Blog

JANUARY 2026 TABLEHOPPING

GETTING TESTY

It’s the beginning of a new year, and the last thing you need is another advice or resolution column. There are new supplements I am trying out and the investigation into peptides continues, but if you want advice about supplements, I recommend consumerlabs.com.

Instead, in this month’s column, I want to “big picture” it regarding your health.

Medicine 2.0 looks at a number on a piece of paper. It could be your blood sugar, your cholesterol, your blood pressure, etc., and reaches for the electronic prescription pad. The medication will make the number better but does little or nothing about the underlying issue that’s causing the “abnormal” value.

Medicine 3.0 looks for the underlying or “root” cause of the abnormal value and looks to address that. For example, if your blood pressure is up, in Medicine 2.0 you will get medication to lower it. Medicine 3.0 acknowledges that if your blood pressure is up, there is something underlying this. Your blood pressure doesn’t go up for no reason. Maybe it’s your sodium/potassium balance. Maybe it’s sleep apnea. Maybe you are oversecreting some hormone, etc. I’m not saying Medicine 3.0 doesn’t use medications, but the focus is on finding out—when possible—why the medicine is needed. Medicine 3.0’s focus is more on cellular biology, the microbiome, and the mitochondria (the tiny structures within almost all our cells that act as energy producers).

Medicine 3.0 looks at the list of major causes of death in America which includes heart disease, cancer, stroke, dementia, diabetes and renal failure and looks for underlying things they might have in common. As my patients hear daily, what they have in common is inflammation. Alzheimer’s is inflammation of the brain. Inflammation is linked to all of the major killers above and there are more and more markers of inflammation you can measure. C -reactive -protein is a well known marker your doctor can measure. I have been ordering more oxidized LDL levels recently. From what I have read the level of oxidized LDL is far more important than the LDL level. Oxidation is a marker of inflammation. The higher your oxidized LDL level the higher your risk for heart attack and stroke. Here’s a nice reference from the National Library of Medicine….PMCID: PMC9885196 PMID: 36727024. So it’s all about inflammation and that’s the end of the conversation in Medicine 2.0.

Medicine 3.0 takes the next logical step. If six of the major killers in America have inflammation in common, what causes the inflammation? Address that, lower inflammation, and lower the risk of all these illnesses.

Some causes of inflammation are hard to measure, like stress or being sedentary. Some are easy to measure but hard to treat, like smoking. Changing your diet is clearly the most anti-inflammatory thing you can do, but it’s complicated and difficult to determine which parts of your diet are causing inflammation. Poor sleep is inflammatory and increasingly easy to measure. Diet, smoking, poor sleep, stress, and being sedentary are all inflammatory and can be addressed, but none of them are easy to tackle. There are two other causes of inflammation that are easy to measure, easy to follow, easy to work on, and probably the most impactful to your health. The first is sugar intake. Sugar is inflammatory—plain and simple. The best measure of this inflammation is not sugar itself, because your body works very hard to keep sugar levels stable until very late in the process. By the time your healthcare provider diagnoses diabetes based on blood sugar, you will have actually been dealing with elevated insulin levels for a decade—and this is the real issue. Insulin is inflammatory. You need a little insulin, but more than a little creates an inflammatory cascade that affects your eyes, heart, brain, and kidneys. Ask your provider to measure your fasting insulin. Your provider may say you don’t need this test because your sugars are fine. You should counter by reminding them that insulin elevation precedes glucose elevation by a decade.

The last very common cause of inflammation is low ingestion of fish oils and excessive ingestion of seed oils like corn oil and canola oil. This is far too complicated an issue to fully address in this article, but type the next line on YouTube.

DR CHRIS KNOBBE OMEGA 6 APOCALYPSE FROM HEART DISEASE TO CANCER AND MAuCULAR DEGENERATION

And

The INSANE BENEFITS Of Adding Fish Oil To Your DIET | Dr. Steven Gundry

This is a very important source of inflammation because an imbalance between these oils affects every cell membrane in your body and you have trillions of cell membranes in your body. We have increasing evidence that some forms of dementia are related to membrane abnormalities. If you don’t give the contractor the right supplies, how is he supposed to make a good foundation? The easy suggestion here is to avoid fried foods and commercial salad dressings that contain oils like canola, sunflower etc.. There are dressing companies that use avocado oil or olive oil. The second and just as important suggestion is to supplement your diet with fish oil. Swig the liquid from the bottle or gulp down the capsules or eat sardines and anchovies ( sorry, no way for me) but get the Omega 3’s into you. Eating fish a couple times a week will not get you to a great level. How do I know? Because I test my patients’ levels almost every visit. The test I use is the Omega 3/6 ratio and I order it from Quest labs who provide a great printout of the results with all the important levels and you can easily compare your results over time and you try different doses to see what you need for a good level. Almost everyone in America has some lipid or cholesterol problem according to all the experts (Again, I don’t agree with this but that’s another article) .
Your provider can write that you have dyslipidemia if there are any flags on your lipid panel or you take a statin drug or have diabetes etc. Your provider will need some persuading. It’s not their fault they have no training in this important aspect of molecular biology but you have, I think, a right to ask for blood work to check on your health if you have a reasonable reason. If you watch the videos above you will see how critical it is to have the right ratio of these oils in your membranes and measuring these ratios has never been easier.

So, Medicine 3.0 is you taking charge of your health this year and working with your health care provider to get these inflammatory markers checked and followed. It’s not all about the base, it’s all about inflammation and CRP, Oxidized LDL, fasting insulin and the Omega 3/6 ratio are the numbers you want to follow. In the end they are all affected by your diet. Until next month get well and stay well.

JT BARRY MD