The Medical Advisor

Updated: November 7, 2026 For decades, weight-loss advice has focused heavily on fat burning. Low-fat diets, carbohydrate restriction, fasting and exercise have all been promoted as ways to encourage the body to use stored fat for energy. But an important question deserves more attention: How effectively can the body switch between glucose and fat as its primary energy sources? This ability, known as metabolic flexibility , is an important feature of healthy metabolism. It involves the coordinated use of glucose and fatty acids in response to food intake, fasting, exercise and hormonal signals. Emerging research involving the enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) has also raised questions about whether impaired glucose oxidation contributes to metabolic dysfunction associated with obesity. However, the evidence needs careful interpretation. Animal experiments, laboratory studies involving human muscle cells and clinical interventions provide different levels of evidence. The...

Most people enjoy eating seafood regularly or taking a relaxing, warm bath. While these seem harmless, research shows that they now come with an unseen invader — microplastics. These tiny plastic particles, often smaller than a grain of sand, are increasingly pervasive in our environment. In fact, they’re now in your brain and other organs. A 2025 study published in Science Advances explored a mechanism by which microplastics directly impact brain function. The study used advanced imaging techniques to observe, in real-time, the effects of microplastics on the brains of mice. Not only were microplastics present in the brain, but they actively disrupted normal brain function by physically blocking blood flow within the brain's delicate network of vessels. Plastic Is Everywhere, and It’s Also in Your Brain In a preprint study published in Research Square, researchers sought to find out the amount of micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) currently embedded in the human body. For their ex...

Executive Summary Dr. Thomas N. Seyfried , Professor of Biology at Boston College, proposes a metabolic model of cancer that challenges the dominant genetic explanation and conventional oncology treatments. Rather than viewing cancer as primarily driven by gene mutations, Seyfried asserts it is fundamentally a metabolic disease centered on dysfunctional cellular energy production. This reframing draws on and expands the historical Warburg effect , emphasizing how cancer cells rely on fermentative metabolism of glucose and glutamine due to defective mitochondrial function.  A 2026 large-scale population study published in Nature Communications demonstrated that machine learning-predicted insulin resistance was associated with increased risk of 12 cancer types in nearly 500,000 individuals from the UK Biobank. This finding strengthens a growing thesis: Metabolic dysfunction is not merely a comorbidity —...