Filmmaker and mother Jessica Solce was frustrated by the difficulty of finding healthy, all-natural products for herself and her family. To make it easier, she created the Solarium, which curates trusted, third-party-tested foods, clothing, beauty products, and more — all free of seed oils, endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, and other harmful additives.

In this occasional column, she shares recommendations and research she's picked up during her ongoing education in health and wellness.

Last year, I went to Palestra’s Age of Light conference in San Salvador intending to deepen my understanding of how light and health intersect. As I expected, I heard compelling speakers like Jack Kruse, Sol Brah, and Erwan Le Corre discuss red-light therapies, photobiology, and the urgency of restoring our relationship with natural light.

I did not expect someone to be announcing a new tablet.

Daylight’s LivePaper screen is gentle on young eyes, free of blue light and flicker. Kids can read, draw, and learn — even in bright sunlight — without glare.

Then Daylight Computer founder Anjan Katta did just that, boldly positioning his new DC-1 tablet as a radical rethinking of how tech, light, and human health might integrate. “The hope," Katta told us, "is a healthier, more humane computer that can help you build a better foundation for your life.”

What does that even mean? Why take on the Goliaths of tech? We already have Apple, Android, and Kindle. Clearly, Katta’s motivation wasn’t just practical.

iPad kids

It might surprise you to learn that Apple founder Steve Jobs didn’t let his own kids use iPads because he feared they were too addictive. A wise move, considering that more than a decade after its release, “iPad kid” has become shorthand for children glued to screens and prone to meltdowns when deprived of them. Adults aren’t immune, either — after all, our kids only mirror what we model.

Research shows direct links between screen exposure and developmental delays. One study found that 1-year-olds who logged four or more hours of screen time per day showed delays in communication and problem-solving by ages 2 and 4. Missed milestones are not minor; they’re signs of neurological disruption.

Technology’s long-term effects on the brain and body are profound — and Katta knew this firsthand. The 2016 Stanford engineering grad had spent his life in front of computer screens and suffered from eye strain, disrupted sleep, migraines, ADHD-like symptoms, and mood swings.

Once he traced these issues back to light, the problem became clear. The cure, however — a truly healthy kind of screen, one that doesn't overload our systems with blue light, flicker incessantly, and keep us indoors — did not yet exist.

Katta made it his mission to invent it. Six years later, the DC-1 was born.

Light as nutrient

If you follow health circles online, you’ve likely heard about light’s impact on well-being — from Andrew Huberman’s discussions of morning sunlight and circadian rhythm to the basic idea that blue light at night disrupts sleep. You probably also know that sunlight helps us produce vitamin D and that darker winters can bring on the blues.

Light should be considered alongside diet, exercise, and sleep as a fundamental pillar of health. It is our most constant environmental input — the very energy base of our ecosystems. It governs circadian rhythm, cellular function, and energy production. It influences how well we sleep, move, and even metabolize nutrients.

From infrared to ultraviolet, the full spectrum of sunlight benefits our health. But problems arise when we isolate parts of that spectrum — especially blue and UV light.

(For an in-depth look at the effects of light on the body and brain, especially in children, I encourage you to read my three-part series on blue light.)

Blue-light blues

Blue light dominates not just our phones, tablets, and computer screens but our indoor environments, too. Because blue light signals “daytime” to the brain, it suppresses melatonin and raises cortisol. Constant exposure disrupts circadian rhythm, contributing to insomnia, mood disorders, obesity, diabetes, and even certain cancers.

These aren’t minor issues — and they’re growing worse each year. We must confront our relationship with light itself. No amount of “biohacking” can replace a healthy light environment. Solutions like the DC-1 and better indoor lighting are essential stopgaps while we reorient our lives toward nature.

The DC-1's display solves the blue-light problem by using ambient light — or gentle red light — as its backlight. The screen resembles E-Ink but refreshes far faster thanks to its patented LivePaper technology.

It also eliminates screen flicker. Unlike natural sunlight or incandescent bulbs, LEDs flash on and off imperceptibly fast, straining the eyes and nervous system. The result? Headaches, fatigue, and anxiety. Daylight restores stability.

Caroline Seidel/Getty Images

Screen saver

If we want to reverse the damage done by technology, we’ll need large-scale reform. But meaningful change begins with individuals. Light affects mitochondrial function — and mitochondrial DNA, passed through the maternal line, is heritable. We — and future generations — are shaped not just by what we eat, but by the light environments that feed our cells.

Simply stepping outside, away from screens, can do more for your health than any pill or supplement.

After six years of development, Katta built a device that acknowledges both science and nature — technology that harmonizes with our biology rather than fighting it.

Daylight’s LivePaper screen is gentle on young eyes, free of blue light and flicker. Kids can read, draw, and learn — even in bright sunlight — without glare. Stylus support makes it feel like pen and paper, encouraging creativity and handwriting. Its distraction-free interface promotes focus and calm. In short: technology without neurological mayhem.

Adults benefit too — less eye strain, fewer headaches, less fatigue. The paper-like display reduces the dopamine-driven scroll reflex that keeps us addicted to our devices.

Connection without addiction

The Daylight Computer mission statement offers a refreshing and much-needed change of priority. As Katta said, "The questions that motivate us are: What are the base defaults of an operating system that sets you up for better habits — for better health?”

When he introduced the DC-1, Katta hinted that the company would also be developing a phone. I can’t wait for that — especially for kids. They deserve communication tools that foster connection without addiction.

I’m excited for the continued growth of Daylight Computer and hope that it inspires other entrepreneurs to create technology built not just for productivity, but for human flourishing.

This affordable dashcam may just pay for itself

Across the United States, staged crashes, road-rage incidents, and hit-and-run damage are on the rise. Unfortunately, if you get sideswiped, brake-checked, or bumped, you have little legal recourse if you can't prove what happened.

This is where a dash camera comes in handy. In recent years the category has evolved from a niche gadget to an essential everyday driving tool. The primary value of a dashcam is simple: It provides evidence that both law enforcement and insurance companies can use in deciding your case.

In case you haven't seen one for a while, modern dashcams have advanced far beyond the single-lens models of the past. One affordable option I recommend is the VIOFO A329S 3CH dashcam.

It features a true 4K front camera, rear camera, and a infrared fish-eye cabin camera with a 210-degree ultra-wide view -- sufficient coverage to ensure that everything from road collisions to interior activity is captured in detail.

The Sony STARVIS 2 sensors under the hood allow the A329S to deliver sharp, balanced footage in both bright daylight and low-light conditions. The cabin camera includes four infrared LEDs, enabling clear recording even at night — a feature especially valuable for rideshare drivers or anyone frequently on the road after dark.

Other advanced features include Wi-Fi 6 for fast file transfers, hybrid parking surveillance with impact detection, support for external SSD storage up to 4TB, a built-in GPS logger, CPL filter, and Bluetooth remote.

Taken together, these tools make it more than a camera — they provide a comprehensive security system for your vehicle. .

At under $500, the dashcam provides protection that often outweighs its cost. Minor parking lot dents or fender benders can cost $1,000 or more to repair, and insurance disputes can increase premiums for years. For families, drivers, or businesses, dash cameras offer peace of mind and a financial safeguard.

Check out the video review for more on the VIOFO A329S 3CH:

The company profiles and product recommendations that Align publishes are meant solely to inform and edify our subscribers. Unless explicitly labeled as such, they are neither paid promotions nor endorsements.

America's last laugh: Talking shop with the founders of Flip City Magazine

Hannah Arendt famously said that the most effective method to subvert authority is to laugh. Political cartoonists have weaponized wit for centuries. As the influence of print media declined, meme-makers took up the challenge, waging ideological war far more swiftly and efficiently than any politician's speech.

The downside is that the elite frequently lack a sense of humor.

'It's the world that's vulgar. It's a dark, yucky world that has to be made fun of. But that's not our fault.'

During medieval and Tudor England, only the court jester was allowed to mock and insult the king; everyone else was imprisoned, branded, and mutilated, or worse, hung, drawn, and quartered. People in power have eliminated those who make fun of them for millennia, driven by narcissism and non-tolerance of criticism. Since the days of Aristotle and Aristophanes, attempts have been made to silence artists by arrest, torture, and death.

In our own time, the hangman, oubliette, and rack have given way to the digital horrors of deplatforming and cancellation. As effective as these have proven, there's a growing sense that "wokeness" is on the verge of extinction.

The linguistic straightjacket of political correctness is beginning to loosen, and artists are emerging from the shadows, taking a well-deserved breath of fresh air, and finally pushing back against what has become one of the most censorious periods in modern history. After being held down for so long, there’s a lot of work to be done. It’s time to Make America Laugh Again.™️

Flip City Magazine has been reporting for duty since its 2020 founding. And while memes may still reign supreme, the Southern California-based crew aims to skewer pretensions the old-fashioned way — with an honest-to-God paper-and-ink periodical "delivered begrudgingly to your door by your woke mailman."

Align recently corresponded via email with Flip City co-founders and editors Scott and Christy McKenzie, who submitted their replies jointly.

ALIGN: Could you tell us a little about yourself with everyone? Who you are, where you’re located, and what you do? How many people do you have working for you?

Scott and Christy McKenzie: We are Scott and Christy McKenzie, editors of Flip City Magazine, an independent quarterly comics and satire print magazine (described by comics luminary Mike Baron as "funnier than MAD or Cracked"), which we have published out of our remote home office in the Southern California mountains since 2020.

Every issue is packed with TV and movie parodies, comics, stories, interviews that don't insult your intelligence. We've hosted and published over 40 writers and illustrators to date. While we bill ourselves as "America's Last Laugh," we have contributors from Sydney to Scotland to SAF.

Flip City Magazine

A: What inspired the creation of the magazine?

S&C: We were coming off a D-list movie project that went sideways. I needed a project into which I could dump every nugget of gold (or, alternately, flaming turd) idea that passed through my head, and this was the best format.

Smart satire magazines had phased out by the early '90s in favor of men's lifestyle mags, leaving a void that nobody thought was worth filling. I don't think anybody has known what to do, with no reason to revive a passé format just to compete for crumbs with the remnants of MAD, publishing more lifeless corporate comedy and Trump hate.

But to resurrect it as a tool of counterculture, that has value. A free America has to have a satire magazine that's independent and essentially populist.

And it's only going to happen here from the looks of things. We are now, as Cracked editor Mort Todd put it, "the world's only satire magazine," for all "in tents and porpoises."

A: What were your influences?

S&C: Early on, Saturday morning cartoons and color Sunday funnies. Which if you missed out on those days, that was some good times, with your bowl of cereal. Later, Cracked Magazine and MAD, "The Dr. Demento Show" for the funniest songs, and in the 1990s, alternative comics publishers like Fantagraphics. "The Book of the Subgenius" might have radicalized me.

A: Can you explain a little bit about the ideas process? How long does it take to go from pen to page?

S&C: It might take a couple of days to write the better part of a feature or a parody once I've got an angle. "Joker 2" (Vol. 23) was a musical parody with five songs, and I took my time to get it right. Readers who expect to hate musicals said they were pleasantly surprised. A musical parody is a delicate thing that can go wrong in so many ways, much like "Joker 2." I'll pass it on to one of our tremendous illustrator talents like Ben Sullivan or Dangerous Dave MacDowell, and they'll reliably send back something that kills.

A: It’s pretty safe to say a more progressive element of the left has had something resembling ideological dominance over the entertainment industry for the last 10 years or so. Did you find it hard to find an audience?

S&C: We were fortunate enough to have a couple of YouTube advocates early on to get us going.

We initially offered Vol. 1 in digital format or in a short print run, and subscribers overwhelmingly chose print. So there is still plenty of demand for physical media.

However, there are plenty of platforms and influencers on the right who wouldn't touch us. And the reason is that they can't control our message, and many don't want to take any chances at upsetting their viewers or advertisers.

Flip City Magazine

Most notably at the beginning was the Babylon Bee, who dubbed us "too edgy and vulgar" to advertise with them, which is entirely their prerogative. Although at the time, we were fairly clean. It's the world that's vulgar. It's a dark, yucky world that has to be made fun of. But that's not our fault.

People love to complain about the lack of alternative culture but Flip City is actually a solution. It heaps ridicule on people who deserve it, without being preachy. It's the kind of cultural thing that people are literally asking for all the time. And it can be a huge thing and sway hearts and minds if people get behind it, support it, and subscribe. It's just a good old-fashioned, all-American, funny mag, y'all.

A: As a Brit, I envy your First Amendment. My home country is awash with laws and regulations regarding the online regulation of speech. A recent investigation revealed that an average of 12,000 people are arrested each year for sending "grossly offensive" messages on the internet. Have you run into any problems or faced backlash over any controversial issues? Does the threat of cancel culture worry you guys?

S&C: Only subscription cancellations. They seem to peak when we poke the wrong sacred cow. I think our heritage subscribers have been conditioned by now to expect anything and trust us.

New readers aren't sure what they're going to get. They see a slick magazine and assume it must lean left because they've never seen anything else. And I think many are hesitant to believe it could be genuinely funny, despite praise from luminaries like Quite Frankly and James Corbett, because of the right's track record on comedy. So you can't blame them.

A: Do you consider yourself to be an equal-opportunity offender? Are there any targets on the right that you would think would be perfect to send up?

S&C: We've done bits about Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk, and recently a Conservative Blowhard mini-magazine with columns by Tim Poolboy and Jack Poachposobiec. It's clearly a goof on establishment gatekeepers and "Conservative, Incorporated," as many call it. But it probably cost us some readers.

Sometimes, people don't get the joke and think you're the enemy. Everybody's looking for a tell that you don't agree with them about everything. We don't mind shedding readers, to a point. We want the best and the brightest readers.

George Caleb Bingham: The Jolly Flatboatmen (1846) | National Gallery of Art

A: I’ve read a bunch of your spoof pieces, and I have to say, your parodies special edition had me laughing so much — it was hilarious! With all the endless political pandering and progressive messages crowbarred into mainstream culture, would you say Hollywood has become a parody of itself?

S&C: Thanks! Ben Sullivan is a parody illustrator on par with the greats and really deserves to be recognized. Hopefully, our upcoming print edition of the Parodies will get him more attention.

The industry may be a self-parody, but that doesn't make it beyond parody. As long as it sucks, there will be a way to goof on it. A satire-proof utopia is unlikely in our lifetimes.

A: It's been 10 years since the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre in France, when Islamic terrorists shot and killed 12 people for publishing a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammed. Is there any subject matter off limits?

S&C: We're not looking for that kind of action, though we do make fun of Antifa quite a bit, so we shouldn't let our guard down.

Nobody wants to hear this, but the limits are determined by what people are willing to pay to read. There is no monolithic block of free-speech absolutists. People will weaponize their dollars against you if your hot takes start to annoy them, and they'll go spend that money on Sydney Sweeney jeans just to show you. You could even make the argument that Flip City is being held hostage by the very readers we sought to entertain! For which the only remedy is more subscribers, to loosen the chokehold of these elitists over our content. And now you see how a print subscription is basically a win for democracy.

A: Comedy is a powerful medium with which to challenge elite power. The ruling class doesn't like to be mocked. It is claimed that Stalin sent 200,000 people in the USSR to the Gulag for making jokes about him and the communist regime. In a recent episode, "South Park" turned its attention to Republican Kristi Noem. How do you think leading politicians should react?

S&C: I think a zero-tolerance policy would yield the best results. We're talking FBI raids, enhanced interrogation methods. Find out who they are really working for. Possible ballistic missile strikes on their Culver City studio. Matt and Trey go to CECOT.

Also Stephen Colbert, he should be crushed under our regime's iron fist and his bones ground into powder to fertilize our crops.

A: What can we expect to see for the rest of 2025?

S&C: Our Best of the Parodies 80-page special edition goes on pre-sale starting September 1 on our website, featuring the brilliant work of Ben Sullivan and our send-ups of "The Walking Dead," "Stranger Things," "Star Trek: Picard," "The Mandalorian," "Guardians of the Galaxy," and more! We're also working on new animated cartoons based on our parodies for 2026.

Enjoy tea's surprising health benefits — without the microplastics

Look, I’m British, so I think you know what I’m going to say about tea.

Tea is great. Tea is delicious. I drink tea every day, just like my father and my mother and their fathers and their mothers and so on, back hundreds of years to when tea first started being imported to Britain from India and became our national beverage of choice.

Put a food-grade-plastic tea bag in near-boiling water, and it rapidly starts to disintegrate and you’ve got a cuppa that’s more plastic soup than tea.

Tea made Britain great. It made the British Empire, and it was the cause — or the proximal cause, anyway — of the great falling-out between Britain and its thirteen colonies, so I guess we can say tea made America great too.

Besides being a nice thing to drink, tea has all sorts of health benefits. Here are three that may surprise you.

1. Tea makes you lose weight

Japanese researchers have shown that an extract of tea catechins with caffeine significantly increases energy expenditure by causing changes to brown fat cells.

There are actually two types of fat: white and brown. Brown fat is a more metabolically active type that’s involved in maintaining body temperature. Think of brown fat cells as little furnaces, if you will, that burn energy to keep the body warm. So by cranking up these furnaces, in a manner that’s similar to the effects of consuming chiles or taking a cold dip, the catechins in tea will increase your total energy expenditure. That means you can eat more and not put on weight, or you can lose weight more easily. Cool, huh?

2. Green tea helps you build muscle

There’s quite a lot of research demonstrating the anabolic effects of green tea; these include studies of bodybuilders, trained athletes, and elderly people. A Brazilian study of women who undertook a weight-loss regimen showed that those who combined weight training with green tea increased their strength the most and also increased their muscle mass the most.

How? It’s been suggested that the phenols in green tea inhibit the enzymes that remove testosterone from the blood, meaning more testosterone remains there for longer. But there are probably other mechanisms at work too. Drinking green tea before exercise may boost the concentration of adrenaline in the body, which could help to improve the quality of the workout.

3. Drinking tea helps you live longer

A large-scale population study of 100,000 Chinese adults showed that drinking three cups of tea a week — in this case, green tea again — reduced the risk of death by a whopping 15% over a period of seven years. The researchers estimated that drinking tea could add an average of 1.26 years to the life of a 50-year-old tea drinker. The researchers attribute these effects to the phenols in the tea — again — which may have a protective effect on blood vessels.

You could quite literally spend all day reading studies about the health benefits of drinking tea. If you’d like to do that, here’s a link to one of my favorite websites, which has a whole archive of tea studies.

So the moral of this story is, clearly, drink tea.

Hold the plastic

But not so fast. Before you go and brew a cup or a pot, there are some problems with drinking tea that you need to be aware of. Here’s a really big one: plastics. Or rather, it’s a big problem that takes a very small form: microplastics.

If you drink tea made with tea bags rather than loose-leaf tea, as most people do, you’re almost certainly ingesting large quantities of microplastics, and that’s not something you want to do if you can help it.

Microplastics are a serious emerging health threat, and new research is linking them to pretty much every known chronic disease, from Alzheimer’s and autism to heart disease and irritable bowel syndrome. Microplastics accumulate in all the organs of the body: the liver, the heart, the eyes, the sexual organs, the brain. It’s been suggested that we swallow a credit card’s worth of plastic a week (5g) and inhale the same amount too.

BSIP/UIG via Getty Images

What's in your bag?

The microplastics in tea don’t just come from the water or the kettle (if it’s plastic); they also come from the tea bag itself. A significant proportion of tea bags are now either made of plastic — the tea bag is actually plastic — or contain plastic, usually in the glue that holds it together. A study of six tea brands in the U.K. revealed that four included polypropylene and one was made entirely of nylon.

Food-grade plastics deteriorate significantly at temperatures above 40 degrees centigrade. Put a food-grade-plastic tea bag in near-boiling water, and it rapidly starts to disintegrate and you’ve got a cuppa that’s more plastic soup than tea.

A 2019 study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology found that a cup of tea produced by one plastic tea bag contained 11.6 billion — billion — microplastic pieces and 3.1 billion nanoplastic pieces. Nanoplastics are probably even worse than microplastics, because they’re smaller, which means they can get into places microplastics can’t inside the body.

One way to cut out the plastics is to avoid tea bags altogether, but it’s not particularly convenient — and who wants to deal with strainers and cleaning up the soggy leaves afterward? I certainly don’t.

Kindred spirit

Thankfully, there’s a solution that doesn’t mean abandoning those handy little pouches. It’s Kindred Harvest, a brand I’m proud to have founded myself, because I don’t want a mouthful of plastic either. Our tea products are organic (so no nasty pesticides); they're independently tested for heavy-metal content (many teas are heavily contaminated with lead and other toxic metals); and best of all, they’re packaged in 100% plastic-free tea bags.

Kindred Harvest offers 10 different blends, with everything from black and green tea to vanilla chai, cinnamon apple, and hibiscus flower.

Kindred Harvest

My personal favorite is the Sleep Tea mix, made with chamomile, lemongrass, spearmint, and lavender. If you’ve been paying attention to these articles over the last month or so, you’ll know that sleep is a seriously underappreciated aspect of good health. Men who double their sleep can double their testosterone, for example. When I have a nice hot cup of that chamomile blend, I know that when my head hits my perfect Woolshire organic virgin-wool pillow, I’ll be counting sheep in no time.

Visit kindredharvest.co.

All-natural tallow: Everything your skin needs — without the hormone disruptors

During the pandemic, there was a large spike in the number of girls entering puberty at a very young age, a recent study from Italy showed.

“Precocious puberty,” as the condition is known, is defined as the development of secondary sexual characteristics — breasts, pubic hair, larger testicles, a deeper voice, etc. — before the age of 8 in girls and 9 in boys.

Tallow balms are easy to make at home — I make one with tallow, olive oil, and rosemary from my garden.

Entering puberty that early can lead to significant complications. As well as being associated with reduced stature and other physical problems, studies have found links with emotional and behavioral issues including substance abuse, social isolation, truancy, and sexual promiscuity.

Growing up too fast

It’s generally reckoned that girls suffer from precocious puberty at a much higher rate than boys: something like 0.2% as opposed to 0.05%, although there may be quite wide national variation. It’s not known why girls suffer at such a higher rate, but there could be a deep survival mechanism at work — perhaps one that allows girls to mature faster and reproduce earlier under particular conditions (war, scarcity, extreme stress).

The researchers behind the study looked at data for 133 diagnosed cases of precocious puberty in Italian girls between January 2016 and June 2021. While they found 72 diagnosed cases in the four years before the beginning of the pandemic, they found 61 cases between March 2020 and June 2021, a rate of four new cases a month. That’s about three times the rate before the pandemic.

The average age of sexual development has been getting lower and lower for decades across the West — maybe by as much as three months per decade for girls since the 1970s — but clearly, the number of cases observed during the pandemic was way outside that general trend.

Fat and unhappy

So what was going on?

The researchers found a clear link between the increase in cases and weight gain, which is a known risk factor for precocious puberty. Fatter children are more likely to enter puberty sooner.

The pandemic was a disaster for children’s health all round. Trapped inside, away from their friends for months at a time, bombarded with terrifying propaganda, left with nothing to do but watch TV or play video games or scroll TikTok while their parents answered Zoom calls in the next room, children got fatter — a lot fatter. Obesity rates went through the roof, and so did rates of mental health problems: anxiety, depression, suicidality.

All that blue light from screens probably didn’t help either. Rat studies have shown that chronic blue-light exposure can bring forward puberty, believe it or not, because of changes to patterns of hormone release.

Sanitizer insanity

Another factor, the researchers think — and you may find this surprising — was the “increased use of hand and surface sanitizers.”

Remember how much people were sanitizing their hands and even home deliveries? In many cases, especially out in public, people were cleaning their hands after every social interaction and every time they walked in and out of a room.

I made a point of never using the hand sanitizers on offer, because I know they contain big doses of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, chemicals that interfere with the body’s natural hormone balance and can have all sorts of unpleasant effects, from reducing testosterone levels to interfering with sexual development in the womb or during puberty.

It’s an unfortunate truth that the young are especially vulnerable to these chemicals, and if they interfere in processes that can only happen once — like sexual differentiation in the womb, “mini-puberty” in early childhood, or “big” puberty in adolescence — the effects can be irreversible. Not good.

A very nasty chemical

One such chemical commonly found in hand sanitizers is triclosan. Triclosan is a very nasty chemical, not least of all because it can dramatically increase the absorption of other endocrine-disrupting chemicals like BPA.

So if you coat your hands with triclosan-laden sanitizer and then touch, say, a plastic toy or a piece of thermal paper, you’ll get a mega dose of harmful chemicals, right into your blood.

It’s not just hand sanitizer, though. Pretty much all modern personal care products contain endocrine disruptors, and for this reason they represent one of our most persistent sources of exposure to harmful chemicals. Research has shown that women are at particular risk, because they use so many personal care products. One study claims college-age women in the U.S. use an average of eight personal care products a day that contain known endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Some women in the study were using as many as 17 a day!

Photo by Rich Sugg/Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service via Getty Image

Cold turkey

The simplest way to reduce your exposure to these harmful chemicals is to stop using products that contain them. Research shows that if women go cold-turkey on their favorite personal care products, levels of harmful phthalates, parabens, and phenols in their urine decrease by as much as 45% in just three days.

Of course, you still need to keep yourself spic and span, but giving up chemical-heavy supermarket soaps and scrubs doesn’t mean you can’t wash, thankfully. A lot of products can be replaced with tallow-based alternatives.

Fat of the land

Tallow is rendered animal fat, usually beef fat. If that sounds disgusting to you, it shouldn’t. That’s how soap used to be made, using natural rather than artificial fats, and as with so many things, the old ways are better.

Being animal fat, tallow has a chemical profile that’s very similar to human fat and contains various natural substances, including vitamins and cholesterol, that are nourishing for the skin. Modern soaps tend to strip the skin of moisture and nutrients and dry it out. They also destroy the colonies of beneficial micro-organisms that live on our skin and protect us, acting as a first line of defense against harmful pathogens entering the body.

A personal favorite

You don’t have to smell like beef, either, unless you want to. Tallow products can be fragranced with natural substances like rosemary oil or lavender.

Tallow balms are easy to make at home — I make one with tallow, olive oil, and rosemary from my garden — but there’s a growing number of companies that make high-quality tallow products as well.

My favorite is North Idaho Tallow Company. The company's tallow sugar scrub — a mixture of tallow and cane sugar, with natural fragrance — is just the ticket after a heavy workout, when you need to wash away the sweat and effort and come up looking sparkling. As well as offering soaps, balms, lip balms, and beard care products, the company also sells tallow-and-beeswax candles, which are so much better than paraffin ones.

Visit idahotallow.com.

Acorn Bluff Farms: Pampered pigs yield 'Kobe beef' of pork

You are what what you eat eats. Try saying that in a hurry.

It’s a simple maxim, but one that guides me in my nutritional choices and in the advice I give to other people about improving their diet. If the meat and animal products you eat come from animals that live unhealthy, unhappy lives — if they’re stuffed full of poor-quality food they shouldn’t even be eating and housed in an unnatural environment — then you’re not going to derive as much benefit from those products as you should.

If you feed animals badly, you get a bad product. It’s that simple.

And why would you want that?

Animal welfare matters

Animal welfare matters not only because it determines the quality of the food you eat, but also because animals are sentient, feeling creatures who deserve moral consideration.

This doesn’t get said enough, actually, and there’s been a rather depressing tendency for so-called conservatives to pay little heed to the suffering of livestock or animals. This is part of a broader Philistine tendency on the right, I think, that reduces everything to economics and lines on a graph.

But of course it’s more economical to immobilize 10,000 chickens in a strip-lit warehouse instead of pasturing them on grass, in rather the same way it might seem economical to import your nation’s birth rates and undercut native labour with cheap foreigners at half the price — and of course they don’t unionize either!

A two-way pact

Domestication, which created cows and chickens and sheep and pigs as we know them, was a two-way pact, and we shouldn’t forget it. We got reliable, high-quality nutrition that didn’t have to be hunted on the plains and in the forests, at great risk to ourselves, and the animals got care and protection — including from other animals like wolves and bears and big cats.

The terms of this pact, and of man’s proper relation to nature more broadly, were given their most solemn expression in the book of Genesis, when God granted man “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

By “dominion,” God didn’t mean, “You can do anything you want to these animals.” He meant, “You are the lord of these animals, and like every lord and his subjects, you have obligations to them. They are in your care. They are not to be abused or misused.”

I didn’t really intend this piece to be a bit of Biblical exegesis, but oh well — here we are.

But as I was saying, if you feed animals badly, you get a bad product. It’s that simple.

Farmed salmon 'toxic'

Take farmed salmon, for example. I think we all know we’re supposed to eat more oily fish to get those important omega-3s in our diet, but the truth is, farmed salmon may be one of the most toxic foods on the planet, and it’s all to do with how the fish are raised and in particular what they’re fed.

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Research has linked regular consumption of farmed salmon to diabetes and obesity. Mice fed farmed salmon gain twice as much weight as mice fed other foods. Farmed salmon has been shown to carry an enormous payload of harmful chemicals, which probably explains its obesogenic effects.

A 2004 study showed at least 13 different persistent organic pollutants in the flesh of farmed salmon and that levels of polychlorinated biphenyls — chemicals known to be carcinogenic and to cause hormonal disruption — were eight times higher in farmed salmon than wild. Two other kinds of carcinogenic chemicals — dioxins and polybrominated diphenyl ethers — have also been found in high concentrations in farmed salmon.

One of the main foods given to farmed salmon is eel and other fatty fish, which are chosen because of their high protein and fat content. The problem is that fatty fish readily accumulate harmful substances, many of which are lipophilic (attracted to fat) and get stuck in their fat stores. A lot of the fatty fish that go into fish feed are taken from the Baltic, one of the most heavily polluted seas on the planet, concentrating the waste of nine industrial nations. (In Sweden, fishmongers are legally required to warn customers of the health risks of consuming fish caught in the Baltic. I bet you didn’t know that.)

Pigs under pressure

The same is true of pigs and pork. Apart from chickens, pigs bear the greatest burden of suffering in the modern industrial farming system. If you want any further reason to pray for the Three Gorges Dam to fail, look up China’s multi-story pig farms, which have the capacity to house and slaughter millions of pigs a year.

We in the West aren’t much better, though. For the most part, pigs here are just as unhappy: cramped, stressed, stuffed full of cheap corn and soy to fatten them up for slaughter as quickly and economically — there it is, that word again — as possible.

That means atrocious misery and poor-quality pork and lard to boot. There’s been a lot of talk of putting away seed and vegetable oils and returning to healthy traditional animal fats like butter and tallow and lard, but lard from industrially raised pigs is anything but healthy or traditional. Because pigs don’t have a rumen — those magical multiple stomachs possessed by cows and sheep — if they’re fed trash like soybean oil, they can’t convert the fats in it to saturated fat. As a result, the fat content of the pork comes to resemble soybean oil, and you’ve got seed oil but it’s called lard. So it goes.

Meet Acorn Bluff

Thank God, then, for Acorn Bluff Farms, a family farm in the rolling bluff country of Louisa County, Iowa. The farm has been in continuous use for nearly 200 years, but in the last five years its owners have converted the farm to focus on producing the highest quality pasture-raised pork, using one of the world’s most prestigious heritage breeds: the Hungarian Mangalitsa.

Mangalitsa pigs were originally bred for the Habsburgs, the royal family of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. You can recognize them by their absurdly cute curly hair. Since they were bred for European royalty, you can bet Mangalitsa pigs taste good. Some call Mangalitsa the “Kobe beef” of pork, Kobe beef being one of the priciest and most prized kinds of beef in the world. The cows are fed beer and given massages. (Really: Look it up.)

Acorn Bluff Farms

The other red meat

At Acorn Bluff Farms, the pigs and piglets are allowed to roam and forage and wallow in the mud and chase one another through the fields and forest like pigs and piglets should. Follow the farm’s Twitter account (@acornblufffarms) for regular heartwarming videos.

In the middle of the 20th century, pork began to be marketed as “the other white meat,” but this was only really possible because modern farming methods were turning pork into an insipid, watered-down, pale shadow of the meat it really is.

If you buy some pork chops or a side of spare ribs from Acorn Bluff Farms, you’ll see pork in its true form: the other red meat. And what’s more, you can enjoy every single mouthful, without guilt — which is how it should be, because God said so.

The Escort Redline 360c: Why this radar detector is the ultimate driving companion

In today’s high-tech world of driving, cars are getting smarter — and so are traffic enforcement tools.

From red-light cameras to radar and laser traps, motorists are facing a growing array of surveillance on the road. That’s where Escort Redline 360c Radar Detector steps in, not as a gimmick or gadget, but as a serious investment in driver awareness and protection.

'The more you know about what’s happening on the road ahead, the safer and smarter your drive becomes.'

At $799.95, the Redline 360c isn’t cheap — but for those who value precision, reliability, and situational awareness, it just may be the best money you can spend on your vehicle.

I had the opportunity to speak with Joe Sherbondy, director of Escort Radar detection products, to get a closer look at what makes the Redline 360c such a game changer.

“The newest firmware update cuts response time in half,” Sherbondy told me. “This isn’t just a minor tweak — it puts Escort firmly ahead of the competition in terms of speed and reliability.”

Setting a new benchmark in detection speed

What sets the Redline 360c apart is its extreme detection range combined with intelligent filtering. Most radar detectors flood drivers with false alarms from automatic doors, collision avoidance systems, and other non-threatening signals.

The Redline 360c’s updated firmware uses machine learning and signal classification to reduce those false alerts while maintaining rapid and accurate identification of legitimate threats.

Sherbondy explained it simply: “Drivers want to be informed — not overwhelmed. Our detectors learn over time, and the Redline 360c now responds faster than anything else in the market, with fewer distractions.”

An evolving ecosystem

What’s equally impressive is how Escort continues to build out its ecosystem. The Redline 360c is integrated with the North American Defender® Database, which offers real-time notifications of red-light and speed cameras.

With a subscription (available in one-year or three-year packages), users receive automatic updates to ensure they stay protected as enforcement zones evolve.

And for those upgrading from an older device, Escort’s trade-in program allows customers to send in their previous detector for credit. It’s a practical option, especially with older detectors quickly falling behind in today’s rapidly advancing enforcement tech landscape.

Bundled protection and smart integration

Escort is also offering compelling bundles that make upgrading more attractive.

Redline 360c + M2 Dash Cam Bundle: For $949.95 (a $50 savings), you get not only the top-tier detector but also Escort’s smart dash cam, the M2. This adds real-time video recording, voice alerts, GPS tagging, and integration with the Drive Smarter app — perfect for reviewing incidents or protecting yourself against false claims.

Redline 360c + ZR6 Laser Shifter: For those looking for total peace of mind, the $1,999.90 package includes Escort’s most powerful radar and laser defense tools. The ZR6 system is designed to combat modern laser enforcement, making this combination one of the most comprehensive protection solutions available for everyday drivers.

Why it matters

Speeding tickets aren't just costly — they can raise insurance rates and impact your driving record. But more importantly, having a radar detector like the Redline 360c empowers drivers with real-time information, helping them make safer, more informed decisions on the road.

Joe Sherbondy summed it up: “We’re not encouraging speeding — we’re enabling situational awareness. The more you know about what’s happening on the road ahead, the safer and smarter your drive becomes.”

The Redline 360c isn’t a toy — it’s a precision instrument built for serious drivers. Whether you commute daily, travel long distances, or simply want to stay one step ahead of modern enforcement, this device delivers.

Yes, the price point may seem high, but consider the long-term savings: fewer tickets, reduced insurance hikes, and a better understanding of your driving environment. Add to that Escort’s trade-in incentives and bundled discounts, and the investment becomes even more worthwhile.

For those who value performance, reliability, and cutting-edge protection, the Escort Redline 360c is the radar detector to beat.

Skip the seed sludge for farm-fresh olive oil — straight from the Mediterranean

Seed oils.

You’ve probably heard they’re really bad, but I bet you don’t know why. If you do, or think you do, I bet it’s because of the disgusting way they’re produced — you may have seen that stomach-turning video of canola oil being made — and the fact that they’re a totally novel form of fat humans have no real history of consuming.

Yet here we are guzzling huge quantities of them in pretty much every kind of processed food you can think of.

Forefather knows best

Seed oils are everywhere now, in large part because they’re cheap to make, but also because we’ve been told, wrongly, that they’re actually much better for us than the fats our ancestors ate since the dawn of time, especially animal fats.

The logic behind that claim — we’ve been eating the wrong fats for 200,000 years until corporations came along and magically gave us the right kind — doesn’t pass a basic sniff test, but there’s also a growing body of scientific research to back up our sensible prejudice.

Everything about this olive oil is authentic, down to the local village men and women who harvest the olives and press and bottle the liquid.

Last week, I talked about the book I consider to be the best book ever written on diet and nutrition, Weston A. Price’s "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration."

Price makes a simple argument: The transition to modern industrial diets has been a disaster for human health. He was making this argument in 1939, when the very first factory foods like refined-wheat products and canned goods were becoming widespread, many decades before supermarket shelves were filled with the kind of ultra-processed slop we’re familiar with today, like Twinkies and Froot Loops and microwave pizza and Hot Pockets.

A worthless byproduct

Seed oils were one of the first true industrial foodstuffs. Whenever modern humans have eaten seeds, they’ve eaten very small quantities of seed oils, but it required modern machines and chemistry to extract them in large quantities and produce horrible oceans of the stuff: high-pressure mechanical pressing, neutralizing, bleaching, deodorizing, and so on.

One of the first commercial seed oils was crystallized cottonseed oil, which you almost certainly know as Crisco. Oil was extracted at high pressure from cottonseeds and then hydrogenated using a metal catalyst to produce a solid seed-based alternative to animal shortening.

Cotton producers loved this new process, because it made a worthless byproduct of cotton manufacturing into a valuable commodity. What was once fit only to thin paint and lubricate machinery (if not just thrown away) became something people would stick in their mouths and eat.

When I put it like that, it sounds kind of evil, and I suppose it is. We really shouldn’t be eating this stuff.

Soy-faced

I won’t bore you too much with the science of seed oils. You can look it up, if you want to: why polyunsaturated fats — the main constituent of seed oils, and especially so-called omega-6s — are toxic and how the manufacturing process makes these fats even more so; the way seed oils interfere with the metabolism and make us put on weight, as well as their tendency to have estrogenic effects.

Delbert Shoopman/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

I’ll mention one set of findings, though, before I move on. A 2020 study of soybean oil (the most widely consumed seed oil in America) showed that not only did it make mice fat, it also disrupted the same region of the brain — and in a similar fashion — as Alzheimer's disease.

Soybean oil also interfered with the production of oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone,” which governs social interaction and bonding. I recently suggested on X that maybe the reason everyone in America is so tense these days is because they eat a thousand times more soybean oil than they did a century ago. I wasn’t joking.

Crushing it

So what about olive oil? I often get asked this. Is olive oil a seed oil? No, it isn’t. Olive oil is a fruit oil, actually. And while it contains some polyunsaturated fatty acids like seed oils, it mostly contains monounsaturated fatty acids, which are different in important ways, most notably their stability.

The extraction process is simple and non-toxic — literally, you just crush olives. What’s more, olive oil contains a wonderful array of unique plant compounds with some pretty miraculous effects.

Maybe the simplest way to understand what’s so good about olive oil, beyond its delicious taste, is to note that it’s been consumed for thousands of years, and those people who consume lots of it, like the Italians, display remarkable longevity, vim, and lust for life.

When it comes to beneficial health effects, science is showing there’s virtually nothing olive oil can’t do. Here’s one study that shows olive oil helps your body produce more testosterone, by allowing the testes to absorb more cholesterol. Here’s another that shows consuming three tablespoons of olive oil a day slows physical aging. And here’s one that shows how a compound in olive oil called hydroxytyrosol helps you to lose weight. Magic.

The good stuff

One of the main problems with supermarket olive oils is quality. You get what you pay for, and the bargains are often adulterated: cut, like cheap drugs, with inferior substances. That means seed oils. This is a problem you get with other oils too, perhaps most notably the hipster and keto dieter’s favorite, avocado oil. A study from a few years back showed that 82% of avocado oil sold in the US was rancid or adulterated.

Here’s a solution: Accept that you’re going to have to pay if you want a good product, and then go straight to the source.

Selo Olive

I go to Croatia for my olive oil. Not literally, but you know what I mean. My friend Martin Erlic founded Selo Olive on his family plantation in Dalmatia during the pandemic. Everything about this olive oil is authentic, down to the local village men and women who harvest the olives and press and bottle the liquid while they sing their local songs and laugh and joke in that inimitable Mediterranean way. “Selo” means “community” or “village” in Croatian, and it takes a community to make Selo’s olive oil.

When I got my first bottle of Selo, I couldn’t believe the difference from every other olive oil I had ever tried.

The color, the aroma, the consistency — and of course the taste. This is the real deal. I don’t think I could ever glug anything else on a Greek salad or grilled sardines or make a delicious olive-oil bulletproof coffee with an inferior brand that hadn’t been hand-picked by grizzled babushkas.

Once you visit the Selo, you won’t ever want to leave.

Bioscience secrets reveal you need to chew harder — and use better gum

"Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Weston A. Price is, to my mind, the greatest book about nutrition ever written. You’ve probably never heard of it, and even if you have, I’d wager you’ve never read it. Which is a real shame.

It’s a shame you’re not the only one who hasn’t read Price’s book. If it had been more widely read at the time of its publication — 1939 — and its essential insights taken up by the mainstream medical establishment, the entire history of nutritional science might be wildly different. Instead of 80 years of declining health marked by an explosion of every kind of chronic disease imaginable, we might have seen a new golden age of health.

Bad bacteria in the mouth can end up in the brain and influence dementia progression.

There would be no need for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to come along and “Make America Healthy Again,” because Americans would all be jacked and glowing and living their best lives, fortified by wholesome diets that provided them with the nutrients that are essential to proper human flourishing.

Weston Price’s thesis was simple: Modern diets — specifically diets made up of food produced in factories — are causing our bodies to degenerate. If that sounds scary, well, it should.

What makes a good face?

Price became a dentist in Cleveland, Ohio, at the turn of the 20th century. As the years rolled by, he began to notice more and more of his patients, especially the children, displaying profound signs of ill health. It wasn’t just that their mouths were starting to fill with cavities. It was that their jaws weren’t developing and aligning properly, the roofs of their mouths weren’t forming right, and their cheeks and nasal passages were narrowing. The entire structure of the face was basically giving way and collapsing.

And with these unpleasant physical changes, which made his patients less attractive, came mental and behavioral changes too, none of them good. Many of the children, in particular, had trouble concentrating and learning.

Price knew these changes had something to do with changes to the foods his patients were eating. Being a scientific man, Price wanted to be sure. So he decided to find control groups to compare his patients with. Together with his wife, Price traveled the globe, from the arctic circle to Australasia, even stopping in the Highlands of Scotland and the Swiss Alps on the way, to look at small-scale societies whose diets had not yet been affected by modern industrial processes.

What Price discovered was that wherever a society continued to eat as their ancestors ate, so long as that meant eating nutrient-dense animal foods — organ meat, fatty cuts, blood, dairy, rendered fat, shellfish and seafood, eggs — then none of the problems Price had been seeing back home in Ohio were visible. Groups who still cleaved to their ancestral diets displayed what Price called “perfect health,” and it extended well beyond their faces: They grew tall and muscular, they were free from disease, they were vigorous and happy.

Price demonstrated something fundamental that scientific researchers are only just beginning to appreciate: That oral health and the development of the face are a powerful index of general health. Chances are, a person with an unhealthy mouth will have an unhealthy body. (A recent study showed bad bacteria in the mouth can end up in the brain and influence dementia progression.)

Natalie Behring/Getty Images

The only way out is chew

Another essential insight from Price is the role of food texture in facial development. Price noted that modern diets are much softer than ancestral diets (people in traditional societies also used their mouths in day-to-day tasks like leatherworking).

What this means is that the musculature of the whole face and especially the jaw has less chance to develop because it gets less use. Muscle is muscle and responds in the same way to stimulus, whether we’re talking about the biceps or the masseters of the cheek and jaw. Use it or lose it. The facial muscles remain open to development throughout our lives.

One easy way to reverse the modern atrophy of our faces and to develop a jaw that could kill is to chew gum. Chewing gum also has powerful anti-stress effects, which is never a bad thing in our increasingly aggravating world. And, of course, chewing gum also looks cool.

The problem with most gum today is that it’s made of plastic. Yes, most synthetic forms of chewing gum use a base made of polymers derived from petroleum. You might as well break a piece off your iPhone casing and chew that. Another recent study showed that gum can release as many as 3,000 plastic particles and that chewing around 180 small sticks of gum a year could result in the ingestion of 30,000 microplastic pieces.

Then there are the artificial sweeteners, which are linked to a wide variety of health issues, from gut dysbiosis and diabetes to brain cancer, in the case of aspartame.

Mastic over plastic

Here’s my recommendation. Chew mastic gum instead, just like the ancient Greeks did 2,500 years ago.

Mastic is a resin taken from the mastic tree (Pistacia lentiscus). Authentic mastic, the very best, only comes from trees on the Greek island of Chios, and there’s no better brand than Greco Gum.

Unlike the bag of mean little shards and dust you’ll get if you buy mastic on eBay, every tin of Greco Gum contains fat, juicy droplets that crunch satisfyingly in your mouth and then become a soft, sucking mass you can really get your teeth into.

Mastic has a very pleasant, fresh taste, a bit like pine, and you can reuse it multiple times.

As well as being entirely natural, mastic gum has potent antibacterial properties. The father of medicine, Hippocrates, recommended mastic to treat digestive problems and colds and to freshen the breath. I chew mastic most days, and my head wouldn’t look out of place buried in the ground on Easter Island. Try it. Build a face fit for stone.

This Idaho family is perfecting the good night's sleep

You spend, for argument’s sake, a full third of your life sleeping. Anything you spend 33% of your life doing is obviously very important, even if you aren’t fully conscious when you’re doing it.

And yet people are still surprised when I tell them they could revolutionize their health if they just took their bedtime habits a little more seriously.

These pillows are as American as apple pie.

Consider testosterone, the master male hormone, which men have to thank for libido, muscle mass, drive, and a willingness to put themselves in harm’s way to save a cute little kitten when no one else will. Most of a man’s testosterone is produced at night, so if a man doesn’t sleep properly, he’ll produce less testosterone.

One study, by a researcher called Plamen Penev, showed that if older men double their sleep from four to eight hours a night, they can double their testosterone levels. Just like that. I don’t think there’s another health intervention a man could make that would have such a drastic effect on his hormonal health.

There are many different things you can do — simple things — to improve the quality of your sleep. You can turn off your electronic devices a few hours before bed and start to darken your home, to simulate the natural diurnal rhythms that have governed sleep since time began. You can take a hot shower or bath before bed to lower your core temperature. Really: Doing that can send you off to the land of Nod up to half an hour earlier.

You can change your bedding, too. Of course you want to be comfortable, and if your bedding is itchy or too thick, you won’t be and you won’t sleep. But an under-appreciated aspect of your choice of bedding is whether or not it contains harmful chemicals.

Lab mice sleep on corn-cob bedding. A study showed that corn contains a substance that mimics the “female” hormone estrogen, and so lab mice get a huge dose of artificial estrogen while they sleep, through their skin. Enough, in fact, that it can interfere with reproduction and even make them sterile.

Mirrorpix/Getty Images

There haven’t been many studies of the effects of bedding on human health, but we have every reason to believe most bedding, which is made of synthetic fibers and laced with nasty chemicals like fire retardants, is having a negative effect on our health. Dermal contact — through the skin — is one major route for harmful substances to enter the body, and if you have your face buried in a pillow that’s soaked in fire retardant, you’re inhaling that stuff all night long. Do you want to inhale fire retardant all night long?

But help is at hand. The Woolshire, a wonderful little family business up in Idaho, is making the most amazing organic virgin-wool pillows — not a single synthetic fiber or harmful chemical in sight — and what’s more, the company is doing so in a way that benefits its local community and the nation.

All Woolshire pillows are handmade, using antique American machinery and local wool that’s milled in one of the longest-running wool mills in the country, in Montana. These pillows are as American as apple pie.

Wool is a superior material, and not just for pillows. It makes you wonder why we ever stopped using it. I’ll let the good people at the Woolshire explain:

“Wool is naturally flame retardant, self-cleaning, and temperature regulating. It retains its loft, is moisture-wicking, and it is very cozy. It has been used by humans for its incredible properties since the Stone Age.”

The Woolshire currently offers two products: its signature Woolshire pillow, with a variety of different fill depths, and a child’s pillow. I’m told the company will be expanding soon to offer other products, including a travel pillow, a prototype of which I’m lucky enough to own.

All my pillows are now Woolshire pillows, and, honestly, I’ve never slept better.

(Oh, and before you go to the website and order the best pillows money can buy, and then have the best night’s sleep of your life, take this promo code with you. Enter REN at checkout and get 10% off your order. Thank me later.)