet — the Pazyryk Rug, radiocarbon-dated to the 5th century BCE — was discovered frozen in the burial tomb of a Scythian prince in Siberia’s Altai Mountains and is now preserved at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Remarkably, this 2,500-year-old carpet was woven using the symmetrical double knot — the same technique still known today as the “Turkish” or “Gördes” knot — and contains over 1.25 million knots across its surface. The sophistication of its design, featuring horsemen, griffins, and fallow deer, suggests that carpet weaving was already an ancient and highly developed art form even then, with origins stretching back perhaps four thousand years or more.

When Turkic peoples migrated from Central Asia into Anatolia beginning in the 11th century, they brought this weaving tradition with them. The Seljuk Turks, who established their Sultanate of Rum with its capital at Konya, produced some of the earliest distinctly “Turkish” carpets — fragments of which survive in the Alaeddin Mosque in Konya and in the Ethnography Museum in Ankara. These 13th-century pieces, with their bold geometric designs in vivid reds, blues, and ivories, established the aesthetic vocabulary that would define Anatolian carpet making for centuries. Marco Polo, travelling through the region around 1271, recorded that the Turks produced “the finest and handsomest carpets in the world.”

Under the Ottoman Empire (1299–1922), carpet production reached extraordinary heights of refinement. The imperial workshops at Hereke, established by Sultan Abdülmecid I in 1843 near the Sea of Marmara, produced silk carpets of legendary fineness — some achieving knot densities exceeding 1,000 knots per square centimetre, visible only under magnification. These carpets were woven exclusively for the Ottoman court and as diplomatic gifts; today, authentic Hereke silk carpets are among the most valuable textiles ever produced. The natural dyes used in traditional Turkish carpets — madder root for red, indigo for blue, saffron and pomegranate for yellow, walnut husks for brown — create colours of remarkable depth and longevity. The fermentation process required to fix these dyes could take months, and the resulting colours often improve with age, developing a lustrous patina that synthetic dyes cannot replicate.

Each region of Anatolia developed distinctive carpet traditions reflecting local materials, tribal affiliations, and symbolic vocabularies. Carpets from Bergama (ancient Pergamon) favour bold, large-scale geometric medallions in deep reds. Milas carpets are known for their prayer-niche designs in warm tobacco browns and golds. The double-knotted carpets of Kayseri display elaborate curvilinear floral patterns influenced by Persian design. Nomadic and village weavers throughout eastern Anatolia produced kilims — flat-woven textiles without pile — featuring symbolic motifs encoding fertility, protection from the evil eye, and tribal identity. The Turkish expression “Ellerinize sağlık” — “May your hands be healthy” — traditionally offered to weavers and cooks alike, acknowledges that the finest Turkish carpets are products not merely of skill but of physical endurance, with a single silk carpet of moderate size requiring six to twelve months of daily labour.

Arrival in Kuşadası

Where the Aegean coast greets travellers at the gateway to ancient Ephesus

PHOTOGRAPH 01 | IMG_8390

Kuşadası Port & the Turkish Flag

Location: Kuşadası Cruise Port, Türkiye | Subject: Harbour and Turkish National Flag

The Turkish national flag — its white crescent and star on a crimson field — frames the view of Kuşadası’s cruise port, where a large vessel is moored against the Aegean waterfront. Kuşadası, whose name translates as “Bird Island,” serves as the primary cruise port for visitors to ancient Ephesus, approximately 18 kilometres inland. The town has grown from a small fishing village to a major tourism hub serving over two million cruise passengers annually, making it one of the busiest ports in the eastern Mediterranean.

The harbour’s natural advantages were recognised in antiquity: Venetian and Genoese traders maintained warehouses here during the medieval period, and the Ottoman corsair Barbaros Hayreddin Paşa (Barbarossa) used the bay as a naval base in the 16th century. The modern town sprawls along the hillsides above the waterfront, its white-walled apartment buildings and resort hotels reflecting the typical development pattern of Turkish coastal tourism towns.

PHOTOGRAPH 02 | IMG_8401

KUŞADASI — The Hillside Sign & Atatürk Monument

Location: Kuşadası, Türkiye | Subject: City Name Sign and Monument

The name “KUŞADASI” emblazoned on the hillside above the town follows a tradition common throughout Türkiye of marking civic identity on the landscape. Nearby, a monument to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 — reflects his omnipresence in Turkish public life. Atatürk’s sweeping modernisation reforms transformed the former Ottoman Empire into a secular republic, and his image appears in virtually every Turkish town, school, and government building.

The surrounding landscape of Mediterranean scrub and scattered development illustrates the tension between tourism-driven urbanisation and the natural coastal environment. Kuşadası’s permanent population of approximately 113,000 can swell to several times that number during the summer tourist season, placing considerable pressure on the town’s infrastructure and water resources.

The Road to Ephesus

Through Mediterranean pine forests and the fertile Küçük Menderes valley toward the ancient city

PHOTOGRAPH 03 | IMG_8196

Mediterranean Forest & Mountain Landscape

Location: Kuşadası–Selçuk Road, Türkiye | Subject: Aegean Coastal Mountains

The pine-clad mountains rising behind the Kuşadası coastline represent the western reaches of the Aydın Mountains (Messogis range), which form a natural barrier between the Aegean littoral and the interior Anatolian plateau. The dense Mediterranean forest cover — predominantly Turkish red pine (Pinus brutia) interspersed with maquis scrubland — blankets the hillsides, providing habitat for diverse wildlife including wild boar, golden jackals, and numerous raptor species.

This landscape would have appeared broadly similar to ancient travellers approaching Ephesus from the coast, though the city’s harbour has long since silted up — the ancient shoreline now lies approximately eight kilometres inland from the modern coast, a dramatic geological transformation caused by sediment deposited by the Küçük Menderes (Lesser Meander) River over two millennia.

PHOTOGRAPH 04 | IMG_8272

The Küçük Menderes Valley

Location: Selçuk District, Türkiye | Subject: Valley Panorama

The broad sweep of the Küçük Menderes (Lesser Meander) valley extends toward the Aegean, its alluvial plain supporting a patchwork of olive, citrus, and fig orchards. This river — whose ancient Greek name, Kaystros, appears frequently in classical literature — created the fertile agricultural landscape that sustained Ephesus as one of the wealthiest cities in the Roman world. The English word “meander” derives from the nearby Büyük Menderes (Greater Meander) River, whose serpentine course through similar terrain inspired the geographical term.

The valley’s agricultural productivity remains significant today: the Aydın province in which it lies is Türkiye’s largest fig-producing region, accounting for over 60 percent of national production and a substantial share of global fig exports. The terraced hillsides visible in the distance bear the marks of centuries of cultivation on this generous but demanding landscape.

PHOTOGRAPH 05 | IMG_8260

Mediterranean Pine Framing the Valley

Location: Selçuk District, Türkiye | Subject: Turkish Red Pine and Valley Vista

A mature Turkish red pine (Pinus brutia) frames a vista across the valley toward the distant Aegean. This species dominates the coastal forests of western Anatolia, its drought-resistant nature and tolerance of poor soils making it ideally suited to the Mediterranean climate of hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters. The tree’s resin was historically tapped for use in shipbuilding, turpentine production, and the flavouring of retsina wine — a practice more associated with Greece but known throughout the Aegean region.

The forest canopy along this route provides welcome shade for travellers ascending toward the House of the Virgin Mary (Meryemana), situated on Bülbül Dağ (Nightingale Mountain) at an elevation of approximately 420 metres above sea level. The microclimate created by the dense tree cover produces temperatures several degrees cooler than the exposed archaeological site of Ephesus below.

Meryemana — House of the Virgin Mary

A pilgrimage site shared by Christians and Muslims on the mountain above Ephesus

PHOTOGRAPH 06 | IMG_8213

Meryemana — The Shrine’s History

Location: Meryemana, Selçuk | Subject: Site Information and Historical Context

An information board at the Meryemana shrine provides historical context for one of Türkiye’s most unusual pilgrimage sites. According to tradition, the Apostle John brought the Virgin Mary to Ephesus after the Crucifixion, and she lived out her remaining years in a small stone house on what is now called Bülbül Dağ (Nightingale Mountain). The site was “rediscovered” in 1891 following visions reported by the German mystic Anna Katharina Emmerich (1774–1824), whose detailed descriptions of a house on a mountain near Ephesus guided the Lazarist priests who found the ruins.

Archaeological investigation has confirmed that the chapel’s foundations incorporate stonework from the 1st century CE, lending some support to the tradition of early habitation. Pope Paul VI visited in 1967, and subsequent papal visits by John Paul II (1979) and Benedict XVI (2006) conferred unofficial recognition on the site. The Turkish government declared it a protected area, and it receives an estimated 1.5 million visitors annually.

PHOTOGRAPH 07 | IMG_8218

The Chapel & Religious Service

Location: Meryemana, Selçuk | Subject: Byzantine Chapel with Clergy

The modest stone chapel at Meryemana preserves sections of walling dated to the 6th or 7th century CE, with later medieval and modern restorations. The structure’s small scale — just a few metres in each dimension — reflects the tradition that this was a domestic dwelling rather than a formal place of worship. A clergyman conducts a service, demonstrating the site’s function as a living place of worship rather than merely a historical monument.

In Islamic tradition, Mary (Maryam) is venerated as one of the most righteous women in history, and the Quran devotes an entire sura (Chapter 19, Surat Maryam) to her. This shared reverence makes Meryemana one of relatively few pilgrimage sites in the world where adherents of Christianity and Islam worship at the same location. A “wishing wall” near the chapel, where visitors tie strips of cloth and paper bearing prayers and petitions, reflects a practice common to both faith traditions in Anatolia.

PHOTOGRAPH 08 | IMG_8238

The Ancient Tree at Meryemana

Location: Meryemana, Selçuk | Subject: Venerable Tree at Chapel Entrance

A magnificent old tree stands at the entrance to the Meryemana chapel complex, its dense canopy providing shade and contributing to the contemplative atmosphere of the site. The surrounding Mediterranean forest — a mix of pine, oak, mastic, and other species — creates a microclimate markedly cooler and more humid than the exposed archaeological ruins of Ephesus in the valley below. This contrast between the serene, shaded mountain shrine and the sun-scorched ancient city reinforces the tradition of retreat and contemplation associated with the site.

Trees of exceptional age and size hold particular cultural significance in Anatolian tradition. The practice of venerating ancient trees predates both Christianity and Islam in this region, with sacred groves appearing in the worship traditions of the indigenous Anatolian peoples, the Greeks, and the Romans. The Bülbül Dağ forest in which Meryemana sits has been protected from development, preserving a biodiversity corridor that supports endemic plant species and migratory bird populations.

Turkish Coffee Culture

An intangible cultural heritage inscribed by UNESCO — and a ritual older than the modern nation itself

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Turkish Coffee Preparation

Location: Selçuk District, Türkiye | Subject: Traditional Coffee Machine and Preparation Setup

An ornate brass and copper Turkish coffee machine occupies the centre of this composition, surrounded by the accoutrements of traditional preparation. Turkish coffee — inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2013 — is prepared by combining very finely ground coffee beans with water (and sugar, if desired) in a small long-handled pot called a cezve, then heating the mixture until it foams. The coffee is poured unfiltered into small cups, with the grounds settling to the bottom. The practice of reading fortunes in the residual coffee grounds (tasseography) is a widespread social tradition.

Coffee arrived in the Ottoman Empire in the mid-15th century via Yemen and quickly became central to Turkish social life. By the 16th century, Istanbul alone supported over 600 coffeehouses (kahvehane), which served as centres of intellectual discourse, political debate, and artistic performance. Sultan Murad IV briefly banned coffee in 1633, reportedly punishing violations with execution, though the prohibition proved unenforceable. The very word “coffee” enters English via the Turkish kahve, which derives from the Arabic qahwa. Turkish coffee is traditionally served with a glass of water — to cleanse the palate — and a piece of Turkish delight (lokum).

Ephesus — City of Marble

Once the fourth-largest city in the Roman Empire, with a population exceeding 250,000 — "Bring Your Imagination When Visiting Ruins"

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The Prytaneion — Heart of Civic Life

Location: Ephesus Upper City | Subject: Prytaneion Columns on Marble Pavement

Corinthian columns rise from the original marble pavement of the Prytaneion — the civic heart of ancient Ephesus where the sacred flame of Hestia Boulaia was maintained by a college of priests called the Curetes. This building served as the city’s official reception hall, where ambassadors were welcomed, public banquets held, and the eternal flame symbolising the city’s vitality was tended. The two famous statues of Artemis now displayed in the Ephesus Archaeological Museum in Selçuk were discovered here during Austrian excavations.

The Prytaneion dates primarily to the reign of Augustus (27 BCE–14 CE), when Ephesus served as the capital of the Roman province of Asia — the empire’s wealthiest eastern territory. The quality of the marble work visible in the surviving columns and entablature fragments indicates the enormous wealth the city commanded through its position at the western terminus of the great land trade routes from Persia and beyond.

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Curetes Street — The Descent to Celsus

Location: Ephesus, Curetes Street | Subject: Panorama toward Library of Celsus

This elevated view captures the full sweep of Curetes Street descending toward the Library of Celsus — arguably the most photographed monument at Ephesus and one of the most iconic images of the ancient world. The marble-paved processional way, flanked by columns and pedestals that once supported statuary, connected the upper civic centre with the commercial and library quarter below. The street takes its name from the Curetes — priests of the Artemis cult whose inscriptions line the route.

At its zenith in the 2nd century CE, Ephesus was home to approximately 250,000 people, making it the fourth-largest city in the Roman Empire after Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. The city possessed running water, public latrines flushed by continuous water flow, heated bathhouses, a sophisticated sewage system, and street lighting. This panorama reveals only a fraction of the excavated area, which itself represents only an estimated 15 percent of the total ancient city — the vast majority remains buried beneath the surrounding agricultural land.

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Nike — The Winged Victory

Location: Ephesus, Curetes Street | Subject: Relief Sculpture of Nike (Victory)

A remarkably well-preserved relief carving of Nike — the Greek goddess of victory — adorns a stone block along Curetes Street. The winged figure strides forward in flowing drapery, the dynamic pose conveying movement and triumph. Nike was one of the most frequently depicted deities in Ephesian art, reflecting the city’s self-image as a place of achievement and divine favour. The relief’s survival in such fine condition — the feathered wings and fabric folds still crisply defined after nearly two millennia — testifies to the quality of the original carving and the protective burial that preserved many of Ephesus’s sculptural elements.

The modern sportswear company Nike takes both its name and its famous “Swoosh” logo from this goddess, whose image appeared throughout the Greek and Roman world on everything from temple pediments to coins. In Ephesian context, Nike frequently appeared in association with the cult of Artemis, the city’s patron deity, and representations of military victory by Roman emperors.

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Curetes Street — The Modern Pilgrimage

Location: Ephesus, Curetes Street | Subject: Visitors on the Ancient Processional Way

A river of modern visitors flows down Curetes Street beneath parasols and sun hats, unconsciously retracing the route of ancient Ephesians who walked this same marble pavement two thousand years ago. The scene captures the paradox of major archaeological sites: the very popularity that ensures their preservation and funding also transforms the experience of visiting them. Ephesus receives approximately 1.5 to 2 million visitors annually, with peak summer days seeing thousands of tourists simultaneously navigating the site’s narrow streets.

The columns and architectural fragments lining the route hint at the street’s original grandeur — a covered colonnade (stoa) once provided shade on both sides, and the marble-paved surface was flanked by shops, fountains, and public monuments. Tour guides can frequently be heard encouraging visitors to “use your imagination” — a necessary instruction when confronting ruins stripped of their original marble cladding, painted decorations, and bronze statuary.

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Inscribed Architrave — Voices in Stone

Location: Ephesus | Subject: Greek Inscription on Architectural Fragment

A monumental architrave bears deeply carved Greek text — one of thousands of inscriptions discovered at Ephesus that provide an extraordinary documentary record of the city’s civic, religious, and commercial life. Ephesus is one of the most epigraphically rich sites in the ancient world; the Austrian Archaeological Institute, which has led excavations since 1895, has catalogued over 5,000 inscriptions ranging from imperial edicts to private dedications, shop signs, and graffiti.

Such inscriptions typically recorded the names of benefactors who funded public buildings, the dedications of temples and monuments, and the decrees of the city council. They represent a primary source for understanding ancient urban society — revealing details of governance, taxation, religious practice, and social hierarchy that no other evidence preserves. The crisp lettering visible here, with its characteristic Greek letterforms, indicates a formal public inscription of the Roman Imperial period.

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Ephesus’s Other Residents

Location: Ephesus Archaeological Site | Subject: Cats on Ancient Stone beneath Fig Tree

Cats doze on sun-warmed ancient marble beneath the spreading canopy of a fig tree — a scene that encapsulates the coexistence of the living and the ancient at Ephesus. Cats have been a feature of Anatolian settlements for millennia; the earliest evidence of cat domestication in the region dates to approximately 7500 BCE at Neolithic sites in what is now southeastern Türkiye. In Ottoman culture, cats held a particularly honoured position — the Prophet Muhammad is said to have loved cats, and Istanbul’s famous street cats are their cultural descendants.

The fig tree (Ficus carica) is itself deeply significant in Anatolian history. Figs were among the first plants cultivated by humans, with carbonised fig remains found at sites dating to 11,400 years ago in the Jordan Valley. The Küçük Menderes valley surrounding Ephesus remains one of the world’s most productive fig-growing regions. The juxtaposition of these living creatures with the ancient stones they inhabit provides a gentle reminder that ruins are not merely archaeological specimens but continuing landscapes.

The Library of Celsus

The most celebrated monument of Ephesus — a funeral monument, library, and architectural masterpiece

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The Library of Celsus — Full Façade

Location: Ephesus Lower City | Date: c. 114–117 CE | Architect: Tiberius Julius Aquila

The reconstructed façade of the Library of Celsus rises two storeys high in a masterpiece of Roman architectural composition. Built between approximately 114 and 117 CE by the consul Tiberius Julius Aquila as a monumental tomb for his father, Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus — Roman senator and governor of the province of Asia — the library held an estimated 12,000 scrolls, making it the third-largest in the Roman world after Alexandria and Pergamon.

The façade employs a sophisticated optical illusion: the columns at the centre are slightly larger than those at the edges, creating the impression of greater width and grandeur than the building actually possesses. The four niches between the columns originally held statues representing Sophia (Wisdom), Episteme (Knowledge), Ennoia (Intelligence), and Arete (Virtue) — the qualities associated with Celsus’s intellectual legacy. The originals are now in the Ephesus Museum in Vienna. The façade was painstakingly reconstructed between 1970 and 1978 using original fragments by Austrian and Turkish archaeologists — one of the most celebrated archaeological restorations in the world.

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At the Library of Celsus

Location: Ephesus Lower City | Subject: Visitor at the Library Façade

The scale of the Library of Celsus becomes apparent with a human figure for reference — the façade rises to approximately 16 metres, its Corinthian columns and carved entablature demonstrating the extraordinary ambition of Roman monumental architecture. The library’s interior, which extended behind this façade into the hillside, contained niches for scroll storage arranged around a central reading room. A double wall with an air gap protected the precious scrolls from moisture — an ingenious climate-control solution that anticipates modern conservation practice by nearly two millennia.

The library was damaged by an earthquake around 262 CE and subsequently destroyed by fire during a Gothic raid. Only the façade survived in recognisable form, eventually collapsing in later earthquakes and being buried by sediment and later construction. Celsus’s marble sarcophagus, however, remained undisturbed in its burial chamber beneath the library floor throughout all these disasters, and was discovered intact during excavations.

Mediterranean Flora

The ancient botanical landscape that frames Ephesus's ruins

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Italian Stone Pines at Ephesus

Location: Ephesus Archaeological Site | Subject: Pinus pinea — Umbrella Pines

The distinctive flat-topped silhouettes of Italian stone pines (Pinus pinea) punctuate the Ephesus landscape, their umbrella-shaped canopies instantly recognisable against the Aegean sky. These trees — also known as umbrella pines or parasol pines — are native to the Mediterranean basin and have been cultivated for their edible pine nuts (pignoli) for over 6,000 years. Archaeological evidence from Ephesus confirms that pine nuts were a regular component of the ancient diet, used in both savoury dishes and sweetmeats.

The stone pine’s characteristically tall, bare trunk topped by a spreading canopy is an adaptation to the Mediterranean fire ecology — by lifting its foliage well above ground level, the tree protects its crown from the wildfires that periodically sweep through the low scrubland. The trees visible at Ephesus are relatively modern plantings, but they occupy a landscape where their species has been present for millennia, providing an unbroken botanical thread connecting the modern and ancient environments.

Selçuk — Layers of History

The modern town that sits atop the accumulated centuries — Byzantine, Ottoman, and Seljuk Türk monuments

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Stork Nests on Byzantine Ruins

Location: Selçuk, Türkiye | Subject: White Storks Nesting on Ancient Aqueduct

White storks (Ciconia ciconia) have built their massive nests atop the remains of a Byzantine-era aqueduct in Selçuk — a vivid image of nature reclaiming ancient architecture. These storks migrate annually from wintering grounds in sub-Saharan Africa, arriving in western Türkiye each spring to breed. Selçuk’s warm microclimate, abundant water sources, and elevated stone structures make it an ideal nesting location, and the town has become well known among ornithologists for its resident stork population.

In Turkish culture, storks are considered harbingers of good fortune, and their nests are traditionally protected. The sight of storks nesting on ancient ruins reinforces a theme central to the Aegean landscape: the continuous layering of life upon the remains of earlier civilisations. The aqueduct itself represents just one of the many hydraulic engineering works that sustained this region’s cities — Ephesus alone possessed six separate aqueduct systems bringing water from springs up to 42 kilometres distant.

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İsa Bey Mosque from Ayasuluk Hill

Location: Selçuk, Türkiye | Date: 1375 CE | Architect: Şamlı (Damascene) Ali

The İsa Bey Mosque spreads across the lower slopes of Ayasuluk Hill, its courtyard and prayer hall visible from above. Commissioned in 1375 by the Aydınoğlu beylik (principality) ruler İsa Bey and designed by the architect Şamlı (Damascene) Ali, this mosque represents one of the finest examples of Anatolian Beylik architecture — the transitional style between Seljuk and Ottoman periods. The mosque was deliberately constructed using marble columns and architectural elements salvaged from the ruins of Ephesus and the nearby Temple of Artemis, physically embedding the ancient city’s material legacy into the Islamic monument.

The panoramic view from Ayasuluk Hill reveals the layered history of this landscape: the İsa Bey Mosque in the middle ground, the agricultural plain beyond it (once the harbour of ancient Ephesus), and the mountains framing the Küçük Menderes valley. The flat area where the temple of Artemis once stood — one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World — lies just out of frame to the left. Only a single reconstructed column marks the site of that once-magnificent temple today.

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Ayasuluk Fortress

Location: Ayasuluk Hill, Selçuk | Period: Byzantine/Seljuk, 6th–14th century CE

The crenellated walls of Ayasuluk Fortress crown the hill above Selçuk, their weathered limestone battlements commanding views in every direction. The fortification has been continuously modified from the Byzantine period through the Seljuk and Ottoman eras, incorporating construction techniques and defensive features from each period. Within the fortress walls stand the remains of the Basilica of St. John — believed to have been built over the apostle’s tomb on the orders of Emperor Justinian in the 6th century CE.

The fortress’s strategic position atop the highest point in the immediate landscape mirrors a pattern found throughout Anatolian history: as coastal Ephesus declined due to harbour silting and the withdrawal of Roman administration, the population gradually migrated uphill to this more defensible position. The name “Ayasuluk” is itself a corruption of “Hagios Theologos” (Holy Theologian) — the Greek epithet for St. John — demonstrating how the site’s Christian identity persisted even after the arrival of Turkic Muslim rulers.

Turkish Cuisine & Travel for Health

The Aegean kitchen — where Ottoman culinary traditions meet the Mediterranean diet

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Aegean Turkish Cuisine

Location: Türkiye | Subject: Traditional Turkish Meal

A plate of Turkish cuisine displays the characteristic elements of Aegean cooking: grilled proteins, fresh vegetables, generous use of olive oil, and accompaniments that reflect the region’s position at the crossroads of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern culinary traditions. The Aegean coastal region of Türkiye shares many dietary elements with neighbouring Greek island cuisine — olive oil, fresh herbs, yoghurt, and seasonal vegetables form the foundation of both traditions.

Travel for Health note: The traditional Turkish Aegean diet aligns closely with the Mediterranean dietary pattern recognised by nutritional research as one of the healthiest in the world. Key features include high consumption of extra virgin olive oil (the Aydın province produces some of Türkiye’s finest), abundant fresh vegetables and legumes, moderate fish consumption, fermented dairy products (particularly yoghurt and ayran), and liberal use of herbs and spices with known anti-inflammatory properties — including sumac, cumin, and fresh mint. The Turkish tradition of beginning meals with a spread of small dishes (meze) naturally promotes portion awareness and dietary variety.

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Turkish Desserts — A Sweet Tradition

Location: Türkiye | Subject: Dessert Display

A lavish display of Turkish desserts showcases the Ottoman culinary legacy that transformed sugar, nuts, and pastry into an art form. Turkish patisserie represents one of the great confectionery traditions of the world, with origins in the imperial kitchens of the Topkapı Palace, where teams of specialist pastry chefs developed the layered, syrup-soaked, and nut-filled creations now recognised globally. Baklava — layers of phyllo pastry with pistachio or walnut filling drenched in honey or sugar syrup — is perhaps the most widely known, but the Turkish dessert repertoire extends to hundreds of regional specialities.

Travel for Health note: While Turkish desserts are generally high in sugar and saturated fat, many contain nutritionally significant quantities of nuts — particularly pistachios and walnuts — which provide monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, including the omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). The traditional practice of serving small portions of very sweet desserts alongside unsweetened Turkish coffee represents an intuitive approach to managing sugar consumption that modern nutritional guidance would endorse.

The Magic Carpets

From showroom floor to living room floor — the ancient art of Anatolian carpet weaving

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The Carpet Showroom

Location: Selçuk District, Türkiye | Subject: Traditional Carpet House Display

The interior of a traditional carpet house near Ephesus reveals the scale and variety of Turkish carpet production. Stacks of carpets in various sizes, colours, and weaving traditions line the walls, while individual pieces are unfurled for inspection on the showroom floor. These establishments — common along the major tourist routes of western Türkiye — serve as both retail outlets and educational centres, where visitors can observe weavers at work and learn about the differences between hand-knotted and machine-made carpets, silk and wool pile, and regional design traditions.

The carpet trade has been a mainstay of the Anatolian economy for centuries. Turkish carpet exports today are valued at approximately 1.8 billion USD annually, though the majority of this figure represents machine-made production. Hand-knotted carpets — distinguished by the irregularities visible on the reverse side and the individual character of each piece — command significantly higher prices and represent a tradition that employs approximately 250,000 weavers across Türkiye, the vast majority of them women working from home in rural areas.

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Silk Medallion Carpet — Teal & Gold

Medium: Hand-knotted silk | Design: Central medallion with sunburst motif

A silk carpet in deep teal and gold displays the central medallion design (göbek) that represents perhaps the most recognisable format in Turkish carpet tradition. The radiating sunburst pattern emanates from the medallion’s centre, surrounded by concentric bands of floral and geometric ornament. The luminous quality of the silk pile — which reflects light differently depending on the viewing angle, a property called “abrash” when it refers to colour variation — creates a visual depth impossible to achieve in wool.

Silk carpets of this quality typically achieve knot densities between 400 and 900 knots per square centimetre (KPSI of approximately 2,600 to 5,800), with each individual knot tied by hand around pairs of warp threads. A carpet of this size, at the higher end of that density range, could contain well over two million individual knots — representing months of continuous labour. The teal-to-blue colour palette suggests indigo-based dyes, traditionally extracted from the leaves of Indigofera tinctoria through a complex fermentation process.

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Silk Compass Rose — Navy & Gold

Medium: Hand-knotted silk | Design: Geometric starburst/compass rose

This striking silk carpet features a geometric starburst or compass rose design in deep navy blue and gold — a bold departure from the flowing curvilinear patterns more commonly associated with Turkish carpet art. The radiating geometric pattern, with its precise angular symmetry, requires extraordinary mathematical precision from the weaver, as any miscounting of knots becomes immediately visible in the symmetry of the finished design. The navy-and-gold palette evokes maritime tradition and celestial navigation — apt for a carpet produced in the Aegean region, where maritime trade has been the economic lifeblood for over three millennia.

The clean, overhead photographic angle reveals the carpet’s full composition without the distortion of perspective, showing the intricate floral infill within each geometric sector. This level of detail is characteristic of the finest workshop production, where master weavers work from detailed cartoons (pattern charts) that specify the colour and position of every individual knot.

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Aubergine Silk — A Rare Palette

Medium: Hand-knotted silk | Design: Central medallion with arabesque borders

An exceptional silk carpet in deep aubergine purple with a cream central medallion and elaborate arabesque borders displays one of the rarest and most prized colour palettes in Turkish carpet production. Purple — historically the most expensive dye in the ancient world, originally derived from the murex sea snail — has retained its association with royalty and exclusivity. In the Ottoman carpet tradition, purple-dominant palettes were reserved for the finest workshop production and court commissions.

The arabesque border design — flowing vegetal scrollwork that appears to grow and multiply infinitely — represents one of the fundamental design principles of Islamic art. The arabesque’s endless proliferation was understood as a meditation on the infinite nature of creation, and its incorporation into carpet design imbued even domestic textiles with spiritual significance. This carpet tradition represents the oldest continuous thread in the textile lineage that connects modern Turkish carpet making to its Central Asian nomadic origins.

Turkish Figs & Travel for Health

From the Küçük Menderes valley to kitchens worldwide — the extraordinary nutritional profile of dried Turkish figs

TRAVEL FOR HEALTH

Organic Turkish Figs — A Nutritional Powerhouse

Product: Macro Wholefoods Market Organic Turkish Figs, 500g | Origin: Türkiye (Aydın Province) | Available in: Australia

The Küçük Menderes valley visible in the photographs above is the heartland of global fig production — and these organic Turkish figs, available in Australian supermarkets under the Macro Wholefoods brand, are a direct product of that ancient agricultural landscape. Türkiye produces approximately 310,000 tonnes of figs annually, accounting for around 27 percent of world production, with the Aydın province surrounding Ephesus contributing the largest share. The fig (Ficus carica) is among the oldest cultivated fruits on Earth, with carbonised fig remains dated to approximately 11,400 years ago discovered in the Jordan Valley — predating the cultivation of wheat, barley, and legumes, and making figs arguably humanity’s first deliberately farmed crop.

Dried Turkish figs are an exceptional source of dietary fibre, delivering approximately 10 grams per 100-gram serving — roughly 40 percent of the recommended daily intake for adults. This fibre is a combination of soluble and insoluble types, each conferring distinct health benefits. The soluble fibre (predominantly pectin) forms a viscous gel in the digestive tract that slows glucose absorption, helping to moderate postprandial blood sugar responses — a property of particular interest for metabolic health. The insoluble fibre adds bulk to stool and promotes regular bowel motility. A 2019 clinical trial published in the Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics journal found that participants with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-C) who consumed approximately 45 grams of dried figs twice daily experienced significant reductions in abdominal pain, bloating, and constipation compared to controls. Critically, the fibre in figs also functions as a prebiotic — providing fermentable substrate for beneficial gut bacteria including Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus species, which produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) such as butyrate. A 2023 review in Nutrients (Sandhu et al.) confirmed that these SCFAs play key roles in maintaining intestinal barrier integrity, modulating immune function, and reducing systemic inflammation.

Beyond fibre, dried figs provide a remarkably dense mineral profile. A 100-gram serving delivers approximately 162 mg of calcium (higher per serving than many dairy products and a significant plant-based source for those following vegan or lactose-free diets), 680 mg of potassium (supporting cardiovascular function and blood pressure regulation through its counter-balancing effect on dietary sodium), 68 mg of magnesium, and meaningful amounts of iron, phosphorus, and manganese. Figs also contain bioactive polyphenolic compounds — including anthocyanins, quercetin, chlorogenic acid, and gallic acid — which demonstrate antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity. The combination of calcium, potassium, and magnesium in figs works synergistically to support bone mineral density, making dried figs a food of particular interest for osteoporosis prevention. As the packet notes, these figs carry a 4 Health Star Rating under the Australian system — a reflection of their high fibre and mineral content relative to their energy density. Three to four dried figs (approximately 40 grams) constitute a nutritionally optimal serving: sufficient to deliver meaningful fibre and mineral intake without excessive sugar consumption.

A Note on “Magic Carpets”

The title is not mere whimsy. The concept of the “flying carpet” appears in One Thousand and One Nights and in pre-Islamic Arabian and Persian folklore, where enchanted carpets transported their owners across vast distances. But the real magic is more tangible: the transformation of raw wool and silk — sheared from sheep, unwound from cocoons — into objects of extraordinary beauty and durability through nothing more than human skill, patience, and inherited knowledge.

To watch a weaver at work, as visitors to the carpet houses of the Aegean coast can do, is to witness an ancient technology still practiced without fundamental alteration. The loom, the knot, the comb, the knife — these are the same tools depicted in medieval miniatures and described in Ottoman guild records. What emerges from them, one knot at a time, is as close to magic as any human craft can claim to be.

COMING NEXT

Santorini: Caldera of Fire and Light

From the Aegean coast to the volcanic heart of the Cyclades — ruins born of nature’s most dramatic force

© 2025 Hart and Trin’s European Travels. A Photojournalism tour. | All Rights Reserved

All images used in these articles are actual unedited photos taken by Hartmut Michael Günther and Trinity Angeles while on their travels in Europe in 2025. AI was used in these articles for some research and writing only.

Here in Part 2 of “Questions & Insights from Rehab Clients”

If you are sincere about stopping crazy and damaging alcohol and drug use, this series facilitates optimal and lasting recovery.

Over ten years ago, I was very fortunate to have clients come in to my clinic who concurrently were enrolled in a world-class alcohol and drug rehabilitation centre in Armidale, New South Wales, Australia called Freeman House. The sincerity and humbleness to want to change an obvious unhealthy habit really struck me. For the next year, I volunteered through Freeman House to offer programmes that help clients understand recovery and, in particular, addressing aspects of lifestyle and nutrition. It’s February 2026, and I’m still fortunate and grateful to be able to help out.

The key to recovery from the clutches of addiction to alcohol and drugs is:

Prioritising your own life, stopping exposure and intake completely, getting some help and most importantly, changing your environment and habits.

Part 1 is here -

Reclaiming Your Health: A Roadmap to Recovery

Healing the Brain and Body After Stimulants, Opioids, and Cannabinoids

When you stop using, your body doesn’t just “rest”—it begins a massive construction project to repair damaged receptors, replenish neurotransmitters, and heal vital organs. Here is how each substance affects you and how you can support your recovery through nutrition.

1. Stimulants (Methamphetamine & Amphetamines)

• The Damage: These drugs force a massive release of dopamine, which can eventually damage the brain’s dopamine transporters. This leads to “anhedonia” (the inability to feel pleasure), memory gaps, and “meth mouth” (severe dental/gum decay).

• The Path Forward: Focus on L-Tyrosine. This amino acid is the building block for dopamine.

  • Eat: Turkey, eggs, seaweed, and lean beef.

  • The Repair: High doses of B-Complex vitamins (especially B12 and Folate) support nerve regeneration and brain “plasticity.”

2. Opioids (OxyContin/Painkillers)

• The Damage: Opioids slow down the central nervous system and the gut. Long-term use often causes chronic constipation, “leaky gut,” and a severe downregulation of the body’s natural endorphin system.

• The Path Forward: Focus on Gut Health & Magnesium.

  • Eat: High-fiber foods (beans, chia seeds) and fermented foods (sauerkraut, kefir) to rebuild your microbiome.

  • The Repair: Magnesium helps with muscle aches and “restless legs” common in recovery, while high-quality protein provides the amino acids needed to rebuild natural “feel-good” endorphins.

3. Cannabis & Synthetic Cannabis (Spice/K2)

• The Damage: While natural cannabis affects memory and motivation, synthetic cannabis is much more toxic. It can cause heart strain, seizures, and severe “brain fog.” Both can deplete the body of antioxidants and irritate the lungs.

• The Path Forward: Focus on Cognitive Clearance.

  • Eat: Blueberries, walnuts, and fatty fish (Omega-3s). These “brain foods” reduce neuro-inflammation.

  • The Repair: Hydration is key to clearing metabolic byproducts. Use Vitamin C to help repair lung tissue and support the immune system.

Polydrug Use: When You’ve Used a Combination

Many people use “uppers” (Meth) and “downers” (OxyContin) together. This creates a “tug-of-war” in your nervous system, leading to high levels of oxidative stress (cellular rusting).

• The Way Forward: Don’t try to “fix” everything at once. Start with the “Three Pillars”:

  1. Hydration: 2-3 liters of water to help your kidneys filter out the backlog of toxins.

  2. Stable Blood Sugar: Eat every 3–4 hours. This prevents the “crashes” that often trigger drug cravings.

  3. Anti-Inflammatory Focus: Use Turmeric and Ginger in your cooking to calm the systemic inflammation caused by mixing substances.

The Nutritionist’s Note: Your brain is incredibly resilient. By providing the right nutrients, you are literally giving your neurons the “bricks and mortar” they need to rebuild a healthy, happy life.

Cravings First Aid Kit: Nutrition for Recovery

When a craving hits, your brain is usually screaming for a chemical quick fix. You can often quiet this noise by providing the specific nutrients your neurotransmitters are searching for.

1. For the Dopamine Crash (Low Mood/Apathy)

- Dark Chocolate (70% cocoa): Gently nudges dopamine levels.
- Bananas: High in tyrosine, the building block for dopamine.
- Pumpkin Seeds: Rich in zinc and magnesium.

2. For Restless & Wired Cravings (Anxiety/Irritability)

- Greek Yogurt: High in protein and calcium to regulate nerve signals.
- Herbal Tea: Signals the nervous system to downshift.
- Oats: Helps the brain produce Serotonin.

3. For the Sugar Panic

- Apple with Peanut Butter: Prevents the energy crash that triggers cravings.
- Frozen Grapes: Provides a cold sensory distraction.

4. For the Mouth Hunger (Oral Fixation)

- Crunchy Veggies: The act of crunching provides a sensory reset.
- Popcorn: Keeps hands and mouth busy.

5. The Emergency Reset Drink

- Seltzer with Lime: The carbonation and acidity can break a mental craving loop.

The 15-Minute Rule: Eat one of these items, drink water, and wait 15 minutes. Most physical cravings will subside as nutrients stabilise.

Metabolic Overload: The Meth + Alcohol Interaction

A Clinical Guide to Combined Neurotoxicity & Repair

When these two substances are used together, the body becomes a chemical battleground. Understanding the “why” behind the damage is the first step in fueling the recovery.

1. The “Masking” Effect (The Stimulant-Depressant Tug-of-War)

In the brain, methamphetamine forces a massive release of dopamine and norepinephrine, keeping the user “wired.” Alcohol, conversely, increases GABA (the “brakes” of the brain).

• The Danger: Meth masks the sedative effects of alcohol. This allows a person to drink far past their biological limit without passing out, leading to asymptomatic alcohol poisoning.

• The Metabolism Glitch: Alcohol can actually inhibit the breakdown of methamphetamine in the liver. This keeps meth in the bloodstream longer, significantly increasing the risk of cardiac arrest and stroke.

2. The Danger of Metabolites (Cellular “Rust”)

The primary issue isn’t just the drugs themselves, but what they turn into as they break down:

• Alcohol → Acetaldehyde: This metabolite is highly toxic. It damages DNA and prevents the liver from processing fats, leading to rapid-onset fatty liver.

• Meth → Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS): Meth metabolism creates “free radicals” that cause oxidative stress—essentially “rusting” your neurons from the inside out.

• The Synergy: When combined, these metabolites accelerate neuroinflammation. They trigger the brain’s immune cells (microglia) to stay in a permanent state of “attack,” which leads to the long-term depression and “brain fog” felt in early recovery.

3. The Gut-Brain Crisis

Alcohol damages the “tight junctions” in your gut lining (Leaky Gut). This allows bacterial toxins (LPS) to enter the bloodstream. Normally, the liver filters these. However, when the liver is busy processing meth and alcohol, these toxins reach the brain, where they worsen meth-induced brain damage.

The Path Forward: A Dual Detox Strategy

Detoxing from both at once requires a “Two-Track” nutritional approach:

Track 1: Guarding the Nervous System (Alcohol Focus)

• Thiamine (B1) & Magnesium: Alcohol severely depletes B1, which can lead to permanent memory loss. Supplementing with B1 is non-negotiable in the first 30 days.

• Hydration with Electrolytes: Alcohol is a diuretic. Proper hydration (Sodium, Potassium, Magnesium) is essential to prevent seizures and heart palpitations during the first 72 hours.

Track 2: Rebuilding the Reward System (Meth Focus)

• Protein Loading: Your brain needs L-Tyrosine (found in eggs, lean meats, and soy) to rebuild the dopamine stores that meth depleted. Without this, the “crash” involves deep apathy and lack of motivation.

• Anti-Inflammatory Superfoods: To calm the “microglial storm” in the brain, focus on Omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil/walnuts) and Curcumin (turmeric). These act as “fire extinguishers” for brain inflammation.

Clinical Note: Withdrawal from alcohol can be medically dangerous (risk of seizures). Always ensure your detox process is medically supervised before starting a nutritional protocol.

Biochemical Recovery Timeline: Rebuilding the Brain & Body

Phase 1: Day 1 to Day 7 (Crisis Management)

- Brain: Neurotransmitters are at their lowest; high anxiety.
- Liver: Begins clearing acetaldehyde; inflammation remains high.
- Focus: Hydration, B1 (Thiamine), and Magnesium.

Phase 2: Day 8 to Day 30 (Structural Repair)

- Brain: Neurogenesis begins; REM sleep starts to stabilize.
- Liver: Liver fat decreases; enzymes (ALT/AST) begin trending toward normal.
- Focus: L-Tyrosine and sulfur-rich vegetables.

Phase 3: Day 31 to Day 90 (Optimisation)

- Brain: Dopamine receptors upregulate; pleasure returns to normal activities; brain fog lifts.
- Liver: Significant regeneration; better protein synthesis and blood sugar management.
- Focus: Omega-3s and prebiotic fiber for gut health.

The 90-Day Mark: Brain white matter shows significant structural recovery, making this the turning point for a sustainable lifestyle.

The Meth-Gout Connection: A Metabolic Perfect Storm

If you have a family history of gout, your body is already sensitive to uric acid. Methamphetamine use acts like “fuel on the fire” for this condition.

1. What is Gout, anyway?

Imagine your joints are filled with microscopic, jagged glass shards. That is exactly what gout is.

• The Cause: Gout is caused by an excess of uric acid in the blood.

• The Pain: When uric acid levels get too high, the acid turns into solid, needle-like crystals (monosodium urate) that settle into your joints—most often the big toe, ankles, or knees.

• The Reaction: Your immune system sees these “needles” as foreign invaders and attacks them, causing the intense swelling, redness, and “bone-on-bone” pain.

2. Why the Genetic Link?

Gout has a strong genetic component because our DNA determines how efficiently our kidneys filter uric acid. Some people are “under-excretors,” meaning their kidneys naturally struggle to flush the acid out. If your parents had gout, you likely inherited kidneys that need extra help to keep your blood clear.

3. How Methamphetamine Triggers Gout

Meth use contributes to gout through three specific metabolic pathways:

• Pathway A: Severe Dehydration: Meth increases body temperature and suppresses the urge to drink water. When you are dehydrated, your blood volume drops, making the concentration of uric acid much higher. This makes it much easier for those “needles” to form in the joints.

• Pathway B: Muscle Breakdown (Rhabdomyolysis): Meth causes intense muscle activity and often teeth grinding/jaw clenching. When muscle tissue breaks down, it releases purines into the bloodstream. The body breaks down purines into—you guessed it—uric acid.

• Pathway C: Kidney Stress: Meth constricts blood vessels, including those leading to the kidneys. If the kidneys aren’t getting enough blood, they can’t filter out the uric acid, causing it to back up in the system.

The Path to Relief: Managing Gout in Recovery

If you have a genetic history of gout, your recovery nutrition should prioritize “flushing” and “alkalizing.”

1. Hyper-Hydration: You must drink more water than the average person. Aim for 3 liters a day to keep the uric acid diluted so it can’t crystallize.

2. The Cherry Solution: Tart cherries (or tart cherry concentrate) are clinically shown to lower uric acid levels and reduce inflammation.

3. The Vitamin C Connection: High doses of Vitamin C (500-1000mg) can help the kidneys excrete more uric acid.

4. Alkalize the Body: Uric acid thrives in an acidic environment (which meth and alcohol create). Eating high-alkaline foods like spinach, kale, and cucumbers helps neutralize the acid.

5. Avoid High-Purine Triggers: While your body is healing, stay away from organ meats, sardines, and especially High Fructose Corn Syrup (found in many sodas), which is a major chemical trigger for uric acid production.

The Nutritionist’s Tip: Gout is a sign that your “filtering system” (kidneys and liver) is overwhelmed. By focusing on hydration and plant-based anti-inflammatories, you can often manage the genetic risk without needing lifelong medication.

Kidney & Gout Support Checklist: The Filter Restoration Plan

Methamphetamine and alcohol put immense pressure on your kidneys. If you have a history of gout, your kidneys need even more support to flush out uric acid and metabolic waste.

1. The Hydration Protocol

- The Morning Flush: 500ml warm water with lemon.
- The 3-Liter Goal: Drink 3 liters of filtered water daily.
- Electrolyte Balance: Add sea salt or sugar-free electrolytes once a day.

2. Anti-Gout Nutrition

- Tart Cherry Power: Use extract or unsweetened juice to lower uric acid.
- Vitamin C Boost: Eat citrus or supplement to help kidney excretion.
- Alkaline Greens: Eat spinach, kale, or bok choy to neutralize acidity.
- Low-Purine Protein: Choose eggs, nuts, and seeds over red meat.

3. Habits to Protect the Filters

- Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup: It is a major gout trigger.
- Monitor NSAID Use: Be cautious with Ibuprofen/Naproxen; they stress kidneys.
- Gentle Movement: Walk 20 mins to help the lymphatic system.

4. Warning Signs (Tell staff if you feel these):

- Sharp pain in big toe, ankle, or knee.
- Dark or foamy urine.
- Lower back pain.

Every glass of water is a direct act of healing for your joints and blood.

Let’s look after our body and brain…

Our optimally functioning brain provides the substrate so to speak, the foundation upon which our consciousness can exist and rub shoulders with the infinite.

Our most valuable asset apart from life itself, is our consciousness.

Our consciousness is where we live, every waking moment, every day, our whole life. It embodies everything we perceive, think about, dream and imagine, remember, and feel. See more at -

Our consciousness, most assuredly, extends beyond just our brain, encompassing our whole body and possibly beyond. Yet our optimally functioning brain provides the substrate so to speak, the foundation upon which our consciousness can exist and rub shoulders with the infinite. Putting harmful temporary-buzz giving chemicals into a self sustaining miracle that is our brain is nuts.

If you are a young person exposed or have friends potentially exposed to shit (what drugs were called in the 70’s) or are a parent, teacher or health professional with some concerns, feel free to share this article while gently sharing your perspective and friendship.

This is an important article.

It ties together questions people frequently ask about: the nature of toxic substances, testing for those substances, what to do when one discovers that one has been exposed to a toxic substance. And the nuances encountered when we look at a substance like Boron.

In 2014, clients started coming into my clinic that presented with unusual and unexplained symptoms. Or they came in with test results that I’d never seen before. Synchronistically around the same time, I’d been reading a book called “Poisoned Planet” by Australian author and journalist Julian Cribb. These factors prompted me to collaborate with a world-class Australian Environmental Analysis laboratory and subsequently founded Toxtest.

Recently a client had highish levels of boron in an analysis that was conducted at our lab. Our lab analyses water, soil, dust, human and animal hair, along with foods, supplements and even medications. Samples are subjected to a total Acid (Aqua Regia) digest and then analysed via the industry standard; Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). See Glossary at end of article.

Elements tested across all the above mediums include – Antimony (Sb), Silver (Ag), Arsenic (As), Lead (Pb), Cadmium (Cd), Chromium (Cr), Copper (Cu), Manganese (Mn), Nickel (Ni), Selenium (Se), Zinc (Zn), Mercury (Hg), Iron (Fe), Aluminium (Al), Lithium (Li), Beryllium (Be), Boron (B), Vanadium (V), Cobalt (Co), Strontium (Sr), Molybdenum (Mo), Barium (Ba), Thallium (TL), Bismuth (Bi), Thorium (Th), Uranium (U), Calcium (Ca), Magnesium (Mg), Potassium (K), Sodium (Na), Sulphur (S), Phosphorus (P) amongst many others

For this client the result showed a boron level of 19 mg/kg in hair. Our laboratory has conducted close to 2,000 hair analyses over more than a decade, testing each sample for 32 elements via ICP-MS. The client’s boron sat at the 97.6th percentile of our entire dataset. Only 43 people out of 1,909 we’ve ever tested had higher boron in their hair.

For the client in question, the boron levels were higher than average for a hair test result leading to concern for the client and raised questions as to how toxic boron really is? Should I be concerned, the client asked? What is boron and where does it come from. But first let’s cover some basics that are often poorly understood.

Part 1: What Does “Toxic” Actually Mean?

Every substance on Earth can be toxic. Even water. Even oxygen. The 16th-century physician Paracelsus put it best: “The dose makes the poison.” This remains the foundational principle of toxicology 500 years later.

What Paracelsus understood – and what the general public often does not – is that toxicity is not a binary property of a substance. It is a relationship between a substance, a dose, a duration, and the organism receiving it.

The Dose-Response Relationship

When toxicologists evaluate a substance, they look for specific thresholds:

NOAEL (No Observed Adverse Effect Level) – The highest dose at which no harmful effects have been observed in studies. This is the starting point for setting safety limits.

LOAEL (Lowest Observed Adverse Effect Level) – The lowest dose at which adverse effects begin to appear.

UL (Tolerable Upper Intake Level) – The maximum daily intake unlikely to cause adverse health effects. This is typically the NOAEL divided by safety factors (called uncertainty factors) that account for differences between animal and human biology and variation between individuals.

LD50 (Lethal Dose 50%) – The dose that kills half a test population. This gives us the acute toxicity picture.

These thresholds explain why water is safe at 2 litres a day but fatal at 6 litres in an hour (water intoxication), and why selenium is an essential nutrient at 55 micrograms per day but toxic at 400 micrograms per day. Context matters. Dose matters. Duration matters.

Can a Nutrient Be Toxic? Upper Limits in Australia

Absolutely. In fact, most essential nutrients have established upper limits. The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) in Australia, along with international bodies like the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the US Food and Nutrition Board (FNB), set Upper Intake Levels for nutrients precisely because too much of a good thing can be harmful.

Some examples that might surprise you:

• Vitamin A: Essential for vision and immunity, but chronic excess causes liver damage, bone loss, and birth defects. UL is 3,000 µg/day for adults.

• Iron: Essential for oxygen transport, but excess iron causes oxidative damage and organ failure. UL is 45 mg/day.

• Zinc: Critical for immune function, but excess zinc depletes copper and causes anaemia. UL is 40 mg/day.

• Selenium: A powerful antioxidant, but just 4–8 times the recommended intake can cause selenosis – hair loss, nail brittleness, neurological damage. UL is 400 µg/day.

The gap between the recommended intake and the toxic dose varies enormously between nutrients. For selenium, the margin is narrow. For vitamin C, it’s wide. Understanding these margins is how we move from fear to informed decision-making.

Why the WHO’s “Big Four” Are Different

The World Health Organization classifies arsenic (As), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), and mercury (Hg) as the most toxic heavy metals to human health. What makes them different from boron or zinc?

• They have no known beneficial function in the human body – unlike zinc, copper, or selenium, there is no amount of lead or cadmium that your body needs.

• They accumulate over time – cadmium has a half-life of 10–30 years in the kidneys. Mercury persists in the brain. Lead deposits in bones for decades.

• They cause harm at very low doses – for lead, there is no established safe level in children. Period.

• Children are disproportionately vulnerable – their developing brains, higher absorption rates, hand-to-mouth behaviour, and smaller body mass mean the same environmental dose hits them harder.

We’ve covered each of these in depth in our Stuff to Avoid series: Mercury, Lead, Cadmium, and Arsenic.

Boron sits in a fundamentally different category. It is not one of the Big Four. It has potential health benefits. It is a nutrient for plants and possibly a beneficial trace element for humans. But it absolutely can be harmful at high enough exposures. This is what makes it interesting – and what makes it a perfect case study for understanding the grey zone of toxicology.

Part 2: Our Main Character – Boron (B)

Boron is the fifth element on the periodic table, a metalloid sitting between carbon and nitrogen. It doesn’t exist as a pure element in nature but is always found combined with oxygen as borates – in minerals like borax (sodium tetraborate), boric acid, and borosilicate minerals. It’s the 51st most common element in the Earth’s crust, present at an average concentration of about 8 mg/kg.

Unlike cadmium, lead, and mercury, boron has an interesting dual character. It’s clearly essential for plant life – without boron, plants cannot form cell walls properly, and deficiency causes agricultural losses worldwide. For humans, the picture is more nuanced. While the US Food and Nutrition Board has not established boron as an essential nutrient, a growing body of research suggests it plays beneficial roles in bone metabolism, hormone regulation, and brain function.

The World Health Organization estimates an acceptable safe range of boron intake for adults of 1–13 mg/day. The US FNB set the Tolerable Upper Intake Level at 20 mg/day, while the more conservative EFSA set it at 10 mg/day. Both of these derive from the same animal study – a rat developmental toxicity study by Price et al. (1996) with a NOAEL of 9.6 mg/kg body weight per day – but they applied different uncertainty factors.

What Boron Does (The Good)

Research has identified several potentially beneficial roles for boron in human health:

• Bone health: Boron appears to help with calcium and magnesium absorption and retention. A study of postmenopausal women found that 3 mg/day of boron supplementation reduced urinary excretion of calcium and magnesium and increased serum levels of oestradiol and testosterone. Epidemiological data from around the world suggests that regions where boron intake is typically 3–10 mg/day have arthritis rates of 0–10%, while regions with intake below 1 mg/day see rates of 20–70%.

• Hormone regulation: Boron influences the metabolism of vitamin D, oestrogen, and testosterone. This has led to its widespread use in bone health supplements, often at doses of 3–6 mg per day.

• Brain function: Some research suggests boron deprivation can impair cognitive performance, including poorer hand-eye coordination and reduced attention and memory.

• Anti-inflammatory effects: There is evidence that boron can reduce markers of inflammation, which may partly explain its apparent benefits for arthritis.

What Boron Does at High Doses (The Bad)

When boron intake is excessive, the picture shifts considerably. The primary concerns from animal studies and human poisoning cases include:

• Reproductive and developmental toxicity: This is the critical endpoint. In rats, mice, and dogs, high boron doses cause testicular atrophy, loss of germ cells, decreased sperm production, and reduced foetal body weight. These effects have been observed across multiple species, which strengthens the evidence. The NOAEL for developmental toxicity in rats is 9.6 mg/kg body weight per day – this is the study that underpins all the safety limits.

• Gastrointestinal effects: Human poisoning cases (typically from accidental ingestion of boric acid) report nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and abdominal pain. These tend to be self-limiting.

• Acute toxicity: Lethal doses for humans are estimated at 15–20 grams for adults and 3–6 grams for infants. For context, you would need to consume many tablespoons of pure borax to reach these levels – accidental ingestion is the primary concern, not dietary intake.

• Nervous system effects: At very high doses, seizures and central nervous system depression have been reported, particularly in infants.

The crucial point: these serious effects occur at doses dramatically higher than normal dietary intake. The average Australian consumes about 2.2 mg of boron per day from food. The gap between typical intake and the doses causing harm in animal studies is substantial – roughly 300-fold. This is why boron is not classified alongside cadmium and lead.

Part 3: Where Does Boron Come From?

Food

For most people, food is the primary source of boron exposure. The richest sources are plant foods: fruits (especially avocados, prunes, raisins, and grapes), leafy vegetables, nuts and legumes, and pulses. Dairy, meat, and fish are poor sources. The average dietary intake in Australia is estimated at approximately 2.2 mg/day.

Wine, cider, and beer also contribute, as grapes and other fruits used in their production accumulate boron from the soil.

Drinking Water – The Australian Bore Water Connection

This is where things get particularly relevant for Australian readers. Australia’s vast interior relies heavily on groundwater drawn from bores (drilled wells), and these ground waters naturally contain boron leached from surrounding geology.

Australian groundwater typically contains 0.05–2.9 mg/L of dissolved boron, with some salt lake brines reaching 1.8–19 mg/L. Fresh surface waters are lower, typically 0.05–0.2 mg/L. The Australian Drinking Water Guidelines set a health guideline value of 4 mg/L for boron in drinking water, based on the WHO’s Tolerable Daily Intake of 0.16 mg/kg body weight.

For someone drinking 2 litres of bore water daily at 2–3 mg/L, that’s 4–6 mg of boron from water alone – on top of dietary intake. Over time, this adds up. If you drink untreated bore water, boron exposure should be on your radar.

Importantly, standard over-the-counter water filters (pitcher filters, faucet attachments) and boiling do noteffectively remove boron from water. Reverse osmosis can remove 50–95% depending on pH, and ion exchange with boron-specific resins is the most effective treatment method.

Supplements

Boron supplements have become increasingly popular for bone health and arthritis, typically sold in doses of 3–6 mg per day. Some online communities promote borax (sodium tetraborate) solutions as a folk remedy for arthritis, often at poorly defined doses.

While 3 mg/day supplementation is well-studied and appears safe, self-medicating with borax carries risks, as it’s difficult to control dosage accurately and borax is not manufactured to pharmaceutical standards.

Consumer Products and Industry

Boron compounds are widely used in glass and ceramic manufacturing (borosilicate glass, fiberglass), flame retardants, laundry bleach (sodium perborate), agricultural fertilisers and herbicides, enamel and ceramic glazes, and insecticides (boric acid). Occupational exposure through inhalation of borate dust is the primary industrial concern, though the general population’s exposure through these routes is minimal.

Cosmetics and Personal Care

Some cosmetic products contain boron compounds. Boric acid (E 284) and borax (E 285) have been used as preservatives and buffering agents, though their use in cosmetics has been increasingly restricted in the EU due to reproductive toxicity concerns from animal studies.

Part 4: Back to Our Client – What Does 19 mg/kg in Hair Actually Mean?

Now we have the foundation to properly interpret our client’s result. Let’s put 19 mg/kg of boron in hair into context using TOXTEST’s own proprietary dataset of 1,909 hair analyses – one of the largest datasets of its kind in Australia.

The Numbers

The dataset: 1,909 hair test results spanning more than a decade, all analysed by ICP-MS at TOXTEST’s NATA-accredited laboratory.

Boron across all samples:

• Median: 1.9 mg/kg

• Geometric mean: 1.8 mg/kg

• 75th percentile: 3.9 mg/kg

• 90th percentile: 7.7 mg/kg

• 95th percentile: 12.0 mg/kg

• 97.5th percentile: 17.5 mg/kg

• 99th percentile: 26.0 mg/kg

• 30% of all results fell below the limit of detection (1 mg/kg)

Our client’s position:

• 19 mg/kg places them at the 97.6th percentile – higher than 97.6% of all people tested

• 9.7 times the median

• 4.8 times our “high” reference threshold of 4 mg/kg

• Above the statistical “extreme outlier” fence of 14.3 mg/kg

• Only 43 out of 1,909 people had higher boron

What the Distribution Tells Us

The boron distribution across our population is heavily right-skewed (skewness of 14). This means most people cluster at relatively low levels, but a tail of individuals shows much higher exposure. This is consistent with a pattern where specific exposure routes – bore water, supplements, occupational contact – drive the high values, rather than general environmental contamination.

Interestingly, boron showed virtually no correlation with other elements in our dataset. Lead, arsenic, cadmium, calcium, magnesium – none of them tracked meaningfully with boron. This tells us that elevated boron is typically an independent exposure, driven by a specific source in that person’s life, not part of a broader contamination pattern.

Gender and Age Patterns

Our data revealed some notable demographic patterns:

• Males showed slightly higher boron than females (median 2.0 vs 1.5 mg/kg), possibly reflecting dietary differences or occupational exposure.

• Children under 18 had notably higher levels than adults (median 2.0, mean 5.2 mg/kg). This could reflect higher fruit consumption relative to body weight, or potentially bore water exposure in regional areas.

Part 5: Should the Client Be Concerned?

Let’s be precise about this.

A hair boron level of 19 mg/kg is unambiguously elevated. It is a statistical outlier. Something in this person’s environment, diet, or lifestyle is delivering considerably more boron than the general population receives.

However, “elevated” is not the same as “dangerous.” Here’s why:

Boron is not cadmium. It does not accumulate with a multi-decade half-life. It is efficiently excreted by the kidneys, with most ingested boron leaving the body in urine within days. The body does not sequester it in organs the way it does lead (bones) or mercury (brain). This means that when you reduce boron exposure, your body clears it relatively quickly.

That said, sustained high boron exposure warrants attention – particularly regarding reproductive health (the critical endpoint from animal studies) and because a level this high suggests an identifiable source that should be investigated.

What We Recommend

1. Identify the source. This is always the first and most important step when any hair analysis shows elevated results. Common sources of high boron include:

• Bore water / untreated groundwater (the most common source in Australia)

• Boron supplements or borax folk remedies

• Occupational exposure (glass, ceramic, or fiberglass manufacturing; agricultural chemicals)

• Very high fruit/nut/legume diets, especially with bore water for irrigation

2. Minimise exposure. Once the source is identified, reduce it. If it’s bore water, consider installing a reverse osmosis system or switching to a treated water supply for drinking and cooking. If it’s a supplement, discontinue or reduce the dose. If it’s occupational, review workplace safety measures.

3. Optimise nutrition overall. This is advice we give regardless of the specific elevated substance. Good overall nutrition – adequate calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, selenium – helps the body manage trace element exposures more effectively. A well-nourished body is more resilient. Specific to boron, adequate calcium and vitamin D are important for bone health regardless of boron status.

4. Retest after a period of reduced exposure. Because boron clears relatively quickly, a follow-up hair analysis after 3–6 months of reduced exposure should show improvement. This provides both objective evidence that the intervention is working and peace of mind for the client.

5. Consult a healthcare professional if you have specific health concerns, particularly regarding reproductive health or kidney function, as individuals with impaired kidney function may be less efficient at excreting boron. Or book a consult on our online clinic at Hartgood with Hartmut.

The Bigger Picture: Getting Informed

This article has covered a lot of ground, from the fundamental principles of toxicology through to the specific case of one person’s elevated boron result. The key takeaways:

“Toxic” is about dose, duration, and context – not an inherent property of a substance. Even essential nutrients can be toxic at high enough levels.

Boron is a grey-zone substance – potentially beneficial at 1–3 mg/day, safe at moderate levels, but harmful in excess. It’s fundamentally different from the “Big Four” metals that have no beneficial role and accumulate for decades.

A result of 19 mg/kg in hair is genuinely elevated but it is not a cause for panic. Boron clears efficiently once exposure is reduced. Identify the source, reduce it, optimise your nutrition, and retest.

Hair analysis provides valuable context. Our dataset of nearly 2,000 results gives individual clients a real reference population to compare against – not theoretical guidelines from a textbook, but actual measured values from people living in Australia.

If you’re concerned about boron or other heavy metal exposures, hair analysis is a non-invasive way to get a picture of accumulated exposure. And if you’re curious about a specific substance, our TOXNO database has over 25,000 substance profiles, most with detailed health effect information or at least links to toxicology information.

A little knowledge goes a long way. Stay informed, get tested if concerned, and make choices that minimise unnecessary exposure. Your body will thank you.

This article forms part of our ongoing series called “Stuff to Avoid.” on InnerFood

For testing services: www.toxtest.com.au

For substance profiles: www.toxno.com.au

For our newsletter: InnerFood on Substack

Statistical analysis based on 1,909 TOXTEST hair analysis results spanning 2014–2026. Laboratory work conducted using ICP-MS following total Acid (Aqua Regia) digestion.

Stuff to Avoid Series

Glossary

Statistical and technical terms used in this article, explained in plain language.

Statistical Terms

Mean (Average)

The sum of all values divided by the number of values. Useful for understanding the overall level, but can be pulled higher by a few very large values. Our boron mean of 3.6 mg/kg is nearly double the median because a small number of people have very high levels.

Median

The middle value when all results are arranged from lowest to highest. Half the results are above it, half below. Less affected by extreme values than the mean, making it more representative for skewed data. Our boron median is 1.9 mg/kg.

Geometric Mean

A type of average calculated by multiplying all values together and taking the nth root. More appropriate than the arithmetic mean for data that spans several orders of magnitude. Our boron geometric mean is 1.8 mg/kg.

Percentile

The percentage of results that fall below a given value. If a result is at the 97.6th percentile, it means 97.6% of all results are lower. The 50th percentile equals the median.

Standard Deviation

A measure of how spread out the values are around the mean. A small standard deviation means values cluster tightly; a large one means they are widely dispersed.

Skewness

A measure of how asymmetric a distribution is. A skewness of 0 means symmetric (bell-shaped). Our boron skewness of 14 is extremely high, meaning most values cluster low with a long tail of high values.

Interquartile Range (IQR)

The range between the 25th and 75th percentiles, containing the middle 50% of all values. Used to identify outliers: values more than 1.5× IQR above the 75th percentile are considered mild outliers; more than 3× IQR are extreme outliers.

Outlier

A data point that falls far outside the normal range of values. Our client’s boron of 19 mg/kg exceeds the extreme outlier fence (14.3 mg/kg), confirming it is a genuinely unusual result.

Correlation

A statistical measure of how two variables move together, ranging from −1 (perfect inverse) to +1 (perfect positive). Values near 0 mean no relationship. Boron showed near-zero correlations with other elements, meaning elevated boron is independent of other metal exposures.

Limit of Detection (LOD)

The lowest concentration that an analytical method can reliably distinguish from zero. For boron in our laboratory, the LOD is 1 mg/kg. Results reported as “<1” mean boron was present but below this threshold.

Toxicological Terms

NOAEL

No Observed Adverse Effect Level. The highest dose tested at which no harmful effects were seen. For boron, the key NOAEL is 9.6 mg/kg body weight per day from a rat developmental study.

LOAEL

Lowest Observed Adverse Effect Level. The lowest dose at which adverse effects were first observed.

UL (Tolerable Upper Intake Level)

The maximum daily intake of a nutrient unlikely to cause adverse health effects in the general population. For boron: 20 mg/day (US FNB), 10 mg/day (EFSA).

LD50

Lethal Dose 50%. The single dose that would be expected to kill 50% of a test population. Used to compare acute toxicity between substances.

Half-life (biological)

The time it takes for the body to eliminate half of a substance. Boron has a short half-life (days). Cadmium has a half-life of 10–30 years – a crucial difference.

Dose-Response

The fundamental principle that the severity of an effect increases with the amount of exposure. The basis of all toxicology.

Uncertainty Factor

A safety margin applied when extrapolating from animal data to human safety limits. Typically 10× for animal-to-human differences and 10× for variation between individuals.

Metalloid

An element with properties intermediate between metals and non-metals. Boron and arsenic are both metalloids.

Laboratory and Analytical Terms

ICP-MS

Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometry. The gold-standard analytical technique for measuring trace elements. A sample is ionised in a plasma at approximately 6,000°C, then the ions are separated and counted by their mass. Can detect elements at parts-per-billion concentrations.

Aqua Regia Digestion

A total acid digestion method using a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acids. Dissolves the hair sample completely so that all elements are released into solution for analysis.

mg/kg

Milligrams per kilogram, equivalent to parts per million (ppm). The standard unit for reporting element concentrations in hair. A result of 19 mg/kg means 19 milligrams of boron per kilogram of hair.

NATA Accreditation

National Association of Testing Authorities. Australia’s independent accreditation body that certifies laboratories meet international standards for competence, quality, and reliability.

Hair Analysis

A method of assessing accumulated exposure to elements over the growth period of the hair sample (typically 1–3 months). Non-invasive and useful for identifying chronic or repeated exposures that blood tests may miss.

Organisations Referenced

WHO

World Health Organization. The United Nations agency responsible for international public health, including setting guidelines for safe levels of substances in food and water.

EFSA

European Food Safety Authority. The EU agency that provides independent scientific advice on food-related risks, including setting Tolerable Upper Intake Levels for nutrients.

FNB

Food and Nutrition Board (US). Part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Sets Dietary Reference Intakes including ULs for the United States and Canada.

NHMRC

National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia). Australia’s peak body for health and medical research funding and advice, including dietary guidelines.

IARC

International Agency for Research on Cancer. Part of the WHO. Evaluates and classifies substances based on their cancer-causing potential.

The anthology of photos presented in this series of articles showcases the author’s journey through Europe’s galleries, architecture, archeological sites, history and culture in 2025. These images capture moments of wonder, unfettered curiosity, and learning for our travellers, yet of course each person who travels will have their own curiosities and unique experience. We hope that these photos and the educational commentaries and observations connected to them, inspire you to travel some time and enhance your joie de vivre.

Please note that these articles are best viewed on the website and on a computer or iPad. That’s because the pictures are so detailed and jaw dropping.

TRAVEL FOR HEALTH — SERIES 2

Delos & Mykonos, Cyclades, Greece

Imaginative Archaeology

Tour guides at archaeological sites across the Mediterranean share a common refrain: “Use your imagination.” At Delos—the sacred island that lies just 35 minutes by boat from the glamour of Mykonos—that instruction is not a suggestion but a necessity. What remains of one of the ancient world’s most important cities is a vast field of low walls, scattered column drums, shattered marble, and exposed foundations stretching across a barren, wind-scoured landscape. Without imagination, it is rubble. With it, these ruins become streets, mansions, temples, and a thriving cosmopolitan port of 25,000 to 30,000 souls.

Delos occupies a singular position in the ancient Greek world. According to mythology, the goddess Leto gave birth to the twins Apollo and Artemis on this tiny island, making it one of the most sacred sites in the Hellenic world. From as early as the 9th century BCE, pilgrims travelled from across Greece to worship at its sanctuaries. By the 2nd century BCE, Delos had transformed from sacred precinct into the busiest commercial port in the eastern Mediterranean—a free port under Roman protection where merchants from Italy, Syria, Egypt, and Phoenicia built lavish houses with mosaic floors and painted walls, traded enslaved people, grain, and luxury goods, and worshipped deities from a dozen different cultures in their own dedicated temples. The island’s wealth attracted scholars, artists, and bankers. Its theatre seated 5,500. Its residential quarter boasted some of the finest domestic architecture in the Hellenistic world.

Then, catastrophe. In 88 BCE, Mithridates VI of Pontus—an enemy of Rome—sent his general Menophanes to attack the island. The assault was devastating: 20,000 inhabitants were killed or enslaved, sacred treasures were looted, and the city was virtually destroyed. A second pirate attack in 69 BCE completed the destruction. Delos never recovered. Trade routes shifted, the population dwindled, and by the 1st century CE the island was effectively abandoned. Over the following centuries, Venetians, Ottomans, and neighbouring islanders quarried its temples for building stone and burned its marble columns for lime. When the French School of Archaeology began excavations in 1873, they found a ghost city—the bones of a civilisation exposed to wind and salt for nearly two millennia.

Today, the entire island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most extensive archaeological excavations in the Mediterranean. Only about one-sixth of the site has been fully excavated; the rest lies buried beneath the scrubby brown hillside, waiting. Visitors arrive by morning boat from Mykonos and have until 3:00 PM to explore before the last ferry departs—a compressed encounter with five thousand years of human history under the unrelenting Aegean sun, with no shade, no trees, and a wind that has not stopped blowing since antiquity.

Delos, however, asks something unusual of its visitors: not just to look, but to see what is no longer there. The mosaic floors that survive beneath the open sky were once enclosed in painted rooms. The column stumps that dot the landscape once supported porticoes and pediments. The stone thresholds that cats now thread through once admitted merchants speaking half a dozen languages. The theatre whose seats have tumbled down the hillside once echoed with the voices of 5,500 spectators. The lions that stand guard over an empty lake once watched pilgrims approach the birthplace of a god.

To visit ruins is to engage in a form of imaginative archaeology—reconstructing from fragments, filling absences with knowledge, and allowing the scale and craftsmanship of what survives to suggest the grandeur of what does not. Delos rewards this effort more richly than almost any comparable site in the Mediterranean, because what was destroyed here was not a provincial outpost but one of the ancient world’s great cities: cosmopolitan, wealthy, artistically sophisticated, and sacred. The rubble is eloquent, if one is willing to listen.

And then, thirty-five minutes by boat, Mykonos offers the antidote: a living, breathing, eating, celebrating Greek island where the Mediterranean diet is not a historical artefact but a daily practice, where churches are still built and used, and where the sea that carried ancient merchants to Delos now carries visitors to its white-washed shores.

The Sacred Island

Approaching Delos from the harbour—a landscape of desolation, archaeology, and stark Cycladic beauty

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Delos from the Ancient Harbour

Location: Sacred Harbour, Delos | Subject: Archaeological Site Overview

The ruins of ancient Delos climb the barren hillside as seen from the vicinity of the Sacred Harbour, where pilgrims once disembarked to approach the Sanctuary of Apollo along a paved processional way 13 metres wide. The low stone walls in the foreground trace the outlines of what were once shops, warehouses, and commercial buildings serving the busiest port in the eastern Mediterranean. Column stumps and wall fragments dot the middle ground, while the brown, treeless slopes of Mount Kynthos—the island’s highest point at just 113 metres—rise behind.

The turquoise Aegean and a modern cruise vessel at right provide a jarring contrast to the ancient desolation. Delos measures just 5 kilometres long by 1.3 kilometres wide, yet at its peak in the 2nd century BCE it supported a cosmopolitan population of up to 30,000 people—making it one of the most densely populated places in the ancient world. The island had no agricultural capacity, no timber, and limited fresh water; everything was imported. An extensive cistern and aqueduct system, wells, and sanitary drains sustained the population, but once the trade routes shifted after the catastrophic attacks of 88 and 69 BCE, the infrastructure that made life possible here simply ceased to function.

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The Ghost City at Golden Hour

Location: Residential Quarter, Delos | Subject: Ruined Walls and Mount Kynthos

Low sun illuminates the dried grasses and exposed wall foundations of the residential quarter, with Mount Kynthos silhouetted against the sky. This is the landscape that demands imagination: every low wall was once part of a house, a shop, or a sanctuary. The column stumps supported painted porticoes. The stone thresholds in the foreground once had wooden doors that opened onto busy streets where Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Egyptian were spoken simultaneously.

The summit of Mount Kynthos—visible at centre—was crowned with sanctuaries dedicated to Zeus and Athena, and the climb offered panoramic views across the Cyclades. The name “Cyclades” itself derives from the Greek kyklos (circle), referring to the ring of islands that encircle sacred Delos. The Athenians so revered the island’s sanctity that they twice “purified” it—first in 540 BCE by removing all graves within sight of the Temple of Apollo, and again in 426 BCE by forbidding all births and deaths on the island entirely. Pregnant women and the dying were ferried to the neighbouring island of Rheneia.

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The Permanent Residents

Location: Residential Quarter, Delos | Subject: Feral Cat Among Ancient Ruins

A tabby cat navigates the ancient stone blocks of the residential quarter—one of the few permanent inhabitants of an island that once teemed with 25,000 to 30,000 people. The 2001 Greek census recorded just 14 human residents on Delos, all of them archaeologists and site guardians. The feral cats, by contrast, have made these ruins their own territory, threading through doorways and lounging on marble thresholds that once admitted merchants, priests, and diplomats.

Behind the cat, the characteristic Delian construction technique is visible: walls of roughly fitted local gneiss stone, originally faced with painted plaster that has long since weathered away. A carved column base at lower right hints at the architectural refinement these domestic spaces once possessed—the bare bones of rooms that were decorated with frescoes imitating marble panelling, furnished with wooden furniture, and lit by oil lamps in bronze stands.

Floors That Endure

The Theatre Quarter’s mosaic floors—among the finest surviving examples of Hellenistic domestic art—outlasted the walls, roofs, and families that once surrounded them

PHOTOGRAPH 04 | IMG_7976

Trompe-l’Oeil: The Three-Dimensional Cube Mosaic

Location: Theatre Quarter, Delos | Medium: Tessellated mosaic, c. 2nd century BCE

This remarkable mosaic employs a triple-coloured lozenge pattern in red, white, and grey tesserae to create a convincing illusion of three-dimensional cubes—an optical effect as striking today as it was 2,200 years ago. The pattern appears in at least fifteen different locations across Delos, making it one of the most popular decorative motifs in the island’s domestic architecture. A running wave (guilloche) border frames the geometric field with characteristic Hellenistic precision.

The ruined gneiss walls that frame this floor once rose to two storeys, supporting painted plaster interiors and wooden beam ceilings. The Theatre Quarter—named for its proximity to the ancient theatre—contained some of the wealthiest residences on Delos, including the House of Dionysus, the House of the Dolphins, and the House of the Trident. These were the homes of successful merchants, many of them foreign-born, who decorated their houses with elaborate mosaics and wall paintings to signal their status and cultural sophistication.

PHOTOGRAPH 05 | IMG_7977

House of the Trident: Anchor and Maritime Motifs

Location: House of the Trident, Theatre Quarter, Delos | Period: c. 150–100 BCE

A wider view reveals the full extent of the mosaic floor in the House of the Trident, one of the largest residences on Delos at 286 square metres. The geometric 3D cube panel gives way to a plainer section bearing the house’s identifying emblem: a black dolphin circling a red anchor, with trident motifs nearby. These maritime symbols strongly suggest the owner’s connection to seafaring commerce—and intriguingly, a resemblance has been noted between this anchor-and-trident design and the trademarks stamped on amphorae recovered from a sunken merchant ship off Marseille, raising the possibility that the house belonged to a Delian wine trader who owned the vessel.

The House of the Trident featured a “Rhodian” peristyle—a colonnaded courtyard where one side’s columns were taller than the others to admit more light—and an elegant marble well-head. The console brackets supporting its columns were carved with lion and bull heads, a decorative style attributed to Phoenician or Syrian influence, reflecting the cosmopolitan character of Delos’s merchant class.

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Tesserae and Precision: Mosaic Detail

Location: Theatre Quarter, Delos | Medium: Stone and terracotta tesserae

This close-up reveals the craftsmanship of individual tesserae—small cubes of cut stone and terracotta, each roughly one centimetre square, set into a lime mortar bed. The precision of the wave border, the clean geometry of the 3D cube illusion, and the anchor symbol are all visible in sharp detail. Shadows cast by the ruined walls add drama to the surface.

The development of polychrome tessellated mosaics is generally dated to the 2nd century BCE, making the Delos examples among the earliest and most important in the Mediterranean. Prior to this period, floors were decorated with simpler black-and-white pebble mosaics. The Delian mosaicists worked with natural stone, terracotta, and—for the finest opus vermiculatumwork—tiny tesserae of glass and faience measuring as little as one millimetre across. These floors were designed to be seen beneath a thin film of standing water that enhanced the colours, rather than in their present dusty, sun-bleached condition.

PHOTOGRAPH 07 | IMG_7986

A Room with a View: Mosaic and the Aegean

Location: Theatre Quarter, Delos | Subject: Domestic Mosaic with Sea Panorama

A smaller 3D cube mosaic floor sits within its ruined room, the collapsed walls now framing a panorama of the harbour, the turquoise Aegean, and the hazy profiles of neighbouring islands. This juxtaposition—delicate domestic artistry against the vast emptiness of the abandoned landscape—captures the essential character of Delos. The mosaic artist who laid these tesserae worked in a busy, crowded household; the room would have been enclosed, roofed, furnished, and alive with conversation and lamplight. What remains is the floor and the view.

Delos now faces a new threat. Rising sea levels, combined with the island’s progressive sinking due to tectonic plate movement, have advanced the shoreline by up to 20 metres in some areas over the past decade. Experts from the French School of Archaeology warn that the coastal archaeological zone—including the ancient commercial quarter—may be submerged within 50 years. The walls of ancient shops are already inundated each winter, with seawater corroding their stone foundations and causing sudden collapses each spring.

PHOTOGRAPH 08 | IMG_8001

Rosette Medallion: A Different House, A Different Hand

Location: Theatre Quarter, Delos | Medium: Polychrome tessellated mosaic

This mosaic features a central floral rosette medallion within concentric geometric borders—a different design vocabulary from the 3D cube patterns, demonstrating the range of artistic expression within Delos’s domestic architecture. A trident or anchor symbol at the lower portion of the panel again suggests maritime connections. The turquoise Aegean stretches beyond the crumbling walls, with the profiles of distant islands on the horizon.

The rosette motif, common across Hellenistic sites throughout the Mediterranean, is often coupled with single-wave borders in Delian mosaics—a regional signature. Each wealthy household appears to have employed its own mosaic workshop, with craftsmen drawing on a shared repertoire of patterns but producing unique combinations for each commission. The binding cement beneath the tesserae was often tinted to match the colour of the stones it held, improving the tonal unity of the design—a subtle technical refinement invisible to the casual viewer but evidence of considerable professional pride.

Through the Doorway

Thresholds and colonnaded courtyards invite the visitor to imagine the daily life of Delos’s vanished merchant families

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Threshold: A Doorway Across Two Millennia

Location: Theatre Quarter, Delos | Subject: Marble Doorjambs and Peristyle Courtyard

White marble doorjambs frame a view through to a peristyle courtyard beyond, where tall columns still stand against the sky. A black cat slips across the stone threshold at lower right—the only movement in a scene that has been silent for two thousand years. At left, traces of the original wall plaster cling to the rough gneiss stonework, hinting at the painted surfaces that once covered every interior wall.

This is perhaps the image that most directly answers the tour guide’s instruction to “use your imagination.” The doorway is intact; the proportions are clear; the courtyard columns establish the scale and elegance of the space. It requires only a small leap to picture a merchant returning home through this entrance in the 2nd century BCE, stepping from the noisy, multilingual street into the cool shade of his colonnaded courtyard, where a mosaic floor gleamed beneath standing water and painted walls depicted scenes from mythology. The cat, threading through the same threshold, provides an accidental continuity—the only living presence in a domestic space built for human habitation.

PHOTOGRAPH 10 | IMG_8021

The Peristyle: Columns, Light, and Mosaic

Location: Theatre Quarter, Delos | Subject: Reconstructed Peristyle Courtyard

Tall marble columns of a partially reconstructed peristyle courtyard rise against the backlit sky, their shadows falling across a wave-pattern mosaic floor at their base. The characteristic Delian construction is visible in the contrast between the refined marble architectural elements and the rough gneiss walls that enclosed the living spaces. At left, remnants of painted wall plaster survive in patches—fragments of the decorative programme that once transformed these austere stone walls into richly coloured interiors.

The peristyle—a central courtyard surrounded by a colonnaded portico—was the defining feature of wealthy Delian houses, borrowed from the public architecture of temples and civic buildings and adapted for domestic use. The courtyard served as the house’s primary light source and gathering space; rooms opened off it on all sides. Square fixture holes, still visible in some peristyle columns at a height of about 220 centimetres, once held the brackets for blinds or screens that could be adjusted to control sunlight and wind—practical solutions to the same Aegean conditions that visitors experience on the site today.

The Theatre

Built in the early 3rd century BCE to seat 5,500 spectators, the theatre’s cavea doubled as a rainwater catchment—engineering and culture in a single structure

PHOTOGRAPH 11 | IMG_8035

The Theatre: 5,500 Seats, 2,300 Years

Location: Ancient Theatre, Delos | Date: Early 3rd century BCE

The ancient theatre of Delos, viewed from the stage area, with modern visitors seated on the surviving lower rows of marble seating—the prohedria, or front-row seats reserved for dignitaries and priests. Above them, the devastation of the upper cavea is stark: hundreds of displaced marble blocks cascade down the hillside in a debris field of collapsed seating rows. Mount Kynthos and its summit sanctuary crown the scene.

Built shortly after 300 BCE, the theatre originally held approximately 5,500 spectators who enjoyed a splendid view across the orchestra and skene (stage building) to the harbours beyond. The structure also served a vital practical function: the curved cavea acted as a massive rainwater catchment during storms, with two well-preserved drain mouths—still visible on either side of the semicircular orchestra—channelling water into an impressively vaulted underground cistern supported by eight granite arches. On an island with no rivers and minimal rainfall, this dual-purpose design was not a luxury but a necessity.

PHOTOGRAPH 12 | IMG_8041

The Shattered Cavea and Mount Kynthos

Location: Ancient Theatre, Delos | Subject: Upper Seating and Summit Sanctuary

Looking upward from the lower seating, the scale of destruction becomes apparent. The upper rows of the theatre have collapsed entirely, their marble blocks scattered across the hillside in a cascade of displaced stone that extends almost to the summit of Mount Kynthos. Where thousands once sat watching performances of Euripides and Aristophanes, only a tumbled mass of rectangular blocks remains—each one a precisely cut seat that has not moved from its fallen position in centuries.

This destruction was not caused by a single catastrophic event but by the slow, cumulative effects of nearly two millennia of abandonment: earthquakes, frost cycles expanding trapped moisture in the marble, gravity pulling displaced blocks further down the slope, and centuries of deliberate quarrying by Venetians and Ottomans who burned the marble for lime or shipped it to build structures elsewhere. Mount Kynthos, visible at the summit, was crowned with sanctuaries to Zeus and Athena, reached by a processional path that still survives in fragments. The name Kynthos gave rise to the epithet “Cynthia” for Artemis—the moon goddess born on this very hill.

Guardians of the Sacred Lake

The iconic Terrace of the Lions—dedicated to Apollo by the people of Naxos around 600 BCE—stands sentinel over the dried bed of the Sacred Lake where mythology placed Apollo’s birth

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Lion of the Naxians

Location: Terrace of the Lions, Delos | Material: Naxian marble, c. 600 BCE

One of the iconic marble lions of Delos sits on its haunches, mouth open in a weathered roar that has been silently sustained for over 2,600 years. The Naxian marble has been eroded by wind and salt spray to a smooth, almost abstract form—the mane reduced to a suggestion, the features softened to the point of dissolution. Yet the pose retains its archaic power: chest thrust forward, forelegs braced, the body taut with implied menace.

These are replicas; the originals, after enduring 2,500 years of exposure, were finally moved indoors to the Archaeological Museum of Delos in 1999. The original terrace comprised between nine and sixteen lions, carved from Naxian marble and dedicated to the Sanctuary of Apollo by the people of Naxos—the dominant commercial power in the Cyclades during the 7th and 6th centuries BCE. One lion suffered a particularly unusual fate: taken by Venetians in the 17th century, it was given a replacement head and installed over the main gate of the Venetian Arsenal in Venice, where it can still be seen today—a Delian guardian repurposed for a different maritime empire.

PHOTOGRAPH 14 | IMG_8050

The Terrace of the Lions

Location: Sacred Lake area, Delos | Period: c. 600 BCE

The surviving replica lions sit in their famous row on modern rectangular pedestals, facing east toward the dried bed of the Sacred Lake—the mythological birthplace of Apollo. Two columns rise behind the terrace, fragments of the monumental architecture that once lined the Sacred Way from Skardana Bay to the temples. The barren landscape stretching beyond underscores the island’s desolation: no trees, no shade, no habitation—only stone, scrub, and sky.

The arrangement deliberately echoes Egyptian avenues of sphinxes—a monumental processional avenue designed to inspire awe and divine fear in worshippers approaching the sanctuary. The Sacred Lake itself, once a natural feature central to Delos’s religious identity, was drained in 1925 to combat malaria. Today a solitary palm tree marks the spot where, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Leto clung to a palm while giving birth to the god of light. The lake’s absence is itself a metaphor for the layers of loss that define Delos: the water gone, the trees gone, the people gone, the gods gone—only the lions still watching.

PHOTOGRAPH 15 | IMG_8038

Columns and the Aegean: Ruins with a View

Location: Residential Quarter, Delos | Subject: Fluted Marble Columns and Sea Panorama

Two standing fluted marble columns rise among dry-stone walls, framing a panorama of the deep blue Aegean and the hazy profiles of neighbouring islands—likely Naxos and Paros, the two largest of the Cyclades. The fluting indicates these are Ionic or Corinthian order columns from a substantial public or private building, their survival testament to the quality of their original construction.

This view encapsulates why Delos became the commercial hub it did: the island sits at the geographic centre of the Cycladic ring, visible from every direction, with natural harbours accessible from multiple approaches. The same geography that made it sacred—its centrality, its visibility, its position at the crossroads of Aegean shipping lanes—made it commercially irresistible. The merchants who built the houses whose ruins now surround these columns would have looked out at the same island silhouettes, watching for the sails of trading vessels carrying the goods that made them wealthy.

The Living Island

Thirty-five minutes by boat from the silent ruins of Delos, the vibrant harbour of Mykonos offers a study in contrasts—and a taste of the Mediterranean diet that has sustained these islands for millennia

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Mykonos Town: The Living Harbour

Location: Mykonos Town (Chora), Cyclades | Subject: Old Harbour and Waterfront

The old harbour of Mykonos Town (Chora) sweeps in a broad arc: turquoise water, fishing boats, a sandy beach, and the famous cascade of white Cycladic buildings climbing the hillside—domed churches, flat-roofed houses, and the characteristic enclosed wooden balconies that provide shade in the fierce island sun. Restaurants and bars line the waterfront in a ribbon of coloured awnings and outdoor seating. The contrast with the desolation of Delos, just 35 minutes away by ferry, could not be more complete.

Mykonos itself has approximately 10,000 permanent residents but receives over two million visitors annually, making tourism the overwhelming driver of the local economy. The island’s transformation from a quiet fishing community into one of the Mediterranean’s most glamorous destinations began in the 1960s, when it attracted artists, writers, and the international jet set. Today, Mykonos is home to over 70 churches within Chora alone—a legacy of the Mykonian tradition of building votive churches in thanks for safe returns from sea voyages, and the old custom of placing the bones of deceased family members within the walls of parish churches.

PHOTOGRAPH 17 | IMG_8069

Dining al Fresco: Cycladic Style

Location: Mykonos Town | Subject: Nice n Easy Organic Bistro Restaurant

White tables and turquoise chairs fill a stone-paved square in Mykonos Town, with diners gathered beneath shade canopies in the classic Cycladic outdoor dining arrangement. The whitewashed buildings, bright painted shutters, and glimpse of a blue-domed church behind create the quintessential Greek island tableau. The restaurant—Nice n Easy, an organic bistro—represents a growing emphasis on locally sourced, traditional ingredients in Mykonian dining, moving beyond the island’s reputation for nightlife toward a more considered culinary culture.

Greek island cuisine is rooted in the principles that modern nutritional science recognises as the Mediterranean diet—a dietary pattern associated with reduced cardiovascular disease, improved cognitive function, and increased longevity. The traditional Cycladic kitchen relies on olive oil as the primary fat source, seasonal vegetables and wild greens (horta), legumes, fresh seafood, sheep and goat cheese, and minimal processed foods. On Mykonos, local specialities include kopanisti (a peppery soft cheese), louza (air-dried pork loin seasoned with pepper and clove), and amygdalota (almond cookies).

PHOTOGRAPH 18 | IMG_8114

Horiatiki: The Authentic Greek Salad

Location: Mykonos | Subject: Traditional Village Salad (Horiatiki)

The horiatiki—literally “village salad”—is the authentic Greek salad, and this plate demonstrates the classic composition: chunked ripe tomato, cucumber, red onion, green pepper, Kalamata olives, and a generous slab of feta cheese dusted with dried oregano and drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. No lettuce—that is an international addition absent from the traditional recipe. The ingredients are simple, seasonal, and unprocessed, representing the agrarian diet that sustained Greek island communities for centuries.

From a clinical nutrition perspective, this single dish delivers a remarkable nutritional profile. The extra virgin olive oil provides monounsaturated fatty acids (oleic acid) and polyphenols with demonstrated anti-inflammatory properties. Tomatoes contribute lycopene—a powerful antioxidant whose bioavailability increases when consumed with dietary fat. Kalamata olives add further polyphenols, vitamin E, and healthy fats. Feta, a brined sheep’s milk cheese, provides protein, calcium, and beneficial probiotics from its fermentation process, while being lower in fat and calories than most aged cheeses. The raw onion and oregano contribute quercetin and rosmarinic acid, respectively—bioactive compounds with antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. Together, these ingredients exemplify the Mediterranean dietary pattern that the landmark Lyon Diet Heart Study and subsequent PREDIMED trial associated with significant reductions in cardiovascular mortality.

COMING NEXT

Ephesus & Turkey: Where Empires Converge

From Greek sacred island to Roman provincial capital—the ruins of Ephesus tell another chapter in the Mediterranean story of grandeur and destruction

© 2025 Hart and Trin’s European Travels. A Photojournalism tour. | All Rights Reserved

Visit Travel for Health on Substack for the full series

All images used in these articles are actual unedited photos taken by Hartmut Michael Günther and Trinity Angeles while on their travels in Europe in 2025. AI was used in these articles for some research and writing only.

If you are sincere about stopping crazy and damaging alcohol and drug use, this series facilitates optimal and lasting recovery.

Over ten years ago, I was very fortunate to have clients come in to my clinic who concurrently were enrolled in a world-class alcohol and drug rehabilitation centre in Armidale, New South Wales, Australia called Freeman House. The sincerity and humbleness to want to change an obvious unhealthy habit really struck me. For the next year, I volunteered through Freeman House to offer programmes that help clients understand recovery and, in particular, addressing aspects of lifestyle and nutrition.

After a year, I was put on the payroll, and since then, I have been able to facilitate four different programmes, with one still running and simply called “Health and Nutrition.”This week, a client asked about healing the liver. She had been a big drinker, had now completely given up, and had some concerning news about the state of her liver.

I did some current research, constructed a handout, and made it available to her and other clients at the centre. However, since I write about health in general and other elements of toxicology, here at Innerfood, I thought it might help some people in a similar situation who don’t have access to a high-quality facility or resources in general, at this point in time.

Here in Part 1 of “Questions & Insights from Rehab Clients” is a guide to the lady’s concern and question, pretty much as it was in the handout I gave her.

Coming at this from a biochemistry and nutrition medicine background, I know very well that the liver is a regenerative powerhouse—provided we stop hitting it with “biological sledgehammers.” This brief is scientifically grounded but phrased for those of us focused on practical recovery.

Your Liver’s Fresh Start: A Guide to Healing & Recovery

The liver is one of the only organs in the human body capable of complete regeneration. Even after years of heavy use, it wants to heal. By removing the primary toxin (alcohol) and providing the right raw materials, you can significantly speed up this biological “renovation.”

1. The Foundation: Total Abstinence

The most important step is already behind you. Without the constant presence of ethanol, your liver can shift from “crisis management” to “repair mode.” Within weeks of stopping, liver fat begins to decrease, and inflammation starts to subside.

2. Hydrate to Flush

Your liver filters blood and creates bile to carry toxins away. Dehydration makes this “sludge” harder to move.

• The Goal: Aim for 2–3 liters of filtered water daily.

• The Boost: Start your morning with warm water and half a squeezed lemon. The citric acid aids bile production and provides a gentle “kickstart” to your digestive enzymes.

3. Eat for “Phase II” Detoxification

Your liver processes toxins in two phases. To help it out, focus on these specific food groups:

• Cruciferous Vegetables: Broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage. These contain sulforaphane, which boosts the liver’s natural detox enzymes.

• Sulfur-Rich Foods: Garlic, onions, and pasture-raised eggs. Sulfur is essential for the production of Glutathione—your body’s master antioxidant.

• Beets & Artichokes: These are “cholagogues,” meaning they help stimulate bile flow and protect liver cells from damage.

4. Reduce the “Secondary” Load

While the liver is healing, try not to give it extra work.

• Cut Refined Sugars: High-fructose corn syrup is processed by the liver similarly to alcohol and can contribute to “fatty liver” even if you aren’t drinking.

• Watch the Meds: Be cautious with over-the-counter painkillers like acetaminophen (Tylenol/Paracetamol), as these are processed heavily by the liver. Always consult your doctor first.

• Minimise Heavily Processed Foods : That can contain unhealthy fats and other non-nutrient additives, which can increase oxidative stress.

5. Natural Liver Supporters

• Milk Thistle (Silymarin): A well-studied herb that may protect liver cell membranes and promote protein synthesis for regeneration.

• Turmeric (Curcumin): A powerful anti-inflammatory that helps reduce the “scarring” (fibrosis) risk in liver tissue.

• Dandelion Root Tea: A gentle natural diuretic that helps the liver and kidneys flush waste more efficiently.

A Note on Patience: Healing takes time. Most people see significant improvements in liver enzyme markers (like ALT and AST) within 30 to 90 days of consistent nutrition and sobriety.

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments.

Coming up in part 2

Reclaiming Your Health: A Roadmap to Recovery

Healing the Brain and Body After Stimulants, Opioids, and Cannabinoids

When you stop using, your body doesn’t just “rest”—it begins a massive construction project to repair damaged receptors, replenish neurotransmitters, and heal vital organs. Here is how each substance affects you and how you can support your recovery through nutrition.

Metabolic Overload: The Meth + Alcohol Interaction

A Clinical Guide to Combined Neurotoxicity & Repair

When these two substances are used together, the body becomes a chemical battleground. Understanding the “why” behind the damage is the first step in fueling the recovery. We also talk about the need for thiamine (vitamin B1) in the early stages of recovery from alcohol.

The Meth-Gout Connection: A Metabolic Perfect Storm

If you have a family history of gout, your body is already sensitive to uric acid. Methamphetamine use acts like “fuel on the fire” for this condition.

Hartmut Michael Günther is a clinical nutritionist and educator and with degrees in biochemistry, psychology, and nutrition medicine and over 25 years experience.

Certain mushrooms love pine forests. They love growing in the pine forests. They need to grow in the pine forests. There were at least three varieties that are edible, nutritious, and delicious that grow in the Armidale pine forest. As always, it’s extremely important to know what you’re doing and to have sought professional advice before eating wild mushrooms.

It’s ten years ago and nearly Autumn in Armidale, NSW, 2016 and after foraging in the local pine forest, I came upon these and then more and more. Matt, the Chef at the local Gold Fish Bowl Cafe, a renowned mushroom forager and food enthusiast, indicated they were Saffrom Milk Caps (Lactarius deliciosus). Previously I had found “slippery Jacks” (Suillus luteus) and innovated a delicious berry and mushroom jam.

Also found some very suspect mushrooms that the good people from the Mushroom Identification Forum helped me identify and suggested I exercise a generous degree of caution. The ones below I have eaten and have just eaten another meal while I write this.

Some highlights from Wikipedia

This mushroom stains a deep green color when handled.
When fresh, the mushroom exudes an orange-red latex or “milk” that does not change color.

It is found in Europe and has been accidentally introduced to other countries under conifers and can be found growing in pine plantations.Lactarius deliciosus grows under conifers on acidic soils and forms a mycorrhizal relationship with its host tree.

It has been reportedly introduced to Chile, Australia and New Zealand, where it grows in Pinus radiata plantations.
High consumption of Lactarius deliciosus could cause urine discoloration, namely coloring it orange/red

The green colour comes through when they are bruised.

Not sure what that green colour indicates. Also don’t know much about the nutritional and medicinal properties. Any input is warmly welcome. When I got them, they were quite dirty, so I washed them, then dried them in the hot sun for about 5 hours.

They felt dry and smelt great. Have kept them now — about two weeks so far — in the fridge in a bowl with no lid — look dry but feel fine and still smell good. Made a meal tonight. Simple and tasty. Still alive.

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The anthology of photos presented in this series of articles showcases the author’s journey through Europe’s galleries, architecture, ruins, history and culture in 2025. These images capture moments of wonder, unfettered curiosity, and learning for our travellers, yet of course each person who travels will have their own curiosities and unique experience. We hope that these photos and the educational commentaries and observations connected to them, inspire you to travel some time and enhance your joie de vivre.

Please note that these articles are best viewed on the website and on a computer or iPad. That’s because the pictures are so detailed and jaw dropping.

Introduction

This is the first article of Series 2 of our photojournalism pieces entitled “Travel for Health.” After leaving Naples, we journeyed across the Mediterranean to the island of Malta. I had never been to Malta before, and first impressions revealed an ancient culture and buildings extremely weathered, yet defiant and mostly standing intact. We were there in summer with not a cloud in sight, and one soon wonders how the inhabitants here receive enough water to live. And while tourism obviously provides income for people on the island, one also wonders how the economy sustains itself. All this and more revealed in the photos taken along with some interesting historical and current highlights. Overall, very relaxing and a chance to slow down and breathe deeply the Mediterranean air and enjoy the people.

Malta occupies a singular position in human history. Long before the Knights of St. John transformed these islands into an impregnable fortress, long before Phoenicians established trading posts on its natural harbours, an anonymous prehistoric civilisation was constructing some of humanity’s most remarkable monuments. The Megalithic Temples of Malta—including Ġgantija on Gozo, Ħaġar Qim, Mnajdra, and Tarxien—date from approximately 3600 to 2500 BCE, making them over 5,500 years old. These structures predate the Egyptian pyramids by a millennium and Stonehenge by nearly as long; only Göbekli Tepe in Turkey claims greater antiquity among the world’s freestanding religious monuments.

The largest stones at these sites weigh up to 50 tonnes, yet they were quarried, transported, and precisely positioned using only Neolithic technology. When visitors walk the honey-coloured streets of Valletta or Mdina today, they traverse ground that has witnessed continuous human habitation since at least 5200 BCE—making Malta one of the longest-settled places on Earth. Not that old, however, compared to the indigenous Aboriginal culture of Australia dating back some 35,000 years or perhaps more.

The archipelago’s strategic position—93 kilometres south of Sicily, 290 kilometres north of Libya, equidistant between Gibraltar and Suez—has made it coveted by every Mediterranean power. The Knights of St. John arrived in 1530 after their expulsion from Rhodes and famously withstood the Great Siege of 1565, when approximately 40,000 Ottoman troops attempted to dislodge some 700 Knights and 8,000 defenders.

The siege’s failure marked a turning point in Mediterranean history; Voltaire later wrote that nothing was better known than Malta’s defence. The Knights subsequently built Valletta as their new capital, creating the Baroque limestone masterpiece that now constitutes a UNESCO World Heritage Site. During the Second World War, Malta endured the most concentrated aerial bombardment in history—in April 1942 alone, the islands received 6,728 tonnes of bombs—earning the entire population the George Cross for collective bravery.

Modern Malta faces a challenge less dramatic but equally existential: water. The islands possess no rivers, no lakes, and receive barely 500 millimetres of rainfall annually. Today, four reverse osmosis desalination plants—at Pembroke, Ċirkewwa, Għar Lapsi, and Hondoq in Gozo—produce approximately 23 million cubic metres of freshwater annually, supplying roughly 64 percent of the islands’ needs. The remaining 36 percent comes from groundwater extraction, primarily through the remarkable Ta’ Kandja underground galleries that extend 6.2 kilometres beneath the Maltese limestone at a depth of 97 metres. Energy efficiency has improved dramatically: desalinating one cubic metre of seawater now requires just 3 kilowatt-hours, down from 7 kilowatt-hours a decade ago.

Despite these engineering achievements, Malta remains Europe’s most water-stressed nation. Agriculture—constrained to just 10,700 hectares worked by some 10,400 small farms, 90 percent of which are smaller than two hectares—produces less than a quarter of the islands’ food requirements.

Approximately 71 percent of Malta’s food must be imported. The terraced fields visible throughout the countryside, bounded by traditional dry-stone walls called ħitan tas-sejjieħ, represent millennia of painstaking effort to coax sustenance from this rocky, sun-scorched terrain—efforts that continue today through the Water Services Corporation’s “New Water” programme, which recycles treated wastewater to irrigate agricultural land in a bid to achieve “net zero impact” on the islands’ precious aquifers.

Deep Blue Sea & the Mediterranean Approach

PHOTOGRAPH 01 | IMG_7684.jpeg — Mediterranean Approach

Location: Central Mediterranean Sea | Subject: Ship’s Wake at Dawn

The ship’s wake stretches toward the horizon as cumulus clouds build over the central Mediterranean. This body of water—93 kilometres south of Sicily and 290 kilometres north of Libya—has served as a maritime crossroads for over three millennia. The Mediterranean’s distinctive deep blue derives from its oligotrophic (nutrient-poor) character: limited phytoplankton allows sunlight to penetrate deeply, with the water absorbing red wavelengths and scattering blue. Thermal stratification creates layers of warm surface water above cooler depths, contributing to the exceptional clarity visible in this image. The cloud formations on the horizon suggest the atmospheric instability common to this region, where hot African air masses meet cooler European systems.

Senglea Point and the Grand Harbour

PHOTOGRAPH 02 | IMG_7761.jpeg — Senglea Point and the Grand Harbour

Location: Grand Harbour, Malta | Subject: Senglea (Isla) with Vedette Watchtower

The fortified peninsula of Senglea juts into the Grand Harbour, its distinctive Vedette watchtower visible at the tip. This gardjola (sentry post), decorated with carved eyes and ears symbolising vigilance, has watched over the harbour entrance since the 1560s. Senglea forms part of the “Three Cities” (Cottonera)—along with Birgu and Cospicua—which served as the Knights of St. John’s original base before Valletta’s construction. Fort St. Michael, whose walls are visible in the fortifications, withstood the main Ottoman assault during the Great Siege of 1565. The morning light illuminates the honey-coloured globigerina limestone that characterises Maltese architecture, while modern port cranes at right indicate the harbour’s continuing commercial importance.

Valletta Waterfront

PHOTOGRAPH 03 | IMG_7766.jpeg — Valletta Waterfront

Location: Valletta, Malta | Subject: Pinto Wharf and Baroque Warehouses

The restored 18th-century warehouses of Valletta’s waterfront rise against the massive fortification walls. Built during the magistracy of Grand Master Manuel Pinto da Fonseca (1741–1773), these structures originally served as storage for goods passing through Malta’s busy harbour. The colourful doors and shutters—in traditional Maltese greens, reds, and ochres—punctuate the uniform limestone façade. Above, the city’s residential buildings climb the steep ridge, their enclosed wooden balconies (gallariji) providing shade and privacy. The bedrock visible between the warehouses and upper city reveals the geological foundation upon which Malta’s fortifications were constructed—cut directly into the living rock.

Senglea Marina

PHOTOGRAPH 04 | IMG_7769.jpeg — Senglea Marina

Location: Senglea, Malta | Subject: Basilica of Our Lady of Victories and Marina

The twin bell towers and distinctive red dome of the Basilica of Our Lady of Victories (Marija Bambina) dominate Senglea’s skyline. The present church, completed in 1743, replaced an earlier structure destroyed by earthquake. The basilica’s dedication commemorates the Christian victory over Ottoman forces in 1565—a defining moment in Maltese history. The dense urban fabric cascading down to the waterfront demonstrates the characteristic Maltese pattern of building vertically on limited land. Modern pleasure craft now occupy the marina where Knights’ galleys once moored, though the massive fortification walls at left still evoke the military necessity that shaped this landscape.

Maltese Terraced Landscape

PHOTOGRAPH 05 | IMG_7813.jpeg — Maltese Terraced Landscape

Location: Rural Malta | Subject: Traditional Dry-Stone Walls (Ħitan tas-Sejjieħ)

The ancient practice of dry-stone wall construction has shaped Malta’s rural landscape for millennia. Known locally as ħitan tas-sejjieħ, these walls serve multiple functions: creating level terraces for agriculture on sloping terrain, reducing soil erosion, retaining precious moisture, and clearing fields of the abundant stones that characterise Maltese geology. Built without mortar using only carefully fitted limestone, these walls represent an intangible cultural heritage recognised by UNESCO. The vegetation visible—including carob trees, prickly pear cactus, and wild herbs—represents the typical garrigue ecosystem of the Mediterranean. In the middle ground, stacked limestone blocks suggest ongoing agricultural activity in a tradition stretching back to Neolithic times.

Dingli Cliffs Vista

PHOTOGRAPH 06 | IMG_7833.jpeg — Dingli Cliffs Vista

Location: Dingli, Malta | Subject: Southwest Coast and Filfla Island

The terraced slopes of Malta’s southwest coast descend toward the Mediterranean, with the uninhabited islet of Filfla visible on the horizon. At 253 metres above sea level, the Dingli Cliffs represent Malta’s highest elevation. The winding paths and scattered agricultural structures (razzett) demonstrate how Maltese farmers have worked this challenging terrain for generations. The dramatic cliff faces expose the geological layers of upper coralline limestone that form this coastline. Filfla, now a nature reserve, served as a military target practice range for British forces until 1971; unexploded ordnance still renders the islet off-limits to visitors. The intense blue of the Mediterranean contrasts with the ochre and green of the cultivated slopes.

St. Mary Magdalene Chapel

PHOTOGRAPH 07 | IMG_7839.jpeg — St. Mary Magdalene Chapel

Location: Dingli Cliffs, Malta | Subject: Il-Kappella tal-Irdum (Chapel on the Cliff)

The Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene stands at the precipice of the Dingli Cliffs, its simple limestone form silhouetted against the Mediterranean sky. First documented in 1446, the present structure dates from a 1646 reconstruction. The chapel has been struck by lightning twice—in 1936 and 2014—testament to its exposed position on Malta’s highest point. The building’s vernacular architecture—rough-cut limestone walls, single oculus window, gabled roof with stone cross—exemplifies the Maltese tradition of wayside chapels that mark significant landscape features. An information board at left indicates the site’s inclusion in Malta’s cultural heritage protection programme. The viewing platform at right offers visitors the dramatic panorama visible in subsequent photographs.

Dingli Cliffs Panorama

PHOTOGRAPH 08 | IMG_7840.jpeg — Dingli Cliffs Panorama

Location: Dingli, Malta | Subject: Ta’ Dmejrek Viewpoint

The modern viewing platform provides a safe vantage point over the dramatic Dingli Cliffs landscape. The exposed upper coralline limestone in the foreground reveals the erosion patterns characteristic of this coastline—karst formations created by millennia of rainfall dissolving the porous rock. Mediterranean garrigue vegetation clings to the rocky terrain: wild thyme, sea squill, and endemic species adapted to the harsh conditions of salt spray, limited soil, and intense summer drought. Filfla island is again visible on the horizon. The agricultural terraces visible below demonstrate the historical imperative to cultivate every possible hectare on this small, densely populated island. Cart ruts—mysterious parallel grooves cut into bedrock, possibly dating to the Bronze Age—can be found throughout this region.

Mdina Gate

PHOTOGRAPH 09 | IMG_7842.jpeg — Mdina Gate

Location: Mdina, Malta | Subject: Main Gate (1724) by Charles François de Mondion

The Baroque entrance to Mdina, designed by French architect Charles François de Mondion in 1724, replaced a medieval drawbridge gate. The triumphal arch design incorporates rusticated pilasters, heraldic shields, and an ornamental superstructure typical of the Knights’ period architecture. A stone bridge spans the dry moat, now converted to the manicured Howard Gardens visible below. The defensive walls visible extending from the gate incorporate elements from multiple periods: Arab fortifications (870–1091), medieval additions, and Knights’ era bastions. Mdina—founded over 4,000 years ago and fortified by Phoenicians around 700 BCE—served as Malta’s capital until the Knights established Valletta in 1566. This gate achieved international recognition as a filming location for HBO’s Game of Thrones, representing the gates of King’s Landing.

Mdina Gate: Sculptural Detail

PHOTOGRAPH 10 | IMG_7847.jpeg — Mdina Gate: Sculptural Detail

Location: Mdina, Malta | Subject: Lion Sculptures and de Vilhena Heraldry

Flanking the entrance, weathered stone lions guard Mdina’s threshold. These sculptural elements, along with the elaborate coat of arms above the archway, reference Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena, during whose magistracy (1722–1736) the gate was constructed. The Latin inscription commemorates the gate’s completion. The rusticated limestone blocks create dramatic shadows in the harsh Mediterranean light, while the accumulation of centuries of visitors has polished the flagstones to a smooth sheen. The architectural vocabulary—classical columns, carved entablature, armorial bearings—reflects the Knights’ desire to project European aristocratic culture in their Mediterranean island stronghold. Visitors pass through this threshold into streets that have remained substantially unchanged since the medieval period.

Streets of Mdina

PHOTOGRAPH 11 | IMG_7852.jpeg — Streets of Mdina

Location: Mdina, Malta | Subject: Villegaignon Street

The narrow streets of Mdina—known as the “Silent City” for its prohibition on most vehicular traffic—channel pedestrians between walls of golden limestone. The buildings display characteristic features of Maltese domestic architecture: enclosed wooden balconies (gallariji), wrought-iron railings, and carved stone surrounds on doors and windows. These architectural elements serve practical purposes in Malta’s climate: the enclosed balconies provide shade while allowing air circulation, and the thick limestone walls moderate interior temperatures. The street rises toward the Carmelite Church, visible at the end of the perspective. With a resident population of approximately 250, Mdina maintains an atmosphere of aristocratic quietude that contrasts with the bustle of modern Malta outside its walls.

Mediterranean Flora

PHOTOGRAPH 12 | IMG_7855.jpeg — Mediterranean Flora

Location: Mdina, Malta | Subject: Endemic or Native Plant Species

This close-up reveals the silvery-green foliage and pale clustered flowers of a plant adapted to Mediterranean conditions. The thick, waxy leaves indicate adaptations to conserve water during the intense summer drought. The specimen may be Maltese Salt Tree (Darniella melitensis), one of Malta’s endemic species, or a related member of the Mediterranean maquis or garrigue plant community.

Malta’s isolation has produced several endemic plant species found nowhere else on Earth, though the island’s intensive development continues to threaten native habitats. Such plants represent important links in the ecological chain supporting endemic insects, birds, and other wildlife, while also contributing to the distinctive visual character of the Maltese landscape.

Mdina Fortifications

PHOTOGRAPH 13 | IMG_7859.jpeg — Mdina Fortifications

Location: Mdina, Malta | Subject: Bastions and Glacis

The massive limestone bastions of Mdina demonstrate the evolution of fortification design across multiple periods. The angular projections allowed defenders to direct enfilading fire along the walls’ faces—a design principle developed in response to gunpowder artillery. The sloping glacis (the grassy area surrounding the walls) was kept deliberately clear of structures to deny cover to attackers and provide clear fields of fire. The manicured lawns and ornamental trees now occupying this defensive zone indicate the transformation of these military works into urban parkland. Palm trees silhouetted against the sky provide scale for the walls’ impressive height. The honey-coloured limestone, quarried locally from Malta’s abundant globigerina deposits, weathers to a characteristic golden patina that defines Maltese historic architecture.

Church of the Assumption (Rotunda of Mosta)

PHOTOGRAPH 14 | IMG_7882.jpeg — Mosta Rotunda

Location: Mosta, Malta | Subject: Church of the Assumption (Rotunda of Mosta)

The Mosta Rotunda boasts the third-largest unsupported dome in the world, with an internal diameter of 39 metres—exceeded only by the Pantheon in Rome and St. Peter’s Basilica. Designed by Grognet de Vassé and built between 1833 and the 1860s largely through local donations and volunteer labour, the church’s neoclassical design deliberately echoes the Roman Pantheon. The Latin inscription on the entablature dedicates the structure to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Flanking bell towers, each with its own clock face, frame the massive drum supporting the dome. This church gained fame for the “Miracle of Mosta” on 9 April 1942, when a 500-kilogram German bomb pierced the dome during Mass with approximately 300 parishioners inside—but failed to explode. A replica of the bomb is displayed within the church as testimony to this event.

Valletta from the Harbour

PHOTOGRAPH 15 | IMG_7886.jpeg — Valletta from the Harbour

Location: Grand Harbour, Malta | Subject: Valletta Peninsula and Fort St. Elmo

The full expanse of Valletta stretches across its peninsula as viewed from a departing vessel. Fort St. Elmo, at the peninsula’s tip (left), guards the harbour entrance where it withstood a month-long Ottoman assault in May–June 1565 before falling with the death of its entire garrison. The Knights subsequently built Valletta on the ridge behind the fort, naming it after Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette, who led the successful defence. The uniform honey-coloured limestone and consistent building heights create a remarkably harmonious urban silhouette—the result of the Knights’ comprehensive urban planning. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980, Valletta represents one of the most concentrated historic urban areas in the world, with 320 monuments within its 55-hectare area.

Mediterranean Sunset

PHOTOGRAPHS 16 | IMG_7899 & 7905 — Mediterranean Sunset

Location: Central Mediterranean Sea | Subject: Sunset from Ship’s Deck

The Mediterranean sun descends through atmospheric haze as the cruise ship continues its journey. The vessel’s contemporary superstructure—designed to maximise outdoor deck space—frames the warm gradations of sunset colours. Cargo vessels on the horizon indicate the continuing commercial importance of these shipping lanes, which have connected three continents since Phoenician times. The figures at right, silhouetted against the golden light, participate in a ritual that has marked maritime voyages throughout human history: the contemplation of day’s end over open water.

Malta in Mediterranean Context

PHOTOGRAPH 17 | Screenshot from Google Maps — Malta in Mediterranean Context - smack in the Middle of the Mediterranean Ocean

Location: Overview Map | Subject: Central Mediterranean Geography

This map situates Malta within its broader geographical context at the centre of the Mediterranean Sea. The archipelago occupies a position of immense strategic significance: 93 kilometres south of Sicily, 290 kilometres north of Libya, and roughly equidistant between Gibraltar and the Suez Canal. This centrality made Malta valuable to every maritime power from the Phoenicians through the British Empire. The map reveals Malta’s position at the narrowing between the western and eastern Mediterranean basins, where shipping routes converge. Modern Malta leverages this position through its ship registry (one of the world’s largest), its container transhipment port at Marsaxlokk, and its role as a logistics hub connecting European, North African, and Middle Eastern markets.

By the way, Industry, Trade, and Global Relations of Malta -

The “motor” of the Maltese economy today is a mix of tourism, iGaming, and financial services. It has also become a massive hub for world trade via the Malta Freeport, one of the busiest transshipment ports in the Mediterranean, where goods from Asia and the Americas are redistributed to Europe and North Africa.

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By the way - there are many more articles coming including much more from Italy as well as Greece, Türkiye, Germany, Paris and from Barcelona, Spain. PLUS an essay entitled Doorways which I entered in a writers competition and highlights unusual insights while on the 2025 European Travel writers tour. But for now…

Two Greek Islands and Turkey (Türkiye) looming on the horizon.

© 2025 Hart and Trin’s European Travels. A Photojournalism tour. | All Rights Reserved

All images used in these articles are actual unedited photos taken by Hartmut Michael Günther and Trinity Angeles while on their travels in Europe in 2025. AI was used in these articles for some research and writing only.